100 Fun Facts About Persona Games

Which company bought Persona's developer, Atlus, when its parent went bankrupt in 2013?

Sega won the auction for Atlus's parent, Index Corporation, which had filed for bankruptcy protection that June with debts of 24.5 billion yen. The deal, worth about 14 billion yen, kept the Atlus name alive.

Persona is a spin-off of which larger Atlus franchise?

Megami Tensei: Persona grew out of Shin Megami Tensei If..., a 1994 entry set in a high school. The first game was even titled Megami Ibunroku Persona in Japan to flag the link, a prefix later games dropped.

Revelations: Persona, the 1996 original, was released for which console?

PlayStation. The 1996 North American version renamed the cast, changed how several characters looked and cut the whole Snow Queen route; the 2009 PSP release undid those changes and restored the missing quest.

What is the gun-like device Persona 3's cast fire at their own heads to summon Personas?

An Evoker is the pistol-shaped device SEES members fire at their own heads; the gesture of facing death lets them summon their Personas.

What is the hidden time anomaly that SEES investigates in Persona 3?

The Dark Hour is a 25th hour hidden at midnight. Ordinary people turn into coffins and remember nothing of it, so the public has no idea it exists while Shadows hunt anyone left awake.

What is the name of the tower that serves as Persona 3's main dungeon?

Tartarus is what Gekkoukan High turns into each night: the school the cast attend by day becomes a labyrinthine tower full of Shadows, which they climb floor by floor toward the top.

Persona 4 takes place in which fictional rural town?

Inaba is the sleepy town where the hero is sent from the city to live with his uncle for a year. Just after he arrives, a TV announcer is found dead, hanging from an antenna, and the murder mystery begins.

In which city is Persona 5 set?

Tokyo is where the hero is sent to serve a year's probation after being framed for assault and expelled. Shibuya and Shinjuku appear under their real names, but his own neighbourhood, Yongen-Jaya, is invented.

What do Persona 5's Phantom Thieves send a target before stealing their Treasure?

A calling card. A Treasure is formless mist until its owner fears it will be stolen, so the warning is what makes it solid enough to take, and the thieves then have about a day to grab it.

In Persona 5, the hero spends his year on probation living in the attic of which café?

Leblanc is the backstreet café run by his gruff guardian, Sojiro Sakura, who slowly warms to him and teaches him to brew coffee and cook curry. Coffee made there restores SP on a heist.

Which creature guides Persona 4's Investigation Team through the fog of the TV world?

Teddie is an empty bear suit who lives inside the TV world, and he lets the heroes leave only once they promise to find whoever is throwing people in. In Japan he is simply Kuma, 'bear'.

Which Phantom Thief can turn into a van to drive the team through the Metaverse?

Morgana becomes a van to ferry the thieves around, and spends the story wondering what he really is. The ending reveals that he was created to guide the hero into the depths of Mementos.

In Persona 3, each major boss Shadow arrives on the night of which recurring event?

The full moon. SEES is told that beating all twelve of these Shadows will end the nightly menace, but their adviser was lying: each kill reunites pieces of a being that heralds the end of the world.

What is the enhanced Social Link system in Persona 5 called?

Confidants are treated as accomplices in the thieves' work, which is why the Japanese version calls them 'Co-op'. Each rank pays off with a practical perk, either in battle or in the hero's daily life.

Which colour defines Persona 5's interface and art direction?

Red follows blue for the third game and yellow for the fourth. To keep it pure, the designers dropped the secondary colours earlier menus had used, leaving almost everything in red, black and white.

Which composer scored Persona 3, 4 and 5?

Shoji Meguro filled those three soundtracks with vocal pop, rock and jazz. In October 2021 he left the company to go freelance, though he still writes music for some of its games.

Which recurring track is the theme of the Velvet Room?

'Aria of the Soul' once had performers on screen: in the earliest games a pianist and an opera singer lived in the Velvet Room. From the third numbered game on the tune stayed, but the musicians were gone.

Who is the long-nosed old man who runs the Velvet Room?

Igor has an impostor in Persona 5: the one players meet for most of the game is really the god Yaldabaoth, who has locked the real one away and taken his place.

The Velvet Room was based on a location from which TV series?

Twin Peaks: the artist behind the room has said he liked how the show's Black Lodge was designed and built his own version of it for the game.

The Velvet Room's attendants are named after characters from which novel?

Frankenstein lends Elizabeth, Margaret, Justine and Caroline their names. Their master is the odd one out: his name is nowhere in Mary Shelley's book.

Who designed the characters of the third, fourth and fifth mainline Persona games?

Shigenori Soejima started as an assistant to the series' first designer, drawing portraits and side characters for the early games, and was handed the art direction when the third game began.

Who designed the characters of the original Persona and the Persona 2 duology?

Kazuma Kaneko drew the casts of the first three games, the original and both halves of Persona 2. He then stepped back and handed the series' art direction to the assistant who had drawn side characters under him.

Between Persona 4 and Persona 5, Katsura Hashino's team made which puzzle game about a man climbing nightmare towers?

Catherine was the Persona team's first game for high-definition consoles, and its director later described it as a trial run for building the next Persona on that kind of hardware.

Which Atlus team, set up by Persona 5's director after that game shipped, made Metaphor: ReFantazio?

Studio Zero was unveiled in December 2016 with a fantasy RPG codenamed Project Re Fantasy, which its founder warned would 'take a long time until completion'. It did: the game arrived almost eight years later.

Which fighting-game studio co-developed Persona 4 Arena?

Arc System Works, the BlazBlue studio, did not pitch for the job: Persona's own team wanted a fighting game and approached it, to its producer's shock. The result is a sequel, set two months after Persona 4.

Persona Q blends the series with which first-person dungeon-crawler franchise?

Etrian Odyssey lent Persona Q its first-person labyrinths and its signature chore: players draw their own maps, wall by wall, as they explore. The director of Etrian Odyssey IV led the project.

Persona 5 Strikers crosses the series with which Koei Tecmo franchise?

Dynasty Warriors' developer, Omega Force, co-built Strikers, so turn-based battles give way to real-time action. It is a true sequel too: months later, the thieves reunite for a summer trip across Japan.

What major option did Persona 3 Portable add to the game?

A female protagonist changes more than the hero's look: her route has its own Social Links, a redesigned first Persona, and the option to swap Elizabeth for a male Velvet Room attendant, Theodore.

Persona 4 Golden was originally released for which handheld?

PlayStation Vita was its only home for eight years. When a PC port finally arrived in 2020, sales ran far ahead of its publisher's forecasts, and the company said it would bring more of its older games to PC.

Which new Phantom Thief does Persona 5 Royal add?

Kasumi Yoshizawa is the name she arrives with, a gymnast who fights as Violet. In Royal's new third semester it turns out to be borrowed: she is really the younger sister, Sumire, living under her dead sibling's name.

Joker joined which fighting game as 2019 DLC?

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate revealed Joker at The Game Awards the night before the game itself went on sale, to lead off its first wave of paid add-on fighters.

What is Joker's initial Persona in Persona 5?

Arsène takes his name from Arsène Lupin, the gentleman thief of classic crime fiction, a fitting patron for a phantom thief. The hero first summons him in Kamoshida's Palace, to stop Ryuji being executed.

Which Major Arcana represents Ryuji Sakamoto in Persona 5?

Ryuji Sakamoto, codename Skull, embodies the Chariot Arcana; raising his bond unlocks Insta-kill, which lets the party dispatch much weaker Shadows on contact without a fight.

Which subscription service had Persona 3 Reload at launch?

Game Pass had the remake from day one, and Xbox's own showcase was where it was officially unveiled, days after Atlus leaked its trailer on Instagram. It still sold a million copies in a week.

Which prize did Persona 5 win at The Game Awards 2017?

Best RPG was the only one of its four nominations to come home. A game famous for its look and its soundtrack lost art direction to Cuphead and music to Nier: Automata, and Game of the Year went to Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Persona 4's party Personas are based on what?

Japanese deities were chosen to suit the rural setting, replacing the Greco-Roman figures of earlier games. Since tradition fixes the gods' characters but not their looks, the artists were free to invent each design.

How do the Phantom Thieves summon their Personas in Persona 5?

By tearing off their masks: the game's idea is that society makes people wear one to hide what they really are, so ripping it away is how each thief sets their true self loose. It is Jung's 'persona' made literal.

In Persona 3, 4 and 5, the protagonist's Wild Card ability is represented by which Major Arcana?

The Fool is number zero in the series' tarot, the empty starting point from which everything else begins. That suits the one character who can hold many Personas while each teammate is bound to their own.

Which song is Persona 5's standard battle theme?

'Last Surprise' is the acid-jazz song that kicks in for ordinary battles. It travelled well: a big-band cover by The 8-Bit Big Band earned a Grammy nomination for its arrangement at the 2025 awards.

Which jazz and soul singer performed Persona 5's English vocal tracks?

Lyn Inaizumi, credited simply as Lyn, sings the English lyrics across the soundtrack. The job stuck: she came back for the anime series, the dancing spin-off and later Persona 5 games.

Which studio, later known for The Promised Neverland, produced Persona 5: The Animation in 2018?

CloverWorks was a brand-new name: A-1 Pictures rebranded its Kōenji studio that April, and the show, first credited to A-1, was moved to the new label. The game's own cutscenes had come from Production I.G.

What nickname does the media give Goro Akechi in Persona 5?

Goro Akechi is dubbed the second Detective Prince by the media, after Persona 4's Naoto Shirogane; the teen celebrity sleuth publicly hunts the thieves while secretly plotting.

Joker's school, Shujin, was named as a homonym for which Japanese word?

"Prisoner" is shūjin, but the school's name is written with different characters, so the joke only works out loud. The game leans on it elsewhere: the Velvet Room is a jail, and new Personas are made on a guillotine.

Which event led Hashino to scrap Persona 5's world-backpacking frame for a Japan-only story?

The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake struck while the game was being planned. 'I wanted to refocus on Japan rather than direct my feelings to the outside world,' its director said, and the round-the-world journey was dropped.

Mitsuru Kirijo's second language was changed to what in Persona 3's English version?

French replaced English, which had been her second language in the Japanese script. The lead on the English version picked it because, he said, she looked somewhat aristocratic and French to him.

Which member of Persona 3's SEES is a dog able to summon a Persona?

Koromaru is a Shiba Inu whose master, a priest, was killed by Shadows. He went on guarding the man's shrine alone, and SEES took him in after finding him wounded from defending it.

Persona 2: Innocent Sin takes place in which fictional setting?

Sumaru City is where gossip turns real: once a rumour spreads widely enough, it comes true. The heroes learn to exploit the curse, spreading rumours they have heard so that useful shops and weapons appear.

Which seemingly harmless character is unmasked as the culprit behind Persona 4's serial murders?

Tohru Adachi, the police partner of the hero's uncle, says he did it partly out of boredom, then tricked another man into carrying on and watched the rescues for his own amusement. Golden even lets the player befriend him.

Which character does the player control in Persona 3 FES's epilogue, The Answer?

Aigis, the anti-Shadow android, is the playable lead of The Answer; set after the main story, it removes the daily-life system and gives her the Wild Card ability.

What is the canonical name of Persona 5's protagonist?

Ren Amamiya is the name used for the protagonist in Persona 5: The Animation and the Dancing in Starlight spin-off, though players may rename him; the manga instead calls him Akira Kurusu.

In the hidden hour that strikes each midnight in Persona 3, what do most people unknowingly become?

Coffins stand in for almost everyone, and the people inside never know the hour took place. A select few stay awake through it, which makes them prey for the monsters that roam.

In Persona 5's Velvet Room, two Personas are combined into a new one using which device?

A guillotine performs every fusion, with the new Persona inheriting skills from the pair it replaces. Unwanted Personas can also be hanged to pass their experience to another.

The Persona series takes its Personas and Shadows from the archetypes of which Swiss psychologist?

Carl Jung's psychology also underlies the series' running theme of the faces people put on in everyday life, a motif that ties back to each character's Persona.

How do Persona 5's Phantom Thieves cross into the Metaverse, the realm shaped by distorted desires?

A smartphone app carries them over. The developers wove phones and social media into the story because of how the public reacts to real-world scandals.

Which snowman-like character has been the corporate mascot of Persona developer Atlus since 1990?

Jack Frost has held the job since the character first appeared, and he even turns up as a hidden racer in SBK: Snowboard Kids.

Since Persona 3, what does a fighter earn by striking an enemy's weakness and knocking it down?

An extra turn, called a One More, is the prize for hitting a weak point or landing a critical hit. Enemies can win it against the party in exactly the same way.

Persona 4's Midnight Channel is said to show on a switched-off TV at midnight only in which weather?

Rain at midnight is the trigger, and the story going round school promises a glimpse of the viewer's soulmate. Several days of it bring the fog that sets each rescue deadline.

In Persona 2: Innocent Sin, what keeps turning into reality across the heroes' city?

Rumors become real once they spread, and the heroes can use that too: asking a private investigator's agency to circulate a helpful one makes it come true.

In Persona 3 and Persona 4, knocking down every enemy lets the whole party rush in with which move?

An All-Out Attack has every able party member pile onto the downed enemies for massive damage, though the player must choose to trigger it.

Persona 5 Strikers reunites the Phantom Thieves for a camping trip during which school break?

Summer vacation takes a different course: the friends are pulled into a mystery that sends them to cities across Japan, Sendai and Sapporo among them.

Which school attended by Persona 3's heroes warps into a labyrinthine tower when the clock strikes midnight?

Gekkoukan High School is where most of the cast study by day. After midnight its tower is stalked by creatures that feed on the minds of anyone left conscious.

Which key colour was chosen for Persona 4 to match its lighter tone and to evoke a warning signal?

Yellow was picked because a murder mystery runs beneath the game's sunnier mood, and its character designer called it the colour of happiness.

Which café owner, cold at first, acts as the hero's guardian during his probation in Persona 5?

Sojiro Sakura warms to the hero over time, and he is also the adoptive father of Futaba, the hacker who goes on to join the Phantom Thieves.

Which Shujin Academy volleyball coach rules the castle Palace where Persona 5's first heist takes place?

Suguru Kamoshida, a former Olympic champion, sees himself as a king there. Once he is beaten, the crown the thieves steal turns out to be his Olympic medal in reality.

In Persona 5, the Palace of shut-in hacker Futaba takes the form of which ancient structure?

A pyramid looks like a monument to sloth, yet its lone inhabitant is a Sphinx born of her mistaken belief that her mother hated her.

Which police investigator takes in his nephew, the hero of Persona 4, while the boy's parents work abroad?

Ryotaro Dojima is the younger brother of the hero's mother, and his only daughter, Nanako, shares the house as the newcomer's young cousin.

In Persona 5, the young wardens Caroline and Justine are really two halves of which Velvet Room attendant?

Lavenza is the true form the pair fuse back into. Together they took over from Elizabeth and Margaret, the attendants of the two previous games.

Besides renaming the cast, what did the 1996 English Revelations: Persona change about several characters?

Their ethnicity changed along with the hero's hairstyle and the place names, because the small localization team feared that Japanese references would alienate Western players.

Which British band did Persona 5's lead composer cite as a particular inspiration for its acid jazz score?

Jamiroquai was the model for a score whose composer was given complete creative freedom and wrote about 80% of its tracks himself over roughly three years.

Which 2008 television series, set ten years after Persona 3, was the franchise's first anime adaptation?

Persona: Trinity Soul sits outside the games' canon because of that alternate future setting. It was animated by A-1 Pictures.

Business heiress Haru Okumura fights under which codename as one of Persona 5's Phantom Thieves?

Noir is heiress to the company behind the Big Bang Burger chain, and she goes into battle swinging axes and firing grenade launchers.

Much of Persona 5 unfolds in flashback while which public prosecutor interrogates the captured hero?

Sae Niijima is the older sister of one of the thieves, and the hero is caught in the first place while infiltrating her own Palace.

In Persona 4, what must each party member do with their rampaging Shadow before it becomes a Persona?

Accept it, and the Shadow becomes a Persona: each one is a part of the psyche its owner rejected, grown into a giant inside the TV world.

In Persona 3, most of the main cast's Personas, such as Yukari's Io, come from which mythology?

Greco-Roman figures fill the line-up: the hero starts out with Orpheus, and his teammate Junpei summons Hermes.

Which pop idol of Persona 4's Investigation Team asks her friends to dance with her in Dancing All Night?

Rise Kujikawa has gone back to show business and wants them beside her at the Love Meets Bonds Festival, where another singer's group promptly goes missing.

Persona 4's first murder victim, announcer Mayumi Yamano, is discovered hanging from what?

An antenna held the first body, and the schoolgirl who found it soon turned up dead herself, hanging upside-down from a telephone pole.

Players choose a name for Persona 3's silent hero, but what is the character canonically called?

Makoto Yuki is dead by the time of the later dancing spin-offs, so a Velvet Room attendant has to travel back to 2009 to bring him to the dance floor.

Concern over allusions to which dictator helped stop Persona 2: Innocent Sin being localized on its debut?

Adolf Hitler is evoked by a resurrected leader called the Fuhrer, whose army attacks late in the story. English speakers had to wait twelve years for a handheld remake.

Which humanoid robot debuts in Persona 4 Arena brainwashed into believing that she is human?

Labrys is an Anti-Shadow weapon who went missing when a plane was hijacked, and the fighting tournament turns out to be the work of her own Shadow.

The animated films that retell Persona 3 take their subtitles from which cycle?

The seasons run from Spring of Birth to Winter of Rebirth, with the third film, Falling Down, standing in for autumn.

Which sprawling Persona 5 dungeon is the Palace of society as a whole instead of one corrupt person?

Mementos is destroyed for good once the god nesting at its core is defeated, but not before it starts to merge with the physical world.

Which mechanic, dropped from Persona 3 and Persona 4, returned in Persona 5 through Hold Up sessions?

Negotiation lets a cornered Shadow be talked into joining as a new Persona. Staff called Social Links a disguised version of it in the two games that left it out.

In Persona 5, the malevolent god Yaldabaoth first appears in the form of which legendary relic?

The Holy Grail is a Treasure created from humanity's distorted sloth, and defeating the god of control behind it takes the power of Satanael.

Which sentient AI do the Phantom Thieves stumble upon inside a dumpster early in Persona 5 Strikers?

Sophia joins the team on the spot and fights off the Shadows around them. Having no physical body, she lives in the hero's phone outside the dungeons.

Persona 3 Reload left Atlus's in-house technology behind to run on which third-party game engine?

Unreal Engine 4 powers the remake and its new lighting effects, a fresh challenge for a team whose earlier projects, Persona 5 Royal included, ran on Atlus's own engine.

In Revelations: Persona, classmates gain the power to summon Personas after playing what kind of parlor game?

A fortune-telling game, itself called Persona, sets everything off, with the hero and three schoolmates playing while two others look on.

Persona 2: Eternal Punishment stars the adult Maya Amano, who holds which job at a teen magazine?

Reporter Maya is sent to write about a curse said to kill on request, in a story that asks how adults find their true selves when faced with reality.

Nyarlathotep, the antagonist behind the Persona 2 games, is taken from the horror fiction of which author?

H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos supplies him, along with other enemies in the duology, and in the story he embodies the negative traits of humanity.

Which signature song of Persona 3 also gave its name to the game's 2007 album of rearranged tracks?

Burn My Dread later became a meme when a typo saw the song distributed as Burn My Bread.

Former members of SEES, the heroes of Persona 3, return in Persona 4 Arena as part of which organization?

The Shadow Operatives were formed after the earlier game's events to keep battling Shadows, and their hunt for a missing weapon leads them into the TV world.

Why is the hero of Persona 5 expelled from his old school and placed on probation for a year?

A false assault charge follows his attempt to stop a powerful politician harassing a woman, and the conviction is overturned only at the very end of the story.

Which art prodigy joins Persona 5's Phantom Thieves after rejecting the well-known painter who mentored him?

Yusuke Kitagawa was orphaned at three and taken in by that mentor, who turned out to be plagiarizing his own students for profit.

Which rapper served as sub vocalist on Persona 3's soundtrack and returned for the remake Persona 3 Reload?

Lotus Juice asked to rewrite some lyrics for the remake so they fit their scenes better, and he was also the system voice of the Persona 3 dancing game.

Which actor, the original English voice of Persona 3's hero, returns in Persona 3 Reload as Yukari's father?

Yuri Lowenthal was recast for the remake but came back as the researcher Eiichiro Takeba. He also voiced Yosuke in Persona 4 for a decade.

Which literary genre, echoed by Personas based on famous outlaws, strongly inspired the story of Persona 5?

Picaresque themes run through the whole game: even fusing and sacrificing Personas was styled after forms of capital punishment.

Which song opens Persona 4, written to set up the inner conflicts of the game's main characters?

Pursuing My True Self was composed alongside the battle theme Reach Out to the Truth, which was meant to show the cast's strength to work through those struggles.

In Persona 5 Tactica, the Rebel Corps stages a revolution against enemy forces known by which name?

Legionnaires are the soldiers of an alternate world overcome by war and oppression, where the thieves are stranded during the events of the main game.

Which creator of the Velvet Room, a guide in the earliest Persona games, later appears as a blue butterfly?

Philemon stands for the positive side of humanity, and his original appearance was modelled on the Chinese thinker Zhuang Zhou.

Revelations: Persona's 1996 English release cut an entire story route named after which fairy tale?

The Snow Queen route begins with a school legend about a cursed prop from stagings of the tale, and the handheld remake finally put it back.

In Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, people are said to summon the murderous Joker by phoning whom?

Their own number is the one to dial, after which the Joker is said to kill on request. In the previous game the same figure was summoned to grant a wish instead.