Persona 3/Fridge

Fridge Brilliance

• The protagonist's starting Persona is Orpheus. Orpheus fought hard to rescue his lover from death, and as it happens, you're pretty much fighting against Death itself.
  • Orpheus has a robotic looking body, while his head is organic. In the original myth he was butchered and all that remained of him was his head, which floated down the river Lesbos.
• If you're imaginative... the protagonists' starting arcanas are of the Fool, and they're silent. Word of God explained this as the potential for change and to put the player into the story, respectively, but there's an English proverb that fits this too: "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt."
• The Dark Hour is the hidden hour right after 12 o' clock, or a thirteenth hour that shouldn't exist. Death is described as the thirteenth Arcana that was never meant to be. Death is directly related to the Dark Hour, being the harbinger of Nyx and all.
• The protagonist's ultimate persona is Messiah, heavily implied to be the J-man Himself. What did Jesus do? He sacrificed Himself for the sins of humanity. What does the protagonist do at the end? Sacrifice him/herself in order to hold Nyx back.
• The song "Burn My Dread" refers to the MC's state of mind. As the story progresses, he realizes that he has to make a Heroic Sacrifice for the good of humanity. Of course he's afraid of being a shield against Nyx for all eternity, but he DOES muster the strength needed to overcome his fear.
• Hell, while we're at it, the way the protagonists summon their Persona is by shooting themselves in the head. Those who fight to live must be prepared to die.
• More than one person on this wiki has indicated that the "I choose this fate of my own free will" bit at the beginning of the game is an instance of But Thou Must!. But think about it for a sec--this is the first thing you do upon starting a new game. In other words, you've already chosen to abide by the contract of your own free will by virtue of the fact that you chose to play the game period of your own free will.
• In The Answer, there are timeskips preventing SEES from going from March 31st to April 1st. As we all know, April Fools day comes on that day and the Fool tarot card represents the start of a new journey. What are SEES going to do after leaving the dorm (at least in a symbolic sense)?
• Ken believes that his revenge is lost when Shinjiro is revealed to be dying of taking the suppressants. But why did Shinjiro take the suppressants? Because he didn't want to lose control and accidentally kill someone again, like Ken's mother. At the cost of shorting his lifespan. So Ken...how does revenge feel?
• When I first got the game I was confused about the Akihiko's Persona. Talking to a Classics professor made me realize that "Polydeuces" is the Greek form of Pollux. As in, Castor and Pollux, twin sons of Zeus and the mortal Leda. Their ancestry lineage worked out so that Pollux was immortal and destined to ascend to Olympus while Castor was mortal and destined to die. Poor Shinjiro.
• Though it's never mentioned in game, Takaya and Jin's Personas are named. They possess Hypnos and Moros respectively. The former was the Anthropomorphic Personification of sleep and false death, while the latter was the personification of inevitable (usually tragic) fate. The two were brother to Thanatos, the spirit of peaceful death and all three were the children of Night--better known as Nyx.
• In The Answer, Metis has a butterfly motif and Psyche is her Persona. Psyche is the Greek word for butterfly, as well as the term referring to one's mind and soul; it hints at her true nature and how she's part of Aigis' psyche.
  • Here's something else: "Metis" is ancient Greek for "wisdom", and in mythology was the mother of Athena.
• I always thought it strange that Pharos would be wearing prisoner-esque clothing, but then it hit me: because Pharos is the personification of death sealed away, he's technically a prisoner inside the MC's psyche.
  • This also explains his physical appearance: He looks like a ten-year-old boy because he is ten years old! As in, he's been inside the MC for ten years at that point. For all we know, if the MC had gone to Tatsumi Port Island in say, 2004, Pharos would like like a five-year-old.
• The main Personas the MC gets may look random but then I noticed something, they all represent their role in death: Orpheus tried to outrun death but failed, Thanatos is death and Messiah surpassed death.
  • Both the Protagonists are also supposed to represent an aspect of children of Erebus and Nyx which were Aether (male Protagonist) and Hemera (Female Protagonist)
• Regarding the western Fan Nickname for the female protagonist, "Minako" is most often written with some combination of characters meaning "beautiful" and "child." However, by convenient coincidence, it can also be written with characters meaning "everything" and "child." Remember what the Universe Arcana represents?

Fridge Horror

• The bad ending doesn't seem quite so bad without the proper context. At first glance, it looks pretty peaceful, but since all memories of the dark hour have been erased, all of the Character Development is null and void. So Junpei still has no purpose in life, Yukari still feels abandoned by her father and mother, Mitsuru is still in a state of Heroic BSOD, Shinjiro is either dead or in a coma and ignored, Ken still has regrets about his mother, Akihiko is still a Blood Knight, and Aigis has been completely forgotten. Oh yeah, and they're all going to die of Apathy Syndrome and they don't know it, and some dialog suggests it may already be happening. Way to go bro.
• In path to the good ending, the entire world slips into the Dark Hour, the Fall is just starting to occur, and at least one person (that we see) dissolves into a puddle of shadow-matter. That's horrifying enough, but... after the MC seals Nyx, everyone loses their memories of the Dark Hour --so it's not just SEES that forgets everything about Personas, Shadows, Tartarus, et al, but the whole world forgot about being drawn into the Dark Hour that last night. So... did the people who fell into Nyx' thrall and dissolved "disappear forever" as far as their friends and family are concerned? Even the victims of Apathy Syndrome had it better than that...
• Think carefully about Ryoji being "inside you". March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November. That's nine months. Congrats, you are the parent of the end of the world! This also puts disturbing consequences on a romantic link with the female protagonist.
  • Does that mean Aigis...OH GOD! And how she interacted with you...SQUICK!
    • Hey, it's not like Aigis wanted to seal Death inside of the Protagonist. She said that there was no other suitable vessel. Although... does this mean that Ryoji Has Two Mommies? At least when the Protagonist is female?
• After defeating Nyx's Avatar, the main character goes to deal with the real thing alone. Nyx's true form is a vaguely egg-shaped ball of light. Right before the animated cutscene ends some weird black lines appear to be growing out of its body. Innocuous enough, until you realize that they're HANDS.
  • Developing the above the hands look like the hands on Maya-type enemies. Ryoji tells the party in November that Nyx is the "mother of Shadows"...
  • Actually, look very closely at Nyx's true form when she attacks : suddenly the weird rays of light surrounding her egg make sense. Yep, that's a pregnant woman giving birth. Giving birth to Death to be very precise : her one and only attack is pushing it out her vagina. Puts a whole new spin on the "Life and Death are one and the same" motto of the game, doesn't it ?
• Persona 3 relies on this to make its bad ending... well, bad. Taken out of context, it seems quite upbeat, with the heroes planning on kicking back after graduation. It isn't until you consider that they've all had their memories erased to keep themselves willfully unaware of the approach of The End of the World as We Know It that the horror starts to sink in.
  • It also implies that Aigis is fully aware of the above andthat she's no longer able to do anything about it.
  • If you keep that in mind, that says that killing the avatar of Nyx can not affect Aigis' mind. That suggests that when Nyx desends, she will be completely unaffected. Think about that for a minute. Imagine being alone in a world full of people who just stands around and drool, imagine watching everyone you know slowly die off one by one as their bodies revolt against them.
  • I can take the Bad Ending to the next level. The End of the World comes because people wish for it. You get to consciously choose whether or not to kill Ryoji, therefore choosing to TRY to stop Nyx or LET Nyx come. When you choose to kill Ryoji and erase your memories, you're choosing Nyx's way. You are, in fact, beckoning Nyx. When your characters are all walking around happy and oblivious, you still win the game. So not only are you the monster, you're also not, because that ending just means you have decided Nyx's way is okay. Death is good for everyone. Death is the cure YOU chose, along with the rest of humanity.
  • How did Officer Kurosawa obtain your swimsuits?!
    • Oh boy...
    • Ow, my neck.
• In the FES version, you can revive Chidori in the hospital, albeit with Laser-Guided Amnesia, and we learn what kind of person Chidori really is. So, what about Jin and Takaya?
  • More like "really was" - they're not being mind-controlled or anything, they're just twisted and deeply embittered by their experiences.

Fridge Logic

• July full moon Shadow, at the hotel: So you've defeated the first one, and have just broken the mirror, only to be treated to... a cutscene of Yukari taking a shower?! OH BOY! Here's the fridge moment: water is transmuted to blood during the Dark Hour. What's Yukari showering in?
  • Fridge Brilliance time: the cutscene could be seen from either Yukari or the MC's perspective; since they're under the spell of the Lovers Shadow and see everything as an illusion, they might perceive the blood as actual water. *shudders*
• If no electronic equipment works during the Dark Hour, then how do -Zio spells work? Granted that the Hermit Full Moon boss uses electricity from hooking himself up to the wires, enabling it to control the generator; as with the Priestess Full Moon Boss. That still doesn't explain how other shadows or Personae use electricity freely, even if it is magic.
  • Well the game never says that the Dark Hour neutralizes electricity, just that electronic equipment doesn't work. Remember Mitsuru's bike? It worked during the Dark Hour so the issue may lie in the hardware.
  • Well, if Time Stands Still during the Dark Hour, then electrons aren't moving, thus electricity is not flowing. Given that Zio spells are magic by definition, they ignore the fact that the laws of physics are frozen.
• Here's another fridge moment, they've said several times that no electronic devices work during the dark hour....... then what happens to airplanes and helicopters still in the air during midnight? On international airports there's planes taking off and landing all the time, time doesn't exactly "freezes" during the dark hour, so if a plane or helicopter is in mid-air when the dark hour kicks in, how exactly dont they crash? their pilots are transmogrified into coffins, so nobody can fly the darn things, and even if there was someone piloting them, if electronic devices dont work, then how........ I Think the mantra is needed badly on this case.
  • Considering that one of your first boss fights is on a monorail that clearly stopped for the Dark Hour there's at least a possibility that people and machines are simply frozen for that time unless they have a Persona or a Shadow does something to them.
• I wish there was a Fridge Hilarity section for this: Take a look at Akihiko's bandage. Now look at his room and pay attention to the trophies above his bed. Now remember the fact that the dorm was hit with an earthquake at one point.
• What excatly does the average schoolperson think the school club that gets their own dorm and has both a school-kid and a dog in it do?
  • The majority of the inhabitants have some kind of family problem so people wouldn't necessarily think it's so strange for them to all get a special dorm, especially with the heir to the local mega-corp there. Additionally Mitsuru is the heir to a megacorp. If she wants an elite club who's going to argue?
  • For that matter, do any of the average schoolpeople even know that SEES exists as a club? All anybody ever says is, "You live in the same dorm," indicating that otherwise they move in different social circles. So they probably don't think it's that weird.
• In The Answer, if Team Aigis and Team Junpei were both unsure of what to do next, shouldn't they have avoided fighting each other? Granted, Junpei seemed to learn towards Team Akihiko, but still he seemed more unsure than anything, like Team Aigis.