YMMV / Persona 5 I To S

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I

• Idiosyncratic Ship Naming:
  • 'The Royal Trio' for the Joker/Akechi/Yoshizawa ship. 'The Royal Trio' is also used to refer to the three-person-group as a whole, even platonically, due to their shared importance in Royal.
  • 'Poly!Thieves' is the ship name for shipping all the thieves together. Whether or not the traitor Goro Akechi is included in this ship depends on the shipper.
• I Knew It!:
  • There was speculation that Ann would be Caucasian, as "Takamaki" is both a Japanese and Finnish surname and thanks to the complicated Kanji in her name, no one really knew if her name was "Anne" or "Anzu". Add to this her blue eyes and blonde hair, which, in a series where blue, red, purple and silver are both natural hair and eye colors, have been reserved for foreigners, such as Lisa (American) and Bebe (French). A profile released shortly after the third trailer revealed one of her grandparent was American, making her ¼ Caucasian. While it's not clear if she has any Finnish ancestry (although the game reveals she did live in Finland for a time), she is partly Caucasian as speculated.
  • After the fourth trailer revealed her character, many guessed that Futaba was a Hikikomori, based on her computer expertise and her name being a Shout-Out to 2Channel. This was confirmed by Famitsu a week later.
  • Many fans guessed that the boy seen on a plane in the fourth PV with the Protagonist and Ryuji would be a Confidant. This was confirmed in the July stream as Yuki Mishima, the Moon Arcana.
  • Virtually every fan correctly picked The High Priestess as Makoto's Arcana. Ditto for Akechi being Justice.
  • Many, many fans correctly called Sae being Makoto's older sister. Granted everyone knew they were related thanks to sharing a last name and the only other possible relation was Sae being her mother.
  • Practically everyone predicted that Akechi sold the protagonist out during the Niijima's Palace heist.
  • Several predicted that the molester the protagonist stops in the prologue would be the Big Bad.
  • As soon as the theme for this game's Personas were revealed to be famous literary characters who reflected the thief motif of the Main Characters, everyone immediately predicted one character would have Robin Hood as a Persona. It took a while to be confirmed, but it was eventually revealed to be Akechi's Persona. Funny enough, the guy who owns the most recognizable Persona (or rather, his namesake) is the Sixth Ranger Traitor.
  • A common theory regarding Royal was that the events of the third term would involve a Lotus-Eater Machine scenario. And as it turned out, people were right.
  • Many people predicted that Goro Akechi would have an expanded role in Persona 5 Royal due to his popularity and his apparent Heroic Sacrifice in the vanilla game being regarded as poorly written, with many having expecting him to receive a redemption arc instead. This theory would be partially confirmed by the E3 trailer for the game which shows a scene of Haru in the Mona bus with the knee of Akechi's Black Mask form partially visible behind her and was later fully confirmed during an August livestream for the game.
  • People had long predicted that the game would be coming for the Nintendo Switch before the official announcement was made.
• Informed Wrongness:
  • The people that oppose the Phantom Thieves' actions that didn't have ulterior motives behind it. While you can make the excuse that their targets were irredeemable bastards that were too powerful to be dealt with by the authorities, many of the people that oppose them didn't know the circumstances. As far as they knew, the Thieves could easily be brainwashing innocent people. By the end of the game, these people end up having their minds changed.
  • To some, the decision to steal Okumura's heart. After it's revealed that the Conspiracy tricked the Thieves by hacking into the Phan-Site and pushing Okumura to the top of the polls, in order to lure them into a trap and dispose of a member who'd become a liability, the Thieves lament that they've lost sight of their real goals. However, the group as a whole showed no signs of letting fame go to their head, and even hesitated about changing Okumura's heart despite popular demand until they met Haru. Ryuji was the only one who lamented at having to be a hero who works in the shadows, and everyone else lambasts him for wanting to be famous. Furthermore, Okumura had committed many of the same abuses of his power that the other targets had and was the prime suspect for the mental shutdowns at the time - even though it turned out that he wasn't the ringleader, Shadow Okumura confesses that he requested some of the assassinations, which really isn't much better. Essentially, while the decision to steal Okumura's heart had disastrous consequences, many players didn't agree with the narrative framing the operation as a mistake that the Thieves should've known better than to undertake.
    • And for that matter, it's not even clear that Okumura's fate would've been different if the Thieves hadn't gone through with targeting him. He'd clearly been set up to die by a powerful conspiracy, and even if the conspiracy couldn't have caused a mental shutdown on Okumura without following the Phantom Thieves into Okumura's Palace (which is a big "if"), Akechi shooting Joker clearly demonstrates that the conspiracy wasn't above good old-fashioned murder if the need arose. It's hard to see a situation where Okumura lives, even if the Phantom Thieves had avoided being the patsy. In that light, Okumura dying isn't a consequence of the Phantom Thieves' actions, it's a consequence of the conspiracy putting out a hit on him.
  • The game makes a big deal of the Phantom Thieves' methods being morally questionable and akin to Heel–Face Brainwashing, but the Phantom Thieves don't do anything but make somebody feel guilty about bad things they've actually done. The Phantom Thieves can't frame somebody for something they didn't do, and they can't technically even force a confession; all they can do is make somebody feel really bad about their own actions. It's hard to see stealing hearts as that morally gray when it has less potential for misuse than a lecture from your mom. Even fans who find the whole "taking your heart" element odd fall into this, since the villains are so evil that there is no alternative way to do so. If anything, they are getting off extraordinarily easy, as the depth and scale of many of their crimes could, under the right circumstances, make an average person not hesitate to resort to lethal force to stop them; indeed, Akechi endorses exactly this perspective in several Thieves Den discussions. The game also very clearly shows that the Thieves only do so after actually researching their targets, so it isn't like they are blindly going off of baseless claims. While later revelations make it clear there are flaws to the whole "taking your heart" path they take, the Thieves had no way of knowing that, and by the time they do learn it, they already are so far into the story that they have to continue forward.
  • During the fight between Ryuji and Morgana at the start of the Okumura Palace arc, the setup seems to imply that both parties are to blame: Ryuji casually insulted Morgana, which is not unusual for him and much less common than the reverse, but it happened to hit a sore spot so Morgana just threw a hissy fit and immediately walked out on everyone, holding them all responsible for Ryuji's comment^{even worse}Morgana lambasts them for not being able to come to a swift and definite conclusion on what to do about Okumura, despite the fact that there were plenty of factors at play at that point that made hesitancy entirely reasonable - pretty childish to expect a group that prides itself on decision-by-consensus to always be able to come to that consensus instantly and painlessly, and extremely childish to write the whole group off and leave after the very first instance of serious indecision. The group then tries pressuring Ryuji into apologizing and he does, passive-aggressively, but when he says the fight is his fault too, he has a point. But nobody sides with him, presumably because we're supposed to think he's the only one in the wrong. Though, who knows - maybe the rest of them were like the average player at this point and just want to soothe Morgana's wounded pride and move on, given that he's easily the bigger drama queen between the two. In summary, it's not clear whether the narrative wanted to paint Ryuji as the sole bad actor or for both of them to be equally wrong (or somewhere between the two), but it doesn't really matter because most players saw it as being almost entirely Morgana's fault. This situation even managed to bleed over into some other areas, such as Haru's first real interaction with Joker outside of her Beauty Thief introduction. While she thanks him for helping her, she states that she just can't agree with, much less join, a group that doesn't know what they want to do. This is presumably meant to provide an unbiased outsider's opinion on the Thieves' deteriorating unity and resolve, but players instead tended to interpret this as Morgana having poisoned Haru against the main group off-screen - this is implied by Haru accusing the Phantom Thieves of not helping their own teammate, an accusation that would only be true from Mona's biased perspective.
• Iron Woobie: Joker. He goes through a lot of crap throughout the whole game. Whether it be treated like a social pariah for a crime he did not commit, being betrayed by his own teammate and mentor figure, or nearly getting himself brutally interrogated, killed, or erased from existence, it's all one big Trauma Conga Line. Despite this, he does not falter from his goals (discounting two of the bad endings) and takes all the abuse with stride.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: A criticism against Royal was that the added features actually make the game much more of a cakewalk than it was in vanilla. While several quality-of-life changes and Anti-Frustration Features do make the game less frustrating, some fans feel it went way too far in that direction by stacking the odds so heavily in the player's favor that beating the game becomes trivial. Social Stats are easier to raise without a guide, Confidant links are easier to manage, and the new battle mechanics (like Showtime attacks as a Desperation Attack) heavily weigh victory towards the player. There isn't any specific change that is clearly a step too far, but all the changes added up make for a largely much easier experience than the vanilla release.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: The confrontation with Black Mask in Royal plays nearly exactly the same as it did in vanilla, aside from a few small dialogue changes. Given how much Royal had extensive changes to the boss battles against the palace rulers who now have more gimmicks to make them either more difficult or more interesting, a lot of players hoped that Black Mask would get the same. This was especially disappointing for those who felt that Black Mask was a pitifully easy boss to handle in vanilla.
• It Was His Sled:
  • The plot point about Goro Akechi being the one who sold out the protagonist during the Casino heist became well known days before the game was even released, due to datamining of digital preloads of the game. Additionally, there is the reveal of their identity as Black Mask which as of 2019, Atlus no longer even considers worth hiding, as the pre-release trailers for Royal feature them in full view in that form.
  • Shido being an antagonist was also a shocker, now everyone knows that too.

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• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Akechi may be a crazy Serial Killer responsible for killing countless people (either directly via mental shutdowns or indirectly by driving people into psychotic frenzies) but it’s hard not to feel at least a little pity for him due to being born as the child of a prostitute and the most corrupt politician in Japan. His mother eventually committed suicide due to the shame and Akechi was passed around from abusive foster home to abusive home, always being treated like a freak due to the stigma against bastard children. Even after becoming a famous celebrity detective he’s still lonely and miserable.
  • Natsuhiko Nakanohara, the first Mementos target. He might be a stalker toward his ex-girlfriend, but he's also suffering a great deal of bitterness from Madarame using and discarding him, as well as guilt from not being able to stop his senior apprentice from committing suicide. It helps that, once he admits he was wrong, he actually has the courage to speak face-to-face with the Phantom Thieves and ask for their help in taking down a bigger target than him.
  • Morgana. There are many times where he acts like a Jerkass, notably when he constantly heckles Ryuji and when he leaves the Phantom Thieves. However, he also has a lot of personal issues which includes an identity crisis and doubts of self-worth, especially when he felt that he wasn't useful to the Phantom Thieves anymore.
  • Mishima, pre-Character Development. While he's obviously only using the Phantom Thieves to try and boost his popularity after a certain point, he is regularly bullied and was abused by Kamoshida and he didn't have any friends until Joker came around, making it hard to not at least pity him.
  • Some of the antagonistic Palace rulers become at least somewhat pitiable in their remorseful states. While he definitely deserves his fate, seeing Shido turned into a sobbing, broken shell of a man is somewhat sad. Especially considering that Shido cannot make amends to Akechi now that he probably wants to.
• Karmic Overkill: One Mementos target is a middle-aged unemployed man who's cheating in order to get the high score at a video game. While he's a nuisance to others, and is denying players who play fairly the chance to have their achievements honored, his crimes pale in comparison to most of the Mementos targets, who generally consist of bullies, abusers, criminals and other scum yet receives the same punishment.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships:
  • Joker, obviously, for being the main character. Popular gay ships include Joker/Akechi, Joker/Yusuke, and Joker/Ryuji, while the top hetero ships are Joker/Makoto, Joker/Futaba, Joker/Sadayo, and Joker/Kasumi. It's to the point where there's even a small but growing subgenre of shipping fic called Polythieves where Joker hooks up with the whole party at the same time, interdating within the harem optional.
  • Akechi's numbers have surprisingly grown over the years as well. Apart from being Joker's most popular gay pairing, he's been romantically shipped with nearly every Phantom Thief member (Futaba being the exception), along with Sae.
• LGBT Fanbase:
  • Whatever reason it may be, due to androgynous design, or his dynamic with Joker, Goro Akechi seems to have a sizeable portion of fans who identify as somewhere on the LGBT Spectrum.
  • Gay male fans also tend to find Iwai a total Silver Fox.
  • A lot of lesbian fans seem to headcanon Makoto as being a Butch Lesbian despite her being a potential love interest for Joker, due to her strong "steel hiding velvet" type personality and the leather-biker image of her Queen outfit.
  • Some fanfic writers depict Ann as a Lipstick Lesbian as well, due to her being a model and the most relatively overt example of Ms. Fanservice of the main cast. In most of these cases, she tends to be paired with Shiho due to some interpreting their extremely close relationship as romantic instead of platonic.
  • The LGBT Fanbase is so strong that there are plenty of memes going around essentially treating the Phantom Thieves as a Cast Full of Gay.
  • In a non-shipping example, Lala Escargot is excellent representation, albeit from a minor character. The fact that she seems to be one of the most level headed, responsible, yet still likable adults in the game while being a Drag Queen, as well as being both a queer and large person who isn't played for laughs, makes many fans wish she'd gotten a larger role.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • Ichiko Ohya is considered the worst Confidant in the game for this reason. Her abilities let you reduce the Alert level faster, but that's already easy enough to do, since ambushing a Shadow and defeating it reduces the Alert meter, and ambushing isn't that hard to do. Unless you're really bad with the stealth mechanics, you're better off spending your time with another Confidant.
  • Despite having to jump through hoops to unlock it, many fans are in agreement that Akechi's Tier 3 Persona, Hereward, isn't worth the effort. It's limited to being an 11th-Hour Superpower, as Hereward can only be used against the Final Boss. The problem is, unlike Yoshizawa's Tier 3 Persona, whose Skills are strong against the final boss, Hereward is weak to the final boss' Skills, meaning that without proper equipment, Akechi and Hereward end up being a hindrance during the final fight. As such, the only conceivable use that Hereward has is as a New Game Plus Persona, which is still limited due to Akechi being mostly a Guest-Star Party Member.
• Love to Hate:
  • Fans generally agree that Starter Villain Kamoshida is one of the best written and most delightfully despicable antagonists in the game. It's absolutely horrifying to learn that this monster gets away with all of the things he does because he's just too invaluable to the school's reputation; a situation that is nightmarishly realistic. Some have gone as far as criticizing the game for making Kamoshida too hateable, setting a extremely high standard for the rest of the game's villains that results in disappointment when compared to him.
  • The only other antagonist to rival Kamoshida in this category is Masayoshi Shido. He is responsible for ruining the life of The Protagonist over the pettiest reason and is willing to murder innocents or loyal lackeys, including his own son all to improve his career, while shrugging the incidents off almost instantly like they were nothing. Fans seem to enjoy his onscreen appearance and love hearing his speeches, though clearly not as much as they love giving Shido the ass-kicking he deserves.
  • To a lot of fans, even the character's former detractors, 3rd Semester Akechi in Royal just oozes this vibe, from their smug dialogue and portraits to their hilariously unhinged battle and navigator dialogue.

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• Magnificent Bastard: From Royal: Takuto Maruki is the mastermind behind the events of the third term. When his girlfriend Rumi fell into a coma, Maruki awakened to a Persona that granted him the ability to alter other people's cognitions and used his power to help Rumi, and later others, cope with their trauma. Among his patients is Sumire Yoshizawa, who later believes herself to be her older sister Kasumi thanks to Maruki's power. While at Shujin, Maruki uses his natural charm to get the members of the Phantom Thieves to open up their heart's desires to him. During the Day of Reckoning, Maruki gains the ability to change reality itself and uses it to create a stagnant reality where everyone has what they want. When the Phantom Thieves discover his involvement in the new reality, Maruki is briefly able to lure Sumire to his side and drives her Persona berserk to fight the rest of the Thieves. Later during the final battle, Maruki uses sheer will power to prevent his Palace from immediately collapsing. After Joker saves him from falling to his death, Maruki expresses admiration for the young man for always keeping his head up. At the ending of the game, Maruki in his new job as a taxi driver, helps Joker escape from the shady men in suits following the Thieves. After that, he tells Joker that he will be having a new start to his life, and the two depart on good terms with respect for each other.
• Memetic Badass: Despite not having a Persona herself, popular Fanon has taken to portraying Sae Niijima as a Knight Templar Big Sister who is the one person capable of intimidating Joker.
• Memetic Loser:
  • Mishima gets this treatment both from fans and In-Universe, as he is treated as The Friend Nobody Likes by the Phantom Thieves, despite him being the admin of the Phan-Site. A lot of options the player can take during his Confidant involve Joker showing irritation towards Mishima, and even Futaba mocks him via Brutal Honesty during Rank 5 of her Confidant by calling him an NPC.
  • Within the wake of the announcement of a new party member in the Updated Re-release, Hifumi has gotten this treatment given how her design was originally meant for a scrapped member of the Phantom Thieves while a brand new character ended up joining the Phantom Thieves and Hifumi was not made into one. It doesn't help much that pre-release footage made it seem like P5R's story will diverge from the original Persona 5.
  • While still a well-liked character, Haru has become this due to suffering the major problems of Late Character Syndrome, with jokes among fans centered around her comparative lack of screentime as compared to the rest of the Phantom Thieves, not helping matters was how her arc was overshadowed by Morgana during the Okumura Palace arc. After the release of Royal, fans took it further by commenting that new addition Maruki was better integrated into the story than Haru was.
• Memetic Molester:
  • Tae Takemi. Her confidant starts off with her giving Joker an experimental drug that knocks him unconscious. Combine that with the fact that, should she be romanced, Takemi actually drops some Casual Kink foreplay. Naturally, it didn't take long for the fandom to have a field day with it. The anime adaptation takes it a step further by having Takemi preemptively offering Joker drugs rather than him having to convince her to take him on as a test subject like in the game.
  • Sadayo Kawakami gets this treatment too from people who can't stomach the idea of a Teacher/Student Romance; while it's Joker who asks her out and not the reverse, that doesn't cut it for some Western players.
  • Futaba Sakura also doubles between this and Memetic Troll due to her bugging of Leblanc and even Joker's cell phone. Many jokes has been made of Futaba monitoring everything Joker does, and even his search history.
• Memetic Mutation: Has its own page here.
• Memetic Psychopath: Several of Haru's Mementos skits have her talking aloud about how much she enjoys fighting shadows, coupled with her having one of the more aggressive reactions despite remaining somewhat calm and composed should you cheat on her during Valentine's Day, has naturally lead to fans characterizing her as Cute and Psycho.
  Haru: "Why is it that I get a shiver of excitement whenever the Shadows plead for their lives?"
  Haru: (very soft-spoken): "Take my chocolate, please... before I crush it."
• Memetic Troll:
  • Morgana, due to him dictating the player's time and refusing to let them do anything but sleep during several parts of the story, and after coming back home from the Metaverse. He quickly gained a reputation amongst players as "that asshole who keeps forcing me to go to bed."
  • Akechi's smug, self-righteous attitude and status as The Friend Nobody Likes generated countless memes involving him messing with the other Phantom Thieves.
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • A decent-sized segment of the Western fandom wishes that a player had the option to flat-out execute the targets. This is despite a few key issues. Firstly, the idea of killing a target defeats the entire premise of stealing a target's heart as the Phantom Thieves; it makes the team into assassins instead of thieves, making them no better than those who oppose them. Second, Ann explicitly shuts down killing a target when Kamoshida suggests it in favor of what is pointed out to be a Fate Worse than Death, with a better chance of positive side effects on top of that. Finally, the fallout from the Okumura arc, wherein Black Mask kills Okumura by killing his Shadow, leaving the Phantom Thieves to take the fall and ruining their reputation, demonstrates exactly why this is a very bad idea.
  • The endings of Royal being a bad ending and a Golden Ending/True Ending. According to the Persona 5 Official Complete Guide, neither was designed as the True Ending, and were internally referred to by the development team as the Stay Ending and the Return Ending, with the belief that there's no single path to justice.
• Mis-blamed: The announcement of the free Japanese dub DLC and the announcement of the delay to April 4 were right next to each others, causing some fans to accuse the Japanese dub, or rather the fans who wanted it as the reason for the extended delay when the reality is the script took longer than usual. It got so bad that John Hardin, PR Manager of AtlusUSA, had to go onto the ''Persona 5'' subreddit and explain this.
  • Additionally, some were mad over Royal rewriting the Shinjuku Creatures to remove the homophobic implications, with some going as far as to say that social justice warriors are now running the industry. However, as shown in this video, their scenes were actually changed in the Japanese version of Royal too (albeit more subtly than the localization) and the primary intent was the same: removing the implications that they're hitting on Ryuji.
• Moe:
  • Futaba Sakura. With her odd but cute quirks and mannerisms, her Shrinking Violet nature, and her diminutive stature, she's incredibly endearing. She gets especially adorable should the player romance her, as once Joker confesses his love to her, she gets incredibly flustered around him, to the point that she completely shuts down for a good eight to nine text boxes. Additionally, she also has a rather tragic backstory which explains why she's a shut in. With all of this in mind, one can't help but want to give her a huge hug.
  • Haru Okumura. Her fluffy hair has brought comparisons to a sheep with a cute and gentle voice to match. She has a sweet personality, and her mannerisms in battle are adorable to watch. Her introduction to the Thieves as a rival "Beauty Thief" was her attempt at being a cool thief, only to keep messing up what lines she rehearsed, making the scene just kind of awkward, but in an endearing sort of way.
  • The Royal edition of the game gives us Kasumi Yoshizawa (a.k.a. Sumire Yoshizawa), an Adorkable gymnast who at one point tries to spook the protagonist by yelling "Hello... SENPAI!" while displaying odd and quirky behavior all around. When her true identity is exposed in earnest, she was also exposed to have one of the most tragic backstories and circumstances in the Persona series, one that most certainly explains her odd behavior and would most likely make one want to give her a hug as well. In a manner more extreme than Futaba, she also acts very flustered if the protagonist decides to start dating her.
  • Jose in Royal is a helpful Living Toy (possibly) that looks and acts like a little boy in an oversized coat. He drives around in his buggy in Mementos and also sells you random stuff for flowers, which he can also turn into refreshing drinks. He constantly tells Joker and his friends encouraging phrases like "Good job!". And to add to the cuteness he seems to have a Precocious Crush on Ann by calling her pretty lady.
• Moral Event Horizon: See here.
• More Popular Replacement:
  • While Sojiro is seen as similar to Dojima from the previous game, Sojiro ends up being more popular for a few reasons. He tries somewhat harder to close the gap between himself and Futaba than Dojima did, although his success is limited by the fact that Futaba's issues are far worse than Nanako's. Late in the game, after learning that Joker and Futaba are Phantom Thieves, Sojiro asks for the full story and agrees to shelter them, in contrast to how Dojima decides to bring Yu in for questioning after getting the threatening letter. It also helps that Sojiro has a good amount of Character Development and gradually warms up to Joker.
  • While Shido was criticized by fans for being a bland Hate Sink, the new antagonist of the Third Term in Royal, Takuto Maruki, was much better received for being an Anti-Villain with genuinely good intentions. Helping matters is that in contrast to Shido, whose motives were never explored beyond his lust for power, Maruki's motivations are far viewed as far more complex and sympathetic.
  • Kasumi from Royal can be seen as this in comparison to Marie from Persona 4: Golden. Marie has been criticized for being awkwardly put in the story and having an increased presence to the point where fans see her as a real life example of Poochie. Kasumi in contrast has been praised for having some excellent chemistry towards the other characters, not taking up too much time, and an excellent twist of actually being her sister who became the actually dead Kasumi. Some were even upset that she was barely playable in Royal and played no part in the spin-off Strikers.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • The shattered-glass sound effect of an impending critical that accompanies a Super Move Portrait Attack, moreso when the same effect is used to announce one of Futaba's support interventions. Few things in the game are quite as satisfying as getting caught in a surprise attack only for Position Hack to trigger and turn the tables, and who doesn't love free heals and stat buffs?
  • Sojiro's "Let me explain!" sound bite which accompanies his coffee and curry trivia.
  • "Here come the buffs!" — It's already nice when your party receives a free group buff, but all three at once is really gratifying. Just as nice to hear is "Super Move: Ultra Charge!", which is a free Charge and Concentrate for the whole team.
  • The popping in of character portraits after a battle, showing that they (or one of your Personas) have just leveled up. The more the better — and it's even more satisfying when it's then followed by a jingle indicating someone's learned a new skill.
  • Strangely, a lot of players enjoy hearing Shido's speeches while exploring his palace. The sound of his voice blaring adds a lot more ambience to the palace's atmosphere.
  • In Royal, hearing the whistle at the start of someone's turn means their Showtime attack is ready, complete with a quote and a close up of the character. When you hear that, you're ready for a show, and you'll pack a big punch at that.
    • Also in Royal the "SHWING!" sound effect of Black Mask Akechi's Rebellion Blade is wonderful to hear.
  • The echoing reverb when an individual awakens to their Persona, which is followed by the Phantom Thief declaring themself free of all doubts and ready to kick ass. Which is why it becomes an Oh, Crap! moment in Royal when you hear Maruki do the same...

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• Narm:
  • The Translation Convention in the English dub which permeates the entire Shin Megami Tensei series and a good amount of other English-dubbed Japanese media is here, too — it is to be assumed that everyone in Persona 5 is speaking Japanese, with the game presenting things in English for the sake of the anglophone viewer. This leads to a few moments where characters say that they can't read English while speaking in English, which is a little jarring no matter how many times you hear it. This also leads to characters in Hawaii, an American state, also speaking in Japanese without so much as a Hand Wave, and when the characters speak English in-story (i.e. to some of the Americans in Hawaii), the English dub makes no distinction between how they sound.
  • Ryuji's use of "effin'" sounds very weird and out of place. He's a Sir Swears-a-Lot who casually peppers his sentences with "shit", "bitch", "bastard", and "asshole". Yet he arbitrarily draws the line at "fuck" for no reason. It ends up sounding like the voice actor really wasn't comfortable saying that specific word out loud, considering there's a few uses of the word "fuck" by other characters that go uncensored. What's jarring is that Ryuji's All-Out Attack finishing touch has "FREAKIN' BORING", which looks (and sounds) more natural than "effin'".
  • Every time you unlock a new Confidant, the story will flash-forward to the interrogation, where Sae will absolutely grill you in an attempt to get you to reveal the accomplice who, for instance, taught you how to handle a gun (i.e. a grade school kid who plays light gun games at an arcade).
  • During her interrogation to Joker, Sae constantly points out that "their time is short", and she often checks her watch and complains that they're running out of time. However, you spend around 100 hours of gameplay reliving the entire story up to that point.
  • Haru's father's death and its aftermath takes place while you're at the game's version of Disneyland, complete with some of the characters wearing goofy animal ear headbands in front of a giant pink castle with fireworks in the sky. To say it's jarring is an understatement.
  • The scene prior to revealing the Black Mask. The game drags out the "suspense" of who Black Mask is. The game even outright plays you a recording of the character talking about how they're going to kill you after they betray you, without any real attempt to disguise their voice. And yet you are still subjected to several minutes of the pronoun game before it is dramatically revealed that yes, Black Mask was Akechi the whole time. Even the reveal of the real twist following that may not be enough to make players overlook it.
  • In the original version, Akechi's Confidant ranked up to 8, with all the usual fanfare, during the scene in the interrogation room where they reveal themselves at the traitor and prepare to shoot Joker. Already ridiculous, but even more so once you realize this logically shouldn't happen, as Akechi isn't talking to the real Joker. Thankfully this was removed in Royal.
  • Both times you personally meet Shido in the real world qualifies as this. For all accounts, the guy filed you onto probation for a minor assault case and ruined your future by sending you into Yaldabaoth's game and he doesn't even remember you. The second time is just ridiculous beyond belief; when he's rallying in Yongen-Jaya, you're standing right in front of him, he looks at you and you aren't even wearing a face mask. Guess what? He doesn't even know that it's the guy he thought Akechi disposed of.
  • Shido's Palace looks to be one of the most threatening in the game with very striking imagery, he is a Hate Sink and Knight of Cerebus. In short, the plot does not take him lightly. But the infiltration of his Palace is subjected to the goofiest puzzle gimmick in the game, which is turning the Thieves into adorable rats in certain rooms in order to crawl into small holes into other rooms that can only be accessed in that way. It is one of the more jarring differences in Palace design and plot.
  • If you make it to the end of Shido's palace the first day it's available, Akechi's greeting of "Long time no see..." can come off as unintentionally funny because it will have been only 5 days since you last saw him.
  • The whole vanilla campaign's terror effect only works for the first time around. Once you realize that the whole event that tricked you into the interrogation is a deliberate ploy on your part to outsmart The Conspiracy and the Black Mask which you obviously know as soon as you meet him and the fact that nearly everything that happened in the game from the fabricated crime against Shido, to the Phantom Thief bandwagon with no purpose other than to trick the Thieves off guard, to the increasingly snowballing popularity of Shido even during situations where it isn't supposed to happen are all rigged by a false god who's making sure that you beat the Conspiracy he personally set up just to rationalize him as the perfect god fit for ruling over the ignorant masses. Heck, the god even taught you how to survive that interrogation and you are expected to survive it!
  • In Royal the Will Seeds can be hard to take seriously since they look like giant potatoes from certain angles, most notably when Joker holds one up after collecting one.
    • If you equip Akechi's Q2 skin during the third term, he's still wearing his Crow outfit, which will make his Showtime look absolutely ridiculous.
  • In a scene at the end of Royal, Maruki tries to make one last deal with Joker to stay in his actualized reality, and leaves Joker and Akechi with the implication that if Joker returns to his original reality, then Akechi will truly remain dead. Akechi tells Joker not to waver, telling him to deny Maruki, even if it means Akechi's possible demise. The scene is incredibly serious, and yet one dialogue option is for Joker to say "This isn't small potatoes!" which just sounds very silly. Thankfully, this was fixed in an update that changes it to a more fitting line being "This isn't trivial!".
  • At the end of the final battle of ‘’Royal’’ against Maruki, after his persona is fully defeated, he challenges Joker to a fistfight, and it is also the only time in the game that he yells. However, he does not have a yelling Character Portrait or any that conveys the rage and frustration he feels and his face looks more annoyed than angry. This can detract from an otherwise very emotional scene.
  • Speaking of character portraits not lining up, the confrontation between Akechi and Shido's cognitive representation of Akechi has Cognitive!Akechi's portrait look like he's yelling, complete with his tongue suspended in the direct center of his open mouth, but Robbie Daymond speaks all his lines with the same soft-spoken volume he uses for most of Akechi's lines.
  • The use of And That's Terrible by the Phantom Thieves to illustrate how awful their targets are can get a bit excessive, the worst of it being in the Cruise Ship Palace when they include locked doors as evidence of their target's villainy.
  • Shadow Futaba encouraging the real Futaba is meant to be badass and heartwarming... except for their constantly referring to the people who've hurt Futaba as "adults", making it sound like a child throwing a temper tantrum.
• Narm Charm:
  • The way Joker says "METATRON!" whenever he summons him. It's so cheesy, like it's coming out of Super Sentai or Power Rangers. And yet, it's so badass at the same time, maybe because of how powerful of a Persona Metatron is.
  • Despite the lack of a yelling Character Portrait for the above mentioned pivotal scene at the end of Royal's final battle, the fistfight being emotional and well-acted on Billy Kametz/Satoshi Hino's part for Maruki makes it forgivable considering the fact that it drives home how well-meaning his role in the Third Semester was while showing that he's completely given up on his plans for a better world.
• Never Live It Down:
  • Ryuji's No Indoor Voice tendencies nearly got the Phantom Thieves in trouble twice: once with Makoto blackmailing them after recording him and him speaking too loudly on the phone, allowing her to hear him, and once as a slip of the tongue in a sushi restaurant. But fans tend to treat Ryuji as if he loudly announces that he's a Phantom Thief at every moment he can. In fact, during the first time it happens, Ann's voice is recorded as well, but she doesn't get as much blame as Ryuji does for this.
  • The time where Morgana ended up leaving the Phantom Thieves for a short while due to an argument with Ryuji. To this day, fans debate on who is to blame for what happened, and it became a huge reason why both Morgana and Ryuji wound up having a mixed reception among the fandom.
  • Sae will forever be seen as a heartless, abusive sister to Makoto due to her hateful rant about she hates having to be the one to take care of her younger sister. Never mind that Sae regretted this as soon as she said it.
  • At the beginning of Kaneshiro's arc, Makoto will follow Joker around the overworld while clearly pretending to read a manga magazine. The game will even have her run up to Joker if he stops walking. A lot of fans remember her for this alone.
  • Yusuke's fascination with the lobsters during the beach event. It's only one small scene, but that hasn't stopped fans from believing that he is interested in lobsters.
  • Haru's colorful comments about the Shadows in Mementos and her reaction on Valentine's Day if you cheat on her has given her a reputation in the fandom of being Cute and Psycho.
  • Similar to Adachi and cabbages, fans have taken to making Akechi obsessed with pancakes, based on a line he said on June 9 when he met the group at a TV station. Albeit said line did reveal he was lying to the Phantom Thieves, since Morgana was the one who said it, and Akechi shouldn't have been able to understand him. Still, it was only one line. Referenced by one of Akechi's 3rd semester Mementos lines in Royal where he mentions never wanting to hear the word "pancakes" again.
  • Sojiro is only known among the fandom by two words: "hoo boy." Just before Joker's date on Valentine's Day, Sojiro notes that it's Valentine's Day, saying "when I was young, hoo boy..." This turned Sojiro into something of a Pornomancer who could bed any woman he wanted in his youth. In-game, Sojiro only says this once, and his dating life isn't brought up anywhere else.
  • In a harsher sense, it's not uncommon for the fandom to give Mishima the Ron the Death Eater treatment due to his role in leaking Joker's record to the school and being Kamoshida's unwilling errand boy. The fact that his Confidant also highlights his more negative traits led to an unfortunate amount of people who take this as proof that he was less of a victim.
• Nightmare Retardant:
  • Shadow Kaneshiro. His transformation is one of the most disturbing in-game as he goes limp while he twitches erratically like a fly, then the cognitive hitman start to run away as he transforms and the camera even closes up to his compound eyes to emphasize the terror. After the transformation is complete, he just screams out slangs and acts in an incredibly ridiculous and silly manner. One can say even his "human" form is acres more terrifying than his One-Winged Angel form.
  • The Reaper is an intimidating and very powerful Superboss. Except during Flu Season in vanilla, where he can succumb to despair after three turns. He also talks in You No Take Candle.
  The Reaper: Me not want to talk to you. Me just want to hear your screams!
  • The Palace Shadows in Maruki's Palace look and act terrifying. If you think that the Persona 4 Heaven shadows are terrifying, these will give you the creeps even more; they are basically black-ish purple, vaguely human blobs sprawling around a research lab or paradise. And then when you tear off their masks... They pop up into several lovecraftian gods that look like rubber toys or MegaTen characters you are basically familiar with like Nebiros, Alilat or Baal.
    • One particularly obvious case happens when Maruki summons a Shadow to attack you once you refuse his view of a perfect world. The Shadow starts limping, twitching and dripping liquid while walking towards you... And then it pops into Hastur, which looks like a giant rubber toy than anything remotely disturbing or intimidating.
• No Yay:
  • There is a subset of the fandom that ships Kamoshida with Ann or, less commonly, Ryuji or Mishima or even sometimes Shiho, all characters who have either been sexually harassed or physically abused by him.
  • Shido/Akechi has a following in the fandom, despite the fact that Shido is Akechi's father and both of them are aware of this fact. This ship gained traction as Shido is shown to not be above manipulating people for his own gain, and has had Akechi under his thumb as his personal assassin for at least two years. Akechi's supposed Uncanny Family Resemblance to his dead mother and attitude towards Shido doesn't help matters.
  • Some fans have this reaction to the fact that the protagonist, a 16 year old high school student, can potentially romance up to four women who are way older than him, with one of them being his teacher.

O

• Obvious Judas:
  • You know from the beginning of the game that someone betrayed you, so the only question is who. As detailed under Captain Obvious Reveal and The Un-Twist, it isn't hard to figure out that it's Akechi, who's the last person to join your party, his Confidant bonuses not showing him being able to learn Endure next, something every other party member has, is the one most vocally opposed to the Thieves' methods; the one who didn't get a commercial, and he doesn't appear in the opening movie in the Vanilla version despite his presence on the game's box art and title screen. Even his DLC costumes don't try to hide this, with him having costumes such as Ideo Hazama, Jun Kurosu, Thomas Mutton, and General Munakata, all major antagonists of their respective games.
  • Another one is Yaldabaoth. He impersonates as Igor and he doesn't do a good job at it. His voice is extremely rough unlike the soft spoken Igor, and he acts absolutely nothing like the real one. ^spoilersThe real Igor will never refer to his guest's journey as a game nor will he imprison Joker in the Velvet Room for an eternity for the slightest mistakes He doesn't even try to speak like the real deal, most notably "Welcome to my Velvet Room" instead of "the Velvet Room" as his introductory scene. Joker also meets him right during the night after the Shido probation incident, as if the incident has the sole intent of dragging him right into his schemes.
  • Maruki from Royal somewhat qualifies. He just seemed overly nice and sympathetic... and sure enough, he's the final target you have to fight in order to save the world. The real twist, in this case, is that he's a complete nice guy with good intentions and absolutely no malice or hatred towards the Phantom Thieves.
• Older Than They Think: Many mechanics from the older Persona games and even from other Shin Megami Tensei titles have re-entered this game in some capacity.
  • A masked Persona-user named Joker who menaced society was done back in Persona 2. Even better, Eternal Punishment's JOKER also had a Red and Black and Evil All Over colour scheme. While 2's Joker isn't the protagonist, Jun Kurosu, ''Innocent Sin''s Joker, becomes a party member as well after his Heel–Face Turn.
  • And speaking of Joker, this is also not the first time in the series where a characters Persona causes them to change clothes and even physical appearance as it was this quirk the original Joker made use of to shift between his alter egos.
  • The Kouha (Light) and Eiha (Dark) magic spells are from the original Persona. While they're classified as "Expel" and "Death" spells in that game, the principle of Light and Dark still applies, as Hama and Mudo also fell under those categories in that game. The Frei (Nuclear) line of spells was also used in both the first Persona and in Persona 2, and finally, Psy (Psychic) originates from Devil Summoner; technically, the Psy prefix came from Megami Tensei, but it was the original name for the Zan line of spells.
  • Ailments are now divided into Physiological (curable with Patra) and Psychological (curable with Energy Drop). Ailments in Persona 1 and Persona 2, as well as some other titles like Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, were also divided into different categories, albeit under different titles (Mind, Nerve, etc.).
  • Using guns as a separate melee attack is present in almost all of the mainline games, some spinoffs, and in Persona 1.
  • The most damaging single-target ice spell is named "Diamond Dust," a spell from Persona 2. Same with Inferno and Deadly Burn for Fire magics.
  • After Persona 3 and Persona 4 used more of a drop / chance mechanic in terms of tarot cards for gaining Persona personally, the negotiation system from both the first two titles as well as the main Shin Megami Tensei series returns (albeit revised in that you can only negotiate with Shadows when they're all knocked down).
  • Yaldabaoth shares a name the final boss of Shin Megami Tensei NINE; all other Shin Megami Tensei games simply refer to the entity as the "Demiurge".
  • Sumire is actually the name of the Chaos heroine of Shin Megami Tensei NINE.
  • In the West, some have confused Ann's persona, Carmen, with Carmen Sandiego as opposed to the character from the eponymous novella/opera due to Sandiego's well-established reputation as a classy Gentlewoman Thief among Westerners in their thirties and and younger.
  • Dungeons inspired by the Seven Deadly Sins was already done in its Spiritual Predecessor Shin Megami Tensei if... if it can be considered a Persona game.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • The Dirty Cop who was interrogating Joker in the beginning of the game is very threatening and immediately crosses the Moral Event Horizon with how violent he is with Joker. Despite having a detailed model and being a big part of the opening cutscene, he does not come back or even get a name.
  • The Black Mask has his true persona, Loki. Its only appearance is during Akechi's Villainous Breakdown and his boss battle. Yet in those short moments, it received praise for its unique design and how it suits Akechi's character. Fortunately, in Royal you get to use Loki for the entirety of the third-term events unless the player fulfills the requirements to upgrade it into Hereward.
  • The Black Mask gets a second stint during Royal's 3rd semester, Akechi briefly takes over as Navigator when the rest of the Phantom Thieves (including Futaba and Morgana) are incapacitated by Maruki's Lotus-Eater Machine. His performance was a huge hit with the fans due to nearly all of his lines being infused with Comedic Sociopathy, with some even wanting an option to keep Akechi as Navigator full-time.
• One True Threesome:
  • Being the founders of the Phantom Thieves and a very strong Power Trio, fans have taken to shipping Joker/Ryuji/Ann (the Shujin Trio, as Ryuji calls them in Strikers) together, with Morgana usually on the periphery but not involved in the dirty particulars for obvious reasons.
  • Joker/Akechi/Kasumi is also popular among fans due to the latter two having an admiration for Joker and being the only two characters in the game to be able to perform Showtime attacks with him, as well as the strong Power Trio they form during the third-term events of Royal. The fact that all three have Personas that specialize in either Bless or Curse skills (with Akechi specializing in both), as well as the P5R Official Complete Guide comparing the relationship between the three to a love-triangle also helps.

P-R

• Padding:
  • The part of the Okumura arc where Morgana temporarily leaves the Phantom Thieves after Futaba takes over his role as the team's navigator and after Ryuji jokingly calls him useless, is this for many fans. With Morgana's knowledge of the Metaverse, his ability to investigate Mementos and his general thieving expertise, many fans didn't really buy his complex over being useless (particularly compared to other members such as Ann). This plus the fact that it adds nothing to his character since he goes back to being an annoying Jerkass (especially to Ryuji), especially during what was supposed to be Haru's arc, the whole debacle really wouldn't affect the story much if it was removed entirely and seemingly only exists to enable the specific method of Haru's addition to the team.
  • During the early part of the third trimester, Joker has to talk to the other Phantom Thieves in order to snap them out of the Lotus-Eater Machine-like dream reality that Maruki has crafted for everyone by convincing the rest of the Thieves that something's off. Sumire is undergoing a Heroic BSoD, Akechi is already aware of what's happening, and Morgana's talk happens automatically. But that still means you have to talk to six of the Thieves. It's a straight week of doing this, and it eats up the entire day once you do it each time. You can't do anything else to advance the clock, and the night activity slot is automatically filled in on each day by Joker repeating more-or-less the same dialogue every night. Just like the above event, the music also loops between two tracks over and over with "So Happy World" and "Suspicion". Plus, the city-wide fast travel mechanic is inexplicably disabled during this segment; you have to manually navigate the subway system every single time. It's not hard to do and you get a nice understanding of what each of the Phantom Thieves considers ideal, but it gets very tedious very quickly, and it can take over an hour to get through it all. You'll be glad it's over once you're finally done.
  • The day after Valentine's Day in Royal, you get chocolate from every single girl whose confidant you have finished but aren't dating. Throughout the entire day, each girl will stop you one by one to give you chocolate for up to 10 separate events, with the women who are unrelated to Shujin Academy taking the time to specifically track you down just to give you chocolate. It can feel gratuitous and unnecessary, especially as they have little practical use as you are in the post-final boss epilogue, and they are essentially Master Coffee but with a unique name for NG+. To make it more gratuitous, literally nothing else happens that day. It's just a slow parade of receiving platonic chocolate.
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • The Conspiracy led by Yaldabaoth, who has a Black Mask assassin who can travel to another world and make almost any person go berserk or mentally shut down with no warning whatsoever. It doesn't help when you are being unwittingly manipulated by the same guy who made this Conspiracy to induce Apathy-based brainwashing onto the very same force of terror he imposed upon Japan. After Shido is defeated it becomes even worse as the true leader begins to step into action himself, and it shows. Not only the remnants revealed that they have plans to take over the world with the Metaverse so even if you are outside Japan, you are not safe, the media begins denying your hard work and support for Shido inversely exaggerates to cultish levels despite it should not happen, and the next thing you know is that Yaldabaoth has decided that the public thinks that Phantom Thieves do not exist...and then you and all of your comrades suddenly writhe in pain and got Ret-Gone.
  • The Reveal of the true Big Bad. He's been right there, watching you the whole time, in the guise of Igor. Every time you entered the Velvet Room to fuse Personas, you were staring a malevolent Eldritch Abomination in the face. And that "rehabilitation" he kept referring to? An excuse to keep tabs on you all the time.
  • Hanging out with Goro Akechi in Royal. You knowingly hang out with this dangerous man with full knowledge that he's the Black Mask assassin that every other Palace Ruler tells you to watch out for, meanwhile when he maintains a friendly facade up until the 8th Confidant Hangout where he explicitly tells you to fight him and after the fight, he says that he will defeat and kill you. After he's reformed, he still has the Black Mask outfit and fights exactly like the Black Mask assassin you fight before, complete with the feral verbal tics during combat while snapping back to being unusually calm and stoic right after the fight. It doesn't help when even after his Heel–Face Turn, your other seven party members still treated him like a dangerous beast out to kill them.
  • While Nyarlathotep doesn't actually appear in this game, the true final boss of Royal is Azathoth, which is Nyarlathotep's father in Lovecraftian mythology. While in this game Azathoth is completely something else and is most likely unrelated to Nyarlathotep's deal, it will not make you stop thinking about it considering that two of the common enemies that you encounter in this dungeon is Biyarky and Hastur, both being Nyarlathotep's cronies in Persona 2.
• Periphery Demographic: Despite being rated M for Mature in North America, Persona 5 is very popular with minors, with many young fans under 18 sharing their fanart and cosplay from the game on networks such as TikTok (much like Death Note during its heyday), although a sizeable percentage of them haven't actually played the game. Putting Joker in the family-friendly Super Smash Bros. Ultimate only helped introduce the game to an even wider sector of that audience.
• Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading: Ann and Ryuji are supposed to be Platonic Life-Partners (with Ryuji being established as attracted to Haru instead), yet they bicker so much that it starts to come across as Belligerent Sexual Tension. It gets to the point that even if you enter into a relationship with Ann, there's gonna be some cutscenes which can make it look like she has feelings for your best friend.
• Polished Port:
  • Royal contains some graphical updates on the PS4 version of the game, including new portraits in dialogue and refined aesthetics for the UI, as well as an entirely new semester and incidental story cutscenes. But the game still runs smoother than ever, and the load times for everything are much quicker, even in spite of all the updates and additions.
  • The Xbox, PC and Switch versions have also won wide praise for being excellent ports of the PlayStation original. In-particular, the Switch is recognized for having very smooth performance (even in handheld mode) with only a minor sacrifice to resolution, while the PC version can support much higher resolutions and framerates with little issue. Add that with almost every piece of DLC being added and you've got the definitive version.
• Preemptive Shipping: As soon as trailers revealed Yuuki Mishima, a fanboy of the Phantom Thieves from their class, fans begun shipping him with Joker and hoping he would be an official Gay Option. This was abandoned when the game released and Mishima turned out to be a very different character than expected. (He's a borderline Loony Fan who's partly using the Thieves to stoke his own ego, and instead of an Honorary True Companion, the Phantom Thieves, especially Joker, treat him as The Friend Nobody Likes) Although he does receive Character Development in his confidant, his relationship with Joker is widely considered to not be good shipping material.
• Realism-Induced Horror:
  • Part of the reason why Suguru Kamoshida is considered by players to be the best antagonist of the game is that people like him do exist in real life. Kamoshida is a realistic portrayal of a sexual predator who is given free rein to do whatever he wants under the protection of the system, simply because his talents make him a valuable asset. And unlike future palace rulers who are influential members of society such as a famous artist or head of a company, Kamoshida is just like any other ordinary school teacher that people can encounter on a daily basis.
  • Although the circumstances surrounding him are rather fantastical, with Yaldabaoth brainwashing the people of Japan to worship him, there's a rather real horror behind Masayoshi Shido: a politician who's ruined the lives of many in his rise to power, uses his connections to keep him from being found out, and is beloved by the public so much that nobody is willing to stop him once he's accused of his crimes because they feel his political influence is what the country needs. Even outside of Japan, politicians such as Shido are already in charge of their countries, and have managed to let their crimes go unnoticed.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • A lot of players dislike Sae at first, particularly when she, in a fit of anger, calls her own sister useless and nothing more than a drain on her life out of nowhere. Toward the end of the game, however, many of those players warm up to Sae, when she proves one of the more sympathetic targets, then becomes a highly useful ally to the Thieves after changing herself without having her heart stolen.
  • From a gameplay perspective, Royal does this with the Lucifer persona. In the original game, he inexplicably had no defensive bonuses despite being a level 92 persona that required the fusion of six other personas to obtain, three of which were advanced fusion personas themselves. Royal gives him a serious upgrade, with immunity to Physical, Gun, and Curse damage along with resistance to Fire, Ice, Wind, and Lightning damage. If you level him up enough, he also covers his Bless weakness up with Repel Bless. It also gives him the extremely powerful Allure of Knowledge trait that drops the SP cost of all spells by 75%. This makes Lucifer a proper end-game persona that's worth using instead of just part of the recipe for Satanael and item fodder for Joker's best pistol.
  • Royal also gives one to Goro Akechi for various reasons. The first one was through his revised confidant in Royal. Unlike in the vanilla where his confidant automatically ranks up as the story progresses, his revised confidant allows Joker to spend genuine bonding time with Akechi that gives him a lot more Hidden Depths, making him a more compelling character. There is also during the events of the third trimester when he rejoins the Phantom Thieves, which plays up his role as the Thieves' Token Evil Teammate and gives him a dynamic with Joker akin to that between Yu and Adachi in Persona 4. Not to mention his short, but hilarious stint as navigator.
  • Royal buffs Ryuji's Confidant ability to allow you to gain experience and money from insta-kill victims, see affected enemies glowing green when you use your Third Eye, and only trigger when you're dashing, turning it from an active liability when grinding to a full-blown Game-Breaker.
• Ron the Death Eater:
  • In Royal, one of the side conversations while exploring Mementos during the third trimester when Akechi rejoins the team. Akechi thanks the Thieves for fulfilling his Last Request to stop Shido, only for Ryuji to coldly dismiss Akechi by saying that the Thieves did it for Joker, not for him. This has a lot of people to start calling for Ryuji's head for his needlessly cold behavior towards Akechi.
  • Royal's 3rd semester Arc Villain is, in-universe, treated as a misguided Well-Intentioned Extremist at worst, and has a Heel Realization after their boss fight. While the darker implications of their methods are pointed out in-canon and opposed by the Phantom Thieves, a small subset of the fandom find them so disturbing they paint this character as just as much of a monster as the other targets, and see their stubborn belief in these methods as evidence they only PRETEND to be nice. Less flattering portrayals are especially common in Joker/Yoshizawa shipping stories, to give the couple a clear antagonist and some Catharsis Factor for her spending months under his brainwashing.^noteIn-canon, while Sumire agrees this wasn't healthy in the long term, she does admit it helped stave off her depression for a time, and as such doesn't resent Maruki for it.
  • Some Ryuji fans demonize the Phantom Thieves (With the exception of Akechi and Kasumi) as false friends, due to what they perceive as the group’s unfair treatment of him, during the infamous scene after Shido's Palace.
  • Conversely, some Ann fans view Makoto as complicit in Kamoshida's abuse since she did nothing to stop him despite the extent of her knowledge and authority being quite limited.
  • Morgana often gets this treatment from those who are either fans of Ryuji or view the Conflict Ball in the Okumura arc to be Morgana's fault. Some who write stories where it's Ryuji who leaves during this arc instead of Morgana often exaggerate Morgana's ego and attitude to unlikable levels. Some of these stories often also become an Accusation Fic against Joker, who is viewed and often characterized to be complicit to much of Morgana's mistreatment towards Ryuji for the first half of the game, and for hypocritically standing by and let Ryuji be the Butt-Monkey in several situations (with the infamous moment with the two NPC's in Shinjuku being one of the stand out examples for the accusation against Joker) despite Joker's sense of justice being what led to his false assault in these stories.

S

• The Scrappy:
  • Eiko from Makoto's Confidant is not very well-liked among players. The main criticism is that most of the Confidant is more focused on her, with most of Makoto's Character Development in it being reliant on Eiko. She constantly acts stupid, shallow, and spoiled, and is also widely disliked for not listening to Makoto as a result of becoming blinded by her "love" for Tsukasa. Even after Makoto and Joker prove that Tsukasa is a lying, cheating, backstabbing loser who was just using Eiko for his own selfish whims, Eiko still yells at Makoto for getting involved in her business, making Eiko get viewed as an Ungrateful Bastard by the fandom. Not helping matters is the fact that Eiko's alleged apology to Makoto and decision to become responsible happens completely off-screen, so the player never sees her as anything other than her negative traits listed above.
  • Even by the standards of Americans Hate Tingle, the Shinjuku Creatures NPC duo that the player encounters in Shinjuku and the beach are utterly reviled. While the jokes about Kanji's sexuality in Persona 4 were polarizing, many players loathed the pair for being unfunny stereotypes who prey on minors, especially in their beach scene. It's even more jarring due to Atlus' previous experiences with non-stereotypical LGBT portrayal (Kanji and Persona 2's Jun, an openly gay party member who was also a romance option, as well as Erica, a non-stereotypical trans woman), the pair come across as a glaring step back. The hatred for these two even extended outside of the game's fanbase, and they were considered so offensive that when Royal came around, they were practically removed for western localizations. What truly pushes them to this trope is that even in Japan, a country that doesn't even bat an eye at media making teasing jokes at LGBTQ+ people, they aren't seen as all that great, with some LGBTQ+ people and even standard Japanese gamers there voicing their open dislike for the pair. They are so disliked by the fans that many fanworks that adapt the game prefer to remove any mentions of the NPC Duo entirely.
• Self-Fanservice: Fan-art of Goro Akechi specifically of him wearing his Black Mask outfit tends to exaggerate his butt, likely due to a moment in Joker's character trailer for Persona 5 Royal where it unintentionally gets emphasized by the lighting during a Baton Pass with Joker.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: The trophies for Royal are much easier to obtain than for Vanilla, since most of the harder achievements are now Thieves' Den Awards. It's entirely possible to get Royal's Platinum trophy in a single playthrough.
• Ship Mates:
  • Ryuji/Ann is a popular ship that goes well with many other ships, so you often see shippers who prefer Joker with other girls or guys allying with them.
  • Besides the above, many Joker/Makoto shippers rub shoulders with Yusuke/Futaba shippers. Bizarrely, they also sometimes Pair the Spares by throwing in Akechi/Haru of all things. ^note  This is despite Haru openly hating Akechi for killing her father and outright tells him that she will never forgive him for it.
  • Joker/Futaba shippers like to ship Makoto/Haru instead. Yusuke, meanwhile, is often shipped with art.
  • Among the series as a whole, people who pair Joker/Ann together tend to also be fans of Yu/Rise and Makoto/Yukari on the basis that all three ships pair the main protagonist with the character who represents the Lovers Arcana.
  • People who ship Joker with either Akechi or someone outside the main party often end up shipping Ryuji/Ann, Yusuke/Futaba and Makoto/Haru as a variation of Pair the Spares, in which "the spares" consists of the entire rest of your party.
  • While it mostly happens amongst the Japanese fanbase, there tends to be an overlap in fans of Joker/Akechi tend to also ship Shido/Akechi.
  • People who ship Joker and Ann with each other or with characters other than Ryuji or Makoto tend to ship the latter two together.
  • Joker/Yoshizawa shippers get on surprisingly well with Joker/Akechi shippers, leading to the "Royal Trio" becoming a popular One True Threesome.
• Ships That Pass in the Night:
  • Makoto/Ann has a fairly strong following among the fandom especially those who support Les Yay couples. In the game proper however, Makoto and Ann barely interact one on one with the only moments of doing so being the apology after Makoto joins the team, eating flan together, and buying Futaba a swimsuit. There's also the added fact that Makoto is shown to be closer to Haru than she is to Ann, making this ship seem even more odd.
  • Akechi/Makoto is fairly popular amongst those in the fandom who pair Joker with Haru or another character due to both of them having a connection to law enforcement, despite only interacting with each other a few times, and one of these instances being Akechi acting needlessly snide and condescending towards her.
  • Despite interacting only a few times, Mishima and Shiho tend to get paired together a lot, mostly due to the abuse they both suffered at the hands of Kamoshida.
  • Sojiro and Iwai are frequently paired up together in fanworks, despite never interacting with one another; it's entirely possible that they've never even met. Their popularity stems from the fact that they're both seemingly gruff older men with a heart of gold, who are raising a child who isn't biologically theirs, and who happen to become a father figure to Joker throughout the story.
  • Ryuji and Shiho also has become a popular pairing, even though neither of them had interacted with each other on-screen. This is partially due to both of them being close friends with Ann, were among Kamoshida's biggest victims, as well as Ryuji's pissed off reaction upon realising what Kamoshida had done to Shiho.
  • One popular pairing in some circles is to pair off Maruki and Kawakami, seemingly because both are Confidants that both work for Shujin Academy as faculty and appear to be in the same age range. Odd considering that the two never directly interact with eachother, and further made odd by the fact that Maruki's palace makes rather clear that despite what he may want to think, Maruki never really got over the loss of his relationship with Rumi.
  • Sae Niijima/Tae Takemi has also proven to be a popular pairing in some circles, despite neither speaking to each other once in the main game (they do share a conversation in the Thieves' Den but the existence of the Thieves' Den is not canon). It may be mostly due to their contrasting personalities (straight-laced prosecutor and casual doctor).
  • On a similar note, Munehisa Iwai/Tae Takemi, who also don't speak to each other at any point in the story. Nonetheless, the ship has gained fans due to their somewhat shady personalities, down-on-their-luck circumstances, and hidden heart of gold, making them ripe for Commonality Connection-type stories.
  • Since the release of Strikers, Sae Niijima/Zenkichi Hasegawa has started gaining support even though they only have one onscreen interaction. Like with the above two pairings, fans have seen potential chemistry in their contrasting personalities meshed with their related professions (a straight-laced lawyer and a bumbling yet heroic police inspector) as well as the fact that cops and attorneys tend to have interesting dynamics (including romantic ones) when paired together in legal dramas.
  • Although she rarely interacts with any of the thieves besides Joker or Akechi, Kasumi is sometimes paired up with Futaba in fanworks. This is presumably due to them both being redheads, the youngest Phantom Thieves, having Dark and Troubled Pasts involving the death of a loved one and being Shrinking Violets with long hair and glasses.
  • Kasumi is also often paired with Ryuji despite not having as much interaction with the thieves due to the two being optimistic athletes (Former athlete in Ryuji's case).
• Ship-to-Ship Combat:
  • This is most common between Joker/Ann and Joker/Makoto. Points that often show up in arguments range from (but are certainly not limited to) Ann being this game's Lovers Arcana and one of the first love interests you meet, to Makoto being relevant to more dungeons than Ann is, having Kaneshiro's act as her introduction but her sister Sae's being more personal for her, and her popularity in the Western fandom.
  • Joker/Futaba is an odd case, as even though fans end up in conflicts with those supporting Joker's other pairings, as well as Yusuke/Futaba fans, there's even fighting among people who like the interactions between the two. Some fans of the pairing prefer presenting them as being a platonic Like Brother and Sister relationship due to Futaba being Sojiro's adopted daughter, the youngest of the Phantom Thieves, as well as Sojiro serving as a father figure of sorts to Joker. A few fanworks often employ Joker and Futaba as pseudo-siblings to ensure that both of them are portrayed as very close to each other while allowing them to pursue other ships. Since she's also a romance option, pairing her romantically with Joker is also popular. This fighting is exclusive to the Western fanbase, as Japanese fans see Joker as Futaba's caregiver of sorts and not a big brother figure.
  • A particularly nasty one goes on between shippers of Joker/Akechi and those who ship Joker with others (usually another guy or Makoto), mostly on Tumblr, due to Akechi's Americans Hate Tingle status and him murdering Joker in the bad ending. People belonging to the latter group have even gone as far as to harass Akechi cosplayers at conventions.
  • Akechi/Haru fans often come into conflict with fans who ship either half of the pairing with other characters, usually Joker/Akechi and Makoto/Haru fans, due to Akechi killing Haru's father and Haru making it explicit that she can't forgive him for it.
  • Joker/Akechi vs. Shido/Akechi gets nasty from time to time, although this conflict usually comes from people going out of their way to harass Shido/Akechi fans. It reached a point where an infamous "block list" circulated around Twitter listing every artist and fan of Shido/Akechi. While this list seemed to have been created to protect people from potentially upsetting content due to Shido being Akechi's father, the block list also included people who weren't fans of Shido/Akechi, who were only on the list because they were nice to Shido/Akechi fans.
• Shocking Moments:
  • From the trailers:
    • The first gameplay trailer was filled with this. An earlier trailer depicted the main character as a seemingly mild-mannered student. The reveal that the main character was not the standard Ordinary High-School Student but an over-the-top Gentleman Thief was quite the bombshell. The trailer also showed new ways of traversing the field and heavy usage of firearms in combat.
    • For Royal. The last Morgana Report drops something no Persona fan was expecting — namely, as part of DLC, players have the option of fighting previous Persona protagonists Yu Narukami and the P3 Protagonist.
    • The fourth trailer was this in spades, revealing huge amounts of the in-game set-up, revealing three party members, several boss characters, the release date, box-art, and more. Compounding the matter is that there was little to no news for close to eight months.
  • In the game proper:
    • Early in the game, everybody was anticipating the badass moment when Joker finally awakened to his Persona, but what nobody expected, due to the trailers avoiding those scenes, was the fact awakening one in this game requires bloodily ripping off a mask glued to their face, shocking and slightly disturbing many players, before the badassery everyone wanted usually sidelines the shock.
    • When you finally face off against Black Mask, Goro Akechi, who's gone batshit insane at this point, suffering no fewer than two Villainous Breakdowns, with his second form gaining his true persona, Loki, and revealing that he's a Wild Card, just like Joker. Shortly after you defeat him and while you're trying to recruit him back to your party, suddenly a shadow manifestation of how the Big Bad views Akechi appears and both Akechis attempt to kill each other. There's a reason why the scene spawned so many memes.
    • The identity of the Big Bad caused this reaction in many fans. It's Igor. Or rather, the Igor you've seen all game was really the Big Bad in disguise all along, and they've been playing you ever since the opening narration.
    • While Joker summoning his Ultimate Persona with The Power of Friendship was expected, what wasn't expected was Satanael being so freaking massive! Satanael is the biggest Persona shown thus far, equaling or even surpassing the size of the Big Bad Yaldabaoth in height, with his main body and all six black wings being the size of skyscrapers. Satanael giving Yaldabaoth a Boom, Headshot! was equally surprising and awesome.
  • It's fair to say that you will be shocked about what they offer you in Royal.
    • Unlike his predecessor in Golden, Joker gets a third-tier Persona called Raoul, alongside the rest of the Phantom Thieves getting their own.
    • Kasumi was often thought as a god, a new Arc Villain or Big Bad, or even the instigator of the Third Term events prior to the game's release because of her opposing stance against the Phantom Thieves. But when the game's full scenario was presented...surprise. Not only is Kasumi actually a human who is a loyal ally of the Phantom Thieves with absolutely no antagonistic intent, this Kasumi is actually Sumire Yoshizawa, Kasumi's depressed and mentally unstable younger sister with many issues on her sleeve.
    • You might also think that the final boss of Royal would be some epic Eldritch Abomination, probably something worse than Yaldabaoth or even Nyarlathotep himself since the latter's henchmen are actually in this game. They aren't; It turns out that this is Takuto Maruki, one of your most trusted confidants who has became a special victim of Yaldabaoth's world domination plan, which for some reason corrupts his persona instead and it proceeds to partially take over him. And out of all of his misguided intent, he actually only wants to make everyone happy and content, ignorant of what his reality warping can actually cause.
• Sidetracked By The Golden Saucer: In the Thieves Den, players can engage in a game of Tycoon with the other Phantom Thieves. It's highly addictive to the point where you'll find more than a few letsplayers on YouTube having several videos of them playing the game. It also helps that you can get coins by winning a game of Tycoon, which is the currency needed to buy soundtracks, cutscenes, artworks and statues in the Den.
• Signature Scene:
  • The bad ending in which Joker is shot dead by Akechi in the interrogation room became one of these when the game was released, inspiring parodies and memes.
  • The shot of Joker's face covered in blood while giving a Slasher Smile alone has become very iconic to the Persona games. The in-game cutscene itself has him ripping his mask off to make his face bleed in the first place, followed by him being engulfed in flames before his persona Arsène reveals himself.
  • April 15th gives us the scene where Shiho attempts suicide due to how emotionally powerful it is.
  • Shido's Calling Card and his boss fight.
  • For those who have completed the game, the summoning of Satanael, and his subsequent dispatching of Yaldabaoth via headshot is a truly epic grand finale.
  • In Royal, there are a plenty added to it.
    • In the main campaign, Asmodeus-Kamoshida now has a Cognitive Shiho in playboy bunny outfit that he outright calls a slave. This just makes Kamoshida even more disturbing, because this means that he literally treats Shiho as a sex slave and nothing else.
    • The first one during the third term is when Maruki displays you the truth of Kasumi's death, revealing the "Kasumi" you are with to be actually her depressed and mentally unstable sister. Based on how Kasumi tries to Red Herring you into thinking her sister died, one might be actually shocked when they see the "Kasumi" they are hanging out all along is just a Tomato in the Mirror. It's also very gory and Kasumi's blood can be seen spilling all over the rainy road.
    • The extra Stay Ending where the protagonist accepts Maruki's reality is just outright disturbing to some, by the way that it twists a happy ending into a whole, new warped meaning. While the cheery tracks like "New Beginning" play during its sequence and everyone seems to be content and happy, everything just seems wrong, such as Morgana being completely human or Sumire reverting into "Kasumi" (And thus metaphorically murdering Sumire for real) or some of the dialogues and portraits, such as "Kasumi's" "Let's stick together forever" and Ann's blushing face during the graduation ceremony sounding outright creepy, the protagonist becomes the Only Sane Person, some of the first dialogue choices upon triggering it imply that he knew that his choice is wrong, but he nevertheless tries to conform to it. When Maruki goes in to make a photoshoot with the protagonist and his friends, he even makes an expression that looks like he's about to murder somebody before sensing something is wrong after Maruki leaves.
    • The final bonus phase of Maruki's boss fight is just Joker and Maruki fighting each other in a fist fight, something completely unheard of in a MegaTen game.
    • Sumire's face when Joker confesses his love to her. It's literally nothing like the blushing faces of the other girls and looks more like a tomato than anything. Based on how she used to give a completely different impression for most of the game, this can actually shock players. See it for yourself -- Spoilers warning! ^note This portrait can also be seen if you choose the dialogue option "Another love confession?" during the Rank 7 hangout (albeit without glasses and her hair tied up) and "I'm in love" when shopping with her during the Rank 8 hangout.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • The sun in Station Square during sunset is very obviously a prop and not part of the back drop since it doesn’t move with the skybox.
  • When Kawakami is in her Becky persona, her close-up shots still use her normal model, as her hair is its normal messy style.
• Squick:
  • As if Kamoshida's physical abuse of the male students and lust and sexual harassment of the female students wasn't bad enough, one of the minibosses of his dungeon is a slime Mara. They couldn't make the party fight an endgame-tier demon like Mara in the first dungeon, so they put in just the tip.
    • Speaking of Mara, Shadow Asakura, a man whose misdeeds- forcing prospective idols to have sex with him in exchange for his assistance- are similar to Kamoshida's, also turns into Mara when fought.
  • An in-universe example occurs when Joker, Skull and Mona find Kamoshida's topless harem in the Palace, writhing and moaning in ecstasy (remember, these are high school students):
    Ryuji: This is effed up... Is that what he thinks of the girls on the volleyball team...?!
  • Kamoshida happens to be even of even higher Squick value in Royal than in the base game. When you fight Kamoshida, there's one more part that absolutely qualifies; Shadow Kamoshida also summons a Cognitive Shiho in his boss fight to cast a second killshot for him. Said Cognitive Shiho is a scantly clad playboy bunny that acts as a obedient sex slave to Kamoshida and if the party kills the cognition or hits Kamoshida hard enough, his dialogue implies that he will still go and abuse her. Remember a while ago he basically beat and sexually harassed the poor girl to the point that she tries to off herself. To say nothing of his Will Seed chamber dialogues, which basically consist of sleazy come-ons against Ann and Shiho.
  • The concept art of Kamoshida's boss form is even more disturbing than the final version, as the "Trophy of Obsession" (full of female legs) is not only positioned in his crotch area, it's also seeping white liquid.
• Stuck in Their Shadow: Kasumi/Sumire suffers from this when compared to Maruki when it comes to being the newest additions in Royal, despite him receiving significantly less focus than she did in the game's marketing. It doesn't help that her character arc gets concluded at the halfway point of the Third Semester and gets Demoted to Extra from then on, which leaves her overshadowed by Maruki whose arc drives the remaining half of the semester.
• Superlative Dubbing: While the game's English localization has its fair share of glaring issues due to Executive Meddling by Atlus Japan,^note Per Word of God, they mandated a very literal translation style and specific "American sounding" pronunciations for character names its voice cast nonetheless does a phenomenal job selling it. Max Mittelman, Erika Harlacher, Cherami Leigh, Erica Lindbeck, and Robbie Daymond (as Ryuji, Ann, Makoto, Futaba and Akechi respectively) are often cited as particularly excellent performances, despite all the hurdles in front of them; Robbie Daymond in particular being praised for his performance when Akechi snaps before his boss fight. For NPCs, the voice acting done by Elizabeth Maxwell, Jamieson Price, Michelle Ruff, and Kirsten Potter (as Sae, Sojiro, Kawakami, and Vanilla P5’s Takemi) have received notable praise as well, with their great acting contributing to them being among the most popular characters in the game on par with the main characters. The antagonists also get a fair share of praise, with D.C. Douglas, and Keith Silverstein (as Kamoshida, and Shido) earning high praise for how entertaining they make their villains sound and help bring them up from Hate Sink bad guys, to Love to Hate villains.
  • With the release of Royal, Billy Kametz has gained notice for his role as Maruki. He really sells that Maruki is a kind hearted therapist who genuinely wants to help the students of Shujin, especially when nearly every other adult is apathetic at best. But he truly becomes a stand out during the final arc when he becomes the final Anti-Villain antagonist. As we see all of his painful past leading up to when he gained his Persona, Billy really brings out the suffering he has gone through. And the final confrontation with him, especially when he begins to break down over knowing that his world will never come to pass is absolutely heart breaking, largely due to Billy's performance.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: The new arc in Royal has a more generally positive reception than the ones in Persona 4 Golden and The Answer in Persona 3 FES, where both are more divisive and at the least, considered a drop in quality from the main game.
  • In terms of gameplay the dungeon in Royal is considered one of the best in the game, building on the designs of the previous dungeons and being beautiful yet still challenging. The dungeon in Golden has a few odd rules involving halving your SP each battle and only being allowed to use items and equipment from the dungeon, and The Answer is infamously long and hard, being seven dungeons, and having no access to social links or the Persona Compendium.
  • The story of the Third Semester in Royal is well-received, especially in regards to its handling of Akechi, Kasumi or rather, Sumire, and the antagonist Maruki, giving each of them compelling motivations. The story of the dungeon in Golden is based around the Base-Breaking Character Marie, though it does contribute a little bit of foreshadowing to the True Final Boss, and the story of The Answer is divisive over a few characters (mainly Yukari) acting much more selfish and making questionable decisions.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • The theme of The Final Boss sounds like a heavily modified version of the first few notes of Jared Dines's Djent Wars Round Three solo.
  • The main piano riff in the track "Swear to My Bones" sounds similar to a Recurring Riff from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, found in the tracks "Courage", a section of Hyrule Field theme, and possibly others, and the guitar riff that comes in later sounds a lot like the "Love Theme" from Final Fantasy IV.
  • The driving guitar from "Rivers in the Desert" may evoke thoughts of "custom kitchen delivery" and "chicks for free" for Dire Straits fans.
  • The openings of ''Wake Up, Get Up, Get Out There" and "Last Surprise" sound vaguely similar to parts of "Canned Heat" by Jamiroquai.
  • The opening guitar riff in "Life Will Change" sounds like the one in "Emergency on Planet Earth" by Jamiroquai.

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