Persona 4 Cracked Theories

It's time for more cracked theories - those ideas we come up while we are playing the game sometimes after 4 am.

The upshot of THIS Persona is that you are new to town, staying with your Uncle while your parents are wherever Japanese Parents go to leave their kids. (If we believed Anime and games NO kids have any parents around or at least one is dead. So upshot of this is kids go to Japan, but LEAVE before you start a family cause there is  50/50 chance you will be the dead parent!)

Anyway the protagonist gets dragged into events by entering a world in the television. If they get the people out before their shadows consume them as it were they survive.  If they fail, the person dies.  I will do a FULL review once I beat this boss I went in under leveled AGAIN. But for now onto the theories,  We have been collecting them as we went, and who knows ONE of these or more maybe true!


1. There is something in the fog or rain that causes it. Your first oddity occurs as you are on the train heading into Inaba and pass through a tunnel. There is a repetition of weirdness at the gas station and later on when you touch the tv screen in your room it 'melts' Maybe it is something in the rain.

2. The Parking attendant is behind it.  He is always there in the rain.  He may also be the gas station attendant that  first greeted you, offered you a job and none ever appears on the board. Okay maybe not the same guy but it is odd that people only want valet parking in the rain. And why do we see him only when it rains, he says something about the streets being more empty. Perhaps he is  hiding out from his last crime spree on some other place?

2. Your Uncle is behind it all - the death of his wife unhinged him. He constantly is not home, he tells Nanako he is working when he is receiving calls about the mysterious car that killed his wife. At one point you see a figure in the fog who is upset that he failed this time  (something very Jack the Ripper like in it)

3. Nanako is behind it all - at every time she says something is boring that is on the news on TV, that person is the next victim.  There is a Panda bear in the room with her that is reminiscent of Teddy. And the TV world seems a little like a child's idea of how things would be.

4. Yosuke is behind it all - he is bored, there is nothing interesting going on.  The TV's the kids enter through are in Junes where he works and the locals all hate him and his family for 'ruining' their downtown. Sounds like a perfectly good revenge to me.  To top it off, there was this girl he was interested in who seemed lukewarm to him. He protests his interest is all to help find her killer, methinks he doth protest too much.

5. You are behind it all - The first murder gave you the idea and  you knew you could do this thing with the TVs already. So you are playing stupid and letting everyone set themselves up. Your parents actually are dead or in the TV world or left for fear of their own safety.

6. Yukiko is behind it.  She seems a bit unstable in many ways, very cold not interested in a boyfriend and hates how everyone expects her to take over the Inn just be cause she is an Amagi.  She wants to leave and find her own way, but keeps getting held back by a sense of duty to her family and the expectations of the town..

7. Misuzu Hiiragi, the wife of the man (Taro Namatame) who had the affair with the  first victim (Mayumi Yamano) is behind it.  She travels a lot, seems to be more than a bit of a controlling type and is concerned about her public image.  He disgraced her and these others may have seen something.Her picture appears on posters in the TV world at the Mayumi Yamano's  death place.

8. Adachi is behind it - come on NO one is that nice and that gullible!  He seems ineffectual but sometimes shows a flash of insight and competence.  

9. Naoto is the actual killer. The Prince of Detectives shows up BEFORE he officially reports to the station.  He talks to Kanji, and Kanji is the next victim.  He is hiding something from everyone (that is obvious) and seems to know a lot more and be willing to believe the high weirdness than any NORMAL person should.  Plus he taunts the group repeatedly about it being a game for them.

10 Mayumi Yamano is behind it all - she is not dead, went into hiding and substituted someone else's corpse for her own.  She killed Saki because she saw her doing the replacement or saw something that would point to her.  She went for Yukiko because she was in chrage of the hotel on the days that Mayumi Yamano stayed there.  She goes for the others because they all have contact with Yukiko in some way.

11. The town itself is the cause.  Their xenophobic nature gives rise to the shadows.  There is something odd about beef being the food Inaba is known for when there are no cattle ranches near there.  It is mentioned a few times.  The town is full of people who judge and find their neighbors wanting.  The entire theme seems to be about what OTHERS think and hiding from them in the fog.

12. The owner of the beef stand and/or her husband is behind it.  They are killing people who have figured out the secret behind the beef.

13 Kinshiro Morooka is behind it all. He certainly seems to hate immoraloty, his job, the students, and Inaba today as opposed to how it WAS.

14. Juness the department store is behind it all. They are taking over the city because they are actually owned by the Corporation that was doing shadow research over a Gennouken High School in Persona 3.


Actually. looking over our list (which was compiled as we went) MOST characters hate Inaba.  Kanji seems ok with the town, but dislikes the people, everyone is so full of hate for the place and each other and envious of other towns that we thought maybe it was a sort of Inaba Gestalt. Anyone have any others?  BTW the answer was in our theories and we were rather surprised that the coders were almost as warped as we are.  Any that anyone else had - EXCLUDING the correct one?