Source plot synopsis — includes the ending
=== Setting and characters ===
Persona 5 takes place within the Persona universe, revolving around a group of high school students who harness Personas, physical manifestations of their inner psyche. The story begins on April 9 "20XX (2016)" and spans roughly a year. It is set in modern-day Tokyo and features several real-world locations, including Akihabara, Shinjuku, and Shibuya. A major setting throughout the game is Shujin Academy, a high school that the protagonist attends. The second major location is the "Metaverse", a supernatural realm consisting of the physical manifestations of humanity's subconscious desires. In the Metaverse, people with corrupted desires form their own unique "Palace," which is modeled after their distorted perception of a place in the real world, along with a Shadow version of themselves (their true self) possessing a "Treasure" symbolic of their desires. Returning from earlier entries is the Velvet Room, a place that exists for the growth of Persona users and shifts appearance depending on the current guest; in Persona 5, it takes the form of a prison.
The player character is a silent protagonist, a commonplace feature in the Persona series, codenamed Joker. He becomes the leader of a vigilante group known as the Phantom Thieves of Hearts, who change the hearts of criminals and other malevolent people through the Metaverse. He is joined by school delinquent Ryuji Sakamoto, fashion model Ann Takamaki, and Morgana, a mysterious cat-like creature. As the game progresses, the group recruits more members, including art prodigy Yusuke Kitagawa, student council president Makoto Niijima, hikikomori computer hacker Futaba Sakura, and cultured corporate heiress Haru Okumura. Also interacting with Joker are high school detective Goro Akechi, public prosecutor and Makoto's older sister Sae Niijima, and Igor and his two assistants Caroline and Justine, who are residents of the Velvet Room.
Plot
Much of the story is told through flashbacks while Sae Niijima interrogates the protagonist. After preventing an assault, he is framed for assaulting the man responsible and put on probation for a year, resulting in expulsion from his school. He is sent to Tokyo to stay with family friend Sojiro Sakura and attend Shujin Academy during his year-long probation. After his arrival, he is drawn into the Velvet Room, where Igor, alongside his assistants, Caroline and Justine, warns him that he must be rehabilitated to avoid future ruin and grants him access to a supernatural mobile app. This leads him into the Metaverse, and the Palace of the school's abusive and lustful gym teacher and volleyball coach Suguru Kamoshida, along with a fellow student, Ryuji Sakamoto, who had been labeled as a troublemaker due to having been provoked by Kamoshida into assaulting him, resulting in Kamoshida breaking his leg in an implied self-defense and dissolving the track team due to the scandal.
After the protagonist and Ryuji are captured by the corrupt manifestation of Kamoshida, also known as his Shadow Self, he awakens to his Persona, Arsène, to save Ryuji from being executed. The two escape to the lower levels of the Palace, where they meet Morgana, a mysterious, small cat-like creature who knows much about the Palaces. Morgana informs the protagonist of the ability to change wicked people's hearts by stealing their "Treasure," the emotional root of their behavior and desires, from the Palaces ruled by their Shadow selves. Not long after, upon discovering the truth about Kamoshida's abuse towards other students in the Palace dungeons, Ryuji awakens to his Persona and resolves to stop Kamoshida. The protagonist later confronts other fellow student Ann Takamaki, who was forced into a relationship with Kamoshida in exchange for her friend Shiho Suzui being on the volleyball team. When Ann doesn't come to Kamoshida's house one afternoon, he takes it out on Shiho in an implied sexual assault, causing her to attempt suicide. After which, the group finally decides to steal Kamoshida's heart and force him to confess his crimes, with Ann awakening to her Persona after accidentally stumbling into the Metaverse.
The protagonist assumes the codename Joker, and after changing Kamoshida's heart, he along with Morgana, Ryuji, and Ann form the Phantom Thieves of Hearts, to steal corruption from the hearts of adults to reform the city, and slowly learns of a broader conspiracy to influence the hearts of Tokyo. They are joined along the way by Yusuke Kitagawa, an art student whom they help to reform his corrupt teacher, Ichiryusai Madarame; Sae's sister Makoto, the president of the school's student council who is assigned to spy on them but joins after being blackmailed by a mob boss, Junya Kaneshiro, who they also reform; Sojiro's adopted daughter Futaba Sakura, an expert hacker who became a depressed hikikomori after the conspiracy murdered her mother and framed her using a forged suicide note; and Haru Okumura, a corporate heiress who rebels against her rich father, Kunikazu Okumura, and his attempts to control her life and mistreatment of his employees. Over time, the Phantom Thieves attract the attention of the public and the police, including Sae and celebrity junior detective Goro Akechi.
However, the Phantom Thieves' popularity plummets after a black-masked assassin frames them for the death of Haru's father. While pursuing the conspiracy, Akechi joins the group and convinces them to change Sae's heart in order to prove their innocence. After infiltrating Sae's Palace, Joker is captured by the police, and Sae interrogates him despite being removed from the case, at which point the story comes full-circle. Joker convinces Sae of the truth. Akechi is revealed to be the assassin and attempts to kill Joker but the Phantom Thieves pull Akechi back into Sae's palace, where he kills Sae's cognition of Joker instead, leaving the real Joker unharmed. It's also revealed that the Phantom Thieves knew Akechi's true nature far ahead of time and only agreed to infiltrate Sae's palace so that this deception could work. Aided by Sae and Sojiro, Joker goes into hiding while the Phantom Thieves learn the conspiracy's leader is politician Masayoshi Shido, who is revealed to be the one who framed and pressed charges against Joker last spring, resulting in his probation and transfer to Tokyo. He has been using Akechi's Metaverse ability to remove obstacles in his path toward becoming prime minister and imposing his twisted reforms on Japan. When the Phantom Thieves infiltrate Shido's Palace, they face Akechi, who reveals himself as Shido's illegitimate son and that his collusion with him was part of a plan to get revenge on Shido for abandoning him and his late mother. Once defeated, Akechi sacrifices himself to protect the Phantom Thieves from a group of Shadows along with Shido's cognition of Akechi himself, allowing them to escape and later defeat Shido. Despite Shido's arrest and confession, the public's opinion of him remains unchanged, and Shido may be released due to the manipulation of the public by his allies.
The Phantom Thieves infiltrate the depths of Mementos, the public’s Palace, to steal the Treasure at its core, believing that changing the general public's hearts will cause them to realize and accept the truth. Inside, they discover that the public is in chaos and has given up their free will, and is now believing the Phantom Thieves never existed. The Thieves are ejected from Mementos by the Treasure itself, manifested as the Holy Grail, and vanish after the Metaverse merges with reality. Upon awakening in the Velvet Room, Igor proclaims Joker has failed to prevent the ruin and orders Caroline and Justine to execute him. Realizing that they’re not killers, Caroline and Justine regain their memories and merge into Lavenza, their proper form. Lavenza reveals that the Igor in the Velvet Room until this point is actually Yaldabaoth, the God of Control, who imprisoned the actual Igor. Yaldabaoth, the Holy Grail made sentient, was created from humanity's wish to be ruled and not think for themselves. Through a wager made with Igor over humanity's goals, Yaldabaoth had given Joker and Akechi their abilities but ensured that Joker would fail to prove that living with ambition is useless.
Yaldabaoth offers Joker to return the world to its previous state at the cost of the world's freedom. Joker rejects the offer, allowing him to reunite with the rest of the Phantom Thieves in the Velvet Room, including Morgana, who was revealed to have been created by the real Igor to lead Joker to the depths of Mementos, and Igor sends them on the path to stop Yaldabaoth. The Phantom Thieves attempt to fight Yaldabaoth again, and as Joker's confidants rally the support of the people, they rebel against Yaldabaoth's control and allow Joker to awaken his ultimate Persona, Satanael, to destroy Yaldabaoth and the Metaverse. After Yaldabaoth's defeat, Joker turns himself in to the police for Shido to be prosecuted. While Joker is incarcerated, the rest of the Phantom Thieves and his confidants help secure evidence of his innocence in the assault charge, leading to his conviction being overturned. By spring, Joker's friends drive him back to his hometown.
There are alternate endings depending on choices made throughout the game. Each Palace infiltration has a deadline where Joker and the Phantom Thieves will suffer real world consequences if they fail to change their target's hearts before a specific date. If Joker fails to convince Sae of the truth during his interrogation, Akechi will succeed in killing the real Joker. If Joker accepts Yaldabaoth's offer, an alternate ending happens where the Phantom Thieves return to fame at the cost of humanity's free will, with Joker having become what he fought against.
Royal
In Persona 5 Royal, two new characters interact with the Phantom Thieves: Kasumi Yoshizawa, an accomplished gymnast who transferred to Shujin Academy the same time as Joker, and Takuto Maruki, a counsellor hired by the school after Kamoshida is exposed. Kasumi awakens to her Persona after discovering a new Palace in Odaiba with Joker. Maruki, in turn, talks to each of the Phantom Thieves throughout the main story and learns their deepest wishes and regrets via their counselling sessions with him.
After defeating Yaldabaoth, a still-living Akechi turns himself over to Sae in Joker's place. At the beginning of the following year, Joker finds reality distorted; Akechi was released without reason, and each Phantom Thief has had their deepest wish granted, including some deceased people being brought back to life, and Morgana in the form of a human. Joker, Akechi, and Kasumi, being the only people able to notice the abnormalities, investigate the Palace in Odaiba and learn that its owner is Maruki, who is revealed to be a Persona-user that can alter reality by forcefully changing people's cognitions. After Yaldabaoth's defeat, Maruki assumed his role since the public embraced the Phantom Thieves, who in turn had unknowingly wished for Maruki to remove their past trauma due to their counseling sessions with him. Through meddling with Mementos, Maruki later brainwashed the Phantom Thieves into accepting a reality that he believes is perfect for them. However, this causes them to stagnate and lose the will to strive for a better world. "Kasumi" is also revealed to be her twin sister Sumire, who had been impersonating her to cope with the former's death due to the influence of Maruki's powers, although only the Phantom Thieves could see her as "Kasumi". Maruki gives Joker time to choose whether to accept his idealized reality. Joker reminds the Phantom Thieves and Sumire of the strength and growth they gained from their real lives, and they agree to change Maruki's heart before he makes the idealized reality permanent by re-fusing reality with Mementos. As part of this, Akechi rejoins the Phantom Thieves, and Sumire, after reawakening her Persona joins the group as well.
Joker later learns from Maruki that Akechi is alive in the altered reality because of Joker's desire to save him from his fate in Shido's Palace, and that whether Akechi lives depends on Joker accepting Maruki's world. Akechi convinces Joker to refuse the offer, stating he would rather disappear as himself than live under Maruki's control. The Phantom Thieves then defeat Maruki the following day and reality returns to normal. With Akechi gone, Joker finds himself back in prison as he was meant to be before reality was altered, but as with the original game's story, he is cleared and released thanks to his friends and allies. At their final meeting, having reflected on their rejection of Maruki's reality, each of the Phantom Thieves choose to pursue their own futures, albeit separate from one another in order to make their wishes come true under their own power. On the day he is due to return home, Joker escapes tailing government agents with help from both the Phantom Thieves and a reformed Maruki, who is now a taxi driver. At the station, Sumire finds him and bids him farewell. A post-credits scene achieved by reaching Rank 8 of Akechi's Confidant before November 17 shows a person resembling Akechi passing by the window on Joker's train ride home.
Similarly to the original game, an alternate ending happens should Joker choose to accept the idealized reality, instead of resisting and attempting to change Maruki's heart. The ending shows the other Phantom Thieves, including Akechi and Sumire, who is now "Kasumi" permanently, who are seemingly unaware of the true nature of reality, while Joker appears uncomfortable and unsure of his actions. Meanwhile, if the player allows to deadline to pass without changing Maruki's heart, Maruki will lament Joker's lack of conviction and thus put him into a state of eternal sleep, relieving him of the stress of making any tough decisions for the rest of his life.
Persona 5 takes place within the Persona universe, revolving around a group of high school students who harness Personas, physical manifestations of their inner psyche. The story begins on April 9 "20XX (2016)" and spans roughly a year. It is set in modern-day Tokyo and features several real-world locations, including Akihabara, Shinjuku, and Shibuya. A major setting throughout the game is Shujin Academy, a high school that the protagonist attends. The second major location is the "Metaverse", a supernatural realm consisting of the physical manifestations of humanity's subconscious desires. In the Metaverse, people with corrupted desires form their own unique "Palace," which is modeled after their distorted perception of a place in the real world, along with a Shadow version of themselves (their true self) possessing a "Treasure" symbolic of their desires. Returning from earlier entries is the Velvet Room, a place that exists for the growth of Persona users and shifts appearance depending on the current guest; in Persona 5, it takes the form of a prison.
The player character is a silent protagonist, a commonplace feature in the Persona series, codenamed Joker. He becomes the leader of a vigilante group known as the Phantom Thieves of Hearts, who change the hearts of criminals and other malevolent people through the Metaverse. He is joined by school delinquent Ryuji Sakamoto, fashion model Ann Takamaki, and Morgana, a mysterious cat-like creature. As the game progresses, the group recruits more members, including art prodigy Yusuke Kitagawa, student council president Makoto Niijima, hikikomori computer hacker Futaba Sakura, and cultured corporate heiress Haru Okumura. Also interacting with Joker are high school detective Goro Akechi, public prosecutor and Makoto's older sister Sae Niijima, and Igor and his two assistants Caroline and Justine, who are residents of the Velvet Room.
Plot
Much of the story is told through flashbacks while Sae Niijima interrogates the protagonist. After preventing an assault, he is framed for assaulting the man responsible and put on probation for a year, resulting in expulsion from his school. He is sent to Tokyo to stay with family friend Sojiro Sakura and attend Shujin Academy during his year-long probation. After his arrival, he is drawn into the Velvet Room, where Igor, alongside his assistants, Caroline and Justine, warns him that he must be rehabilitated to avoid future ruin and grants him access to a supernatural mobile app. This leads him into the Metaverse, and the Palace of the school's abusive and lustful gym teacher and volleyball coach Suguru Kamoshida, along with a fellow student, Ryuji Sakamoto, who had been labeled as a troublemaker due to having been provoked by Kamoshida into assaulting him, resulting in Kamoshida breaking his leg in an implied self-defense and dissolving the track team due to the scandal.
After the protagonist and Ryuji are captured by the corrupt manifestation of Kamoshida, also known as his Shadow Self, he awakens to his Persona, Arsène, to save Ryuji from being executed. The two escape to the lower levels of the Palace, where they meet Morgana, a mysterious, small cat-like creature who knows much about the Palaces. Morgana informs the protagonist of the ability to change wicked people's hearts by stealing their "Treasure," the emotional root of their behavior and desires, from the Palaces ruled by their Shadow selves. Not long after, upon discovering the truth about Kamoshida's abuse towards other students in the Palace dungeons, Ryuji awakens to his Persona and resolves to stop Kamoshida. The protagonist later confronts other fellow student Ann Takamaki, who was forced into a relationship with Kamoshida in exchange for her friend Shiho Suzui being on the volleyball team. When Ann doesn't come to Kamoshida's house one afternoon, he takes it out on Shiho in an implied sexual assault, causing her to attempt suicide. After which, the group finally decides to steal Kamoshida's heart and force him to confess his crimes, with Ann awakening to her Persona after accidentally stumbling into the Metaverse.
The protagonist assumes the codename Joker, and after changing Kamoshida's heart, he along with Morgana, Ryuji, and Ann form the Phantom Thieves of Hearts, to steal corruption from the hearts of adults to reform the city, and slowly learns of a broader conspiracy to influence the hearts of Tokyo. They are joined along the way by Yusuke Kitagawa, an art student whom they help to reform his corrupt teacher, Ichiryusai Madarame; Sae's sister Makoto, the president of the school's student council who is assigned to spy on them but joins after being blackmailed by a mob boss, Junya Kaneshiro, who they also reform; Sojiro's adopted daughter Futaba Sakura, an expert hacker who became a depressed hikikomori after the conspiracy murdered her mother and framed her using a forged suicide note; and Haru Okumura, a corporate heiress who rebels against her rich father, Kunikazu Okumura, and his attempts to control her life and mistreatment of his employees. Over time, the Phantom Thieves attract the attention of the public and the police, including Sae and celebrity junior detective Goro Akechi.
However, the Phantom Thieves' popularity plummets after a black-masked assassin frames them for the death of Haru's father. While pursuing the conspiracy, Akechi joins the group and convinces them to change Sae's heart in order to prove their innocence. After infiltrating Sae's Palace, Joker is captured by the police, and Sae interrogates him despite being removed from the case, at which point the story comes full-circle. Joker convinces Sae of the truth. Akechi is revealed to be the assassin and attempts to kill Joker but the Phantom Thieves pull Akechi back into Sae's palace, where he kills Sae's cognition of Joker instead, leaving the real Joker unharmed. It's also revealed that the Phantom Thieves knew Akechi's true nature far ahead of time and only agreed to infiltrate Sae's palace so that this deception could work. Aided by Sae and Sojiro, Joker goes into hiding while the Phantom Thieves learn the conspiracy's leader is politician Masayoshi Shido, who is revealed to be the one who framed and pressed charges against Joker last spring, resulting in his probation and transfer to Tokyo. He has been using Akechi's Metaverse ability to remove obstacles in his path toward becoming prime minister and imposing his twisted reforms on Japan. When the Phantom Thieves infiltrate Shido's Palace, they face Akechi, who reveals himself as Shido's illegitimate son and that his collusion with him was part of a plan to get revenge on Shido for abandoning him and his late mother. Once defeated, Akechi sacrifices himself to protect the Phantom Thieves from a group of Shadows along with Shido's cognition of Akechi himself, allowing them to escape and later defeat Shido. Despite Shido's arrest and confession, the public's opinion of him remains unchanged, and Shido may be released due to the manipulation of the public by his allies.
The Phantom Thieves infiltrate the depths of Mementos, the public’s Palace, to steal the Treasure at its core, believing that changing the general public's hearts will cause them to realize and accept the truth. Inside, they discover that the public is in chaos and has given up their free will, and is now believing the Phantom Thieves never existed. The Thieves are ejected from Mementos by the Treasure itself, manifested as the Holy Grail, and vanish after the Metaverse merges with reality. Upon awakening in the Velvet Room, Igor proclaims Joker has failed to prevent the ruin and orders Caroline and Justine to execute him. Realizing that they’re not killers, Caroline and Justine regain their memories and merge into Lavenza, their proper form. Lavenza reveals that the Igor in the Velvet Room until this point is actually Yaldabaoth, the God of Control, who imprisoned the actual Igor. Yaldabaoth, the Holy Grail made sentient, was created from humanity's wish to be ruled and not think for themselves. Through a wager made with Igor over humanity's goals, Yaldabaoth had given Joker and Akechi their abilities but ensured that Joker would fail to prove that living with ambition is useless.
Yaldabaoth offers Joker to return the world to its previous state at the cost of the world's freedom. Joker rejects the offer, allowing him to reunite with the rest of the Phantom Thieves in the Velvet Room, including Morgana, who was revealed to have been created by the real Igor to lead Joker to the depths of Mementos, and Igor sends them on the path to stop Yaldabaoth. The Phantom Thieves attempt to fight Yaldabaoth again, and as Joker's confidants rally the support of the people, they rebel against Yaldabaoth's control and allow Joker to awaken his ultimate Persona, Satanael, to destroy Yaldabaoth and the Metaverse. After Yaldabaoth's defeat, Joker turns himself in to the police for Shido to be prosecuted. While Joker is incarcerated, the rest of the Phantom Thieves and his confidants help secure evidence of his innocence in the assault charge, leading to his conviction being overturned. By spring, Joker's friends drive him back to his hometown.
There are alternate endings depending on choices made throughout the game. Each Palace infiltration has a deadline where Joker and the Phantom Thieves will suffer real world consequences if they fail to change their target's hearts before a specific date. If Joker fails to convince Sae of the truth during his interrogation, Akechi will succeed in killing the real Joker. If Joker accepts Yaldabaoth's offer, an alternate ending happens where the Phantom Thieves return to fame at the cost of humanity's free will, with Joker having become what he fought against.
Royal
In Persona 5 Royal, two new characters interact with the Phantom Thieves: Kasumi Yoshizawa, an accomplished gymnast who transferred to Shujin Academy the same time as Joker, and Takuto Maruki, a counsellor hired by the school after Kamoshida is exposed. Kasumi awakens to her Persona after discovering a new Palace in Odaiba with Joker. Maruki, in turn, talks to each of the Phantom Thieves throughout the main story and learns their deepest wishes and regrets via their counselling sessions with him.
After defeating Yaldabaoth, a still-living Akechi turns himself over to Sae in Joker's place. At the beginning of the following year, Joker finds reality distorted; Akechi was released without reason, and each Phantom Thief has had their deepest wish granted, including some deceased people being brought back to life, and Morgana in the form of a human. Joker, Akechi, and Kasumi, being the only people able to notice the abnormalities, investigate the Palace in Odaiba and learn that its owner is Maruki, who is revealed to be a Persona-user that can alter reality by forcefully changing people's cognitions. After Yaldabaoth's defeat, Maruki assumed his role since the public embraced the Phantom Thieves, who in turn had unknowingly wished for Maruki to remove their past trauma due to their counseling sessions with him. Through meddling with Mementos, Maruki later brainwashed the Phantom Thieves into accepting a reality that he believes is perfect for them. However, this causes them to stagnate and lose the will to strive for a better world. "Kasumi" is also revealed to be her twin sister Sumire, who had been impersonating her to cope with the former's death due to the influence of Maruki's powers, although only the Phantom Thieves could see her as "Kasumi". Maruki gives Joker time to choose whether to accept his idealized reality. Joker reminds the Phantom Thieves and Sumire of the strength and growth they gained from their real lives, and they agree to change Maruki's heart before he makes the idealized reality permanent by re-fusing reality with Mementos. As part of this, Akechi rejoins the Phantom Thieves, and Sumire, after reawakening her Persona joins the group as well.
Joker later learns from Maruki that Akechi is alive in the altered reality because of Joker's desire to save him from his fate in Shido's Palace, and that whether Akechi lives depends on Joker accepting Maruki's world. Akechi convinces Joker to refuse the offer, stating he would rather disappear as himself than live under Maruki's control. The Phantom Thieves then defeat Maruki the following day and reality returns to normal. With Akechi gone, Joker finds himself back in prison as he was meant to be before reality was altered, but as with the original game's story, he is cleared and released thanks to his friends and allies. At their final meeting, having reflected on their rejection of Maruki's reality, each of the Phantom Thieves choose to pursue their own futures, albeit separate from one another in order to make their wishes come true under their own power. On the day he is due to return home, Joker escapes tailing government agents with help from both the Phantom Thieves and a reformed Maruki, who is now a taxi driver. At the station, Sumire finds him and bids him farewell. A post-credits scene achieved by reaching Rank 8 of Akechi's Confidant before November 17 shows a person resembling Akechi passing by the window on Joker's train ride home.
Similarly to the original game, an alternate ending happens should Joker choose to accept the idealized reality, instead of resisting and attempting to change Maruki's heart. The ending shows the other Phantom Thieves, including Akechi and Sumire, who is now "Kasumi" permanently, who are seemingly unaware of the true nature of reality, while Joker appears uncomfortable and unsure of his actions. Meanwhile, if the player allows to deadline to pass without changing Maruki's heart, Maruki will lament Joker's lack of conviction and thus put him into a state of eternal sleep, relieving him of the stress of making any tough decisions for the rest of his life.
Sources and content license
Source and revision history ↗ · Adapted from Wikipedia contributors, Persona 5. Section headings and formatting adjusted. · Content license