50 Fun Facts About Persona Games

Which company primarily develops the Persona series?

Atlus is now owned by Sega, which took over Western publishing after the 2016 merger of Atlus USA with Sega of America.

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

It grew out of the well-received high-school setting of Shin Megami Tensei If... on the Super Famicom.

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

It was the first role-playing Megami Tensei game to leave Japan; its heavily altered localization was redone for the 2009 PSP port.

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

The ritual earned the game a "most controversial game that created no controversy" award from 1UP.com.

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

SEES stands for Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad, the school club that doubles as a monster-hunting unit.

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

It can only be visited in the evening, and absent party members can keep you from climbing on a given night.

Persona 4 takes place in which fictional rural town?

The staff went "location hunting" and modelled it on a town on the outskirts of Mount Fuji, deliberately a "nowhere" place.

In which city is Persona 5 set?

Its main locations were based heavily on real counterparts; the hero lives above a café in the fictional Yongen-Jaya.

What do Persona 5's vigilante students call their group?

The other three are real Persona groups too: Persona 4's party, the SEES survivors in Arena, and the freedom fighters of Tactica.

What is the codename of Persona 5's protagonist?

Players can rename him; Xander Mobus voices him in English and he even appears as a skin in Overwatch.

Which friendly creature in a hollow bear costume guides Persona 4's party?

His Japanese name is Kuma; the localizers renamed him for Western familiarity.

Which cat-like creature joins Joker, Ryuji and Ann as a founding Phantom Thief?

The ending reveals Morgana was created to lead the Phantom Thieves into the depths of Mementos.

Which game introduced the Social Link system to the series?

They were called "Community" in Japanese; the English name came from Igor's talk of "society" and "bonds".

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

Strikers drops it entirely in favour of Requests and a BOND level shared by the whole party.

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

Soejima called blue the colour of adolescence for Persona 3 and yellow the colour of happiness for Persona 4.

Which composer is most associated with the Persona series?

He joined Atlus in 1995, and his very first track for the series became the recurring Velvet Room theme.

Which recurring track is the theme of the Velvet Room?

Meguro kept it almost unchanged across games because "the shape of the song had been well-defined".

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

In Persona 5 the Igor players meet for most of the game is actually Yaldabaoth, who has imprisoned the real one.

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

Specifically the Black Lodge; the room changes form depending on the psyche of its current guest.

Igor and his Velvet Room assistants are named after characters from which novel?

Elizabeth, Theodore, Margaret, Caroline, Justine and Lavenza all trace back to Mary Shelley's book and its adaptations.

Who has been the series' character designer from Persona 3 onwards?

He also designed Persona 5's protagonist, which he called his most challenging recent work, and the chibi cast of Persona Q.

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

Kaneko handed the series to his protégé so he would not imprint his own style on it, and to give him experience.

Which director led Persona 3, 4 and 5 at Atlus?

He pitched Persona 3 in 2003 after directing Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne.

Which new Atlus department did Hashino found after Persona 5 shipped in 2016?

Its first original game was the fantasy RPG Metaphor: ReFantazio in 2024.

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

Hashino approached them after being impressed by BlazBlue; Arena was the series' first non-RPG.

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

It was the first Persona game built for a Nintendo platform, and its team mixed Etrian Odyssey IV and Persona staff.

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

Omega Force co-developed it; the story picks up half a year after Persona 5 and it passed two million sales by 2023.

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

Choosing her swaps Elizabeth for a male attendant, Theodore, and changes some Social Link stories.

Persona 4 Golden was originally released for which handheld?

A PSP version would have cut too much content; the game ended up boosting Vita sales.

Which new Phantom Thief does Persona 5 Royal add?

Hifumi was once planned as a thief in the original game but was cut to an optional Confidant.

In which year did Joker arrive in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as DLC?

He brought a Persona-themed stage, eleven music tracks and a set of Mii costumes with him.

What is Joker's initial Persona in Persona 5?

It was originally going to be the German demon Mephistopheles, changed because a gentleman thief fit the theme better.

Including Royal, how many copies had Persona 5 sold by June 2026?

That makes it the best-selling title in the entire Megami Tensei franchise.

In which year was Persona 3 Reload released?

It was the first main entry to launch worldwide simultaneously and on non-PlayStation formats from day one.

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

It was also up for Game of the Year, Best Art Direction and Best Score/Music, but only the Best Role Playing Game trophy came home.

Persona 4's party Personas are based on what?

The rural setting inspired the switch from the Greco-Roman figures of earlier games; Persona 5 went with thieves and rebels.

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

Each earlier game had its own ritual; the masks tie into the series' recurring Jungian "persona" motif.

The protagonist's Wild Card ability is represented by which Major Arcana?

Only the lead can wield and swap multiple Personas; everyone else in Persona 3, 4 and 5 has a single one.

Which British band inspired Meguro's acid-jazz score for Persona 5?

He wrote roughly 80% of the soundtrack over three years and treated it as one continuous work.

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

It was her first video game; she found the rap in "Wake Up, Get Up, Get Out There" the hardest part.

Which studio produced Persona 5: The Animation in 2018?

Production I.G animated the game's cutscenes, A-1 made the prequel special The Day Breakers, and MAPPA did Royal's opening.

Who directed Persona 5's figure-skating animated opening sequence?

The skating symbolised breaking free of oppression and echoed her work on Yuri on Ice.

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

It fits a game whose fusion animations are themed after methods of capital punishment.

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

Seeing how people bonded in the crisis, he kept the journeying inside the shifting Palaces instead.

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

She spoke English in the Japanese original; the localizers picked a new language to match her cultured look.

Why was Persona 3's North American release pushed back three weeks in 2007?

Atlus said the deluxe package would have been "irreparably compromised" by shipping without it.

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

Its villain shares a codename with Persona 5's hero, seventeen years earlier.

According to director Hashino, the "FES" in Persona 3 FES comes from which word?

The expansion added a Hard mode and a playable epilogue called The Answer.

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

The epilogue drops the daily-life system entirely, which reviewers counted against it.

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

Players can still rename him; the others are the leads of Persona 4, Persona 2 and the Persona 3 films respectively.