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The characters elemental strengths and weaknesses are chosen based off of their meanings in the Western Zodiac.

Assume for a moment that Ice = Water, Electric = Earth, then read their meanings listed below.

Fire = Spirit, inspired, energy, instinctual, outgoing, active -AKA Willpower/Ambition

Air = Mind, intellectual, ideas, detached, social, conceptual -AKA Information/Comunication

Water = Emotions, imaginative, nurturing, introverted -AKA Emotion

Earth = Body, practical, sensual, grounded -AKA Stability

Now compare these meanings to the Inaba Scoobies' personae.

For example: Yousuke is strong with wind AKA Comunication, which shows most strongly in how he's usually the one that gets the gang together, and how he manages to avoid answering whenever people start asking questions about his shadow. Since he can't stand being bored he often does something stupid which, since that's the opposite of being practical AKA Earth, translates in him being weak to Electricity which represents that element. By the time you finish his social link, Yousuke learns not to be quite so childish (thus minimising his weakness) and also gains the proper motivation to keep on fighting, thus explaining the otherwise odd resistance against Fire (AKA willpower).

...Seriously, it works for all of them. (Even Izanagi; if you take into account Souji can only talk with pre-set options but is the practical, reliable leader right from the start, it fits perfectly with this).

As for Light and Darkness, they most likely stand for the Sun and Moon, which work thusly:

Light/Sun = Fire & Earth AKA the 'masculine' elements. Darkness/Moon = Wind & Water AKA the 'feminine' elements.

Needless to say, making Naoto with her gender issues make equal use of these two is a great way to highlight how evenly spilt between the two she may be. (Also raises the question of why Izanagi has an immunity to Darkness but that's for other people to argue over).

• I should add I haven't compaired these meanings to the P3 cast's personae yet; though it IS kind of interesting to note that Minato, who can't say no to any girl who wants to date him, has a weakness to Darkness. Just food for thought.

In The Golden, Marie will be the new Hierophant S. Link.

Her hat has a "V" decoration, the Roman numeral for 5, which is the Hierophant Arcana's number.

• Jossed. She's the Eternity/Aeon Social Link.

Personas are summoned via the Tulpa Effect, aka Thoughtforming

See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughtform Their minds quite literally makes their Personas real.

Mara is a Creeper from Minecraft

Just look: Creeper and then [1]....

• Great, now every time I see Mara in Persona 4, I can hear hissing Creepers...
• And if they weren't bad eough, every Creeper now looks likea giant dick to me. *Shudders* Now that's a scary thought.

Pulled from Youtube...

RYNOROSSFILMS: Ladies and gentlemen, a story for you: As you all know Captain Falcon died in that epic paunch and his position was taken over by the less awesome Rick Wheeler. The truth, however, was that Captain Falcon was reincarnated. His reincarnation later beat the living shit out of Rick and took back his rightful position.

And that reincarnation was&# 65279; known as Kanji Tatsumi. Also:

Yosuke is the reincarnation of the MC from Persona 3

They both share a voice actor...and that's all the evidence for this WMG But this troper wants it to be confirmed, it's so awesome!!!!!! WAIT! The troper who wrote this found another link between the P3 MC and Yosuke: Headphones. That's gotta mean something.

• How can be be the reincarnation when Yosuke's around 17 during Persona 4 and Persona 3's MC died only two years prior?

Possible explanation: Yosuke isn't a reincarnation of the MC in the traditional sense. Perhaps instead of MC's soul going to the afterlife, it fused with Yosuke's soul.

• • Who says reincarnation has to be linear?
• Evidence: If you look at the Megami Tensei wiki images for Jiraiya ^{[dead link]} in P4 and Orpheus , note they have the SAME EXACT POSE
  • I find it perfectly credible that Yosuke might have been constructed around traits of P3's MC, but just a design decision, not necesarily meant to imply a connection. There are other traits to point out, such as Yosuke also being from the city, the other similarities you already mentioned (headphones, voice actor, etc) and also, Yosuke's final Persona is Susano-O, which in P3 was the Ultimate Persona of the Fool Arcana, the MC's initial Arcana.
• Ah! The troper who started this WMG never thought about that!!!

The delivery truck Namatame used is the same one you see at the gas station

Think about it, how many delivery trucks can there be in a small town like Inaba?

• • Practically confirmed: In the scene where the investigation team idenitifies Namatame as a suspect, Adachi says and I quote "If it's a local company, it'd be the same delivery man every time, so he's not a stranger to Nanako." In other words, Inaba's local delivery company only uses one delivery man and therefore only needs one truck.

Teddie is a Shadow born from the Main Character

Three main things point to this: First, Teddie is a Shadow born from the desire to fit in and be accepted by other people, something someone who has to move around a lot would definitely have and definitely repress, though not necessarily central enough to form THE Shadow (the main character's Persona), so to speak. Two, Teddie seems to trust the main character a bit more than other people from the beginning, and continues to address him with the utmost respect even after other folks develop Personas as well. Three, Teddie shows up in the Velvet Room - something Igor says only the main character should be able to do.

• Also, if you're lazy and develop no social links, Teddie is still there for the Main Character when he needs a Spirit Bomb to save the day in the best ending.
• He could actually be the protagonist's "main" shadow, as his persona (Izanagi) isn't actually gained by confronting and winning over his shadow, but is instead given to him by Izanami. The other people who received Izanagi from Izanami haven't confronted their shadows either.
• It's quite possible that he is. A Shadow never appears for the main character, he got his Persona BEFORE entering the TV so it's quite possible the usual Shadow creation process got messed up. Hell, doesn't Namatame essentially turn into his Shadow when you confront him? Teddy also shows a great desire to make friends and be accepted, something that you'd expect from someone who has to move around a lot due to his parents work.
  • Adachi gets a shadow too - he uses it to taunt you when you first enter his dungeon, as I recall. Plus, Teddie being the MC's shadow would explain how he managed to meet up with him on his first trip to the Midnight Channel; Teddie would have shown up regardless of where they popped out.
  • A moment of Fridge Brilliance actually gives this some credence from within the game. Teddies Persona is of the Star Arcana. One of the things associated with the Star Arcana: Hope.
  • Another thing worth considering; Teddie's Social Link is based around his fear that there is he has no 'real self'. It's no stretch of the imagination that this kind of crisis is faced by everyone who has the Wild Card ability. When you can change 'who you are' at will it doesn't take much to get confused.
  • There's one hole in this theory: Teddie pretty much implies that he has been in the other world since the beginning of it's existence.(When talking about that world during your first meeting with him, he says "it's always been like this" and when the true form of the other world appears after Izanami's defeat, he says "A long time ago, this world used to look like this.") Since the other world reflects the collective minds of humanity, one would presume that it has existed for a long time...certainly longer than the Main Character has been alive. After all, humanity has been around for a long time. If that were the case, then it would be impossible for Teddie to be the Main Character's shadow, since he predates the Main Character.
    • Well, if we assume that everyone always has a shadow in World inside the TV, it's entirely possible that Teddie has been there for quite a while (Souji's whole life), and that things literally DIDN'T look like the crazy world that it ends up like until much more recently.
• One last thing to feed the theories: Teddie's Shadow has an attack called Nihil Hand, but if you fight him on the first day you can, he won't have access to it. The reason why is because the second day, Morooka gives a lecture on Nietzche. Now, why would that matter?
  • Actually if you're slow to defeat him, Shadow Teddie uses Nihil Hand anyway. Unless he uses it no matter what on new game+ every time.
    • Wait....didn't Adachi make a bunch of nihiistic remarks during the time you fought him. Now, compare it to Shadow Teddie's dialogue....could Teddie be Adachi's Shadow?

Alternately, Teddie is a Shadow born from Shuji Ikutsuki

Hence all the un-bear-ably bad jokes.

• Though Ikutsuki's shadow would be even more ridiculously nihilistic and corrupt than even Teddie's shadow.
  • Unless he was suppressing his "sunshine, flowers, and gumdrops" side to avoid thinking about the moral consequences of his acts.
  • I think this might be canon...

Teddie isn't the Main Character's Shadow, but a Psyche Splinter

There has been precedence: Metis from Persona 3 FES. The Main Character perhaps wished that he were more grown up, making his own arrangements to remain in Japan rather than let his parents take him wherever they were going. The initiative and responsibility required that he deny his childishness as a thing of the past.

How about Teddie being a shadow born from Nanako

Specifically he was born from Nanako's feelings of loneliness. Nanako may have been young, but as seen by her and Dojima's Social Links she has more then enough problems already to have a Shadow. She is trying to come to grips about death, misses her mother, and her father is almost never around. I don't think I recall seeing her spend time with friends either, she just goes home and watches TV.

Now look at Teddie. He's a shadow who wanted to be accepted by people. Nanako's loneliness could translate into Teddie's desire for friends. Teddie also very quickly hits it off with the Main Character, who is also the first person Nanako is able to draw close to. Teddie also has a tendency to say things as though it were a commercial which is easily explainable by how much time Nanako spends watching TV, and even somewhat paralleled by her singing along with commercial jingles. When Teddie becomes independent enough to form his own self and enters the real world, he very quickly becomes a friend to Nanako, who may in fact be his best friend besides the Main Character.

This would also explain the absence of Nanako's Shadow when she was in the TV world. It wasn't because she was too young to create a shadow, it was because her Shadow was already there. Furthermore it's Nanako's "death" that causes Teddie to return involuntarily to the subconscious and have his existential crisis, along with having his epiphany about just what he was.

• While this makes a certain amount of sense, it means that Nanako is going to be a raging lesbian when she grows up.
  • Er, well be that as it may, it does nothing to discount the hypothesis itself, it merely point's out an additional consequence of it being correct that This Troper hadn't thought of while typing it. Besides, it's not like possible homosexuality is anything new to Persona 4 anyway.
    • Note that I never said that that was a bad thing.
      • Perhaps not. For all of Teddie's "scoring with girls" obsession that winds up consuming his whole Personality it seemed to be entirely imprinted upon at first. When you meet him he's not like that at all in fact aside from being childlike and friendly doesn't seem to have much of a personality. It's not until his encounters with Yukiko' shadow that he starts to talk about scoring all the time, and the fact that the next two dungeons are also related to sexual themes just reinforces the notion. This doesn't make him a perverted bear by nature, just extremely impressionable like a child. Unfortunately the people he imprinted upon happened to be a crowd of hormonal teenagers.
• As a minor point, Nanako does spend time with her friends. In a few Social Link events she turns up on the way to or from meeting with friends, or at least other people she knows well enough to be on first-name basis. How close she is to them is uncertain.

Teddy is Mitsuo's shadow

He may want to pretend he doesn't care, but his hidden desire is acceptance. He starts losing it when Teddy's befriended by the investigation team. He really loses it when Teddy gains independence from him (at the end of Rise's dungeon). Hence his new shadow is empty when you face it in his dungeon.

Yosuke has TWO Shadows, but only directly created one

Let's think about this for a second. We all know that Teddie was created as a result of a Shadow becoming in-sync with human loneliness, but he never states how many humans it took. Shadow Yosuke's gimmick was that its creator's greatest fear was to be alone. Somewhere between Yosuke going to Inaba and gaining Jiraiya as his Persona, Pre-bear Teddie became attuned to Yosuke's loneliness, and became the cutesy, lovable, Handsome Lech who gets a Crowning Moment of Awesome with his Last Stand (even if it's a subverted Last Stand)

Teddie is Theodore Roosevelt's shadow.

Perhaps Roosevelt didn't want to admit he liked puns?

• Alternately, he is borne of Roosevelt's denial of his softer side. He claimed to hate the nickname "Teddy", possibly due to its association with the stuffed animal and his masculine image. It makes sense that if he was suppressing a softer side, centered around false hate of the nickname, it would manifest as a shadow as something like Teddie.

Teddie is the reincarnation or something of Haruhi Suzumiya.

Think about it. The entire thing, even Izanami's very existance, and the MC being in Inaba at all... EVERYTHING happened because Teddie willed it so. Because he was hella lonely. To take it further; In christianity, God created people to love him. Think about it. Teddie is just God in a space-monkey-bear-suit. He created humanity to love him from the very beginning. Izanami might seem to disprove this, being something Teddie would be against, but... remember, God lets bad things happen too. In fact, Izanami is actually a device to pull people to him and his "heaven"... Are you mind-fucked yet?

• • Honey please I don't drop my mental pants on the first date

Teddie is the personification of the true TV-World, created by Philemon.

Izanami's plot of putting humanity on trial via the Midnight Channel sounds a lot like the conflict between Philemon and Nyarlathotep. She created Ameno-Sagiri from the fog representing denial, but cheated by using him to manipulate Adachi and Namatame. Now, look back at the first WMG on this page, of Teddie being the main character's shadow. The Star Arcana, Teddie's link, is a sign of hope; the main character is the representation of hope in Izanami's test. He's also able to appear in the Velvet Room, which is usually only inhabited by the main character and Igor, who works for Philemon. In addition to the power of the wild card and using the Velvet Room to fuse Personas, Philemon created Teddie from the unclouded version of the Midnight Channel. Because of Teddie's desire to attain the truth and help people, he became friends with the protagonist and helped him defeat Izanami. Just as planned!

Teddie is some kind of universal shadow, made up of pieces of all human minds. His personality is most strongly influenced by the people he closely interacts with.

The evidence for this one is a little sparse, but the fact that he hits on everyone could be caused by Yosuke's loneliness, whereas his desire to find his true self could come from Rise. His bursts of anger come from Kanji Tatsumi and his cheerfulness comes from Nanako/Yukiko/Chie.

• So...Teddie is Nyarlathotep?
  • If so, then the plot of the game shifts from "beat the evil gods" to "execute a {[plan}} on the part of Philemon to get what remains of Nyarlathotep to pull a Heel Face Turn". An obvious extension of this is...

...that Izanami was a jobber generated by Philemon to provide a foe for Teddy/Nyarlathotep and friends to fight

So that Teddy/Nyarlathotep would have a foe to Heel Face Turn against. A consequence theory of the above guess.

• But Nyarlathotep is half of the Collective Unconscious, the destructive half, and inseparable from Philemon, the creative half. If Nyar turns good, what happens to Philemon? The Shadow of humanity might not be a job for a nice person, but if the guy currently running it leaves, what happens to all of humanity's suppressed destructive urges? ...maybe this is how Erebus came about, because I'm pretty sure in P2 Nyar covered everything he did. Which means Philemon's ruining things by switching from the relatively controllable Nyarlathotep (doesn't do much outside their little bet) to whatever will come pouring out of humanity's dark side next. Well-Intentioned Extremist...or Face Heel Turn to match Nyarlathotep's Heel Face Turn?

Alternately, Teddie is the collective Shadow of the Fool Arcana.

Why not? Teddie says that he has been there for a long time, possibly forever. If Teddie was there since the beginning, perhaps he means the very beginning of The Fool's journey.

The Main Character convinced his parents to move to Inaba.

Shortly after he got off the train he told his parents how much he loved Inaba and wanted to go back there. He argued that since they were not around a lot it was good for him to be near a guardian like Dojima. And because the parents were not around a lot they did not feel much connection to where they lived currently. So they acquiesced and the Main Character got to move back to Inaba nine months later, down the street from Dojima and Nanako.

• • This sounds pretty credible. Hooray!

The Persona 3 protagonist's sacrifice has started to turn the tide.

Crystal Dragon Jesus that he is, by holding back the concept of the "resignation to the inevitability of death", others are able to cleanly defeat Eldritch Abomination that otherwise would have been half-victories in previous games.

• The influence of the Main Character allowed for Teddie to be created in the first place.
• The gameover text seems to show something like this.

The Main Character is the reincarnation of Izanagi

Hence him having a far firmer connection to his Persona (it used to be him), while he does fight his former life's ex, Izanami, she is the one who gives him the power to stop the murders in the first place.

• This is also why he can actually see in the Midnight Channel without his glasses. Yes, he can't see well, but Izanami does comment on how it's odd that he can even see blurs. And then in the end, he gives up the glasses entirely.
  • And why he looks exactly like Izanami's human avatar. (especially when you look at him crossdressing) They were twins in mythology.
  • The Megaten wiki says (on the Izanami page) that the hero of Megami Tenesi is a reincarnated Izanagi. That would work interestingly.

When characters tell Shadows that "You're not me!", they're right.

They're constructs created by the God of Fog to facilitate the murders, as are the dungeons. Observe: the Shadows of intended murder victims act and dress in bizarre and outlandish ways that symbolize the character flaws they harp on, while the Shadows of people who enter Midnight Channel purposefully (Yosuke and Chie) simply harp on flaws without showing any variation in appearance; easily explained by a much shorter preparatory time. They power up upon being "denied" because characters who deny their flaws donate them to the Shadows due to the weird super-symbolic rules of Midnight Channel's reality. "Teddie's Shadow" is completely improvised on the spot, explaining the "strange power intervening" that Rise mentions before his appearance, the completely different voice where most Shadows have a distorted version of their look-alike's voice, and the fact it doesn't start powering up into a boss form until the entire party "denies" it (Teddie didn't have enough nihilism to power it up on his own).

• Also if the midnight channel shows whatever the public is thinking about and the shadows appear on it, how does that work? The only way I can think of is that each shadow is what others think of them (possible exceptions are Yosuke's Chie's and Teddie's, As they never appeared on it.)
• Here's another interesting thought. The people that entered willingly (Yosuke and Chie) had shadow monster forms that were monstrous reflections of their own two faced mental issues but had the faces of the Persona's they'd later obtain (Jiraya and Tomoe). Meanwhile the murder victims (Yukiko, Kanji, Rise, and Naoto) had shadow monster forms that resembled their Persona's bodies but had the faces of the characters instead, and also were themed after the dungeon (Yukiko was a caged nightingale, Rise was a stripper, Naoto was a old school tokusatsu villain. The odd man out is Teddie, whose Persona and Shadow had zero resemblance to each other.

The Persona 4 protagonist is the Persona 3 protagonist.

"Minato" (as he is called in the official manga) faked his death due to maxing out all his Social links and having over five women chasing after him. He dyed his hair, contacted his uncle, and made up a fake identity for himself. It explains why he unlocked his Persona the first and the easiest. He has already had experience. Also explains why he is rather mature. The reason he starts over from level one is that he hasn't had anything to fight against for over a year and has been out of practice.

• • I'll due you one better all of that is true except the level thing He is level one because he poured all his power into the great seal wiping out his Persona compendium and draining Orpheus thus he re-imagined him into Izanagi

Igor and the others inside the Velvet Room are orchestrating the mother of all Gambit Roulettes in order to save humanity's soul.

Igor's role in each game is to guide the protagonist in their journey, whatever it may be. Of course, he's not allowed to directly interfere, but he does a really good job assisting people and pointing them in the right direction. Thanks to him, the protagonist of Persona 3 was able to successfully prevent The Fall and sacrifice himself to become the seal separating Nyx and Erebus. In Persona 4, he guided the protagonist to uncover Izanami's plot, which finally allowed the fog of deceit to be lifted from the heart of humanity. Hopefully, this means that humanity will start turning away from the nihilistic path that led to the summoning of Nyx in the first place. Oh, and in the first two games, Igor worked for this guy. Notice how he wanted to see if humans could become enlightened beings and the butterfly motif. Now think back at how many times a blue butterfly showed up in the third and fourth games.

Igor is actually using the protagonist and his allies in an incredible game of Xanatos Speed Chess to build up his own power so that he can take over the Persona (and possibly the real) world.

Igor's not out to save humanity because it's the right thing to do; he's doing it to ensure he has plenty of servants around when he finally wins.

• After Persona 2, Philemon vanishes, replaced by his (former) subordinate Igor with no explanation; Igor actually kills Philemon (after the game is over, of course, so that no one asks any potentially lethal questions) and replaces him.
  • Except Word of God states that Philemon is still around looking after the protagonists. Specifically, the butterflies that appear in animations in 3 and 4, as well as the butterfly save points, are signs of this. Check the Persona 4 part of the link above.
• In Persona 3, Igor uses the protagonist to seal away Nyx, but never explains himself to the player. Presumably, it's because Nyx, as another godlike being, is Igor's rival; getting rid of Nyx expands Igor's own power. Once Nyx is effectively destroyed, he waits for everyone's memories of the events to fade, then eliminates the Main Character; there are multiple ways he could have killed the MC, since he apparently doesn't have any problem making weapons/Personas that can more or less annihilate omnipotent death gods. (The 100% HP cost on the Great Seal attack was meant to do just that: it makes the MC dependent of Igor for his survival, and when Igor decides to pull the life support...)
  • In The Answer, he then grants Aigis the MC's former powers to destroy Erebus, who's come to rescue/avenge his wife (mythologically, Nyx and Erebus were married). Instead of killing off Aigis, however, he just lets her fuse with Metis (effectively her Shadow - which he could have created out of those spare monster parts you bring Elizabeth throughout the game) and releases her to enjoy her newfound humanity so that he doesn't have to deal with another scenario like this one.
    • This also explains why he's so eager to help Aigis during the SEES battles; he needs Yukari and Mitsuru, who want to go back and try to save the MC, to lose (and since they're the final team Aigis faces, he has to support her through all of the battles). Otherwise, they might catch onto his plan and mess it all up by stopping the MC from sacrificing himself - even if it means the destruction of mankind (given a choice between death and slavery, most people will probably pick death).
    • The Shadow version of the MC you fight in The Answer? That's actually the MC himself, who's pissed that all of his friends - including his girlfriend(s) and supposed patrons - left him to die; he switches sides and joins the Shadows instead when his (probably justified) anger overcomes him. Igor then has Aigis eliminate him before he can interfere with his future plans.
    • That theory not only makes sense, it's actually kind of creepy.
• Then there's Persona 4, where Igor has the Protagonist kill off two more deities - Ameno-sagiri and Izanami. With them dead, he can expand his influence once again - but he's learned from his past mistakes, as he lets the Protagonist live an ordinary life. (Conveniently, it also lets him call for help if he's in trouble.)
  • This also explains why Margaret replaces Elizabeth as your Velvet Room Assistant; when Elizabeth gets out of line and wants to rescue P3's MC, Igor kills her off and lies to Margaret about the fact that she's dead.

Igor is in fact, an alternate version of Shin Megami Tensei Lucifer, who has decided the best way to rebel is to prevent humanity from destroying themselves. He's going to make them earn it, though.

Note how Lucifer is the Persona gained as the party progresses in P4. Also Elizabeth and Margaret seem to fulfill the "nurse" role from Nocturne.

• If Igor worked for Philemon and Igor is Lucifer, does this mean that Philemon is the true leader of the Chaos faction?
  • One does wonder where Philemon disappeared off to.
  • If so, then what the hell is Nyarlathotep?
  • An avatar of YHWH.
    • It does work with the whole "Philemon told Lucifer about YHWH" WMG in the Shin Megami Tensei section. I mean, if he and Nyarlathotep are rivals, that would mean that he and YHWH are rivals too. He probably made Igor just to get even and stuff.

Alternately, Teddie is the Persona continuity's version of Lucifer - an amnesiac Lucifer who only knows that things at the start of P4 are not right and wants to honestly help the party.

This can be a little out there, so let's break it down:

• First of all is Teddie's origins; while there is some sense in the argument that Teddie is the MC's Shadow, at the same time Teddie keeps talking about, and always behaves like, he's been in the "Shadow World" for a very, very long time. (Note how other people's Shadows don't really seem to talk about the world they're in or know anything their "origin" doesn't - how would the Shadow of the MC know about things like the fog rolling back or have the insight on how the Midnight Channel works later on, if he was created on the spot when the MC entered the TV in late April?)
  • It's also worth pointing out that the "Shadow World" of both P3 and P4 functions very much like The Abyss in the earlier SMT games, in that it is a realm heavily influenced by human belief and thought patterns. The demons Shadows even power up off of the suffering of others ("you're not me", etc), Magnetite/Magatsuhi style. Never mind the section under Iwatodai being called the Abyss of Time...
    • It's especially worth noting that Chie (who has a tendency to notice stuff by accident) points out that the TV Abyss and the Shadows therein seem to be reflecting current human thought - which is why the Abyss is seemingly populated by giant robots, lions and knights instead of ogres and gremlins, and why it has places like Magatsu Inaba and Void Quest instead of looking like a Sephirotic tree ala SMT 2. Which would also explain why Lucifer isn't totally in charge anymore - if people don't believe in him as much anymore, well...
• Second of all is his appearance in the real world. While not exactly matching the old Kaneko design, he's frighteningly close with the dapper shirt and the flower in the same place "Louis Cypher" keeps a decorative handkerchief, never mind the blond hair, blue eyes and pale skin. There's also his bishie sparkles to consider, although whether or not those are actually visible to characters is debatable and may not be quite as worth considering.
  • The magnetic charisma Teddie has in human form that the sparkles represent, however, is very much worth considering. Teddie shows in several optional scenes that he can manage people as easy as Louis ever could.
• There's another bit to consider about his appearance in the real world: the fact that he can do so at all. The only time the overwhelming majority of Shadows can leave the "Abyss" is due to some kind of dimensional event like the Dark Hour or the December Nonstandard Game Over in which Izanami's plan is pulled off and the fog grows thick enough to allow Shadows to manifest in the real world; otherwise, they're stuck on the other side. We've only ever seen two other "Shadow" beings who can manifest in the "regular" world, those being Ryoji "Nyx Avatar" Mochizuki and Izanami as a Gas Station Attendant, and even then the latter seems to have a restriction in which she can only manifest during rain or fog. That is to say, the only two other beings who can manifest in the real world are skull-crackingly, unthinkably powerful death gods. This would seem to suggest that Teddie is quite a bit more powerful than he really lets on, since he can casually live in the real world with even less restriction than the other two...
• Then there's the fact that he's the Star Arcana, which can represent hope for the future (which, fundamentally, is what Lucifer is all about in the original SMT games). And, of course, what Persona do you get access to when Star maxes out in P4? Angel-form Lucifer, of course.
• And then there's the whole "I think I was a special being" segment in October; while Teddie remains vague about it, he's really convinced that he was a little more than just joe average Shadow. Once you find out what he "really" is in December, he seems to evade references back to this (and seems to become oddly evasive about his "true nature" in general).
  • Teddie is even mentioned as possibly being like a "King" in the TV World, primarily by Nanako; most people find this funny, but the game sure makes a big deal of the concept for being a throwaway joke...
• Teddie's actions interactions with the party take a note from Lucifer's old playbook as well - alternately coercing the party, pleading with them, being friendly and helpful, and helping them directly, all to achieve the end he desires - that is, removal of the power that was otherwise corrupting the "Abyss".
• There's also the fact that Teddie entered the Velvet Room. Does that mean he's part of the MC, or does that mean he's someone that Igor knew he couldn't refuse a ride to?...
• This does raise the question of: Lucifer in a bear suit? Well... Teddie seems to have forgotten what he's supposed to be, so if he wants to look nonthreatening, what other kind of form would he take? And who'd expect Demon-King Lucifer to run around in a bear suit, anyway?
• We'll have to wait for Persona 5 to see if any of this bears out, but there is definitely something up with Teddie and we likely have not seen the last of him.
• In Strange Journey, Lucifer shows up as a young woman. Teddie is known for cross-dressing.
  • In a blue dress, no less.
    • In fact, Lucifer shows up looking exactly like Alice from SMT 1, which is the exact same thing Teddie cosplayed as. The two look startlingly alike, even with the differences in art style.
    • > Wait, there's something very wrong with this otherwise sound theory--Lucifer appeared in Raidou Kuzunoha VS King Abaddon, and the Devil Summoner games share their world with Persona's. So either something happened between Devil Summoner and Persona, or if Teddie IS Lucifer, he's taking an immensely clandestine approach to things this time around.
    • >> Lucifer can assume more than one disguise.
      • >>>Dammit, that's true. Clever bastard. And he's holding back, too, which is also in-character.

Characters don't use Evokers to summon their Personas because they don't have to.

Like most high-schoolers, the cast of Persona 3 take great effort in putting forth a facade of normalcy and are reluctant and perhaps terrified of exposing their flaws. Since the manifestation of Personas is directly tied to the emotions they are trying to suppress, the only way they can summon them properly is by "killing" themselves through the use of Evokers, shutting down the ego and allowing the id to run rampant. In Persona 4, a potential Persona-user is forced to literally face his inner demons in the company of his friends and classmates, violently breaking down whatever facades they might have built up to obscure their insecurities. This gives them a control over their Personas that is stronger than that of the characters in Persona 3 and allows them to summon Personas without an Evoker.

• It also explains, in Persona 3, why Aigis (almost ego-free robot), Koromaru (animal), and the members of Strega (batshit-crazy) don't use Evokers.
  • Aigis and Koromaru do have Evokers; they simply use ones purpose-built for them (Aigis's Evoker is built-in, Koro's is a weird headset thingy - Ikutsuki even showed it to SEES and explained how it worked). Chidori and Jin have Evokers as well.
• This Troper thought this was absolutely given- Evokers are a psychological crutch given to the characters to give them a 'weakness' Ikutsuki seems to lack a persona, and surely doesn't know a way to restrain a persona that can be summoned free-handed, so this would keep SEES in check for the eventual takeover (assuming Aigis fails, of course, and a good planner never assumes victory.). The same applies to the Strega members who do use them, Surely those not with the voice of god could never do what he could. Its all an illusion they never thought to break- Except for the Main, But we know how THAT ends. Also reinforced by the fact Your Mind Makes It Real .
• Note the summoning quotes. P3's are all orders, P4's are requests to a friend.
• The crew of P3 both had to use their evokers and didn't have to use their evokers to summon their persona. They had to be scared enough for the persona to finally come out. Maybe the P4 crew were constantly afraid of the Shadows and, considering this "is" the world of Shadows / Personas, their personas could be summoned by just breaking a tarot card... er, somehow... due to the amount of fear that would probably have their personas be popping out every five seconds. Doesn't quite explain the whole Shadow business, though.
  • This troper had assumed that the evoker usage and the shadow facing were parallel with the entities responsible for the shadow worlds getting riled up. When A god of death, with a shadow time in which most people are sealed in coffins is responsible, then facing their fears of death by pulling the trigger of an apparent gun is the way to bring their personas into being. When A goddess of death who believes that mankind will be happier if they embrace the delusions they so often follow is responsible, then facing shadows who imitate the secret thoughts and motivations behind the superficial rationales is the way.

They don't have to use evokers to summon Personas because they can only summon Personas in another world made for shadows, as opposed to the mortal world.

There ya go.

The Persona 4 Protagonist is the child of Tatsuya and Maya from Persona 2

The constant mention of rumors of parents that constantly travel everywhere. It could be Maya and Tatsuya, constantly looking for strange new things to investigate. The reason they never looked at Inaba is that just looks like a serial murder case.

• Also, he may have inherited the ability of the Wild Card from both of them. Maya, Tatsuya and the Persona 4 Protagonist can change Persona at will.
• Also the fact he uses the same type of weapon as Tatsuya.
• This explains why even Izanami is surprised that the main Character got the Wild Card ability. She only meant to give him a Persona. So the Wild card ability is Genetic? Maybe a Bloodline?
• Isn't the protagonist a little too old to be their kid, even assuming they hooked up right after the end of Eternal Punishment (which seems very unlikely, IMO)? Besides, everyone in Persona 2 has the Wild Card because of Philemon, not from some innate power.
  • Yes. The earliest Eternal Punishment could take place is in September 1999, since it references the Grand Cross (August 17, 1999) as having already happened. Assuming Tatsuya and Maya did hook up (even though the ending specifically shows Maya moving on), the child would be 11 or 12 in Persona 4. And, of course, the so-called "Wild Card" ability is only unique and special in Persona 3 and Persona 4.
    • For the sake of convenience, ignore all time inconsistencies.

Chie Satonaka is the child of Gene from God Hand.

Her follow-up attack, Galactic Punt, is similar to that of Gene's God Roulettes: Dragon Kick.

• She also uses the Ball Buster on Yosuke.
• Continuing this awesome line of crossover logic, Shadow Rise is Shannon.

The True Ending isn't true at all.

Izanami did in fact defeat the party, and she trapped them in the fog of deceit. Unwilling to accept the truth of their defeat, the party created an illusion of a victory against Izanami.

Naoto Shirogane is a descendant of Raid&# 333; Kuzunoha the XIV.

Their physical appearance is slightly similar. She wears clothes similar to him. Her Persona was one Raid&# 333;?s main foes, and even the official website mentions that. She also uses guns like him, and her Final Persona holds a katana similar to Raid&# 333;?s. Not only that, but Naoto mentioned coming from a family of detectives, and Raid&# 333; worked as one.

All this indicate a possible relation, and since Raid&# 333;?s game was set in 1920 while Persona 4 is in 2011, there sure is a chance that Naoto carries his blood on her veins.

• Look at the locks of hair framing Naoto's face. Trace the lower one, mentally or with a piece of paper. Now, take a look at Raidou. Trace one of his sideburns. ...Genetic? (Probably just an appearance-based Shout-Out, but WMG isn't fun if you're too logical.)
  • In Persona 2 the detective agency that spreads rumors for you is called Kuzunoha Detective Agency and the girl who works there (Tammy in the US version) who was the main character of Shin Megami Tensei: if... is a Devil Summoner (I was reading the script for Persona2 Innocent Sin once and she uses her demons at one point so she still has that power.)
  • ...Isn't the game mentioned as a Show of some sorts in a Shout-Out/Homage? I could've sworn...
    • Chie mentions having seen a movie about Raidou once; the implication being that it's a Plausible Deniability Masquerade Breach - the Kuzunoha clan cashed in on stories about Raidou, since who'd believe a detective actually ran around summoning demons and stuff? Pfffft. It helps that, as noted above, the old demons seem to have gone poof entirely and been replaced with the Shadows some time between Devil Summoner and "now" in the Persona timeline.
• I bet that her grandfather, whom she mentions a few times, is Raidou. Her grandfather would have to be around 110 years old, though.
  • Grampa Shirogane is the Jack Frost that goes around dressed like Raidou
    • Grampa Raiho Shirogane is totally my new personal canon!
  • Doing the math of Raidou lifespans, him being that old isn't strange.

Naoto is the P3 Protagonist's little sister!

She stated that her parents died in a car "accident", just like P3's protagonist's parent had. What happened then in Persona 3? Because Aigis had sealed Death inside of the young boy, she took him to the Kirijo group, but her system shut down before she could explain much. Without knowing what to do with the kid, the Kirijo Group gave him up to adoption, or put him under governmental care (thus explaining why he seems self-sufficient on his own), and eventually he is brought him back to that city where the incident happened.

Naoto probably believes or was told that her older brother died in the "accident" as well. It's worth noting that the dates do work for this: Naoto is 15 at the start of the game (April 2011), which would make her approximately three years old during the events that set off Persona 3. This'd even explain why she wasn't in the car with her family when the battle with Thanatos occured; she was sufficiently young that she was probably left with Grandpa Kuzunoha while the rest of the Shirogane family went out for that evening. She may even have been left with Grandpa while her parents went to investigate the explosion at the Kirijo lab, although that doesn't really explain why they'd take the P3 Protagonist, who was himself only seven.

• • The Shiroganes/Kuzunohas are a precocious bunch. Maybe they were putting the P3 Protagonist through some on the job training.

• To add even more fuel to the fire, even the names support the idea, a little. While obviously in the manga adaptation the Protagonist doesn't go by "Shirogane" (and the manga isn't strictly canon at any rate), "Naoto" (&# 30452;&# 26007;) puns off of "Minato" (&# 28234;) - "Naoto" more or less meaning "straight pillar" (of the load-bearing kind), while "Minato" means "port" or "harbor"; that is to say, "Naoto" is that which supports "Minato". A little spurious on the face of it, but at the same time the Japanese absolutely love naming schemes like this in their fiction, and the fact that the two names snap together so well could be more than just coincidence.
  • And of course, given the current state of Minato, the relationship between the two names suggests terrifying and awesome possibilities for the future.
    • Boy howdy!
• Tying in to certain ideas above, there's another very good reason that Naoto wouldn't know that her brother has basically become the savior of humanity: Minato Shirogane was able to choke out his name to the stunned Kijiro scientists after Aigis brought him back. They managed to get in touch with his grandfather, who upon hearing their story in full promptly shit a brick as he understood exactly what was lurking inside his grandson's body (being, you know, a Kuzunoha). Here he made a hard choice: he allowed his grandson to be given up for adoption and to tell Naoto that her brother was dead, so that she too wouldn't get sucked into the vortex of what would inevitably occur. In a case of You Can't Fight Fate, though, she has ended up entangled in the same overall mess that her brother was forced into a decade ago - and may well be on the path to discovering what happened to him and what has happened to the "Abyss", not to mention truly inheriting the "family business" of being a Kuzunoha. (Mind that in the ending, she states outright that she'll keep investigating Ame-no-Sagiri and Izanami, and the entire cast points out that the TV portals still work. The story isn't nearly done, yet...)
  • This bit is even (thinly) supported by Naoto's own Social Link; the Shirogane family butler has obviously been keeping an eye on not only her but the entire group, and by the October timeframe that the Link is available Grandpa Kuzunoha probably has a pretty good idea of what's really happening in Inaba and what his grandchild has become a part of, despite his attempts at preventing it; as a result, he sets up a series of challenges to remind her that searching for the truth is her greatest passion and to follow it; that is, to investigate the trail of Shadows all the way to Kirijo and her brother's ultimate fate.
    • Of course, this gets pretty depressing if you look at things from Minato's perspective: Not only are his parents dead, but his grandfather just abandoned him with no explanation. No wonder he was emo...
      • This might be totally unrelated but if you take Naoto dungeon hunting soon after she first joins and talk to her she'll mention that she finds herself oddly familiar and skilled with the power of Persona, a bit too well she believes for something that should have been totally new to her. Minato was a noted as being abnormally a natural at using a Persona too. Maybe it's In the Blood? Her own Persona is also much more powerful that it should be, with 4 types of damage it can use much more varied that any other party member and even the main characters Persona's barring careful crafting.
• This theory has had a small hole poked in it by Persona 3 Portable, which states that the (male) protagonist lived with "relatives" after the auto accident. This makes it a little harder to explain why Naoto wouldn't know of the P3Protagonist at all, although this assumes that Naoto is unaware her brother is alive at all after 1999 - she could simply know that he died a year ago (as of the start of P4) without knowing the details of what happened. Naoto doesn't mention her brother's recent death in-game because, well, it isn't relevant to the current situation.
• Guys, Come on. This idea is milked so many times in Fan Fiction that it's probably canon in the minds of thousands.
  • What, you're saying when lots of people believe something it magically becomes tr- OH MY GOD.

Nanako is actually an offshoot of Izanami created to stay close to the Main

When Nanako is thrown into the TV, she manages to form a world, yet her Shadow doesn't appear. This is explained as her being too young to have an ego, despite all of the indications via Social Link that she should have one. The reason she doesn't is because, as a god, or at least part of one, she doesn't need one. Not only that, but if you don't get the Bad Ending, she comes back to life despite all of the indications that she should be dead. This is because of her inherent abilities as being part of Izanami. However, the fog still hurts her because of her close proximity to her creator's powers, causing a sort of spectral feedback, thus harming her. Dojima, meanwhile, believes that Nanako is actually his daughter because Izanami screwed with his memories, making him believe that her mother died in a hit and run. This would also explain why Dojima never manages to find the guy who did it; his wife never existed.

• Alternatively, it's possible that Nanako wasn't intentionally placed there; perhaps she's an incarnation that Izanami purposefully discarded to remove part of herself... i.e. her 'innocence' or her 'purity', something that she felt would hold her back when she enacted her ultimate plans. This banished aspect was unable to remain a godlike being like Ameno-sagiri, and so took on a mortal form to avoid simply fading away. She used the last of her power to insert herself into the MC's life, staying close to him not because she's been ordered to, but because she found herself naturally drawn to him by the same power that caught her 'complete' self's attention. Which means, of course, that as her mortal form matures, the Main could very well find that her 'cute little marriage proposal' was completely genuine and he's picked up a Divine Stalker with a Crush...
  • "You're not real... You're not my real dad!" may well be thrown back at Dojima for all those drunkenly lucid times he's looked at his "daughter" and seen her for what she really was, and called her out on it.

Alternatively, Nanako is a Barrier Maiden holding back Izanami's fog.

Nanako is really the designated Barrier Maiden for Inaba, but because of her young age, her powers weren't fully developed when Izanami began her trial on Inaba. Because of this, Nanako couldn't fully hold back the fog, leading to at least a small amount of the fog leaking through after a long period of rain. When she was kidnapped and thrown into the TV, her close proximity to Izanami's fog overload her, which leads to Nanako's hospitalization once she is rescued. After her condition starts taking a turn for the worse, she's too weak to even attempt to hold back the fog anymore, which leads to the fog becoming permanent in Inaba until Ameno-Sagiri finally lifts it himself.

Philemon gave the Wild Card and the power to access the Velvet Room to P3 and P4 Main Characters

In Persona 2, he gives it to all of the main characters, often appearing as a golden butterfly at first. In P3, a blue butterfly appears in the opening, and later when Aigis receives the Wild Card, and in some guide/interview Atlus confirmed that was him, along with the savepoints in P4. As for not appearing in human form, well, he's afraid the Main Characters might punch him and make his pretty mask fall off once again. Okay, it's probably because only one person needs the Wild Card until Nyarlathotep starts messing things up again.

Nanako doesn't has shadow because she already resolve her issue

When the party hear Nanako's voice on third heaven, she said she miss her mom but doesn't feel lonely since she has Dojima and Protagonist. The heaven is manifest from her wish to see her mom, but that isn't enough to manifest shadow. If she genuinely overcome her loneliness of losing her mom, the shadow won't has anything to evoke her.

• I think the game mentions this as her being 'too young' or something with utterly no explained logic behind it.
  • It's implied that she doesn't form a shadow because her 'facade' isn't complete that is, she isn't lying to herself enough for it to have an effect.

In a few thousand years; Aigis, Teddy, and Elizabeth will team up

In order to change mankind forever and rescue the protagonist of Persona 3. This will result in a "positive" conception resolution.

The True Ending is actually a Downer Ending.

Bear with the Fridge Logic for a second here. Lifting the Fog of Deceit from people's hearts means that they're more in touch with themselves... including the morally twisted people like Adachi. Now fully conscious that they like making people suffer, the newly-minted Complete Monsters start raising all sort of hell, causing chaos, and generally setting up a crisis for Persona 5 to be about.

• Added to the fact of how there might be people like Mitsuo, who are utterly empty and emotionally dead might just have an equally bad effect upon the world, perhaps making the void within their souls physically manifest perhaps?
  • Making the void of the soul manifest? Unlimited Blade Works!

Alternatively, the Normal Ending is actually a Bittersweet Ending.

So, you just defeated Adachi and stopped the fog in Inaba. Your team of ragtag investigators and loyal friends are all wistfully looking out to your train as it pulls away, confident that you just stopped a crisis? Will everything be alright? Wrong. The Midnight Channel still exists, the TV World still exists, Izanami still exists and there will be batshit insane people out there who will put this ability to good use. All you did was just prolong everything. It also helps that, if this theory is correct, then it would make a small ending bridge: Downer (Bad) - Bittersweet (Normal) - Happy (Good).

• Isn't that like... ALREADY addressed on the Normal Ending? With Naoto mentioning the Midnight Channel is still out there, and someone else might find a way to use it, so they need to be careful?

Kanji's sexuality is a Cosmic Plaything

The universe makes it whatever will be funnier at any given moment.

Upon defeating the Bonus Boss Shadows, the MC eats them.

Aside from the Contrarian King, they're not much harder than the plotline bosses, especially once you get to Shadow Mitsuo. Where else could the Courage increase come from?

• This is certainly possible. I mean, he's probably eaten weirder stuff before...
  • Nanako called, she wants her science project back.

Souji Seta is indeed the horny bastard Morooka makes him out to be, and is taking advantage of several emotionally insecure girls to quench his sexual appetite

'Nuff said.

• He's certainly right about his reasons for wanting to join a culture club.
• Seta changes his personality between every s-link, seems very manipulative to me.
  • Yeah, but manipulative bastards never heal those traumas the way Seta does; if someone has resolved their issues you can't manipulate them. By the time Seta gets into someone's pants he's guided them to a level of self-acceptance that would ordinarily be impossible without years of therapy. That isn't manipulation, it's Intimate Healing.
    • They've come to trust Seta; it's all part of his plan.
    • Or he's a Magnificent Bastard/ Chivalrous Pervert, who wants to get laid...alot....but not enough to hurt anyone.
    • Souji Seta: Healing women's tortured psyches, one orgasm at a time.

Daidara is supplying the party with weapons not because he is doing it for art

But because his business is crap (So Kanji bought a shield once and... ?) he is willing to supply anything for anyone, no questions asked for money, even supplying teenagers with guns.

• I always thought that was a given. That and the fact that since you're his only customers means that he'll sell you anything you guys want just so he won't be completely lonely.

Margaret, Elizabeth and Takaya are the Shadow versions of Amaterasu, Tsukuyomi, and Susano-ou.

They all have the same silver hair as Izanami and the Protagonist, and they all have those bright golden eyes that the Shadow versions of people have; they are their children, born from Izanagi into the world of Shadows after he met Izanami in the underworld. Elizabeth and Margaret were taken in and cared for by Igor, but Takaya found his way into the real world and was picked up by Ikutsuki.

• Actually consider Elizabeth disappearing to help Minato, while Margaret doesn't understand this and is argueably "enraged". Takaya pissed off his sisters and Igor, who then banished him into the real world. So Elizabeth would be Tsukuyomi. Margaret would be Amaterasu and Takaya is Susano-ou. Also the fact that Nyx and the moon, with the seal and Elizabeth trying to free Minato, it makes some sense and fits in nicely.

The PC was intended to fail, but won due to Wild Card

Without it, the PC would be stuck with Izanagi, a Persona that doesn't learn a skill past level 5. Adachi was also granted a Persona by Izanami, and he is the king of pushover bosses (Namatame's battle is against a shadow, not his Persona), lessening the chance it is mearly be a gameplay quirk

• The other Izanagi is much more powerful than yours however, suggesting that either the wild card ability weakened yours, or that it would have gotten stronger had you only had to rely on it.
  • Powerful?
    • It has Vorpal Blade, Heat Riser, and some Dyne level spells. That's a heck of lot stronger than Souji's wimpy Izanagi with the weakest level physical and magic attacks. Not the Persona's fault it's master is too stupid to use it properly.

People trapped in the TV don't need to eat/drink due to the awareness of Bottomless Bladder as a trope.

Everyone is concerned that the Shadows will kill the victim in a few weaes, but never about the fact that would starve/dehydrate in less time. It is revealed near the end the Midnight Channel shows what the audience wants to see, so why not apply this to the TV world proper as well? As for Yosuke the first time, it was either due to being a preexisting condition, or because it makes exceptions for Rule of Funny.

• This can be extended to every trope present inside of the TV... awesome.
• Alternatively, this also means people who need to go, like, say, Yousuke, can't and are left to wallow with a full bladder. Remember to check your inventory and equipment, go to the bathroom and THEN save before you wander into a shadow filled funworld, kiddies.

After being caught, the killer is living a comfy life in a mental asylum after the end of the game.

What else do you do with a guy who claims to murder people by throwing them into TVs? (yes I realize the insanity defense does not work that way, though his rant doesn't exactly scream "I know my actions are wrong")

• Hardly, by the end of the game, someone comments "he admits to have hung the people on the...". He admitted to the murders, but not the way he did so. Surely, he's kinda crazy, but not that stupid. In the True Ending, he even gets to deliver a letter to the Main Character from jail, which confirms he's not in an asylum
  • That is what everyone thinks he means. "He put them in the telephone wires under the delusion he was throwing them into a TV".

The Inaba water supply is tainted

Note the much higher rate of unique hair colors compared to Persona 3 (MC who has death sealed inside him, Akihiko and maybe Fuuka, plus that random guy with the assault record Odagiri threatens who gets cloned in 4 from what I recall). In Persona 4 ratio is inverted, Rise and Yukiko (possibly Kanji, who explicitly bleachs his hair) are the only ones with real hair colors in the party.

• How come Yosuke and Chie are unusual? They are both just different tones of brunette. (And Teddie doesn't count)
  • Brunette? Looks green to me.
    • o_O
• The playable party's hair colours are pretty believable, with the possible exception of Naoto and the MC. I am curious about Ayane and Yumi, whose hair seem to be tinged slightly green, and Kou, who is slightly blue. Everything can be explained with dyes anyway.
• Clearly, it is the work of the nation of Junes, staging an all-out biological war against Inaba. Persona 5, anyone?

The True World inside everyone's souls isn't nearly so pleasant everywhere.

• Sure, the area they immediately saw is very pleasant, largely because the party is a nice group of people (with the possible exception of Yosuke). But it's got its own bombed-out wastelands, stinking swamps, what have you as places where the less positive elements of humanity's psyche manifest.
  • Just how the hell is Yosuke a possible exception?
    • Well, just because you pity a person doesn't mean they're a bastion of morality. Of course, a lot of teenage boys are sort of jerks at times, so there's a fair chance Yosuke will grow out of some bad traits he shows over the game.
    • Yeah, Yosuke's not unrepentantly evil or anything close, but he is still, at times, a total douchebag. Such as during the entire camping trip sequence, and many offhand remarks throughout the game.
    • All right, points taken, Yosuke has severe and at times grating personality flaws, but don't forgot that he has shown considerable character development and heroism in the course of stopping the murders and, you know, the end of the world. So, a nice person, just a flawed one.
    • Good doesn't mean nice, you know. Yosuke is a good person (he took in Teddie, after all), but he's also an asshole; being on the Investigation Team doesn't actually change how much he enjoys picking on and embarrassing his friends for his amusement.
    • Sometimes this troper wonders if she's the only one who grew up with a 'Yosuke'. There are guys out there who will poke fun at their friends, feel uncomfortable about homosexuality and act like jerks, but they can also be the most dependable person in your life who will stand by your side when things get tough. There's a saying that goes "teasing is a sign of affection", so Yosuke must genuinely care for all his friends, and he has shown it: he gave Teddie a place to live, he invited Nanako to Junes, he gave Kanji some money for popsicles, he withstood Chie's tantrums and bought her lunch twice, he fought alongside the protagonist since the beginning, and he was really upset about Nanako's "death". Speaking of that event, weren't Naoto and Kanji also urging for Namatame's death? I remember Naoto was the first to suggest it:

Naoto: (walks up to the large tv) "This must be a luxury suite. Most hospital wards don't have such large televisions...why, with something like this in the room, this man could escape at anytime...although once he enters...he may find there's no way out." Rise: "Wait a second! Y-you don't mean...are you...serious..." Kanji: "You just gonna turn your back and walk away?" Rise: "That's...but...! Chie: "W-what's gotten into you guys?!"

• • • From that event, we can easily say that every character has a Dark Side.

The protagonist is an Unreliable Narrator.

He plays up his own social aptitudes and importance to the group. The real leader of the group wasn't him, but Yosuke, and it shows through when he forgets to change how Adachi acts like a Shadow Archetype to Yosuke, monologuing on boredom and how lousy it is to be out in "the sticks", and basically doing everything he did for the lulz, like Yosuke's Shadow wanted to. The one to actually figure out that Namatame wasn't the killer was Naoto, who actively demonstrated the ability to shift her preconceptions and search for the truth just before performing her Gambit Roulette of getting kidnapped. Meanwhile, Protagonist was going with the flow of things just like Namatame.

• I don't happen to recall you BEING the narrator though, so it's not really possible.
  • Unless he's such an unreliable narrator he doesn't even narrate that he's the narrator.
  • The entire game is from Brotagonist's perspective, which is close enough.

The MC wasn't part of the experiment at all; he was a Wild Card from the beginning

My theory hinges on two main factors: Adachi had more reason to be Hope than the MC, and that the murder of Morooka could only have been commited by someone who had entered the TV. To explain the latter, you must take one thing into consideration: Mitsuo lacked the physical strength to club, drag and hang Morooka. He might have had enough power to throw Morooka into the TV, presumably with some amount of existing force, but definetely not homicide of this degree. Mitsuo threw the victim into the television set, then fled using his powers.

One will most likely be asking who fills what position. Clearly, Namatame was despair. Mitsuo was emptiness, judging by his Shadow's dialogue and the dungeon. Adachi fits best as hope; even though he, in his words, was "bored shitless", he states directly after that he was "wondering what to do". Adachi wanted something to do, still possessed hope for his time in Inaba. So where does this leave the MC?

By the time he arrived in Inaba, none of Izanami's puppets had attempted to use their powers. Rather, they remained completely unaware. Izanami starts to become frustrated and hands some powers to the MC, who in turn is noticed by Philemon/Igor and is granted the Wild Card. Adachi then learns he has powers and starts putting them to good use.

• Mitsuo really did kill Moroka without using the TV despite how odd it seems that he could physically pull it off. But it's confirmed when confronting Adachi later on. Mitsuo had no power, he killed Moron the old fashioned way and Adachi threw him into the TV to keep the game going on. Mitsuo wasn't approached by Izanami at all. Which makes sense, as she only gave the power to newcomers of Inaba while Mitsuo apparantly lived there quite a while.

Saki didn't hate Yosuke nearly as much as the shadows make it out.

One of the major plot points is that while the shadows are parts of the mind that the person that the other is afraid to admit but that's not the entire person (Chie's shadow is formed of her resentment of Yukiko, but they're still friends, etc.). Furthermore the Midnight Channel will show things that people want to be true or think are true. Saki may not (and considering Yosuke's then poor social skills probably not) have wanted to have a relationship, she may not have had the massive hate.

• Most definitely. More than likely Saki's shadow Hannibal Lecture'd her about how she was two faced to Yosuke all the time. Had she been saved it would have come to light and the relationship between them could have been mended. But alas she was the Sacrificial Lamb

Yosuke is only a Jerkass because he's a closet masochist/discipline fetishist and wants people to hit him.

Chie kicks him in the nuts, he begs the main character to punch him until he feels better, and he's constantly goading Kanji. It's all because what he really wants is a severe ass-beating.

Yosuke is gay

Or at least Gay For Protaganist. Who says his heterosexual perverted ways aren't just a cover up? We never see what he likes to view.

• In what sense is this Wild Mass Guessing? There's so much Subtext in his Social Link it's practically a plot point.
• Dude! Everyone is gay for the protagonist.
  • Even the girls?
    • Especially the girls.

Yosuke is the reincarnation of the Persona 3 Main Character

Borrowing an idea from Discworld that reincarnation doesn't have to be strictly linear to get around time difficulties...Yosuke, like P3MC, loves music and is always listening to a portable MP3 player, even in combat. His starting Persona, like Orpheus, is a folk hero in a bitchin' scarf. He's also kind of a perv and freely hits on his female friends while having...issues about his actual sexuality like anyone who had maxed multiple social links in P3 would. Finally, Yosuke is a complete Butt Monkey, karmic repayment for the P3MC's obscene luck in the matters of romance, friendship, and spiritual enlightenment. He does get to live, though.

• They also have the same english VA.

Rise is the reincarnation of Persona 3 PSP's Female Main Character

Fe MC S.Links indicate that she's more connected to the team than the MC was. This lead her to be more understanding and more motherly towards her team. And if her Link with Shinjiro was indicating anything, she wasn't afraid on hitting on guys. Rise's Teen Idol status is because Fe MC enjoyed karaoke night and had a secret wish to be a singer while the bullied part was because she was alone for so many years.

• Once again, same English VA.

The MC dies in a train crash shortly after the end of the game.

This sets up Persona 4: FES or the equivalent with an extra story where the Investigation Team members, with help from Margaret and a recently re-deceased Izanagi, try to bring him back from the dead. I'm sure there'll be a very sad ending where they need to leave him behind to prevent the world from being attacked by the legions of hell or something; maybe Nanako used up their one resurrection a game limit.

(I mainly have a hard time believing they'll just let it be a happy ending.)

• That's a pretty awful Diabolus Ex Machina, even if it's to make Persona 4 fit in with Shin Megami Tensei.

Brotagonist spiked the girl's drinks on the school trip.

The only reason Chie was excluded was because Teddie took her drink. It makes perfect sense...more sense than "drunk off the atmosphere" at any rate.

• Chie probably had a higher alcohol tolerance than the other girls because she's more muscular than them, she mentions feeling a bit tipsy but not totally smashed like the other girls (and Teddie) the lightweights of the party. More than likely all the drinks were spiked though as just about everyone other than Naoto, seemed to be a bit tipsy....NAOTO DID IT! Probably in the hopes they'd be more talkative and spill the beans on the case.

Teddie spiked the drinks at Club Escapade

During the Kings Games, Yukiko, Rise, and Teddie seemingly become drunk "of of the environment," because according to Naoto (and even implied by Kanji) the drinks were not alcohol. If this was the case though, why were those three the only ones "affected by the environment." It's safe to assume, especially since Teddie had been hanging out on the bad portion of town by himself prior to meeting up with the group, that he spiked both his and the girls drinks.

Yukiko is the secret lovechild of Kaguya and Mokou.

She resembles Kaguya in appearance and upbringing, and her Persona uses fire, just like Mokou does. Also, her healing and revival powers may be a weaker form of her parents' regenerative immortality.

Of course, you may be asking "How can two women reproduce with each other?" Well, Gensokyo is a land of fantasy, so there's bound to be some method of same-sex conception out there. As for how she stumbled into Japan, she wasn't wanted and is secretly adopted.

• It was Eirin's shady new drug.

Teddie and Lain are the same person.

• Pedobear, Teddie, and Pajamas!Lain are all the same person.

Nanako actually Came Back Wrong.

You haven't seen all the effects of her ressurection. Maybe she's not quite herself, and she'll always seem "off". Maybe its something worse. Maybe she's not even herself at all, and something else is controlling her body for the time. Maybe what she saw on the other side will eventually make normal life impossible. At the end of Persona 4 FES, or whatever they do, you'll end up having to kill her.

• Of course, there will be no Persona 4 FES, so we'll never see if this is right or not. Also, I think this counts as a Poison Oak Elliptic Tree.
• To be honest, I always thought the "I wanna marry you, big brother!" counts as a hint. How can Nanako just spew that out in the open? Just now? There is a theory that involves the fog not actually lifted... but stored within Nanako. The fog being a time bomb where Izanami and the fog will be reborn when Nanako reaches a certain age. Then when Nanako hits that age, then Izanami will be reborn with Nanako as her vessel, and the fog will return...

Chie is actually a Plant of some organization or even a deity of some kind or a creation of one, sent to help the party out.

This is something I picked up on during the scene on the last day where you suspect that someone was pulling everyone's strings and go hunt for Izanami. Yosuke points out that Chie was the one who first got them to try the Midnight channel and Chie stutters for a few seconds before hastily explaining that she heard it from another group of girls. She then wonders out loud if there's a "conductor" of some sort after reading Adachi's letter, before hastily stammering out "It was just something that popped into my head" But she does this throughout the entire game. Makes offhand comments that turn out to be exactly the hint the team needs to keep going. People suspected her of being a Genius Ditz but is their more to it? Also immediately after MC confronts Izanami for the first time, Chie is apparantly the only one who noticed Izanami there, Yosuke and Yukiko need to be told about it by MC. We also know next to nothing about her family or past beyond her being Yukiko's friend for awhile and that one kid who shows up during her S link who's also just a friend not related to her. We never meet her family nor does she ever seem to mention them despite every other party member except Teddie either having a relative appear or at least talked about. And she basically starts the quest. It's her that mentions the Midnight Channel first, and it's her that takes the MC tv shopping at Junes where you encounter the TV that takes you to the studio despite not being able to afford it herself. Granted she does have a Shadow encounter like everyone else but it could have been faked. Chie's notably more worn afterwards than any other character because of the fog almost like she was overacting. Of course she might not even know of any of this herself, and have a kind of self Weirdness Censor like Ryoji did in P3, not honestly knowing why she's always saying the right thing at the right time.

Kou Ichijo is the younger brother of the Persona 3 Protagonist.

They both look pretty similar ^{[dead link]}. Both of them were orphans. Although it's revealed what happened to Minato's parents in P3, Kou ends up being told that his parents died from illness. This could be a cover-up story for what really happened. He could have shock-induced amnesia about his parents and brother from losing his parents, being separated from his brother, and being whisked off to an orphanage at the age of about three or four.

A teenaged Nanako will be a party member (or possibly even the named protagonist ala Tatsuya/Maya) in Persona 5 and will be instrumental in freeing Minato

Search your feelings. You know it would be awesome. It would make sense from a plot perspective too. Young kid, nearly dies from shadows, that and she has an entire pack of Mama bears and papa wolves in the form of some of the most powerful persona users in living memory.

• • Imagine what would happen if you could fuse Messiah, Thanantos, Orpheus Telos, and Izanagi no Okami.....
    • The world's biggest Game Breaking Disk One Nuke!
• Not to mention that she's already got a fair few of the personality traits of a main character - cares about others, a bit stoic and used to being alone but willing to make friends, willing to help others. And plotwise, her narrative arc is somewhat unresolved - she didn't have to face down her own Shadow yet, and you just know both she and Dojima aren't going to sit idle about the whole "Shadow" business, especially not with the TV portals still working even in the True Ending. Especially given how popular she is, this is almost less of a wild guess than it is a near-certainty. The real question will be how she enters the story and what role she plays.
  • Or, perhaps, ala Minato, exposure to an otherworldly power at a young age might be required for the development of "Wild Card" abilities. This neatly explains why she doesn't have a Shadow (she's too young for her ego to be solidified, and she's put into a situation where a shadow normally appears) thus, her Shadow never takes shape, and as a previous WMG said, she's already reached a point where her "issue has been resolved" meaning that a Persona should have appeared, meaning that she could have a multitude of Personas. Named protagonist (as the last two games haven't had non-MC Wild Cards,) here we come.

Teddie's Shadow is a direct creation of Inazami

When the Teddie's shadow goes berserk Rise mentions some sort of outside power, and Shadow! Teddie says pretty much the same things Izanami does later in the game. (Truth unattainable, you all suck, What you're doing is pointless, lay down and die already, oh shit you guys are powerful, you still suck no matter how badly you kick my ass. etc.)

Alternately Teddie's Shadow is a result of Adachi throwing a tantrum

We don't know much about Adachi's powers but it does seem like he has a far greater affinity for affecting the TV world in lieu of Seto's messanic charisma and wild card persona. He probably watched the midnight channel, saw six kids and their stupid bear about to buy it and said "This is going to be so F* cking cool! Dojimae's going to shit a brick when his nephew and his friends show up dead on a telephone pole. Awesome!" Only to throw his remote when Teddie Curbstomps Rise's Shadow. Then he remembers "Wait, I've got powers too. Suck on this!"

• Interesting to note is that "Shadow Teddie" has a voice almost exactly like Ame-noSagiri!Adachi, with the difference being that "Shadow Teddie" doesn't have a reverb-echo-effect-thing.

The Velvet Room has some sort of evil mirror counterpart

Absolutely no basis for this but you know it would be awesome.

• The Leather Room, in which resides Joker-sama

The Amagi family are ninja

Yukiko is your most powerful spellcaster, indicating some pretty impressive Ki/Chakra training. She is able to use a fan as an instruement of murder, occassionaly throwing it like a shuriken to disable enemies. To say nothing of her statement "that bear needs to be disappeared." That wasn't an idle threat, Yukiko had serious intentions of assasinating Teddy right then and there.

• Alternately, they're yakuza.

The Protagonist has MPD

It explains how he can have multiple personas and the 'Wild Card'is a metaphor for his disorder.

• In this case, he'd have to have in excess of a hundred personalities. All the power would also leave him disinclined to actually seek treatment. This is fairly unsettling.
• Also the dialogue choices when you are talking to people are actually different personalities vying for control of the body.

Something big was going down at the Culture Festival behind the scenes

I don't know what, but something really significant- probably related to whatever will happen in Persona 5. Evidence for something of import? The "long-nosed fortune teller". Between the name and the blue velvet booth, its obviously either Igor or one of his proxies. However, when was the last time Igor showed up during daylight in the real world itself, and not in a subdimensional pocket deep within the human unconscious or mystic dimensional overlap? For him, or one of his proxies/servants, to show up in the daytime in the unaltered mundane world of Men means that something world-shaking was happening, but the protagonists were having too much fun to notice.

• I think it was Margaret in the blue booth. That chuckle sounded distinctly female and when challenged to predict something about the protagonist's relationship with girls, the person says that they have the advantage, suggesting that the person has had personal contact with the protagonist.(Or at least was watching him.)
  • Thing is, she doesn't have a terribly long nose, and Igor fits the "personal contact/watching him" thing as well...
  • It was a woman's chuckle though. And Margaret's Social Link shows she actually has a pretty quirky sense of humor. She'd probably think it was hilarious to wear a fake nose and playact at being her master for a day of goofing off with teenagers.
  • Also, whenever you ask about your Social Link progress in the Velvet Room, Margaret is the one you ask and she's the one who answers you. Clearly, she's the expert on the protagonist's relationships, not Igor. She's the one who would "have the advantage" in that area.
    • The anime confirms it, it's Margaret. The scene is voiced, and the voice is unmistakeably hers. Unless Igor can somehow change his voice.

The events of Port Island and Inaba are in no way particularly unusual

Similar things go on across the world all the time- maybe even one potential apocalypse per city. Everyone has succeeded- so far. The reason Igor is so hands-off with mentoring is because he's got his hands full helping thousands of persona team leaders worldwide. Presumably, a high percentage of March deaths in the 13-24 age group is really Apocalypse Prevention Suicides. This is why a random place like Inaba was the focus- everywhere else was taken.

• I thought of this a while ago. Wait, does this mean that the orginal and american dub of the original persona could have happened concurrently? With all these apocalypses, you're going to get some repeats.

Izanami had attempted her experiment once before, in a different small town...

...Called Silent Hill.

• Except there, her aspect was Samael.
• Meanwhile, on another planet her Namatame/Adachi equivalent was some monkey-man with birthing hips.
• She also became a god by arranging the massacre of yet another small town... called Hinamizawa. There weren't any monsters there, but there were plenty of crazy people.

Come on, a town covered in fog, where all the monsters are reflections of the dark side of the human psyche? I can't be the only one who made this connection after seeing the fog of deceit covering Inaba.

The existance of Shadows rather than Demons has to do with the nature of the 'Conception' from Nocturne

In the SMT series proper it's shown that the world is destroyed and remade, more than once, through a process called the Conception.

It's also shown in Nocturne that only humans can create the new world, and in doing so they alter the 'rules'.

Between Persona 2 and Persona 3, the world was remade in such a way that the various demons had less power. As a result, however, the power of Persona was not diminished, and became warped over time, causing Personas which weren't properly controlled to become Shadows. This may extend to Demons being completely disallowed in the 'Real World', so Igor, Margaret, and Elizabeth can only exist in dreams, which is why only the protagonist can interact with them, and they can only support a single guest's power of Wild Card...at a time.

Adachi secretly really bought into the "the Midnight Channel shows your soul mate" rumor.

The real reason he snapped when talking to Mayumi is because he saw her in the TV and he became enraged (with more than a little help from his rampant misogyny) that the woman who was supposed to be his soul mate had been having an affair with a married man.

• Rampant misogyny and de Clerambault's Syndrome, maybe the latter sparked the former.

Personas 1-4 are all part of an extended battle to Earn Your Happy Ending against the evils inherint in mankind.

Think about it, Persona's 1&2 were essentially chess games between Philemon and Nyarlathotep. Philemon awoke the personas in the characters for them and they served as his soldiers against Nyarlathotep who used demons as his soldiers. The shadows really are just parts of Nyarlathotep. The reason for the swicth in enemies between P2 and P3 is because Nyarlathotep was defeated by Tatsuya & Maya and co. Without a balance to his power Philemon was forced to take a more passive role and with the last of his power he gave the SEES members the potential they needed. It was after P2 that the pieces of Nyarlathotep fragmented and became the shadows. They created the Dark Hour as their temporary home since the gateway to hell isn't around. The Fall meant the opening of the gate to hell which would have created a scenario similiar to the kind we see in the SMT games. The shadows wanted to go home. They finally retreated to the collective unconciousness of humanity were the persona's dwell. They corrupted the world and then sought to absorb Inaba and counterattack. They of course failed when Souji beat back their current ruler and forced them to retreat once again. All this time Nyarlathotep's fragments grow weaker and with Erebus gone and Nyx held at bay by Minato Philemon is likewise almost dead.

The person 'driving' the Velvet room Limo is...

Theodore. Because why not?

• Sounds reasonable enough. I wonder, though, is Theodore also brother of Elizabeth and Margaret? If so, what is he? Oldest? Middle brother? Elizabeth's non-identical twin? What?
  • Yes, as far as I'm aware, he is their brother and the youngest.

Mitsuo Kubo is based on Christian Weston Chandler of Sonichu “fame”

Think about it: They’re both manchildren. They’re both obsessed with videogames to an unhealthy degree. They both make creepy advances towards girls they barely know (in Mitsuo’s case it's Yukiko, in Chris’s case it’s basically anything female). They both copy other peoples work. They both have unusual eyes. They both have grudges against and get disproportion revenge upon teachers (well alright, the person Chris has a grudge against is a dean not a teacher, but same basic principal). They both always wear the same shirt.

You have to admit the resemblance is disturbing and uncanny.

• Occam's Razor would point out that it is rediculously unlikely that there are enough Japanese Sonichu "Fans" to make it likely. Then again, Occam's Razor would also disregard quantum physics beacuse it isn't "The Simplest Explination", but yeah. Besides, Chris's type is actually quite well known in Japan.
  • Critical Research Failure on what Occam's Razor actually entails. Read the actual article.

At some point, Dojima was finally told the truth

This troper suspects that after everything that happened, he finally became open minded enough to ask The MC if all that stuff about throwing people into the TV's was true. For the MC's part, he caved in and showed him the truth, figuring that Dojima was trustworthy (something they all admitted earlier in the game). Possible because at this point, there's no point in hiding it from him, plus we all know Nanako's kidnapping might have been avoided if he had been let in on the secret.

• Uh yeah? He explicitly says during the good ending after the final boss he doesn't understand the TV world or Persona stuff.
  • Really? I interpreted it as him still not really knowing what had happened, but thinking that they had a strong enough case against Adachi that even craziness about T.V worlds and the like didn't matter. He says something along the lines of "Even if a T.V world does exist, It won't change that Adachi will be put away", near the end of the game. I mean if he knew for sure, they would have just said it wouldn't they? Or am I just stupid -_-
    • Basically, Dojima seems to at least remember the explanation that the MC tried to give him on the day Nanako was kidnapped. It's fairly obvious that he still doesn't fully believe it, though.

The true world in everyone's hearts revealed in the True Ending is the setting at the beginning of the First Pokemon Movie.

Seriously. The whole opening thing with Mewtwo dreaming before he wakes up in the cloning lab, saying that he is "ready to be"? The mountain Mew flies over is totally the same mountain as the one in the true TV world.

The Mission Control Characters are stronger than we realize

This is more Persona 3 and 4, but there is no section for general theories. First we have Fuuka: Spent weeks(although only hours to her) traipsing around the school during the dark hour. She would have died, but her Persona, which hadn't even fully awakened yet instinctively guided her away from danger (and also steered toward the protagonist, or perhaps I should say, it steered them towards her). She's also the only character besides the MC to realize what the evoker is beforehand. Next is Rise. her shadow used it's scanning powers to not only evade the party's attacks, but also hit all with an almost instant KO attack. It's the only boss not to be beaten in a battle. Also, mere moments after gaining her persona, Rise is the only character to make use of it immediately. They can analyze the enemy, predict their movements, and avoid them, and strike weak spots. Well, not the last one, because they can't fight, but if they could....... Remember what Fuuka's persona did to the shadows that attacked it? And all she did was summon it. Imagine if she had the same fighting potential as the others, same for Rise.

• Theorectically, it would make them able to predict and avoid any attack thrown at them like Rise's shadow does. However they'd need the physical abilities to actually do so. Rise since she's a trained dancer and in active physical shape might be able to pull it off, but Fuuka's pretty frail, and doesn't get much exercise. However if they fought as well they'd need good multitasking skills to both fight and be mindful of the other team while they are at it. It's probably more effective for them to stick to support since the other characters probably have more raw power than them.
  • That's more or less what I was thinking. They may not be able to do it, but the potential is there, and it's frightening. As for Fuuka's lack of physical skill, perhaps a long range strategy: use her power to keep her distance the way she did in her intro arc, and pelt with any spells possible. Assuming her persona can learn spells. In fact, I wonder if Atlus has considered such a thing themselves. Imagine an enemy persona user who can do what I described: It would not be fun, now would it?
• Something else for the potential of this theory: Remember, because you got to change the party members every now and then, everyone ends a certain number of levels inferior to the group's leader, but when you check Fuuka's or Rise's Personas, you'll find that they are pretty much at the same level of their respective leader.
  • Fuuka and Rise actually do have their own stats. Fuuka's are pretty good for level 17, with a definite slant towards defense. She has zero growth, though. rise does have stat growth, but I believe she's still behind most other members.
• I just remembered: we do see a possible example in Mitsuru. Her persona also has scanning abilities, but not on the same level as Fuuka. Any guesses about how she battles? I bet she fights exactly like how I picturing Rise or Fuuka could if they had combat abilities, although since hers is more battle oriented, it's probably at a lower level. It's non-cannon, but in the Persona 3 manga, she says that she can predict the enemies movements, and it would make sense for her to do so.

Nanako was far more clued in then she lets on

Okay, you watch television all day. You have a brother surrogate that you think hung the moon.... And then people start dying. Now all of a sudden your brother comes home at odd hours all brusied and batterd, he has a lethal array of katanas, long swords, and body armor. Moreover, he's buying weird mystical equipment from the mail order. And then... people stop dying. People disappear, but they always reappear at the same time that your awesome big brother comes home with those mysterious injuries... Seriously though, Nanako's probably heard of the midnight channel (what else do we see the poor kid doing but watch television? And we do know that she was up the first time that you watch the midnight channel), she's seen all the stuff you order through the mail, she does nearly all of the chores in the house she's probably been in your room, multiple times, without your knowledge (what kid hasn't snuck into the room of a particularly admired older sibling?) and she's always running interception between you and Dojimae.

• Nanako is Izanami. They have the same voice talent! And the MC might've gotten his spark of Persona when he shook hands with the gas station goddess but only got that headache when he saw that Nanako was staring at him.

The events of Persona 3 and 4 are orchestrated by Igor to bring back Philemon

The whole situation in the Persona!Verse right now is that Shadows and other unholy abominations lurk everywhere...but where the hell is Philemon? Shadows but no Philemon? Dude, where's my boss? Igor is very quiet, but he is, after all, Philemon's servant. He must have a plan. Notice that each "true end" leads to the enlightenment of an aspect of humanity...so the final event might bring back Philemon?

• The iconic blue butterfly Philemon does appear more frequently in Persona 4 than Persona 3...

Naoto is a decendent of a Kuzunoha... just not Raidou

There are 4 great summoner titles, but we only know of Raidou, Geirin and Kyouji (Raido is not from the same universe and thus doesn't count)

Yosuke has TWO Shadows, but only directly created one

Let's think about this for a second. We all know that Teddie was created as a result of a Shadow becoming in-sync with human loneliness, but he never states how many humans it took. Shadow Yosuke's gimmick was that its creator's greatest fear was to be alone. Somewhere between Yosuke going to Inaba and gaining Jiraiya as his Persona, Pre-bear Teddie became attuned to Yosuke's loneliness, and became the cutesy, lovable, Handsome Lech who gets a Crowning Moment of Awesome with his Last Stand (even if it's a subverted Last Stand)

Teddie is Theodore Roosevelt's shadow.

Perhaps Roosevelt didn't want to admit he liked puns?

• Alternately, he is boune of Roosevelt's denial of his softer side. He claimed to hate the nickname "Teddy", possibly due to its association with the stuffed animal and his masculine image. It makes sense that if he was suppressing a softer side, centered around false hate of the nickname, it would manifest as a shadow as something like Teddie.

Teddie is the reincarnation or something of Haruhi Suzumiya.

Think about it. The entire thing, even Izanami's very existance, and the MC being in Inaba at all... EVERYTHING happened because Teddie willed it so. Because he was hella lonely. To take it further; In christianity, God created people to love him. Think about it. Teddie is just God in a space-monkey-bear-suit. He created humanity to love him from the very beginning. Izanami might seem to disprove this, being something Teddie would be against, but... remember, God lets bad things happen too. In fact, Izanami is actually a device to pull people to him and his "heaven"... Are you mind-fucked yet?

Teddie is the personification of the true TV-World, created by Philemon.

Izanami's plot of putting humanity on trial via the Midnight Channel sounds a lot like the conflict between Philemon and Nyarlathotep. She created Ameno-Sagiri from the fog representing denial, but cheated by using him to manipulate Adachi and Namatame. Now, look back at the first WMG on this page, of Teddie being the main character's shadow. The Star Arcana, Teddie's link, is a sign of hope; the main character is the representation of hope in Izanami's test. He's also able to appear in the Velvet Room, which is usually only inhabited by the main character and Igor, who works for Philemon. In addition to the power of the wild card and using the Velvet Room to fuse Personas, Philemon created Teddie from the unclouded version of the Midnight Channel. Because of Teddie's desire to attain the truth and help people, he became friends with the protagonist and helped him defeat Izanami. Just as planned!

Igor is actually a Time Lord. The Velvet Room is some sort of corrupted, ever-changing TARDIS that can enter human minds. Elizabeth, Margaret, and Theodore are his Companions, possibly other Time Lords.

• • Alternatively, Igor is Suzumiya Haruhi.
    • If so, then Philemon would be Kyon.

Each of the protagonist's companions is associated with one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

The protagonist, being the paragon of perfection that he is, doesn't have a sin as much as he doesn't have a Shadow. But think about his companions for a moment: Chie's sin was obviously Envy, of Yukiko, who she thinks is better than her at everything. Yukiko's sin was Sloth, waiting for a strong prince to save her from her personal problems instead of trying to deal with them herself. Kenji... well, I guess you can say he is quite Wrathful, even though I don't see how this is related to his Shadow. Rise is associated with Lust in a sort of opposite way: her life (or so she thinks) is defined by it not because she is very lustful, but because she is the object of so much lust. Naoto obviously has some serious issues with Pride, risking her own lives and those of others(in addition to generally acting like a prick) in order to prove to herself (and to the world) that she is the very best.

So, this leaves us with Yosuke and Teddie, and Gluttony and Greed. Now I am stuck. But this theory sounded really promising a few minuets ago.

• Well, Teddie ate a ridiculous amount of ramen when they went on that field trip to Gekkoukan, so there's your Gluttony right there. However, if this is the case, how can Yosuke be associated with Greed?
  • Yosuke always struck me as selfish, so perhaps he was greedy for attention? And Kanji's shadow fits more with Lust, if only because it wanted acceptance in anyform and Rise's shadow seemed angry, thus Wrathful, about her life. Plus considering she almost obliterates the party while laughing evily, there's that as well.

Shadows are NOT inherently Evil.

It's probably explained somewhere explicitly and I just missed it but here we go.

Shadows are basically every part of you, the good AND the bad. While we always see them acting violently, it's more an issue of them lacking self control. Considering that Personas are explicitly Shadows controlled by the Ego, it stands to reason that Shadows in and of themselves are not evil or good. They're more chaotic Neutral. Relative to the person they act in their own self interest and act out however the person would if they just didn't give a damn. But then, why is it that shadows always seem to want to kill the characters?

It's because when you're denying them, you are very literally denying a part of yourself. And if you are denying a part of yourself so strongly that you would sooner see that aspect destroyed then come to light...Well for a shadow, since it IS an aspect of you and you are the only one who can change it in anyway, well effectively you're killing it. It's trying to protect itself from you, or perhaps more accurately trying to FORCE you to accept it.

• This is explicitly stated...yeah.
• Where at? I don't recall seeing it said anywhere, at least in P4
  • The existence of Teddie? The acceptance speeches? It's not a WMG if it's a major theme of the game, dude.

TV Tropes is the Shadow of The Other Wiki.

Wikipedia has largely become a regulated stopover on the way to more "valid" research. It struggles to feel accepted academically while still suffering the derision of teachers everywhere. Wikipedia struggles to be accepted through strict regulation and cold hard facts; a far cry from the more lax, Rule of Fun oriented TV Tropes. Wikipedia, in an effort to stamp out its more trivial side, inadvertently gave birth to TV Tropes as its Shadow self. It cannot bear to reconcile knowledge with fun and so it cannot bring itself to face TV Tropes. But TV Tropes is Wikipedia. And The Other Wiki is TV Tropes...

That Troper is the Shadow born of the collective ego of all Tropers...including you.

That Troper

How long are you planning on denying it? Beneath your thin veneer of snarky sophistication your true desires are laid plain before me. Who hasn't secretly pimped their own Fan Work under pseudonyms and puppet accounts? Don't you feel the need to rant and rave about asininely stupid programming that everyone else seems to fawn over? The Just Bugs Me pages for Twilight and The Inheritance Cycle alone allude to your true nature.

My opinions are right and all the garbage just hides the fact that I'm openly tearing down something I don't like and NO I WILL NOT TAKE IT TO THE FORUMS!!! And why shouldn't I? So what if there isn't a page for Cartwheeling Dynamite Puppy; there should be damnit, even if I have to pimp it to high heaven! Who are they to say what is and isn't A Trope?! "Some Tropers think...Your Milage May Vary But...Please exercise Rule of Cautious Editing Judgement when blah blah blah blah blah blah!" That weasel talk makes me sick!! Why shouldn't I say exactly what's on my mind?! MINE is the only opinion that matters!!!

My OTP IS the Fan-Preferred Couple! Katara is a Canon Sue and I don't care who disagrees! Don't you take my entry down! I'M right, YOU'RE wrong!

Isn't that what you truly feel?

Villinize me all you'd like. Just accept the inevitable truth: you are me...and I am you

• I'm right here, you're over there, therefore, as you do not share the same place as me, you are not me.
  • Ahhh, shit...Let's get "I'll Face Myself" up and running...
  • NO! You're not me!
  • Alright, I've been waiting for this! Let's battle! You're nothing like me anyway!!!
  • I AM A SHADOW, THE TRUE SELF!
  • Yes, yes, I know, I'm an egotistical asshole here for my own entertainment rather than the betterment of the wiki, pushing my own opinions with varying degrees of subtlety and lack thereof while pretending its neutrality. Now hurry up and transform into a Persona already, I want superpowers and don't want to get my hands dirty with a boss fight.
  • The strength of heart to face one's self has been made manifest. Troper has obtained the facade used to overcome life's hardships, the Persona ...?
  • Thou art I and I am thou. From the sea of thy soul, I emerge. I am The Other Troper, Protector of the Wiki

The entire soundtrack is just the music playing on Youske's iPod, and the reason it's playing is because it's so loud the MC can hear it

The reason it changes is he changes the music to fit the mood. Plays "I'll Face Myself" to match the seriousness when they get in to the boss fights, "Reach out to the Truth" to get pumped up for battle, and so on. But "Never More" in on the MC's that is off-camera that he listens to on the train away. Any other tracks are because Philemon Did It to set the mood. Everyone assumes it's just Youske's loud headphones again and pay it no mind, and Youske just thinks his iPod is broken.

• • That must hurt Youske's ears after while if the music is that loud...

Mitsuo Kubo will return as a minor antagonist in Persona 5.

He's the only villain that you don't fight directly at some point, and we don't know what happened to him beyond the fact that he was prosecuted for murder. If he appears at all, I bet he's either going to be a Social Link (unlikely, given how unrepentant he is) or a member of the Quirky Miniboss Squad.

Persona 3 and Persona 4 will be.....

Part of a trilogy along with Persona 5. Just as the first ....2? games were connected, so have 3 and 4. Persona 5 will take it to the next level, with the revelation that events in the last two games were an Evil Plan by the villain of that game, and may have cameos by characters from both previous games, who all have to work together to foil the Big Bad. It's been hinted at with all the there still being mysteries about the nature of Shadows (Teddie, Teddie TEDDIE!), the differences between summoning personas in the two games (naturally accepting yourself vs Unnaturally forcing it out), and other stuff I'm likely missing. It also admittedly sounds like a bad fan fic, but don't deny you want to see it.

The music from the games IS in universe.

But not from Yosuke's Headphones, The Music is caused by the shadows. Basically each song that you hear in the game is a reflection of whatever characters Shadow, so for example Nanakos Shadow (shadow equivalent?) Is the one singing/generating Heaven. By the same token the Battle music is ALSO caused by Shadows, except in this instance it's caused by the Persona's (still shadows after all), so what each character is hearing is probably a little different. The only exceptions to this would be in the face of Major Bosses, who are essentially super powerful shadows. They're basically singing their song so loud you can't hear your own.

The Only possible exception/reversal to this could be The Genesis, where the hero's persona (Izanagi-no-Okami) Overrides to bosses theme.

The Genesis is the Final Battle of the game in miniature

It's been a little while since I've played the game, so maybe it was blatantly evident during the fight, but I've noticed that the song seems to line up with the final battle fairly well. 0:00-2:48 is the First half of the boss fight against Izanami. Things are rough, but they're shambling along till they thought they've won... And then 2:48-4:50 starts the battle against Izanami-no-Okami, A goddess. And it sounds suitably epic as your characters struggle against the might of a god. And again it mellows when they thought they had Won...When she starts outright killing the characters in 4:50-5:50. During the high points of the section(don't know what it would be called properly but between 5:25-5:40) there are 8 massive beats, The points when each of the characters were hit with Thousand Curses. 5:50-6:45 is the scene following MC's death at the hands of the curse and then his friends and allies using the power of friendship, love and all that to help him stand back up, and complete his social link giving him Izanagi-no-Okami. 6:45-7:51 is him standing up to and then beating Izanami.

The Main Character Doesn't complete all the Social Links until the end of the game

Not to say that it's impossible to finish every other character's social links, you can. But assuming that every character in your party in the game has a social link, why wouldn't the MC? He alone doesn't have to face any internal issues, if only because of Izanami, but that doesn't mean that they are there. And if I have the Manga Characterization right, and assuming that it's at least partially true for the Game itself, Boyo has issues making real connections with other people. Just because they (his social links) make a connection with him, and believe (rightly) that he is someone that they can count on does not mean the same for him. The Realizing that he has people that he can truly count on, real friends? I would think that would count as a suitable epiphany.

Naoto doesn't just Look like the Protagonist of Persona 3, she is the protagonist of Persona 3

Wait, hear me out. Couple of years ago Naoto and her sister get into a car accident and one of them dies. Nearly. See, FeMC from P3P goes on to do the whole world saving deal, while Naoto, nearly dead falls into some kind of temporal hole (remember they were trying to see about time control at one point with the shadows) and ends up the required number of years in the future, only to be refound by her Grandfather (who, if the rumors are true, Is Raidou who may very well aware of the craziness that can go on when you deal with demons/shadows) and continues to raise the child, telling a bit of what happened. It would possibly explain why Naoto is so willing to accept the utterly absurd (from a normal persons perspective) that there are demons in the tv.

But wait you say, if Naoto is the MC from 3 why is she well...a she? Butterfly effect. the minor difference of one of the twins being female did something or another that caused FeMC to be the hero, and the other to get launched in time. On the other hand, if the MC was male, it caused the sister to get launched in time. And perhaps dye her hair/temporal weirdness did something to her hair.

• So in one such reality that Minato is male, could there ever have been a red-haired also-male "Fe MC" sibling that gets launched in time and can only fully pursue his dreams by cross-dressing? And does Souji still take a shine to him?

Teddie is Pedobear in disguise.

We all know how Teddie wants to be friends with the team and play with Nanako. However, what no one knows is that the lovable Junes mascot hides darker motives. Since he's so bent on being friends with a group of high schoolers (who, by the way, are all under the age of 18) and one of the high schooler's elementary school-age cousin (who he has high interest in "playing" with). He uses his pretty-boy image so no one suspects anything.

• Given the age of most of his targets, its much more likely that Teddie is Pedobear's older brother, Ephebobear.

Sam Evans is the MC.

Let's look at the evidence, shall we? Persona 4 MC and Chord Overstreet ^{[dead link]}. See any resemblance?

Sam is very loyal on Glee, a trait that's heavily implied to be the MC's by default. He's a bit of a jock with an interest in the arts (in P4 you can be on a sports team and in the music/drama club). The timelines coincide (he is currently a Sophomore in 2010-2011 like the MC would be).

MC's ethnicity isn't referenced, so it's possible he's American. Maybe Sam is bi-racial, Japanese on his mother's side. He isn't a natural blond after all.

It seems he has moved around/transferred a lot in the past. His parents might have gone to Japan on 'business' and when the time came, rather than ship him off again to yet another new city, they decided to keep him with Dojima for a year to give him some stability. Then at the end of April 2012, he's shipped off to the US again.

• Does this make Kurt his new Yosuke? They're both dripping with Ho Yay (one for obvious reasons) and look fantastic in miniskirts.
  • Actually, no. Timeline-wise he would have met Kurt first. His transfer would occur at the end of his first year at McKinley.

Ameno-Saigiri and Shinoda are two eyes from the same pair of eyes.

And according to the myth, when both eyes open at once, humanity will find true despair.

Daidara knows about Shadows, and has at least some idea of what the Investigation Team is up to.

Come on, he doesn't bat an eye when he gets exotic materials (which include monster teeth and eyes) from a bunch of teenagers, he seems to be able to identify said materials and definitely knows how to work with them (a normal smith probably couldn't turn flowers dropped by defeated Bambinos into usable equipment), and at one point, he even gives the MC a speech about how he should take pride in vanquishing evil.

• Corollary: There's an old man who mentions that the weird fog comes to Inaba from time to time. What's not to say that Daidara did some fighting against Shadows himself one of the past times it happened?
• Okay, how about this? Like Igor, Daidara is an agent of Philemon. I think I'm going to consider this part of my personal canon.

P4 was a cosmic game between Minato and Nyx

While stewing around at the Great Seal, Nyx implanted an idea in Minato's head: A chance to have his life back. Both of them would take on different forms in this game, with Minato taking control of a mysterious transfer student who had just arrived in Inaba (Which explains why he didn't need to face his own Shadow, as he had done so already), and with Nyx taking the form of the goddess Izanami. If Minato was to win, by once again defeating Nyx, he would be giving mankind a stronger reason to live and thus weakening the burden on the Seal. If Nyx was to win, she would have to defeat Minato and cover the world in fog (Thereby triggering a new Fall by turning everybody into Shadows). Everything else, such as Adachi's transfer, and Namatame's affair becoming public were all done before the game started, to make things more interesting and challenging. The party members were also drawn together in this cosmic game, to give Minato some new allies.

An Updated Rerelease with a female protagonist will have Ken replacing Chihiro

Seems natural to me since they're both of the Justice Arcana. He'd appear on the second day with the team walking past a guy laying a flower in front of the old dorm. Curious, one of the group goes up and talks to him. S/he would get Ken to show them around town. (My theory is Rise but that's mostly for the Actor Allusion that would be with the English VA's) During the process, they will get vague hints about his past with Persona, about how his life was once driven with revenge (with foreshadowing towards the future incident with Nanako) and how his friends and a girl he knew saved him from himself. His relationship with the girl will be left vague, for sanity's sake, though he admits to a crush. He may or may not go to club Escapade with the group.

The Shrine Fox is an Inari Kitsune

It feels so obvious that I even hesitate to put it down, but considering her high intelligence and ability to enter the TV world, as well as the fact that one of Persona 4's main motifs is Japanese mythology, I'm surprised I see relatively little mention about it. However, it is possible that she was born just a normal fox, and somehow gained powers by living near the shrine (heck, considering that Koromaru's former owner was a monk, this might also in part explain why everyone's favorite knife-wielding dog was so supernaturally intelligent).

Teddie and the TV world are suffering body horror

teddies human form is his real form. as is the lush green TV world: izanami came along, found that changing it (and teddie, accidentally) would be easier than making a New world for her plans.

Shadow Mitsuo is not Mitsuo's real Shadow.

Blink and you'll miss it. At the beginning of Mitsuo's boss battle, his Shadow says "I am a Shadow. Come.. I'll end your emptyness." HOWEVER -- he never says "[I am] the true self"! It seems very strange that this was left out, particularly considering that Mitsuo is the fake final boss. Perhaps, like Nanako, Mitsuo's ego was not developed enough for him to create an actual Shadow. The Shadow that appears to him was probably created by Adachi to make the Inaba Scoobies more convinced of his guilt. Hey, he did make a Shadow for Teddie after all..

• But Teddie's shadow says it's the true self...

Teddie is Louis Cypher.

He maybe aware of it, and he may not, but Take a look ^{[dead link]} and see for yourselves if there is a resemblance. ^{[dead link]} Long WMG short, Izanami was in the way of whatever shit he was planning, so he wanted to take her down, and used the party to do it. If he really doesn't remember who he is, then he may have tried before, and gotten curb-stomped, but the desire to stop her didn't go away, even if his reasons for why he wanted to stop her changed.

Teddie is really Theo.

When you choose to be the male main character, or choose Elizabeth in the female path, Theo, who was a what could have been choice, still exists, but cannot take a form. Eventually his spirit takes the form of Teddie, and joins up with the P4 crew. Also, note that Teddie seems to recognize the Velvet room, and the fact that he was able to get there is considered notable by Igor. This may be because he was a occupant of the room at one point in his existence.

Naoto actually has a pretty sizable chest.

She just binds it down, since she's so embarrassed by it. She even kept the tape on during the hot springs scene. Hence why Rise was so shocked at her physical exam results.

People of the Fool Arcana are natural Wild Cards, and therefore subject to different rules than Wild Cards of different arcanas.

It would explain why the main characters in Persona 3 and 4 don't have to directly meet Philemon in order to receive the ability to use multiple Personas, and why, unlike the characters in the earlier games or Aegis in the Answer, they have to rely on Social Links in order to power themselves up.

Izanagi is the narrator of the game.

Considering that he was given to the protagonist by Izanami, it would also help explain why the narration is wheedling the protagonist to simply go home after he talks with all of his Max S-link friends the day before he leaves Inaba.

Souji/Yu is the love child of Nakajima and Yumiko from Digital Devil Story. And Serph Sheffield is actually Nakajima's pseudonym.

Souji loathes his father so much that he changes his name to Yu Narukami, but his real name truly is Souji Nakajima. Yes, Tropers. Souji "Nakajima" is the son of Akemi Nakajima/Serph Sheffield. Akemi Nakajima changed his name to Serph Sheffield and flew to wherever the hell Digital Devil Saga take place in after he impregnated Yumiko. Although Serph is Varna, Serph Sheffield is not; he is Izanagi. And yes, that means Izanami gave birth to her husband. Here, have a Brain Bleach.

Shadows of humans in the TV world are fragments of Nyarlathotep

In Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, Nyarlathotep claimed that he gets his power from ignorance, anger, and vengeance. While he does gain power from other emotions, these are his primary sources of energy. Note that all three of these emotions are treated as 'negative' emotions.

So Nyarlathotep is defeated, the heroes hit the Reset Button and the world lives to see another day. Problem solved, right? Except that Nyarlathotep's power sources haven't been destroyed. Essentially, as long as humanity exists, there's a possibility he'll return...and try to kill everybody again. But why hasn't he? Well, that last run-in he had with the Persona 2 gang knocked him up quite a bit. So much, in fact, that Nyarlathotep could no longer hold himself together and his essence scattered. These little pieces of Nyarlathotep are what we see as Shadows in Persona 4; ugly, negative feelings that the characters don't want to acknowledge as a part of themselves, and which manifested much more easily and powerfully in the TV world. They aren't made up of only anger/ignorance/vengeance because those aren't the only negative emotions of the human psyche, which is where Nyarlathotep gets his power from. He gains strength from whatever the most powerful emotions coming from an individual human are, whether it's jealousy or rejection or loneliness, and the only reason he mentioned those three emotions specifically is because they were most relevant to the humans he'd been conversing with (the Persona 2 protagonists). On that note, the shadow monsters from Persona 3, as well as those in Persona 4 that aren't Shadow-forms of humans, could be smaller fragments of Nyarlathotep since they emerge from the same source but aren't actually strong enough to retain a human conscience like the Shadow-Characters. The Kirijo company was responsible for calling the Shadows, not creating them.

If this is the case, it would explain what Philemon's been doing - breaking himself into smaller pieces of Persona, which he ordered Igor to grant to those with the potential to use, in order to hold back Nyarlathotep's onslaught. However much of a god he is, it might be difficult for him to hold back Nyarlathotep over a wide area. That Philemon isn't the type to normally get directly involved with human affairs can also be solved if you recall that Nyarlathotep isn't really himself anymore - rather, his will is spread out and not concentrated, which makes it hard to keep the Shadows in control. Bit difficult to play chess with something like that.

This also neatly sets up Persona 3, since if Philemon's busy splitting himself into pieces, it would explain why he had to get the MC to do so much of the work, at least until either a better solution presents itself or humanity finally learns from its mistakes. It makes even more sense if you think of Erebus as a particularly large portion of Nyarlathotep, as well as a branch of humanity's emotions that grew in power since the ending of Eternal Punishment.

Finally, both Nyarlathotep and the Shadow-Characters have Yellow Eyes, which was the original starting point of this WMG.

Shadows are the basis of Puella Magi Madoka Magica's Witches

(major spoiler warning for Madoka Magica if you haven't finished/seen it yet) Witches in the Madokaverse are essentially the souls of despairing Magical Girls, so perhaps Kyubey's race discovered the existence of Shadows and used them as part of their plans to harvest energy from human emotions?

Lifting the fog in Persona 4 symbolized the end of humanity's wish to die, freeing the Protagonist of Persona 3.

Or at least help relieve the burden on the Protagonist of Persona 3 a lot.

The main characters' personas in Persona 3 vs. those in Persona 4 reflect the game's environment.

Persona 4 takes place in a rural Japanese town, and so the main characters' personas are based on Japanese folklore. Persona 3 is set in a (westernized) city, so the characters' personas are based on Greek mythology.

Morooka was actually trying to be a cool teacher, but was failing miserably.

He comes off such a huge jerk because he either has some form of Autism, the primary effect of which on him is causing him to make jokes that instead come off as being horribly mean.

The new character in P4 Golden, Marie, is a version of Margaret.

The names are similar, AND Marie wears the blue colors associated with the Velvet Room residents.

Alternatively Marie is a reincarnation of Metis from P3 FES

• She and Metis have a striking resemblance down to the bangs on the side of the head, plus since Aigis became human, and Metis stated that her heart was connected to the "sea of the soul" or whatever, she was able to be reborn with her psyche in another human body

Alternatively times two, Marie will be the Aeon Social Link in The Golden.

Think about it. Her clothes resemble the denizen's of the Velvet Room, plus she's got a big V on her hat, similar to Theodore. If that's true, then she's also non-human and would have to learn the ways of actual human beings, thus explaining why she's Aeon. (Plus, Aeon was the only one not used in the original, so it makes sense in a meta sort of way.)

• Confirmed. (Though there's some mistranslation that fans read the kanji of Aeon that was used in Persona 3 FES as 'Eternal/Eternity' in Persona 4: The Golden. Hence, it's still confirmed that Marie is infact the Aeon Arcana Social Link.)

Marie is the daughter of Maki and the Progaonist

Marie has a similar name and looks kinda like Maki with darker hair. Who has that type of hair? The orignal Persona's protagonist.

The events of the Persona fighting game will show how the P3 MC comes back to life, if not, The Golden will.

There's an image of another Fool on the character select screen. Why not?

• The other fool in the character select screen is Aigis.

Mystery Food X shall be a special move in the fighting game.

In this case, the Instant Kill move.

The Final Boss in the fighting game will be...

... So ridiculously cheap and hard that even the worst Arc System Works had brought out thus far (GG Justice, GGX Dizzy, GGX2 I-No, Unlimited Nu, Unlimited Ragna, Unlimited Hazama, Mu-12) COMBINED will still wince in fear. Because when you have a company known for their massive That One Boss collection MAKE a fighting game... it's bound to happen.

Teddie is all that remains of Ryoji from the previous game

Okay, this is a stretch, but let's go for it. It IS Wild Mass Guessing, after all. Also, lots of spoilers for the end of P3 and some things in P4. If you have not finished either game or cheated and watched it on Youtube, you have been warned.

• Ryoji turns out to be the hugenormous Shadow known as Death. Teddie, meanwhile, turns out to be a Shadow who woke up to human emotions one day. If one assumes that Ryoji's own personality wasn't actually assimilated-- which seems to be the case, considering he talks to the cast in P3 one last time after the final battle-- but that as The Appriser and part of Nyx he wasn't allowed to keep it, it could have easily been expelled to be it's own little doo-dad, which in turn, becomes Teddie.
• Their personalities are actually quite similar. The flirting, the cheerful perkyness, the general sweetness, the rediculous amount of angst they get upon realizing what they are. To be honest, the biggest difference is Teddie end up much less fatalistic. One could take it as after the final battle and the fact that the P3 scooby gang managed to win an "impossible" battle, the remnants of Ryoji's persona got new hope for fighting fate. Well, that and Teddie's jokes are made of derp.
• Stupid reason, but come on: Just imagine Teddie in human mode with his hair dyed black and with an Epic Scarf. Do it.
• Because it would be awesome and an interesting twist in the upcoming game(s).

Admittingly, there are some gaping holes in it-- Arcana Change, what-- but, again; it IS just a Wild Guess.

(Also admittingly, this works best if you assume that the MC is a girl because Even More Emotion for Ryoji-- which would also explain some of Teddie's reactions to Rise-- but you know, it still more-or-less works without it.)

Reasons for the strange eye symbol that can randomly appear on a character's status screen

As seen here

• It's a dummied out game mechanic similar to that of the 'heart' one from Persona 3. In Persona 3, you could get a Persona with a heart shaped symbol on their status screen; if you then learned all of that Persona's skill set, you would get a special item. The eye could have been something similar but with party members, that was dummied out at the last minute.
• On a New Game+, you get the chance to fight Death, who randomly appears in treasure chests. You get an amazing weapon for defeating him, there's one available for each team member. Given that people have said the eye can change from character to character by reloading a save, it's possible the eye is simply telling you which character's weapon will be dropped if you were to fight Death.

Some other features/random trivial tidbits that will be in The Ultimate in Mayonaka Arena

• The main reason why the Ultimate Personas are not available outright:
  • Consider the fact that in Persona 3: The Answer, S.E.E.S. loses their powered-up personas. Now simply apply that formula to The Ultimate, and there's your explanation. (And don't give me bullshit about the P3 gang still retaining their ultimates when the P4 cast can't. All arguements are invalid.)
  • Another reason: they'll be used for the ultimate forms of each character (ala the "Unlimited" characters of BlazBlue), allowing characters to get status buffs, new attacks, etc.
• The remaining characters/the final boss:
  • Rise might make a surprise appearance as one of the playable fighters. Come on, admit it... you really want to know what kind of dirty (no, not THAT DIRTY) secrets she's been hiding.
  • Since we have Aigis as one of the playables, there seems to be no ruling out the rest of the Persona 3 cast to fight alongside her. It would be really nice to see the counterparts of both teams go up against each other (Minato(Minako)/Narukami, Junpei/Yosuke, Akihiko/Chie, Mitsuru/Teddie, etc.) wouldn't it?
  • We can also include the other Persona-users who aren't members of S.E.E.S/Investigation Team (aka. Strega and Adachi). We could really see an example of The Bad Guy Wins in The Ultimate.
  • For the final boss, it would make sense to make either Izanami to be the final boss. Be prepared for her to be That One Boss, though. Why? Look at the many cheap-ass bosses that have plagued the Persona (and to a larger extent, Shin Megami Tensei) series as well as Blazblue (i.e. Unlimited Nu/Hakumen/Ragna/Hazama, Nyx, Erebus, the Full Moon Shadows, other random bonus bosses, Unlimited Hazama, Izanami-no-okami, Shadow Yukiko, Shadow Teddie, Shadow Rise, and yet other random bonus bosses, and did I mention bonus bosses and Unlimited Hazama?
  • And, should Arc System Works be insane enough, include a Blazblue/Guilty Gear (probably the former) just For the Lulz. Now, let the thought of the Investigation Team fighting Ragna The Bloodedge slowly sink into your mind. (Don't give me bullshit on this one. Since the gameplay of The Ultimate is somewhat similar to Blazblue, it wouldn't be much of a hassle to simply toss in a Blazblue fighter. And a guy can dream can't he, even though he knows it's pretty much impossible?)
    • Hazama vs. Adachi, the battle of the trolls.
    • Kanji vs. Tager. Its either an ass renovation or a GIGANTIC TAGER!
• Other things:
  • Alternate Costumes: Because you really want Yu/Kanji/Yosuke in a drag fighting Naoto in a schoolgirl uniform or Chie/Rise/Yukiko in some Fan Service-y outfit.

Ryoji will be an extra/hidden/boss character in The Ultimate.

He is still an avatar/fragment to Nyx, but for now his role is to observe humanity's ways and keep in touch with Nyx and the Persona 3 protagonist. In fact, one of Aigis's reasons for entering the tournament in the first place is to investigate his purpose. Since the Persona 3 protagonist sort of raised Ryoji and gave him humanity, his fighting style will utilize a one-handed sword for a weapon and Thanatos as his Persona. Finally, Night Queen will be his most powerful super, being his equivalent to Jayoku Hotenjin!

• Jesus Crackers On A Stick. I can only hope that the makers of this game trope, because YES PLEASE. Alternitively, he could be the Final Boss and be brainwashed by Erebus, which could also be what the hell got into Teddie to make him start the tournament in the first place. If nothing else, a cameo with him flirting with all the girls, of both games, would be appreciated, whether it's a flashback or not.

In the new Persona 4: Golden, Souij/Yu will finally have the option to date Yosuke.

• Just throwing it out there. Hey, we're getting Persona 2 and this troper is certain the gay option won't be edited out. With all the Ho Yay in the original game, and with added features of the new game, we might just be able to date Yosuke if you pick your cards right (like the hug scene in Social Link 8).

Teddie is a "proto-Philemon" Shadow

• Philemon is said to be the collective "ideal" borne from humanity's deepest desires for goodness, what mankind strives to be (as opposed to Nyarlatothep, who is the collective desire for chaos and self-destruction.) Similarly, Teddie coalesced from a repressed desire that all humanity shares: "to be accepted." First, he manifests within the TV World --an existence within the Collective Unconscious that derives from how mass media affects people's perceptions of each other. Second, said manifestation is specifically crafted to appeal: he's a cute, inoffensive, funny mascot in his natural environment, and when he decides to manifest outside the TV World he assumes a human shape of idealized beauty. Third, he defines himself entirely through his relationships with others, more so than the Main Character, and is desperate to gain their approval and companionship. The character who accepts him the most is the one he grows closest to, and the one whose fate determines his own. The only reason he has his own Shadow is because, since he embodies an ideal, he doesn't know it himself --so he doesn't know the point of his own existence.

In the anime, Yu's really a laid back, Nice Guy who enjoys sarcasm once in a while.

The reason he seems so serious/dull all of the time is simple. His Expression is too low.

• He's pretty much confirmed to be a Deadpan Snarker by episode three. What does he say when Yosuke is doubled over in pain from a Groin Attack? "Careful on the way down."

Premise for a Persona 4:FES

The main character is resettling ack to his old life and when he starts the new school year, he sees that Izanami is now attending his school. FOR SOME REASON!

The Golden will include a crossover

There will be another crossover with Capcom, like Nocturne, except that it will involve another addition to the story, not a side quest to get a new party member/Persona (Although getting Sparda as a Persona would be cool). Now, it can work as one of two ways, either a short television appearance/reference to their Japanese names, or a full blown unlockable minigame where you have to get involve, getting either MC/Narukami/Seta or Miles Edgeworth to convict Mitsuo or Adachi, or even get Phoenix to defend Nametame or the MC from murder charges. Oh, come on, wouldn't it be awesome to have either Phoenix or Miles fighting Shadows with either Maya or Pearl as support? Also, Yosuke and Naoki could get closure by speaking to Saki.

Other Golden crossover ideas

• Dark Souls / Demon's Souls
  • As if Persona 4 couldn't get any harder, you can try tossing in a boss from either one of the two games up there. Granted, it's going to help somewhat that you have a break from the action with bosses like Great Gray Wolf Sif and Dragonslayer Ornstein and Executioner Smough. Who knows, you could take them as Personas and use them against other bosses. The joy of using the boss that handed your ass to you on a silver plate against another annoying-as-hell boss is glorious.
• Devil May Cry
  • When you do think about it, Dante wouldn't far off as a party member, seeing as he's got experience. Plus, you've got the weapons from other DMC games for the crew to use (Yu = Rebellion, Chie = Beowulf, Yosuke = Agni and Rudra).

Building on the Souji moves back to Inaba WMG...

• Persona 4: The Ultimate seems to support this! It takes place a few months after Persona 4's storyline, but notice how Yu is wearing his school uniform, whereas Naoto is not.
• Note that Yu/MC is wearing his old second year uniform, where if he was living in Inaba, he'd have a third year one. (The same way Kanji now wears a second year uniform instead of a first year one) He probably just wore it because it was easier to smuggle weapons into the TV World with it. (Out of universe reason, they wanted him to look familiar.)

In a later episode of the anime, the Investigation Team will test the limits of Aiya's Deliver Anywhere policy

Namely, by ordering from inside the TV World. And it will work.

• • That would be funny as hell, but is it even possible? If I remember correctly from the game, cell phones don't get service inside the TV world, so how would they place an order?
  • If this happens, I'm willing to bet it's because Aiya's delivery service is related to the Velvet Room... somehow. Think about it: For ramen, the Special Bowl is inordinately helpful to Yu as a meter stick of personal development, and the delivery girl would fit right in as one of Igor's aides.
  • There are scans showing motorcycles inside the Midnight Channel on Persona 4: The Golden. So you may be right.

Adachi's vomiting was real, not fake as suggested on the main page.

• When we're first introduced to him, Adachi vomits at the sight of Mayumi Yamano's body. It's suggested on the main page that this was an act, since Adachi himself was the one who killed her. But think about this: when Adachi threw Yamano inside the TV, he expressed surprise and excitement that such a thing was possible. (Presumably he had only placed parts of his body inside before.) Since he hadn't previously known that a person could actually enter the TV world, one could assume that he'd never done so himself and therefore probably wasn't aware that humans who entered the TV world were in any kind of danger. Thus, his vomiting was a very real reaction resulting from his initial shock at seeing Yamano's body.

Aika Nakamura is Aegis in disguise.

• She's actually investigating Inaba as part of her quest to bring back the MC from Persona 3, and her role as a hypercompetent ramen delivery girl allows her to get around town and keep tabs on the investigation team without anyone thinking it unusual when she shows up everywhere.
  • Alternately, she's Elizabeth with dyed hair and uses the Velvet Room to be anywhere.

Yu's reaction to Teddie's new look in the anime will be...

Ces't Magnifigue.

• Oh hey, I was kinda right.

Mitsuo is Namatame's son.

They sort of look alike and it's not impossible that Namatame dated and got pregnant a woman before Ms. Yamano. She didn't tell him, however, and raised him under the name of her husband, one Mr. Kubo.

Naoto isn't related to any Kuzunoha but to Narumi

He's actually a detective and not just posing as one...

The Personae that you unlock from maxing out a Social Link represent how the Main Character sees the person that SL represents

Mada (Magician) represents Yosuke because he's a pervert that doesn't always think things through properly. Thus hothead with hotpants. Kohryu (Hierophant) represents Dojima because Dojima is the protector and overseer of his domain, Inaba.

• This raises some interesting questions regarding why Teddie's is a form of Lucifer, then (and dovetails nicely into the "Teddie is Lucifer" WMG above).

Kanji is Bi

Okay, WHY hasn't anyone thought about this before? Isn't it possible that his Shadow is just flanderized latent bisexuality? Why is everyone so fixated on calling him completely straight or completely gay when there's a perfectly reasonable third option open?

• I also think he's bi. In the game, he says that he wants to be accepted by either gender but he most likely doesn't want to be seen as some musclebound Camp Gay stereotype just because of his hobbies.
• Personally, I'll take the fourth option, and suggest he's questioning. He's truly unsure of what he's really attracted to. Frankly, I don't think there's anything wrong with not having a resolution to that during the game. His Shadow is his sexual confusion manifest as what he feels most humiliated by, and him accepting his Shadow is him realizing that he doesn't have an answer yet, but that it's okay.

Naoto is really L.

The "grandfather" she lives with is Watari, and Naoto Shirogane is just one of her aliases.

In the anime, Yu is doing a New Game+.

Specifically, Yu is on a quest to Set Right What Once Went Wrong because he reached the Bad Ending, letting Nanako die and the real killer go uncaught. His failure bothered him for some time, prompting Igor to do his Time Travel thing. Unfortunately, Yu does not have Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory, but he instead has instinct and deja vu on his side. This also explains how his Izanagi is so badass and how he has access to high-level Personas earlier; he still has access to his old Persona Compendium.

• But if it were a New Game Plus, he'd have retained his social stats. How do you explain that?
  • If there is no Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory, so he forgot all about his status. But if the deva ju thing works, he can get them back faster.

Chie will be the canon love interest in the anime.

She's gotten way more romantic scenes then any of the other potential love interests. Although to be fair, Naoto did just get here.

Kanji and Naoto will get together in the anime

Just a thought. Chie and Rise have had more attention as a potential love interest then Naoto so far, and focus is put onto Kanji's crush on her. The swimsuit contest really didn't help either. Perhaps the Christmas Eve scene, with Naoto putting on the female school uniform and all, will happen with Kanji instead of Narukami?

Aika is Izanami

Their hair is fairly similar, neither of them adhere to Curtains matching the Window (unlike essentially everyone else), and we all know how important blue/grey-haired people end up being in Shin Megami Tensei properties. It would explain how she's capable of being basically everywhere at any point in time, and wouldn't Izanami like to keep a closer eye on her most recent pawn?. The fact they went to the trouble to add her to the Anime despite not apparently doing anything with her (at the time of writing) seems to led credence to this theory.

Daidara was a persona user when the same events went down fifty years ago

• Okay now bear with me on this one folks but it is mentioned at one point that the strange fog shows up every fifty years or so Old man Daidara seems to have an odd business lots of familiarity with the shadow materials and at one point tells the MC in his optional chats that he ought to be proud of vanquishing evil he also seems to come off as a Stealth Mentor at times his choice of buisness was put in place to assist any new persona users when the time came

alternatively to the above Hisano and her Husband may have been Persona users

• Hisano mentions her late husbands passing resemblance to the MC and he may have at one point been part of Izanami's experiment how ever they only staved off Ameino-sagiri and thus only bought fifty years in the modern day Hisano could only out of action due to being frail with age.

The Golden will have a new story, ala The Answer

If the PS Vita can re-create the magic that is Persona 4, then they probably end up making a sequel storyline, just like what Atlus did to Persona 3. It'll probably be something that would end up linking the stories of 3 and 4 together, and maybe prepare the world for the fifth game.

Yu hasn't moved back to Inaba

It's somewhat possible that he could enter the Midnight Channel and meet up with his old friends there. As for the uniform, he's just nostalgic.

• It was mentioned by Teddie going in through another T.v coud be dangerous cause you would not know were you are essentially he would be lost if he entered from somwere else especially the city

Golden WMG

Just for the sake of accessibility, please put all future WMGs about the Updated Rerelease here.

Anyway, to get everybody started, here's everything known so far about the Golden:

• There are two confirmed Breather Episodes: a beach trip (looks like it's before Naoto is recruited, as she's not with the team) and a skiing trip (confirmed to take place during January)
• January and February will be part of the game. In the original, the game skips from Christmas Day to the last day on March 20. Other than the skiing trip in January, no other major events such as new Midnight Channel victims or breather episodes are confirmed.
• The Aeon Arcana returns from Persona 3, under the name of the Eternal Arcana. Marie is the persona tied to this Arcana.
• The rest of the Investigation Team will receive new ultimate Personas:
  • Yosuke - Takehaya Susano-o, an enhanced version of Yosuke's original ultimate Persona, Susano-o
  • Kanji - Takejizaiten, the highest realm of the Six Lust Realms (Kamaloka)
  • Yukiko - an epithet (read: byname; descriptive word) for Yukiko's ultimate Persona, Amaterasu
  • Chie - Haraedo-no-Okami, a Shinto goddess of Purification
• The game will feature mopeds as a form of transportation, ala Bully, (Whether this will open up travel to areas outside Inaba is still unknown). For reasons currently unexplained, the party can bring these to Midnight Channel investigations as well.
• New costumes for each of the playable characters:
  • Yu (Protagonist), Yosuke, Kanji and Teddie have their cross-dressing costumes from the school's crossdressing competition.
  • Chie, Yukiko, Rise and Naoto have maid outfits.
  • All members of the team have winter gear uniforms.
• Two party members will be able to simultaneously attack enemies with their Personas.
• New battle themes have been made for random encounters. The old themes are still around, but only if you manage to attack enemies from behind.

Now, feel free to speculate.

Yu Narukami is playing on a New Game+

The proof? He has access to high-level personas far earlier than he should. Also, the Reaper appears in episode 24. The first time around, he put Namatame into the television and aquired the bad ending. Also, the first time around he didn't max out any social links, thus the ultimate personas are new to him when he fuses them in the anime. As a result, Igor decided to send Yu back in time to Set Right What Once Went Wrong. When Yu decides not to throw Namatame into the television, it's not because Nanako tells him it's the wrong thing to do, but rather his memory tells him that if he puts Namatame into the TV now, everything will be lost and he will have to do everything all over again.

As to why his social stats are so low in the beginning, well, I guess he never bothered raising them.

Marie will play a part in Persona 5

The stylized V in her character design may make this possible. After Yu helps Marie in whatever issues she may have, she will play a part in the next installment, possibly even being Igor's replacement, seeing as how his VA died.

Aika will be the new female protagonist in The Golden.

Her addition to the cast in the anime contributed literally nothing essential to the story, so why would the writers have gone so far out of their way to include her as much as they did? Most probably: they were using the anime to promote her because she is slated to have some sort of super secret special role in The Golden. What role, you ask? Why, acting as the all-new selectable sis-tagonist! Hamuko from Persona 3 Portable turned out to be incredibly popular, so why wouldn't they do the same thing here?

• They explicitly stated that The Golden won't have a female protagonist.

Aika is Aegis, Marie is Metis:

• Reasoning:
  • Both of their paired names start with the appropriate letter: A/A, M/M
  • Aika is remarkable similar to Aegis
    • She has little emotion
    • She speaks deliberately, like a robot
    • She is remarkably calculative and precise for a teenage girl
    • She has light hair
    • She knows things other characters don't and has interest in Yu
    • She has lighter hair than Marie, reminescent to Aegis' blonde hair
  • Marie's face is closer to Metis than Aegis
    • She has longer bangs
    • Her face has a sharper chin
    • She dresses as if she were highly emotional
    • They both have black hair
    • She is representative of Aegis' humanity, which is explored in the Aeon Social link in Persona 3, FES
• The Explanation:
  • Through some horrible twist of fate, Aika had come across the Dark Hour and got killed by Shadows. However,her personality was rescued and placed into Aegis. Aika's body is kept in stasis by the Kijiro Group. Persona3 happens. After The Answer happens, Aegis loses her memories and returns to her own body, her human body. Her memories are dormant and may only be rerevealed in some awesome ending. Metis leaves her sister's robot body and takes her place as part of the Velvet Room cast.

"Reach Out To The Truth" is sung from Nanako's perspective.

Let's dissect it, shall we?

Now I face out, I hold out, I reach out to the truth of my life seeking to seize the whole moment, yeah!<-Nothing significant.

Yeah, naked truth lies/ Only if you realize<-If you can look past the easy answer, the truth is quite easy to see.

Appearing in nobody's eyes/ 'Till they sterilize<-Just to throw in a rhyme.

Stop the guerrilla warfare to keep it fair<-Nanako is Justice, so she would want everything to be fair. Attacking an enemy from behind gets you a cheap advantage.

Bro, change your rage to smarter, greater cause!<-She calls Narukami "onii-chan"/"big bro", and if you give in to your anger and kill Namatame, she gets Killed Off for Real.

You know the stake is high, stardom is near<-Her life, then the lives of the entire world are at stake here, and if you do things right, you'll be remembered as a hero.

Those who sympathize you die<-She's the only one who believes you, and suffers a Disney Death after her dungeon.

Killers pass you by<-I don't know how she figured it out (maybe she just guessed), but who among us thought that Adachi was the culprit at first?

Do not waste your time hating floating guys<-Kunino-Sagiri was floating during the fight against him, was he not?

Use your might to A.I.s<-Just saying it's better to directly control your allies and not risk Artificial Stupidity.

Justice to them all<-Think about it. During the True Ending, everyone gets what they deserve. Narukami's a hero, Namatame's free to go, Adachi's in prison, and the fog of deceit has left humanity's heart forever.

...seeking the seize the whole moment to now break away!<-She wanted to be freed from Namatame, but a little girl could never break away from a grown man.

Oh God, let me out, can you let me out?/ Can you set me free from this dark inner world?<-Should be obvious.

Save me now, last beat of the soul!<-After you save her, she gets her aforementioned Disney Death.

Aika is really...

Minato Arisato. After the events of Persona 3, Minato got a sex change and moved to Inaba to avoid the wrath of all the girls who discovered he was cheating on them. He, or rather, she, now watches over Narukami as a concerned senpai, wanting to make sure that he uses the Wild Card power properly.

Sousei Kurogami may be the "half-brother" of Aegis and Labrys.

Sousei Kurogami, a new character of Persona x Dectective Naoto and a "mechanized" detective, was secretly created by the rival manufacture of the Kirijo Group (including those who formerly worked for). Yet, the Kirijo Group were still unaware of Sousei's existence.