• Arch-Enemy: To Yomi Hellsmile, who loathes detectives with a passion and has been trying to keep them away from Kanai Ward since his reign began, specifically those of the WDO.
• Cavalry Refusal: Fubuki accuses the organization of this at the end of Chapter 4, claiming they could've sent in support to prevent Chief Yakou's death, but Halara dismisses her for it due to it being a pointless thing to worry about by then.
• Decoy Protagonist: The Master Detectives in Chapter 0 are set up as Yuma's companions to Kanai Ward, but none of them survive the trip.
• Empowered Badass Normal: Aside from their personalities, the Master Detectives are rather normal human detectives with normal human values, who have a strong sense of justice and a willingness to fight against evil. What makes them empowered is their Forensic Fortes, which are actually their only supernatural attributes, of which they trained themselves to perfect over time after taking up a job at the WDO.
• Expy: A rather obscure reference to those unfamiliar with Japanese mystery literature, but the WDO is pretty clearly based on the Japan Detectives Club (JDC) from Ryuusui Seiryouin's JDC Series. Both are massive organizations made up of eccentric detectives, with each detective having their own distinctive "reasoning method"-styled pseudo-superpowers.
• Famed in Story: Number One. The leader is recognized for being able to solve a case on his own, and is a highly respected member of the organization. Despite this, he has to hide from the public and the other Master Detectives because he's an easy target for assassination. In a sense, said hiding never actually happens in the case of the present day story, as Yuma is the current Number One in disguise, Makoto is the Big Bad who is a clone of him with only a mask to hide his face, and the Body Double shows himself clearly to the NDA.
• Hufflepuff House: The story focuses on the Nocturnal Detective Agency's mission in Kanai Ward. There are several unnamed branches in the organization and possibly more but they aren't mentioned, and it's implied that not every detective from the organization was sent to Kanai Ward as a group, meaning that there are some outside of Kanai Ward doing work unrelated to Makoto Kagutsuchi. As it would seem, the reason the NDA is the primary focus is because Number One who leads the organization as a whole is within the group under a different alias.
• Interpol Special Agent: All their detectives are essentially this, as the WDO is an international, extra-legal, and extra-priviledged organization, meaning they can investigate anywhere and take over a case regardless of jurisdiction. Halara even outright refers to WDO detectives as "agents" in the prologue when describing the training process to Yuma. Too bad for our detectives that Kanai Ward is entirely isolated from outside world and Amaterasu Peacekeepers don't give a damn about any power the WDO might have.
• Killed Off for Real: The Master Detectives in Chapter 0, besides the fake Zilch, die permanently, since they're humans and not immortal like Kanai Ward's residents. It is implied that various other Master Detectives came in via the routes that Halara, Desuhiko, Fubuki and Vivia took, those of whom also died en route to Kanai Ward.
• Knight Templar: Downplayed. It's mostly due to the WDO's cooperation with Makoto kidnapping criminals that he's able to succeed as the Big Bad, but they seem unaware he's using those criminals for Kanai Ward's food supply. Despite this, the organization still believes it's doing the right thing by helping him.
• Mission Control Is Off Its Meds: The organization (or rather Makoto posing as its leader) allows a group of random detectives to be sent to Kanai Ward altogether without confirming if the mission is legitimate at all. The real Number One has hardly any authority over this decision for some odd reason. Overall, it turns out to have been a horrible idea considering that they were sent to Kanai Ward for the intent of being a pawn for Makoto to use against Yomi the whole time.
• One Person, One Power: The Master Detectives who receive a Forensic Forte through training only have that single Forte at their disposal, with there being no suggestions from the more experienced WDO detectives that they can get multiple.
• Private Detective: All of them are private investigators working on their own terms, though they don't work for profit (except for Halara) and solve cases because they personally chose that as their career.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: The WDO gathers people of high intellect to investigate any case around the world with supernatural powers at their disposal, but what does the organization aim to do with these people? Use their powers to investigate cases around the world, and sure, while it's beneficial enough to do that, it's also wasted potential. Even Yakou Furio himself notes how he feels inferior being merely a detective in the prologue.
• Super Cop: Most of the Master Detectives have supernatural powers that aid them in investigations. The Player Character is the real Number One, the leader of the organization, possessing Coalescence, playing the role of "Yuma Kokohead", and with his Coalescence, he connects his power to the other detective's power (in this game's case, Postcognition, Disguise, Time Leap, and Spectral Projection) in order to solve the cases where their use is necessary. Number One is also accompanied by Shinigami, a death god who can summon the Mystery Labyrinth and use her own powers to reap the soul of its creator.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Implied with the order Number One's Body Double gives at the end of Chapter 4 after discovering Yakou had committed murder on Dr. Huesca and gotten himself killed in the process. The WDO refuses to sacrifice the lives of others to complete their assignments, and practically vows against it, at the most. This makes the deaths of the Master Detectives in Chapter 0 even more an insult to the organization, as they were killed by one of their own (or whom they thought was one of their own) completely against their agreements when joining the WDO. Doesn't stop the real Number One using the Book of Death to kill the culprits he uncovers during his visit to Kanai Ward, though.
• Virtuous Character Copy: As far as the institution the main characters are part of goes, it's got quite a few differences to Hope's Peak Academy. These differences are because of their different leaders, the WDO being led by the virtuous Number One/"Yuma Kokohead" and Hope's Peak being led by the more villainous Steering Committee. Whereas the ultimate talents are (for the most part) just exceptional proficiency in a specific skill, the Master Detectives' Fortes are explicitly supernatural in nature. The WDO also doesn't discriminate based on whether one has such an ability or not, with non-empowered individuals being able to become full fledged members, and the Nocturnal Detective Agency treats Yuma as an equal despite only being a trainee. Unlike Hope's Peak's board of trustees, who are corrupt and are self-destructively lax with security, the WDO's shady side came from Makoto impersonating Number One, who genuinely wants to make people in the world happy by solving mysteries. And the only people shown entering their restricted areas are the ones with the proper clearance.
• With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: The Master Detectives are expected not to abuse their Forensic Fortes to commit crimes rather than solve them. Ironically, a clone of the true Number One, the leader of the WDO, ends up doing exactly this as the Big Bad.

Voiced by: Akira Kamiya (Japanese), SungWon Cho (English)

Number One is the leader and top detective of the World Detective Organization.

After all the members of the Nocturnal Detective Agency arrive in Kanai Ward and wait in Yakou Furio's agency, Number One calls them and orders them to investigate Kanai Ward's Ultimate Secret to expose the truth of the Great Global Mystery. He elaborates no further on what either of these are and tells the detectives to investigate on their own.

• Advertised Extra: Is marketed alongside the other Master Detectives, but plays no role in any of the cases. Justified as Number One is a fake that the real Number One hired before the game even begins.
• Big Good: Zig-Zagged. He is the one who gives the order for the Nocturnal Detective Agency to search for "Kanai Ward's Ultimate Secret" and the "Great Global Mystery" that sends the plot forward, but he isn't the real Number One. Yuma Kokohead is the real Number One and is the one who actually takes this role, with the Body Double working on his behalf.
• Body Double: For the real Number One. He may look nothing like him, but since so few know what the real Number One looks like, this isn't an issue.
• Catchphrase: "Go forth, proud detectives! Eliminate all mysteries from this world!"
• Catchphrase Interruptus: He gets cut off when saying the "mysteries" within his Catchphrase when the explosion strikes him in Chapter 4.
• Cool Old Guy: Gives off this impression in his introduction, though Shinigami dismisses him as just some old man. She has very good reason to say so, since he's actually a fake employed by the real Number One, whose identity Shinigami already knows. Setting that aside, he seems to be capable in his own way, as one of the loading screen tips says that he has a muscle-bound body that is full of scars from his encounters with various criminals.
• Cool Shades: Wears purple shades.
• Decoy Leader: His purpose is to be a decoy for the real Number One (the protagonist), who is the leader of the World Detective Organization. Everyone in the NDA believes him to be the real deal because he's a decoy, plus the actual Number One taking advantage of never showing his face in public.
• Disconnected by Death: The explosion that occurs on the other end of the call disconnects the line to him at the end of Chapter 4, displaying white noise on the TV screen, to the horror of the detectives.
• Exact Words: He introduces himself to the detectives as "Now, I simply go by Number One". Not "I am Number One".
• Killed Mid-Sentence: At the end of Chapter 4, just as he recites his motto, he is suddenly struck by an explosion, and footage of the WDO headquarters being struck by an explosion appears on the screen. Ultimately subverted, at least in regards to the WDO building itself, since the epilogue reveals that Makoto faked the footage, presumably to give the impression that even the WDO had fallen.
• Masquerading As the Unseen: Number One is normally unseen by the masses and the other WDO detectives, and using doubles is a common practice for them. The Number One on the TV is in fact only an imposter working on behalf of the real one.
• No Name Given: Since he serves as a Body Double for the real Number One, his actual name is never given.
• Poor Communication Kills: Literally. He never actually says what the "Great Global Mystery" actually is until Yakou Furio dies due to the NDA being in the dark about it actually being a global kidnapping case. Eventually, when Halara insists that he tell them all for Yakou's sake, it's too late by that point since Makoto, the bad guy, has already gotten what he wanted from the detectives and no longer needs them.
• Red Herring:
  • He resembles Makoto in a few aspects such as his long hair, so when Makoto is revealed to be a homunculus of Number One, Yuma believes it and hypothesizes at first that Number One's youth was restored in Makoto's creation. Of course, it turns out that the imposter and Makoto have nothing to do with each other.
  • In general, this "Number One" is not the real one, but he's certainly intended to trick the viewer into believing he is. The real Number One is not the old man who contacts the detective agency, but rather the Shinigami-possessed "detective trainee" in blue working with them who calls himself "Yuma Kokohead"... and alongside that, the Big Bad is his perfect clone, who appropriately carries across the true Number One's stoic demeanor.
• Retirony: Not retirement exactly, but the explosion that strikes him happens just as he's about to end his second meeting with the Nocturnal Detective Agency following Yakou's death.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Following the bombing of the WDO, his talent is listed as "Running away", which seems to have worked as it's implied he wasn't killed.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: It's never made clear what exactly happened to him after he was struck by the explosion at the end of Chapter 4. Though Makoto faked the footage of the WDO building being struck, it isn't directly said the footage of Number One was faked. At the same time, he is never referred to as dead after Makoto's ruse is uncovered, and his portrait never gets crossed off. At the very least, he is no longer posing as Number One, since the resignation letter Yuma prepared before his pact with Shinigami is made public to the WDO, and everyone becomes aware he was a body double.

Voiced by: Tomokazu Seki (Japanese), Y. Chang (English)

Zilch Alexander is a Master Detective and possesses Forensic Forte: Animal Investigation, allowing him to communicate with mammals and have them assist him. He is one of the five detectives that Yuma Kokohead meets on the train ride to Kanai Ward in Chapter 0.

• Asshole Victim: Although Yuma certainly never intended to kill him and is utterly horrified when he finds out that completing a Mystery Labyrinth will kill the culprit, once we find out how much of a Psycho for Hire "Zilch" is, there is no reason to sympathize with him.
• Back for the Finale: He dies in Chapter 0 but comes back in Chapter 5 to serve as an exposition dump regarding the big secret of Kanai Ward.
• The Beastmaster: Zilch's Forte is allegedly controlling small mammals to assist with an investigative work, though we never get to see this because the real Zilch is actually dead and the Zilch giving this information is actually an impostor.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: He's the most openly accepting detective of Yuma despite his amnesia and general suspicious nature. In actuality he was just biding his time until he could kill everyone and the only reason he spared Yuma was so he could be his patsy.
• Broken Record: His mind is only barely still functional by the time Yuma meets him again, and once he's done giving up all the information he can, he goes back to rambling about how close he was with Yomi.
• Came Back Wrong: Albeit less so than the other homunculi. While he can still speak and isn't mindlessly aggressive, his speech eventually starts repeating itself ad nauseum. His cognitive abilities are impaired, as shown when he mistakes Yuma for Yomi. He's also content to simply stand around in his corner of the factory, hardly what anyone would call living.
• Catchphrase: Any time Zilch wants to hear what others have to say he specifically says he'll "allow it", which Aphex repeatedly finds annoying.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Many details learned about him actually end up becoming very important to the story, especially during the endgame portions.
• Consulting a Convicted Killer: Yuma does this to his zombie self in Chapter 5, well-aware he's the same assassin from Chapter 0.
• Cruella to Animals: A hint to his treachery is that he has several garments made with animal fur, which is highly ill-fitting for an animal lover.
• The Dragon: To Yomi. While Martina is the Peacekeepers' vice director, the individual behind the fake Zilch causes more conflict in Yomi's elimination of any competition to his position, from executing the Master Detectives in Chapter 0 all the way to killing Yakou's wife and Amaterasu's former CEO.
• Expressive Accessory: The animal ears on his hat wiggle by themselves.
• Faking the Dead: An intentional part of his elaborate murder plot in Chapter 0 is pretending he died from immolation like the others. He is the first "body" Yuma finds after he wakes up from the drugs he induced, and makes absolutely sure that Yuma actually sees his "death" so he can pretend to be amongst the other victims. In reality, he switched himself out with Aphex's corpse and hid under the bed, then left the room after Yuma did. Of course, this elaborate trick turns out to have been All for Nothing when he ends up dying for real in the end.
• Faux Affably Evil: While Zilch may seem like a wise and kind detective he is really a cold-blooded hitman hired to kill all the detectives on the Amaterasu Express before framing Yuma to take the blame for the murders.
• Foil: The real Zilch was a Nature Lover who protected animals from corrupt industries. The bio for the hitman who took his place has his dislikes as "Animals", and his likes as "Destroying Nature". The digital artbook even points out the irony that an animal lover would wear such prominent fur and leather… Because he isn’t!
• Foreshadowing: Though considering his short screentime (in Chapter 0 that is), it's more like Five-Second Foreshadowing. Zilch's constant "requests of permission" for people to talk during the train trip is a hint that he actually means that he's "allowing them to speak", because he's really allowing them to live, since he's really only a dedicated hitman infiltrating the Master Detectives' trip to Kanai Ward in order to kill them all.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Wears glasses and murdered the Master Detectives on the Amaterasu Express by burning them alive while setting up Yuma to take the fall. If the words of his zombie self are anything to go by, he loved killing people, and considered his years working as Yomi's personal hitman to have been the highlight of his life.
• The Ghost: The real Zilch Alexander is never shown once onscreen, having already been killed by the hitman posing as him prior to the other Master Detectives’ arrival. Yakou mentions that his corpse is hidden within the spare first car at the the Kanai Ward train station, but neither Yuma nor the player ever get to see the body.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Sparing Yuma proved to be his undoing after Shinigami reaped his soul once the case was solved.
• Impersonation-Exclusive Character: The only Zilch encountered in the story is the imposter, as the real one was murdered beforehand.
• Impostor All Along: The Zilch Yuma meets on the Amaterasu Express is actually a hitman who killed and impersonated the real Zilch Alexander, though this not revealed to Yuma and the player until after the case is solved and "Zilch" is dead.
• Jerkass: He's already shown to have shades of this during Chapter 0, but when he comes back in Chapter 5 as a zombie, even while in a complete daze he reminisces fondly about the awful things he has done over the years for Yomi, and regrets none of it.
• Karmic Death: Yuma and Shinigami kill him (unwittingly) after he, as the game's first culprit, frames him for the murder of the Master Detectives on the Amaterasu Express.
• Kill and Replace: He killed the real Zilch Alexander and took his place before the other detectives boarded the train.
• Killed Offscreen: He dies offscreen after Yuma solves his mystery labyrinth.
• Kill It with Fire: The fake Zilch murders the Master Detectives on the Amaterasu Express through immolation.
• Nature Lover: The real Zilch is allegedly a philanthropist who maintains the balance between humans and nature.
• No Name Given: Only ever referred to as "Zilch", so his real name is never learned. Even after his identity as a hitman is uncovered, the game simply calls him "Fake Zilch" when he appears as a zombie later.
• Posthumous Character: The real Zilch Alexander was already killed by the hitman posing as him before the story even began.
• Professional Killer: The Zilch that Yuma meets on the Amaterasu Express is actually a hitman who killed the real Zilch Alexander and stole his identity in order to kill the other Master Detectives entering Kanai Ward.
• Psycho for Hire: Although he is a hitman hired to kill people, he also enjoys takings lives as part of his job.
• Sadist: He admits that he loves killing people as a hitman in his zombified form to Yuma.
• Significant Birth Date: The real Zilch was born on October 4th, World Animal Day.
• Slipping a Mickey: He knocks the other Master Detectives (and Yuma) out by spiking the drinks onboard the Amaterasu Express with a sleeping drug before the others boarded the train, which is what made them vulnerable to his murderous intent.
• Starter Villain: Zilch, or rather the hitman impersonating him, is the first killer that Yuma must identify with the Mystery Labyrinth.
• Villainous Friendship: Seems to have genuinely held some personal fondness for Yomi, having done his bidding directly and acted as an advisor to him. Knowing Yomi, though, the odds of this fondness being mutual are... low.
• Warm-Up Boss: The first culprit and the first enemy faced via the Mystery Labyrinth, he serves to introduce the player to the "murder mystery" elements of the game.
• Would Harm a Senior: Zange Eraser, a senior Master Detective, is one of his victims in the game's first case, so naturally he was willing to kill him too.

Voiced by: Yui Horie (Japanese), Lindsay Sheppard (English)

Pucci Lavmin is a Master Detective and possesses Forensic Forte: Audial Aptitude, allowing her to hear the faintest of sounds. She is one of the five Master Detectives that Yuma Kokohead meets on the train ride to Kanai Ward.

• Blessed with Suck: Her Audial Aptitude seems to veer into this. Despite being incredibly useful for gathering intel and solving cases, it has left her with an incredibly diminished sense of self, as well as requiring her to wear headphones at almost all times to avoid being overwhelmed with excessive stimuli.
• Classical Music Is Cool: Her profile states her like as "Classical Music".
• Death of a Child: Is explicitly called a "little girl" by Shinigami and sleeps in a room with stuffed animals, and dies in probable agony via immolation.
• Headphones Equal Isolation: She's not a social person and wears headphones to limit her Super-Hearing ability. Her train car shows a lot of other headphones.
• Luminescent Blush: Despite normally being The Stoic, Pucci turns red and sweats bullets when she nearly touched Yuma's hand when both tried to pick up her Detective Deed, and also comments on own unnatural heartbeat.
• Not So Stoic: Despite being The Quiet One of the group, other people talking loudly while she's concentrating sets her into a rage.
• Perpetual Expression: She has a constant display of anxiety and fear on her face, conveying her shyness. The exception is when she's determined or angry, in which case she'll narrow her eyebrows.
• The Philosopher: She goes on a tangent filled with encyclopedic definitions about the true nature of things before introducing herself as asked, then comments how she dislikes the concept of names.
• Ship Tease: She has a minor moment with Yuma following her Luminescent Blush incident. In true Danganronpa fashion, she dies shortly after.
• Super-Hearing: Pucci Lavmin's Forensic Forte is "audial aptitude" - the ability to detect heartbeats, footsteps, whispers heard in 500 meters radius by concentrating.
• Verbal Tic: When referring to herself in the first person, she, Pucci, usually follows it up with her name. Rather contradictory of her given that she goes on a rant decrying the entire concept of names as meaningless and arbitrary.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Killed by Zilch during the events of Chapter 0.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: Despite her youth, she mentions that her primary clientele includes corporations and politicians, likely because her Forte allows her detect secret conversations and her maturity allows her to react appropriately. She also demonstrates herself to be very philosophically inclined.

Voiced by: Yukari Tamura (Japanese), Lauren Landa (English)

Melami Goldmine is a Master Detective and possesses Forensic Forte: Spiritism, allowing her to act as a spirit medium only if she wears the clothes of the person of choice. She is one of the five detectives that Yuma Kokohead meets on the train ride to Kanai Ward.

• Actual Pacifist: Says outright that she avoids solving problems with violence.
• Expy: Of Miu Iruma. Both share similar voices and play off their attractiveness with no shame, have long blonde hair, and take pride in looking fashionable. Melami, however, is a Nice Girl executing herself with dignity and grace, while Miu is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold who openly embraces her sense of chaos and degeneracy and ends up being The Friend Nobody Likes. ^{Spoilers for Danganronpa V3}Additionally, Miu survives until Chapter 4 in her respective game, while Melami is killed off before the main story even begins.
• The Fashionista: If her excessive makeup and obsession with clothes were any indication, she's quite obsessed with fashion, for a truth-seeking detective, that is.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: A Nice Girl with blonde hair.
• Necessary Drawback: The ability to summon the dead would be very useful to a detective, however because she has to wear the deceased's clothes to do so, this restricts the victims to be the same body size as her.
• Nice Girl: Aside from Zilch's faked acceptance, she's the only one of the Master Detectives aboard the Amaterasu Express that treat Yuma with any congeniality. It makes her death by being burned alive all the more horrifying.
• No Sense of Personal Space: Melami hugs Yuma to measure his clothes sizes with no warning.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: While on the trip to Kanai Ward via the Amaterasu Express, Melami deduces that there's a spy from Amaterasu Corporation aiming to disrupt the Master Detectives and prevent them from investigating Kanai Ward, pretending to be a Master Detective. Said spy turns out to be "Zilch", who was exactly that, aiming to disrupt by murdering said detectives, but she concludes this due to someone from Amaterasu spying on her before the trip. The real reason was actually because the Peacekeepers ruling over Kanai Ward didn't want detectives uncovering Yomi's crimes. Regardless, no one believed her deduction.
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: Speaks of having no problem stripping to shake off pursuers.
• Sherlock Scan: Despite her quirk of judging people by what they wear, she proves herself to be a detective by figuring Yuma can't be an imposter if he's wearing a tailor-made WDO uniform.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Among the first Master Detectives that Yuma meets prior to his arrival in Kanai Ward, she is established as the nicest, and is the least begrudging of the five, not prone to holding anything against people or willing to pose any harsh criticisms when unnecessary (aside from sarcastically pointing out Aphex's stupidity), and is in fact that only one who actively tries to do a good deed while on the trip. Actually, prior to being sent to Kanai Ward, she seems to have kept her Nice Girl personality for all of her clients, at that, meaning she may have had a positive reputation as a Master Detective too. To make her niceness even more clear, she's also more modest and less cynical than four of the five Master Detectives that Yuma ends up being forced to work with throughout the main story (Yakou, Halara, Desuhiko, Vivia), with Fubuki being the only other real Nice Girl Yuma ends up with as a colleague. So, of course, she ends up being completely burned alive by an impersonator before she even reaches Kanai Ward with the others.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Combined with No Good Deed Goes Unpunished, but her offering Yuma a coffee not knowing it had a sleeping drug allowed him to be knocked unconscious in the train's bathroom, giving the fake Zilch an opportunity to kill the other Master Detectives, including herself. However, Yuma plays some part too by rejecting having someone accompany him, Melami in particular, preventing someone from witnessing him falling unconscious as a result of that sleeping drug.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Killed by Zilch during the events of Chapter 0.
• Willing Channeler: Melami Goldmine's Forensic Forte allows her to put on the clothes of a deceased person and channel their spirit, with the catch that she can only do so if the clothes fit her (and if they're fashionable enough for her to actually consider putting them on). She never gets the chance to show this to everyone before she’s killed by the hitman posing as Zilch.

Voiced by: Showtaro Morikubo (Japanese), Stephen Fu (English)

Aphex Logan is a Master Detective and possesses Forensic Forte: Life Detection, allowing him to sense out any sign of life within a close range. He is one of the five detectives that Yuma Kokohead meets on the train ride to Kanai Ward.

• Dark and Troubled Past: His lawyer parents got their necks cut open right in front of him for going after The Mafia. He escaped by stowing away on a ship, and spent most of his life as an illegal immigrant living in the slums where Might Makes Right prevails. He's quite unhinged because of this, is quick to use violence as a solution to his problems, and offers to give Yuma "stab wound training" by stabbing him with progressively larger implements.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Aphex explodes for the slightest of reasons, threatens murder and wants his fists to do the talking in any conversation.
• Hidden Depths: The most aggressive and downright rude detective seen in the game, he nonetheless makes several important observations across his brief screentime and gets the detectives trying to think about the likelihood of an impostor. Strength aside, it’s not particularly surprising he was the first killed.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Aphex is the only one of the initial Master Detectives whose methods are against what detectives normally do, as he'd rather assume anyone he doesn't like is guilty and to act accordingly. Despite the violent behavior, Aphex also has a strong sense of justice according to his profile card, and shows concern for Yuma when he feels sick.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Some humor is drawn from the fact that his Forte, life sensing, is extremely similar in functionality to Pucci’s hearing, except her Forte has ten times the range of his and has many more uses than just detecting people. Still, the redundancy makes clear there really are only six people onboard the train. Granted, in day to day life, his doesn’t seem to actively inconvenience him like hers does.
• Psychic Radar: Aphex's Life Detection lets him sense and detect people in a 50-meter radius.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: At the beginning of the game Yuma believes he's one of the five master detectives that's supposed to be on the Amaterasu Express, which Aphex calls bogus on and labels him as an imposter for being late, having no badge, and giving a story about having amnesia that could be faked. Turns out he was right in two different ways: Yuma Kokohead wasn't a Master Detective, but a trainee who was stationed in Kanai Ward; and later on, it's revealed that the "Yuma" we know is actually Number One, who stole the identity of the real Yuma Kokohead and used it to smuggle himself into Kanai Ward. Either way, Aphex was absolutely right that he wasn't one of the five detectives who were supposed to be on that train.
• Smarter Than You Look: When Aphex temporarily calms down, he demonstrates that he's still a detective by producing a plausible theory that Yuma is indeed a Master Detective and was attacked by an infiltrator who intended to take his place. Melami comments that Aphex has exceeded her expectations.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Killed by Zilch during the events of Chapter 0.

Voiced by: Yosuke Akimoto (Japanese), Kurt Bicknell (English)

Zange Eraser is a Master Detective and possesses Forensic Forte: Thoughtography, allowing him to copy a few seconds of his thoughts from five minutes ago into an electronic device. He is one of the five detectives that Yuma Kokohead meets on his train ride to Kanai Ward.

• Cane Fu: The loading screen trivia mentions that his cane acts as a weapon, which he is very skilled at using.
• Cool Old Guy: By the end of the one scene the Chapter 0 gang shared, he was starting to show signs of as much as he grew excited for the next case. Not that it lasted long…
• Feeling Their Age: He mentions that, in his prime, he was able to record ten seconds of video with his Thoughtography, but can now only manage two or three at most.
• Non-Standard Character Design: Zange is the only one of the initial Detectives to not wear WDO-styled clothes.
• Technopath: Zange Eraser's Forensic Forte is "thoughtography", which allows him to record his memories onto electronic devices. It’s pointed out that this creates legally admissible evidence if a copy is sent to a different device before the original footage expires.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Killed by Zilch during the events of Chapter 0.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: His ability to copy a visual representation of his memories into electronic devices is seen as useless by Shinigami, since she thinks it to be no different to a recording device. In the Mystery Labyrinth, however, it's used to prove Yuma drank the drugged coffee that Melami offered him.

• Ambiguously Brown: All of the churchgoers appear to have tanned skin.
• Church of Saint Genericus: The specific religion the church actually follows isn't expanded upon beyond that a being called "the Metal Fox" is a part of it.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": They’re only known by their respective titles without any hint in what their real names are.
• Saintly Church: The churchgoers do in fact want to contribute good to Kanai Ward. However, the priest and worshipper took it to extremes in their endeavors as the Nail Man.

Voiced by: Takahiro Fujiwara (Japanese), John Eric Bentley (English, credited as JEB)

The priest at Kanai Ward's church is one of the four suspects of the Nail Man case, being present at the scene where the Nail Man receives requests from Kanai Ward's residents.

• Affably Evil: In spite of his crimes, he's a genuinely kind man.
• Anti-Villain: He's caring and thoughtful toward other people, but it gets to the point that he feels compelled to help those who plead to the Nail Man to kill certain people in order to get rid of Kanai Ward's corruption.
• Beware the Nice Ones: As a priest, he isn't a bad person and is quite affable. As the Nail Man, however, the crime scenes he (and his copycat) created are utterly disturbing.
• Bluffing the Murderer: Yuma tricks his Mystery Phantom by claiming the muddy footprints at the fourth Locked Room Mystery can be definitively matched to his own. This causes the priest to argue that that he already disposed of the shoes in the incinerator, which never came up in the investigation.
• …But He Sounds Handsome: When discussing the Nail Man cases with Yuma, he's quick to point out that some people in the Kanai Ward might view them as a saviour...
• Calling Card: As the Nail Man, the victim being pinned down by nails and strangled to death, with the doll that was used to target them at the scene.
• The Confidant: As a priest, he took it upon himself to walk through Kanai Ward and listen to the citizen's problems and offer advice on how to solve them. Unfortunately, he took it way too far, fulfilling their Nail Man murder requests too. After his death, the nun forces Yuma to take his place for two side quests.
• Death by Irony: The priest is a vigilante who kills people who are evil in an attempt to eradicate Kanai Ward's evil. He becomes an evil of his own in the process, forcing Yuma, who is also a vigilante eradicating Kanai Ward's evil, though an outsider, to identify him via the Mystery Labyrinth and reap his soul.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Of Chapter 1. He's the Nail Man, but the Mystery Labyrinth doesn't end with his Mystery Phantom's defeat, because someone else killed one of the victims.
• Eyes Always Shut: His eyes are closed at all times except for in his pondering and worried sprite, as well as when seen in his homunculus form.
• Family Business: His family's served the church for many generations, so he's proud of his bloodline.
• Frame-Up: Responsible for framing the kid's dad.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: His insistence on making his killings locked room mysteries creates evidence that implicates him. The first killing has him escape through a vent, which means that the Nail Man has to be someone thin. The second killing has him throw a key into a locked room to hide it under a corpse while holding up the corpse with a string, which means that the Nail Man can use both hands well. And the fourth killing has him climb down a clock tower with a ladder, which he disposes of using the church's incinerator, to which only the clergy have access. All these clues help Yuma conclude that he is the Nail Man.
• Hulking Out: His second Mystery Phantom form is a huge, Professional Wrestler-like man covered in nails.
• Hypocrite: He started killing as The Nail Man to help rid Kanai Ward of its evil (hence only going after cruel people), and yet he was at least partially willing to let Jiei take the fall for it. Had Yuma not investigated his crimes, an innocent man would have been executed, and his son would be orphaned.
• I'll Never Tell You What I'm Telling You!: He tries to deny that he threw his shoes into the incinerator after committing the clocktower murder by saying he threw his shoes into the incinerator.
• Locked Room Mystery: This is his little party trick for his murders, to double up on the mystical nature of The Nail Man.
  • The Secret Club Owner was found dead in his club, with no windows and the only key to the door found in a glass inside the club. The Priest escaped by shimmying through a vent high above the ground, using the nails driven into his body and pinning him to the wall as a sort of ladder.
  • The Mansion Owner was found with his legs pinned to the floor of a room with only one door and no windows, the only key to the room underneath him. The trick here is that the Priest looped a string around the victim's neck to hoist the upper body up, fed it through the eyeholes of a doll pinned to a wall, then looped it through a small vent above the door, which he used to throw the key inside and under the body.
  • The Clocktower woman was found in a room on the top floor several stories high, the only window locked with a shutter. Here, the Priest used a couple nails to set up a rope ladder to lower himself to the ground, cutting each rung as he descended. Once he pulled the rope down, the weight of the shutter caused it to fall down and activate the lock.
• Lone Wolf Boss: Downplayed. While Chapter 0's culprit is a hitman hired by Yomi Hellsmile of the Peacekeepers, Chapter 2's culprits are trying to avenge their friend thanks to Amaterasu covering it up, the main goal of Chapter 4's culprit is outright murdering the head researcher of Amaterasu Corporation, and Chapter 5's culprit is Amaterasu's CEO, the priest is an extremist who is operating solely on his belief that Kanai Ward is full of corrupt individuals - by murdering those he's sent to target while pretending to be the Nail Man. That being said, he is bribing one of the Peacekeepers to cover up his activities, though that's the only involvement he has with Amaterasu Corporation.
• Mythical Motifs: His permanently squinting eyes along with his gaunt face shape and red facial markings give him a similar appearance to a Kitsune mask. Fitting, since the deity they worship is a fox.
• No Name Given: He's only know as "the priest" or Father.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: As the Nail Man, the priest targets people who were already morally questionable and only the people he's requested to target by the public. He kills those people in a misguided attempt at eradicating Kanai Ward's evil.
• "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: He encourages the public to see his serial killings as the Nail Man as just a mere "urban legend" with the Nail Man itself being of supernatural origin, even though as we discover eventually, he's very much a real person, that being the priest himself.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: He bribes Seth Burroughs to cover up the evidence of his serial killings, which, of course, forces Halara to use their Postcognition to see his crimes in the past when someone first found them.
• Serial Killer: He turns out to be the Nail Man, and has killed at least 3 people by strangling them to death.
• Sinister Minister: A priest who moonlights as a mythic serial killer.
• Vigilante Execution: Essentially what the priest does as the Nail Man is to kill anyone whose name is written on a doll and left in the forest, as the targets are those who wronged the people who write their names down on the doll. The priest believes that exterminating evil is the only way to stop the corruption occurring in Kanai Ward, and he strangles them to death in order to make them suffer for their sins.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: He believes himself to be this at very least. He was only motivated to take the Nail Man's name because he believed it was the only way to put an end to the evil that festered unchecked inside Kanai Ward, and only went after those who he believed deserved to die.

Voiced by: Mami Fujita (Japanese), Shara Kirby (English)

The nun at Kanai Ward's church is one of the four suspects of the Nail Man case, being present at the scene where the Nail Man receives requests from Kanai Ward's residents. .

• Disability Alibi: She is cleared as potentially being the Nail Man because her dominant hand being broken prevents her from facilitating the mansion locked room, as she couldn't have thrown the key in from outside and held onto the string keeping the body up at the same time.
• Expy: She's very similar to another violent nun with the penchant of being rude, crass, and foul.
• Genre-Busting: She really works hard for her Death Metal Choir concept to take off, and her annoyance at Yuma is due to the latter's actions causing her to have less time to devote to it.
• I'll Kill You!: When Yuma confronts her during the investigation, which comes up again when she's about to be accused as a Mystery Phantom. "I'll kill your ass in the name of God!"
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Despite being outwardly very rude and aggressive, she does deeply care about the people of the city. Notably, after the priest dies and she is unable to deal with the influx of people wanting to share their worries, she makes Yuma go around and listen to the people rather than simply turning them away, suggesting that she does still feel they deserve to be heard and comforted. And if Yuma helps all the people well, she shows her delight at his work.
• No Name Given: She's only known as "the nun".
• Nun Too Holy: Subverted. She's barely conservative with her habit, she's foul-mouthed and foul-tempered, and prefers heavy metal to church hymns. But that's the extent of it, as she's otherwise a dedicated church follower.
• Red Herring: Despite being one of the suspects in the Nail Man killings, Yuma quickly dismisses her as the culprit due to her dominant hand having been broken for some time, so she couldn't have thrown the key through the door vent to facilitate the second murder's Locked Room Mystery.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: In her introduction, she warns Yuma that if he pisses her off, he'll regret it since her father's a higher-up at Amaterasu. Ultimately, nothing comes out of this.
• Taking Up the Mantle: Continues the priest's work as The Confidant after he dies from the Mystery Labyrinth, and even asks Yuma to do some of the work too.
• Tomboyish Voice: She has a deep, aggressive voice to match her aggressive personality.
• The Smurfette Principle: The only female churchgoer shown.

Voiced by: Daichi Hayashi (Japanese), Doug Stone (English)

The servant at Kanai Ward's church is one of the four suspects of the Nail Man case, being present at the scene where the Nail Man receives requests from Kanai Ward's residents.

• Disability Alibi: Well, for a definition of "disability". When the Mystery Phantom version of the priest tries to pin the killings on him, Yuma points out that The Servant is too large of a man to have slipped through the vent that let the killer escape the first killing.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: During one of the sidequests, he falls for an obvious scam and tries to buy a "magic potion" from a "wizard" that will supposedly make him strong enough to defend himself. If the correct dialogue option is chosen, Yuma tells him that true strength comes from the heart instead of the body, dissuading him from buying the potion and inspiring him to train both his heart and his body, leading to him becoming a protector of the weak.
• Gentle Giant: He's a large man but soft-spoken, with a secret passion for protecting the weak. His size is why Yuma realizes he can't be the Nail Man, since the first murder's Locked Room Mystery involved the culprit escaping through a narrow vent using nails as a makeshift stepladder.
• Magic Feather: The "magic potion" he seeks to make him strong is almost certainly a scam and does nothing, but if the wrong dialogue option in the above sidequest is chosen, he'll drink it and proceed to beat the mugger who accosted him half to death before going on the run as a fugitive. Given his size, he was probably strong enough to do this already, he just needed the confidence to do it.
• Nice Guy: He's a man who unlike the others, comes off as genuinely sweet, never being abusive once towards Yuma.
• No Name Given: He's only known as "the servant".
• Non-Standard Character Design: Is drawn with a more cartoonish face to emphasize how much of a gentle giant he is.
• Spanner in the Works: He was the one who found the burnt rope in the incinerator. Without this discovery, the Nail Man killings couldn't have been tied to church.

Voiced by: Eiji Hanawa (Japanese), Phillip Reich (English)

The worshipper at Kanai Ward's church is one of the four suspects of the Nail Man case, being present at the scene where the Nail Man receives requests from Kanai Ward's residents.

• Bait-and-Switch: Solving the third murder didn't provide any additional clues to the Nail Man's identity, because it wasn't perpetrated by the Nail Man. The worshipper did the third murder as a copycat crime.
• Color Motif: Blue. His hair is blue, he has blue eyes, and has a black uniform with blue patterns on it.
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: He always has a cigarette in his mouth and murdered a woman to act like the Serial Killer he idolized.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: He killed a random woman with a blow to the back of the head, then strangled her corpse to make it look like the Nail Man could have done it. It was meant to look like a Locked Room Mystery that anyone could have set up... Except that the cause of death for all the victims was never made public knowledge. He was first on the scene for the prior two murders, so the only other people who would have known the actual cause of death were the Peacekeepers and the Nail Man himself.
• Irony: He wanted to meet the Nail Man, and yet the Nail Man was actually the priest of the church he frequented, so he pretty much met him already without even realizing it.
• Jack the Ripoff: He was so obsessed with the Nail Man killings that he went and committed one of his own. Yuma realized he wasn't the actual Nail Man, since the rope ladder that allowed for the fourth murder's Locked Room Mystery was disposed of in the church incinerator, which can only be accessed by the church's clergy.
• Locked Room Mystery: His version was that the woman murdered in the Art Gallery was found dead in a room with only the door as a way in or out, since the nearby window is only a few inches big and has an awning that barely opens, all with the key found on a doll nailed to a painting. The trick is that after the murder, he set the painting up at the window, nailed the key into the doll, then made the painting tip over.
• Lone Wolf Boss: He is a copycat culprit that is acting solely on his own beliefs and terms like the Nail Man/priest he's copying and has no relevance to the Amaterasu Corporation at all.
• Mr. Exposition: His only role on-screen (off-screen, he serves as the copycat culprit of Chapter 1's case) outside of the Mystery Labyrinth is expositing about the previous locations of the Nail Man cases, and then, due to being the copycat culprit in one of them, dying from the Mystery Labyrinth afterward.
• Never the Obvious Suspect: Played with. He's the most knowledgeable about the Nail Man and first on the scene at all their killings. A genre-savvy player would think he couldn't possibly be the Nail Man, and they'd be right. But that doesn't mean he didn't kill anyone.
• No Name Given: Like everyone else who is associated with the church, he's only known as "the worshipper".

• Alas, Poor Villain: Waruna, Yoshiko, and Kurane's motive for murdering Karen was to avenge Aiko's murder, and as part of their alibi all three of them feign hostility to hide how they truly felt about each other until their deaths.
• Anti-Villain: Waruna, Yoshiko, and Kurane killed Karen to avenge Aiko's death six months ago, as the Peacekeepers were unwilling to convict Karen themselves. However, they had to hide their mutual friendship for Aiko from the other drama club members due to building an image of fake rivalry, requiring them to also conceal their crime.
• Death by Pragmatism: The reason Waruna, Yoshiko, and Kurane personally took it upon themselves to take revenge upon Karen by killing her was because the Peacekeepers wouldn't take care of the killer they knew to be responsible for Aiko's death themselves, forcing the trio to take action instead. This creates a Mystery Labyrinth revolving around their murder, leading to their deaths when Yuma reaps their souls.
• Everybody Did It: All three suspects in Karen's death conspired to murder her together.
• Face Death with Dignity: The trio of girls accept that they are going to die and let Yuma and Shinigami take them out.
• Friends All Along: Yoshiko, Waruna and Kurane are believed to be rivals with each other according to both Kurumi and Yuma's experiences when disguised as them. It turns out they were not only best friends, but best friends with Aiko, whom Karen, the case's victim, killed. The three of them sought revenge against Karen for killing Aiko.
• Graceful Loser: Yoshiko, Waruna, and Kurane, in contrast to most of the culprits Yuma would identify in the Mystery Labyrinth, all accept their defeat and unmasking as the culprits, explaining their motives and admitting to Yuma that they're all happy they don't have to pretend to be rivals anymore and could join Aiko in death.
• Leitmotif: "Castle of the Black Lilies" plays inside of the academy, the song being a wistful, ambient tune with harps and strings, representing the elegance of the academy itself.
• No Full Name Given: The students in Aetheria Academy don't have their surnames revealed, only being known by their given name.
• Non-Standard Character Design: With the exception of Kurumi, all the female characters from the school are drawn in a slightly different artstyle from the rest of the cast, appearing less like Rui Komatsuzaki's usual style and more Shoujo-esque.
• Poor, Predictable Rock: Each of the three girls can only use one defense against GOD Shinigami, so if you've countered one you've countered them all. The only time they pose a real challenge is the last segment when they all work together and thus can mix and match their defense patterns.
• Sailor Fuku: The academy's students wear a red and black sailor fuku as their default uniform, or alternatively, a windbreaker uniform.
• Sympathetic Murderer: Waruna, Yoshiko, and Kurane all plotted to murder Karen to avenge Aiko's murder, since Karen's father being a higher-up in Amatarasu meant the Peacekeepers refused to reopen the case and investigate Karen no matter what evidence or arguments the girls brought them, so she never would have been brought to justice otherwise. Kurumi notes that if detectives like Yuma had been in the city and investigated back when Aiko was killed, Karen's murder would probably not have happened.
• Together in Death: After explaining their reasons for the murder, Waruna, Yoshiko and Kurane's souls find solace in being able to show their friendship again, no longer having to hide it and embracing each other in a circle as Shinigami is about to reap their souls. Aiko's soul even silently joins them to give some comfort.
• Undead Child: Well, undead teenagers. Yoshiko, Waruna, Kurane and Aiko all return as homunculus zombies in Chapter 5 following their deaths in Aetheria Academy.

Aiko is a former student at Aetheria Academy, having been killed by an unknown assailant six months ago and her death covered up as a suicide.

• Bludgeoned to Death: She, or rather her homunculus, dies from being bludgeoned in the back of the head with a brick by an enraged Karen.
• Friendly Zombie: Ends up becoming a zombie because of her nature as a homunculus. Kurumi has an offscreen encounter with her in Chapter 5 where Aiko apparently retains enough of her senses to be able to talk with her and ultimately gives Kurumi her closure in the end. This encounter is also what reminds Kurumi about the blood test that Amaterasu had practically the whole population of Kanai Ward take.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Implied to have been this with Kurumi before her death.
• Inspirational Martyr: Her death and the subsequent coverup directly leads her three friends (Yoshiko, Waruna, Kurane) to conspire a revenge plot against her killer, Karen. Karen learns the hard way that you Don't Create a Martyr.
• Never Suicide: Even though Karen tried to frame her death as a suicide, nobody close to Aiko was convinced. It didn't take long for Waruna, Yoshiko, and Kurane to figure out what actually happend.
• Posthumous Character: She's been dead six months prior to the events of the story.
• The Voiceless: She never has any spoken lines, even in flashbacks, and her one conversation with Kurumi as a zombie is unseen.

Voiced by: Hitomi Ueda (Japanese), Lizzie Freeman (English)

Karen is a student at Aetheria Academy, described as being attractive but arrogant and willing to step on people to get ahead.

• Aerith and Bob: Japanese pronunciation aside, "Karen" sticks out as a surprisingly normal name, perhaps even more than "Seth".
• All Part of the Show: She dies from poison while acting out a scene involving poisoned drinks during a rehearsal play. Briefly, the audience does believe it's an act until it's confirmed to be real.
• Asshole Victim: She had killed Aiko just six months prior and gotten away with due to her family connections and the corrupt Peacekeepers. Is it any wonder her victim's three friends all conspired to kill her?
• Crime of Passion: Given the choice of using a brick in the garden to kill her, Yuma concludes that Karen had never planned to kill Aiko when they had met, and Karen had impulsively killed her after an argument. Though the fact that she framed it as a suicide and used her father's connections to get away with the murder still makes her unsympathetic.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: She seems to die rather quickly when the poison takes effect, but the blood she coughs up indicates that it's not a painless death.
• Fan Disservice: In the Mystery Labyrinth, before turning into a Mystery Phantom, she appears in a small, revealing outfit that shows off her shapely figure... but with the face she had when she died, blood and all. Even Desuhiko is horrified.
• Interface Spoiler: Should one attempt to read her character file immediately after the cutscene where she dies, the bottom image on the left (where profiles display a few pictures of said person) flat-out shows Karen's Mystery Phantom form. This completely spoils the upcoming encounter for the chapter's Mystery Labyrinth and the fact that Mystery Phantoms can even take on the forms of non-living people to begin with.
• The Killer Becomes the Killed: Aiko’s killer, Karen, is killed by Aiko’s three close friends in a revenge plot.
• Meaningful Name: Despite the name being pronounced the Japanese way, she definitely lives up to the Karen standard. She has a sense of entitlement towards the position of star actress so strong that a single heated argument with Aiko led to her envy getting the better of her and her killing Aiko. She comes from a privileged household, which allows her to dodge any accountability. She evokes contempt from those around her, which directly led to her death. And she has (dark) blonde hair and blue eyes, which is Japan's Phenotype Stereotype of white people.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: She got away with murdering Aiko despite her clumsy fake suicide set up because her father was a higher up at Amaterasu. Deconstructed in that one of Aiko's friends also had connections, which were used to exhume the evidence Karen tried to have buried.
• Teens Are Monsters: She killed another student practically the same age as her out of an impulsive envy and framed it as a suicide, then covered it up due to her connections to Amaterasu Corporation.
• A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: Well, covering up the murder after was no impulse, but the murder itself was. As a result, Aiko's three friends plotted revenge against Karen and killed her on-stage during a play rehearsal... and then those three friends also died as a result of the Mystery Labyrinth. And combined with Aiko's trigger death, Karen's murder led to five deaths in total.

Voiced by: Marika Kouno (Japanese), Suzie Yeung (English)

Waruna is a student at Aetheria Academy, described as being aggressive and determined to accomplish anything, as well as somewhat self-centered.

• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Her profile explains that she dislikes sympathy.
• The Dreaded: She has a very aggressive and intimidating personality, which is why many students try to avoid her at all costs.
• The Fashionista: Obsessed with makeup and looking good, to the point that she specifically stays in the dressing room during Yuma's investigation to apply makeup.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She tries to hide it, but for all her abrasive personality she did have three good friends; Yoshiko, Kurane, and Aiko.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The very aggressive red to Yoshiko's and Kurane's blue.
• When She Smiles: Gives a genuine, tearful smile during their confession to their motive behind murdering Karen, before they are to be reaped by Shinigami.

Voiced by: Azumi Waki (Japanese), Brianna Knickerbocker (English)

Yoshiko is an honor student at Aetheria Academy, described as being friendly and charismatic with everyone at the academy liking her.

• Beware the Nice Ones: Is amongst the most well-mannered of Chapter 2's Sympathetic Murderer trio (compared to an aggressive Waruna and a defensive Kurane) but is also the one who provides the poison used to kill Karen during the play. However, when Yuma is disguised as the other two suspects and interacts with Yoshiko, she is implied to be guilt-ridden over being responsible for leading the murder.
• Foreshadowing: After the initial shock of Karen's murder during the rehearsal play in Chapter 2, a wide shot of Yuma and Desuhiko watching over is given. However, Yoshiko is also shown standing right next to the stage on the left of that shot, and after she was seen sneaking around during the play, suggesting she did something from the audience that contributed to the murder. It turns out that Yoshiko was the one who gave Waruna the means to poison the victim, and did so from right next to the stage.
• Girls Love Stuffed Animals: Her profile states she likes teddy bears.
• The Heart: Of the four main theater club girls the story focuses on, she seems to be the most well-liked by the other club members, being mentioned as invaluable to the production of the current play. Most of the girls Yuma speaks to while disguised as her have positive things to say (with the exception of the other two culprits, Waruna and Kurane, who are understandably tense around her given what they've just done), and at least a couple seem to have outright crushes on her.
• Heroic BSoD: Although all three are stuck in this to an extent during Yuma's investigation, Yoshiko stands out more than her other two conspirators, as she's isolated herself in gloom and possibly guilt over what she'd done, in contrast to her warm, caring nature towards the theater club.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Just as Karen's father used his connections to cover up her crime, Yoshiko used her family connections to find things that were covered up about it.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Her profile mentions she dislikes syringes.

Voiced by: Azusa Tadokoro (Japanese), Laura Stahl (English)

Kurane is a student at Aetheria Academy, described as being emotionless and somewhat antagonistic, but also shy and a loner type.

• Beneath Notice: Several of the girls of the theater club don't even seem to acknowledge her presence in some cases, to the point that two gossiping girls who clam up the second anyone approaches them just keep chattering away if Yuma is disguised as Kurane. Yuma can only remark on how useful Kurane's nigh-invisibility has been for his investigation.
• Creepy Monotone: Speaks in an mysterious, almost disturbed tone of voice with almost no change in pitch. This is averted when Yuma is disguised as her, as he uses his normal nervous tones with the voice changer when replicating her voice, as opposed to copying the monotone. Also averted by the real Kurane when she gets defensive, which can be seen when Yuma interrogates her while disguised as Martina, and when her Mystery Phantom starts becoming agitated.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: When Yuma disguises himself as Kurane, both Waruna and Yoshiko act very dismissive and cold toward her. Most of the other girls don't even notice when she is close by, giving the impression that Kurane is completely friendless and not all that liked. The reveal behind the case proves that this assumption couldn't be further from the truth, though there are some implications that this was the case before she met Aiko, Waruna, and Yoshiko.
• Hiding Behind Your Bangs: Her right eye is covered by a long growth of her silver hair.
• The Quiet One: Isn't much of a talker, and when she does, she speaks very softly. Likely a result of being Beneath Notice.
• Shrinking Violet: Her Mystery Phantom suggests that she is this, as she gets far more riled up over being accused as the (singular) culprit of Karen's murder than the Mystery Phantoms of Waruna and Yoshiko.
• Signature Headgear: She wears a large red bow on the back of her head.
• Technophobia: Her profile states her dislike as "electronic gadgets".

Voiced by: Yui Kondo (Japanese), Dorothy Elias-Fahn (English)

Hana is a teacher at Aetheria Academy that Desuhiko Thunderbolt chooses to disguise as to sneak into the academy to investigate Aiko's death.

• Brick Joke: She shows up for real in Chapter 3 as part of a sidequest, having heard the rumours that there are two of her running around.
• Curtains Match the Window: Has green hair and green eyes.
• No Name Given: Her name is only revealed in one of the loading screen lore tidbits. In the actual game, she's just called "Teacher".
• Stalker with a Crush: Desuhiko continuing to act like Desuhiko while disguised as Hana results in the school's music teacher reciprocating "Hana's" advances and stalking the real one. Yuma manages to cover up Desuhiko's involvement by claiming the music teacher must have mistaken an expression of platonic affection as romantic. Hana plays along with the lie, even though she knows she said nothing of the sort.
• Tormented Teacher: Desuhiko impersonates her so he can investigate Aiko's death with Yuma, dealing with the consequences of a Stalker with a Crush as a result, and as revealed in the final Deduction Denouement, her original self oversaw the blood sampling of the academy's students and witnessed the homunculi kill those students as the homunculus clones of Kanai Ward's residents went on a murderous rampage.

• Even Beggars Won't Choose It: Despite Amaterasu Corporation making absolutely everything in Kanai Ward and the Resistance being forced to live in the slums, they refuse to accept anything actually from Amaterasu Corporation as a means to fight for their goals. Especially Margulaw. The safe Iruka uses for her gun may be an exception to this, but it's hinted that she's reluctant to use it too, especially when she finds out about the delay lock.
• Hates Rich People: The whole reason the Resistance was formed was because they despise Amaterasu Corporation's carelessness for the unending rain in Kanai Ward and how they, as the elite, look down on the poor. Well, everyone except for Icardi, that is, who is secretly willing to sink to the same lows.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: With the exception of Icardi, the other members are aggressive and won't hesitate to pick up a fight, but they genuinely believe in Shachi's ideals.
• No Full Name Given: The members of the Resistance don't have their surnames revealed, only being known by their given name.
• Put on a Bus: After you briefly encounter Servan, Margulaw, and Iruka at the beginning of Chapter 4, they’re never seen or even mentioned again.
• La Résistance: Fighting against Amaterasu Corporation in the slums. The concept is deconstructed when Icardi kills the leader for a bank heist to flee from the city due to disagreeing with the idealism in a resistance.
• Theme Naming: Aquatic animals in Japanese. We have Shachi as the orca (shachi), Icardi as the squid (ika), Servan as the mackerel (saba), Margulaw as the tuna (maguro), and Iruka as the dolphin (iruka).

Voiced by: Kenjiro Tsuda (Japanese), Edward Bosco (English)

Shachi is the leader of the resistance against Amaterasu Corporation.

• Ambiguous Situation: Just how much he knew about the homunculi. Uniquely among the Kanai Ward populace, he indicates he knows homunculi currently live (something even Yomi and Huesca are implied by Makoto to not be aware of), as he states they exist and are in Kanai Ward. He further says he knows more, but as he decides to only reveal this to Yuma as payment for completing the job, and he is murdered before he can give said payment, we never find out just how much he knew, if he was only aware of the mindless homunculi in the Restricted Area or if he perhaps even knew he himself and everyone else was a homunculus. His resurrected self is no help in the matter, as he is as mindless as most others.
• Boom, Headshot!: Icardi kills Shachi by shooting him through the temple at point-blank range.
• Death by Genre Savviness: On many levels. He starts the Resistance against Amaterasu Corporation because he knows that the corporation is a force of evil, unlike most of Kanai Ward's residents. This leads to the other members joining, including a faking Icardi. When the Peacekeepers discover the hideout and Yomi attempts to arrest him and his team, he escapes them by running up to the roof and locking the door so the Peacekeepers can't reach him... only for Icardi, who was planning to betray him, to be on the roof with him, which is what ends up killing him.
• Friend to All Children: Shachi mentions how he sees children victimized as a result of corruption and it’s one of the reasons he’s fighting against the Peacekeepers and Amaterasu Corp.
• Gentle Giant: He's one of the tallest characters, but also one of the kindest.
• The Killer Was Left-Handed: Inverted. It appears Shachi committed suicide when Yuma finds his body on the rooftop, but Yuma proves that it's actually murder because the killer put Shachi's gun in his right hand, not knowing that Shachi is left-handed and the gun was made to accommodate that.
• Large and in Charge: He leads the Resistance against Amaterasu, and is also the bulkiest and most muscular team member.
• Large Ham: Everything about him is very exaggerated, from his loud voice to his energetic expressions.
• Locked Room Mystery: An impossible crime variant, as with his death not being a suicide, it means the killer shot him and escaped from the several stories high roof in mere seconds, with the only door having Peacekeepers on the other side and the emergency stairs not only having a camera watching them, but also having Yuma on them further down. As it is revealed, his killer, Icardi, dove into a prearranged storm drain, covering his tracks with a bomb to bury the drain in rubble.
• Nice Guy: He's one of the kindest characters in the entire game, being portrayed much more of a father figure for Yuma than Yakou was.
• Sheep in Sheep's Clothing: Played straight twice in the same chapter.
  • Shachi gives the first impression of a friendly gentleman who wants to oppose the corruption of Amaterasu, but there are hints that he's a terrorist that will kill Yuma if he refuses. When Shachi is given a gun, Yuma and Shinigami think he's going to kill the former, but he just simply asks Yuma for help with a task in exchange for information while respecting his decision not to join the resistance.
  • While it appears that Shachi set Yuma up to be framed for terrorism and committed suicide, Margulaw confirms that Shachi isn't the type of person who would take his own life, and Yuma comes to same conclusion because Shachi doesn't seem to be the type to be rash enough to kill himself without making sure that the Peacekeepers have him cornered. When Icardi tries to claim that he did all of his crimes for the sake of the Resistance and that Shachi agreed to die for it, Yuma doesn’t buy it for a second because Shachi has confirmed to him personally that he prefers to resolve conflict without violence.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: He was a jolly old fellow who, despite leading the Resistance against Amaterasu, enforced a strict no-kill policy, as doing otherwise would make them no better than their enemies. And despite ordering Yuma's kidnapping, he doesn't hurt him and even lets him go after Yuma refuses to join them. What more needs to be said about his life expectancy in this kind of story?

Voiced by: Kentarō Itō (Japanese), Ezra Weisz (English)

Icardi is the deliveryman of the resistance against Amaterasu Corporation.

• All for Nothing: He planned to kill Shachi, frame Yuma for terrorism, and rob the bank to fund his escape from the city. Killing Shachi created a Mystery Labyrinth with his soul at the center. Getting Yuma involved in the mess pushed him into a corner and forced him into it, resulting in his own death. Even if he had managed to get away with everything, the second he stepped out of Kanai Ward and into the sunlight, he would have frenzied and eventually dropped dead, unable to enjoy any of his ill-gotten gains.
• Asshole Victim: Yuma and Shinigami kill him via Mystery Labyrinth, but considering exactly why they had to kill him in the first place (betraying and killing Shachi due to his cynicism, framing Yuma as a terrorist, and siccing the Peacekeepers on him), there is no reason to sympathize with him by the end.
• Bait the Dog: When he introduces himself to Yuma, he apologizes to him for the rough kidnapping, thus giving off the initial impression of being not too bad of a person. He ultimately turns out to be worse, being a shameless traitor who's willing to throw the Resistance under the bus so long as he alone benefits from it.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: When introducing himself to Yuma, Icardi acts friendly towards him and finds him to be impressive for being a detective, even apologizing for being rough on him when kidnapping him. Not only is he quick to turn on him as soon as he disagrees, he's deceiving the entire Resistance, as he was planning to murder Shachi, then frame Yuma as a terrorist and make him his scapegoat to distract the Peacekeepers.
• Character Tic: When outraged, though it's mostly shown in the Mystery Labyrinth only, Icardi balls up his fists and stomps around as he glares at who he's talking to.
• Chekhov's Skill: It’s been explained to Yuma that he's an accomplished swimmer and diver. This is how Yuma identifies him as Shachi's killer, since the killer would have to be a skilled diver in order to escape the rooftop by jumping into the flooded storm drain.
• The Cynic: Icardi hated Shachi’s idealism and saw fighting the Peacekeepers as a lost cause, so he conspired to rob the banks and escape Kanai Ward.
• Death by Materialism: His murder plot entirely revolves around stealing large amounts of money from Kanai Ward's banks and trying to get as much money as he can to escape, and it creates a Mystery Labyrinth that eventually results in his death. Nothing but materialism is what killed this man. Halara even points it out following said death.
• Didn't Think This Through: His Mystery Phantom tries to argue that the flooding incident was Shachi's idea and that exposing the truth would mean the Resistance's struggle was pointless. Putting aside the fact that Mystery Phantoms deliberately try to bury the truth, Yuma had spoken with Shachi personally and knew the man didn't want to use violence of any kind, which would include flooding. Yuma was so enraged he put aside all pretense of guilt over causing Icardi's death and vowed to expose the real truth without hesitation.
• Dirty Coward: He has no problem leaving anyone to die so long as he comes out with treasure.
• Failed a Spot Check: Icardi sees Shachi take the revolver from Iruka with his left hand for himself, yet still makes the mistake of thinking Shachi is right-handed when framing his death as a suicide.
• False Friend: Became one to the Resistance after he grew tired of Shachi's idealism and became disillusioned with the city. He uses them to rob Kanai Ward's banks and then flee to the outside world. He ends up murdering Shachi and framing Yuma for the alleged "terrorist attacks", becoming the culprit of Chapter 3.
• Fatal Flaw: Cynicism, greed, and shortsightedness. He believed Shachi's ideals would've meant nothing, so he decided to murder him without remembering which is his dominant hand, and stole money leaving evidence pointing to him.
• Faux Affably Evil: He pretends he's onboard with Shachi's ideals, but will betray him if he believes he has the right cards.
• Fish People: His Mystery Phantom takes form that vaguely resembles a hulking fish-like humanoid being in a diving gear.
• Foreshadowing: Icardi repeatedly snarks about Shachi's ideals and even says that money is better than "claiming you'll fight but not actually doing it" before Yuma's given the assignment to set up surveillance around Kanai Ward from Shachi himself. This would obviously foreshadow his materialistic murder plot in the second half of Chapter 3.
• Hate Sink: Unlike many culprits who are either sympathetic or have redeeming features, Icardi has few to no redeeming qualities to his character. The only thing he is motivated by is escaping the city he despises by getting safes of money from the bank. He does it by flooding part of the city after Yuma planted the bombs intending to frame him as a terrorist. He even killed Shachi when on the rooftop to frame Yuma as the culprit. Even after being outed, he still deflects the blame from himself, instead choosing to blame the city, the Peacekeepers and the pointlessness of fighting them for his faults. Overall, he is one of, if not the least sympathetic culprit in the entire game, with even his death being completely well deserved. It's no wonder why Yuma shows no hesitation in defeating him in the Mystery Labyrinth, even though he knows full well it will result in his death.
• Hypocrite: Icardi's Mystery Phantom reveals that his reason for killing Shachi and framing Yuma as a terrorist, and constantly ratting him out to keep the plot going, was due to hating that the Peacekeepers made Kanai Ward into a horrible place to live in, and he had lost hope that peace could be brought back, something of which Shachi promoted constantly. Despite this, his whole scheme revolves around using the blind corruption of the Peacekeepers themselves to serve his agenda by using the secondary plot of framing Yuma as a terrorist to distract them from Icardi's bank robbery scheme by flooding one of Kanai Ward's districts, in turn making him no better than the despots the Peacekeepers are.
• It Is Beyond Saving: He believes that the Peacekeepers (AKA Yomi Hellsmile) have made Kanai Ward such a terrible place to live in that the only option is to leave it behind. However, he wants to escape alone rather than bring anyone else along with him and is willing to frame people and commit murder for it as well as flooding an entire district, so he is hypocritically making the city's living conditions even worse.
• It's All About Me: He selfishly prioritizes saving his own skin by fleeing Kanai Ward over helping the Resistance bring down the Peacekeepers' tyrannical rule, not caring of the others suffering under their rule.
• Jerk Jock: Him being a professional athlete swimmer with a bad attitude who killed a guy in a ploy to escape from Kanai Ward, he's certainly one of these.
• Karmic Death: Yuma and Shinigami kill him - Yuma being fully committed to doing it when he attempts to lie about Shachi's intentions as a Mystery Phantom - after he frames Yuma as a terrorist and encourages the Peacekeepers to chase after him as a distraction.
• Knight of Cerebus: While the previous three cases had semi-sympathetic culprits, Icardi stands out as irredeemable and after his case, things get much darker.
• Lone Wolf Boss: While Chapter 0's culprit is a hitman hired by Yomi Hellsmile of the Peacekeepers, Chapter 2's culprits are trying to avenge the death of their friend that Amaterasu helped cover up, the main goal of Chapter 4's culprit is outright murdering the head researcher of Amaterasu Corporation, and Chapter 5's culprit is Amaterasu's CEO, Icardi is working solely for himself and isn't even opposing the corporation, outright admitting that he doesn't believe in any opposition at all.
• Mad Bomber: His plan to escape Kanai Ward involves bombing specific areas and using the chaos to pull off a series of bank heists in order to set himself for a new life outside the city.
• Manipulative Bastard: It's subtle, but he tells Shachi to carry the revolver Iruka gave him around on his person for Shachi's convenience. This would later turn out to be to Icardi's convenience, as he would later take the revolver from Shachi and place it in his (right) hand to fake his suicide after betraying and murdering him.
• More Hateable Minor Villain: Makoto Kagutsuchi is the CEO of Amaterasu Corporation and has been hiding by far the most evil thing in the story, that being that Kanai Ward's residents are homunculi who killed their original selves, which is the source of Amaterasu's control over Kanai Ward, but he is an extremist and sympathetic despite that. Yomi Hellsmile is a psychopath, plain and simple, but that can be attributed to his position as an Amaterasu Corporation agent more than anything as his position as a company member allows him to do the terrible things that he does to begin with. On the other hand, Icardi is a petty average citizen of Kanai Ward willing to let everyone else suffer under Makoto and Yomi's rule and is basically no more than a despicable coward willing to take advantage of and kill innocent people just so he can escape on his own, even discounting the "homunculus replacement" aspect of his character arc.
• Never My Fault: His Mystery Phantom has the gall to claim one of his teammates could've killed Shachi despite each of them having evidence to prove their innocence. And when his soul is on its way to be reaped by Shinigami, he plays the victim card and deflects the blame from himself, claiming that it's the entire city that's in the wrong, not him.
• Non-Standard Character Design: He has long and pointy ears, which combined with his eyes, make him look like an elf.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: When cornered, he tries to claim that the flooding of Marunomon District was a message to the city's elite and that Shachi agreed to die so the Peacekeepers could be framed for it. In truth, he was just trying to rob a bank and flee the city.
• Obviously Evil: His face is nothing short of sinister and gets pretty violent when nothing goes his way.
• Playing the Victim Card: After being outed as the culprit, Icardi's Mystery Phantom still continues defending himself and excusing his actions by claiming that the city of Kanai Ward and the Peacekeepers are to blame for everything, and that Shachi's cause wouldn't have resolved anything, refusing to acknowledge that anything he did was morally wrong.
  "It's this city that's wrong... This rotten place..."
• Rapid-Fire "Shut Up!": When he is accused of betraying Shachi's ideals by flooding the city by Yuma, he desperately deflects his arguments with a repeating "Shut up!" before his true motive is revealed.
• Reused Character Design: He looks near identical to Kazuichi Soda from Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair.
• Revealing Skill: Yuma is able to identify Icardi as the culprit because the only way to escape from the roof after killing Shachi was by jumping off it, and the only way to safely land was through water, allowing him to make the connection and conclude the culprit was able to swim and swim confidently, the only Resistance member having that ability being Icardi.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here!: Icardi hated living in Kanai Ward and saw the fight against the Peacekeepers as a lost cause, so he conspired to rob the banks and use the money to set a new life outside the city. This also leads him to murder Shachi and frame Yuma for terrorism as part of his plan.
• Smokescreen Crime: Everything he did with framing Yuma as a terrorist, murdering Shachi, and flooding Marunomon District was all in service of plundering bank safes to fund him getting the hell out of Kanai Ward.
• The Sociopath: A much lesser example than Yomi, but Icardi is clearly incapable of empathy or understanding people and is only concerned for himself. This makes him stand out in how unsympathetic he really is as one of the story's murder culprits.
• Sore Loser: His profile states his dislike as "losing". This seems to carry over to the main story when his Mystery Phantom is furious over being exposed as killing Shachi for self-serving reasons than to aid the Resistance.
• Treachery Is a Special Kind of Evil: Yuma is noticeably outraged when he finds out that Icardi betrayed and murdered Shachi, to the point that he has no problems exposing the truth with the Mystery Labyrinth despite knowing that this will kill Icardi.
• With Us or Against Us: Says this word-for-word when Yuma tries to leave the Resistance to find the other detectives.
• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: His Mystery Phantom's extremely flimsy counterargument when Yuma identifies him as the culprit, claiming that flooding the city was to "unite the rich and the poor" and that it's "what Shachi would've wanted." Yuma has none of it.

Voiced by: Shota Hayama (Japanese), Derek Stephen Prince (English)

Servan is the tech manager of the resistance against Amaterasu Corporation.

• Ambiguously Related: He and Iruka have the same hair and eye colour as well as the same birthday, which seems to hint they're related, possibly twins.
• Anti-Villain: He was with Icardi, but he genuinely had no clue what his actual motives were and is guilty about indirectly being involved in Shachi's death.
• Butt-Monkey: Poor guy is put through the wringer throughout the chapter and it's not entirely his fault. Fortunately, he manages to patch things up with his surviving teammates.
• Bystander Syndrome: Whereas Iruka, Icardi, and Margulaw act aggressive toward Yuma when he has doubts about joining the Resistance, Servan acts indifferent toward the tense scene, wanting them to take it outside so that none of his machines get accidentally damaged.
• Conveniently Timed Distraction: After Guillaume captures him as the true culprit's accomplice and attempts to give him and the dead Icardi over to Yomi, Yomi, Bad Boss as usual, scolds her out of rage due to Makoto letting the NDA get away, allowing the two Peacekeepers to be distracted during their argument and giving an opening for Servan to escape and hide away from the Peacekeepers in the Resistance hideout.
• Curtains Match the Window: Has dark blue hair and dark blue eyes.
• Forced into Evil: Icardi threatens him into building the bombs, though Servan is kept in the dark about his plot to kill Shachi and rob the bank by flooding the district. Icardi later has him accompany him during his bank robbery in the flooded district, only for both men to be caught by Yakou and the Master Detectives with him.
• Mission Control: He instructs Yuma on where to set up the cameras when helping the Resistance out on spying on the Peacekeepers. It goes downhill when Icardi begins his plan and the cameras were secretly bombs.
• My God, What Have I Done?: He's regretful over being indirectly involved in Shachi's death, though fortunately his surviving teammates were willing to forgive him.
• Non-Standard Character Design: He looks nothing like most of the other characters of the game, sporting a set of protruding lips and a blue afro.
• The Smart Guy: The brains in the Resistance and the one in charge of all of their machine-related matters. He also set up their surveillance system that helps them keep an eye on the events all over Kanai Ward.
• Welcome Back, Traitor: Although Icardi coerced him into building the bombs and kept him in the dark about his plot to murder Shachi and commit a bank heist, Servan still betrayed the Resistance by doing so. Margulaw admits to Yuma that while he did consider turning him over to the Peacekeepers, he chose to help him go into hiding instead because he still saw the members of the resistance as his family.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Due to a bullying incident as a kid in which he almost drowned, he has an intense fear of the water, which clears him as the murderer since there's no way he would have ever escaped the crime scene by diving into water like the culprit did.

Voiced by: Tomomichi Nishimura (Japanese), Jake Eberle (English)

Margulaw is the benefactor of the resistance against Amaterasu Corporation.

• The Alibi: He has an airtight one for Shachi's murder, clearing him of suspicion.
• Cool Old Guy: While a little grumpy, he's overall fair and helps his group greatly.
• Everyone Has Standards: Margulaw states that as much as he wants revenge on Amaterasu, he would never manipulate anyone to do the dirty work for him. According to him, revenge must be taken with your own hands or it’s meaningless.
• Frame-Up: Was framed by the Peacekeepers for embezzlement.
• Grumpy Old Man: To be fair, he's been bitter with Amaterasu having a hand with his family's murders.
• Revenge: Used to work in accounting for Amaterasu, but was accused of embezzlement, which caused his whole family to be falsely arrested. His family later became sick and died in jail, which left him as the sole survivor, and now he wants to destroy Amaterasu.
• The Team Benefactor: When Yuma interrogates him about Shachi's murder, he explains that he provides the funding and resources for the Resistance as proof of his innocence.
• Team Dad: Implied to be this after Shachi's death.

Voiced by: Chinatsu Akasaki (Japanese), Karen Strassman (English)

Iruka is the weapons designer of the resistance against Amaterasu Corporation.

• Action Girl: She loves weapons and won't hesitate to jump into a fight.
• Ambiguously Related: She has the same hair colour, eye colour, and birthday as Servan, which hints they're related.
• Ax-Crazy: Subtle, but it's there. She loves fighting and will happily involve herself in battles without any regard for anyone else.
• Blood Knight: She is willing to kill anyone who disagrees with the Resistance's cause just for the exhilaration of using her weapons on someone, but she is ultimately a heroic person despite that since she is doing it to fight Amaterasu Corporation, and she tones it down when Shachi dies because of this obsession.
• Broken Smile: Her smiling sprite (pictured) is one of these.
• Butt-Monkey: A non-physical example, but judging from her very first words, she was not winning the card game she was playing against the other Resistance members prior to Yuma's arrival.
• Creepy Red Herring: Iruka is a sadistic Gun Nut who repeatedly stresses her preference for violence over Shachi's peaceful methods. Then he turns up dead. It turns out her gun obsession actually clears her of the crime, as she made his custom left-handed revolver, and therefore wouldn't have placed it in the wrong hand if she'd killed him.
• Curtains Match the Window: Has dark blue hair and dark blue eyes.
• Everyone Has Standards: Iruka may be willing to kill anyone who gets in her way, and has no issues using people as targets for her gun obsessions, but she isn't treacherous like Icardi, as her Mystery Phantom claims.
• Expy: A Blood Knight with a ponytail and fairly revealing outfit that is much more insane than the rest of her male teammates with a fair knowledge of weapons? Hmm…
• Gun Nut: She's absolutely obsessed with firearms, and invites Yuma to join her for target practice. When Yuma explains that he's never held a gun and therefore probably wouldn't make a good shooting partner, she clarifies that she wasn't asking him to be her shooting partner, she was asking him to be the target. She starts to downplay this trope after the Resistance collapses, particularly after she receives Shachi's final gift — a toy gun, with a message from Shachi emphasizing the symbolism of it not being able to kill anyone — and vowing to try to do things more the way he would have wanted.
• Intimate Marks: Has a tattoo on her left breast.
• The Lad-ette: Iruka is violent, aggressive, eager to fight other people who challenge her, and isn't one for tact.
• My God, What Have I Done?: She's regretful over accidentally kicking off the case that would have her boss dead.
• Sadist: Iruka very clearly prefers to use violent tactics for things to go her way.
• The Smurfette Principle: The only female Resistance member.
• Thousand-Yard Stare: Her default expression invokes this, and combined with her unsteady, strained speech patterns gives the impression that she is not exactly fully stable mentally.
• Tomboyish Ponytail: Naturally, she has a neat ponytail to define her tomboyishness.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Iruka in her sidequest has now calmed down and tries to do things as Shachi would've asked.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: She was first gifted a gun on her birthday when she was four, and continued to get one every year after that, each one bigger than the last, with her promised next birthday gift being an anti-tank cannon.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: "Unwitting" is an understatement. Iruka creating the gun for Shachi allowed Icardi to falsify his murder of Shachi as a suicide, albeit with the wrong hand, since the revolver is for a left-handed user, and Icardi used Shachi's right hand, as well as to frame Yuma as a terrorist, causing all of the chaos in Chapter 3.

The Unified Government is a governing body comprised of every world leader.

They are suspected of aiding in Kanai Ward's present day issues by the detectives investigating the city. The first evidence of them being involved in suspicious activity is when Kurumi Wendy reveals that the homunculus research that Amaterasu Corporation is apparently involved in is why they approved of Kanai Ward's isolation.

• Apocalyptic Gag Order: The UG covered up evidence of their homunculus research in an attempt to create an immortal army of them from the world because the population would no longer have faith in them if they knew otherwise. Makoto threatened to release it to the public because they threatened to flatten Kanai Ward when Amaterasu's research ended up in catastrophe, but the UG doubled down and let Makoto isolate Kanai Ward instead, as to prevent any outsiders from entering the city, let alone knowing it even exists.
• Didn't Think This Through: Their attempt to create an immortal army of homunculi is halted because of their creation of Makoto, a perfect clone of the WDO's Number One, which was intelligent enough to become self-aware enough of what it is to realize what conspiracy the UG was partaking in too. The clone worked, but was intelligent enough to also be an unrestrained, independent schemer, and the first thing that clone did was turn their own research back on them as a means to blackmail them into isolating Kanai Ward.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Alongside Dr. Huesca, they are also responsible for the homunculus research that causes Makoto to do what he does as the main antagonist. However, they have much more direct influence on the plot, as the UG are the ones who created him in the first place.
• Hate Sink: As a governmental organization, they're not very likable even with their minor characterization, being the ones who instigated the homunculus research that causes all of the game's plot-driving disasters and opting to cover everything up for their own reputation no matter the aftermath of such a thing. The research only began for the sake of a powerful army and nothing more. They're basically the equivalent of Hope's Peak Steering Committee only much worse.
• Hoist by Their Own Petard: Pretty much the entire plot of the game happens because of their creation of Makoto Kagutsuchi, their homunculus clone of Number One, turning their own research back on them through blackmail.
• Karma Houdini: Besides Makoto's blackmailing (and even then that only provided them with more opportunity to cover up their conspiracy), they never suffer any consequences for their homunculus research and hiring Amaterasu Corporation to conduct it alongside them and instigating everything in the story, from Kanai Ward's destruction to Amaterasu Corporation's takeover and Makoto's isolation, among many other things. Even when Makoto tells the homunculi about said research that they kept hidden the entire time to protect their reputation (presumably as part of his long off-screen confession), the citizens seem to not care as a result of Makoto's negotiations for them to send imports over to the city.
• The Man Behind the Man: They are the ones responsible for the bad things that happen in Kanai Ward by proxy of pushing the Amaterasu Corporation to do homunculus research as competition against their own, being the reason Dr. Huesca conducted his research in desperation to catch up, the ones who created Makoto using Number One's DNA in the first place (and allowed him his position as CEO), which by proxy also makes them responsible for Makoto bringing the detectives to the city and instigating the game's plot, complied with the city's isolation in exchange for keeping Makoto quiet about their research, and are the ones who threatened to destroy Amaterasu Corporation in the backstory, which also urged Makoto to blackmail them into simply isolating the city from the rest of the world instead.
• One World Order: Run by a parliament consisting of elected representatives from each ward or region.
• Skeleton Government: We don't see or hear much of how they are run. They apparently have military ambitions, but the UG are also way more benevolent and democratic than Amaterasu, according to the people who resist the latter's corporate rule. But after the failure of Amaterasu's homunculus research, the UG initially intended to destroy Kanai Ward to get rid of the homunculi until Makoto convinced them to settle for isolating it.
• Slave to PR: Unusually for a government with the amount of power they are implied to wield, they are evidently very dependent on staying in the good graces of the average citizen. In particular the consequences of the inhumane elements of their homunculi experiments becoming public knowledge are so dangerous for them that Makoto (the result of said experiments) can blackmail the entire world government with just the threat of exposing them. While not the only reason they cooperate with him (it is cheaper for them to let him handle things in Kanai Ward, and he is able to assure them the homunculi won't be a threat to the rest of the world), loss of public faith in them seems to be the biggest concern.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: They were planning to flatten Kanai Ward and permanently erase the defective homunculi created by Dr. Huesca once their homunculus research went awry. Makoto Kagutsuchi and his blackmail using said research prevented them from doing this.

The Qs are spherical and cubic non-malicious pink beasts that roam around the Mystery Labyrinth, constantly having stuck-out tongues. Made from the Mystery Labyrinth itself, they gather together to create Mystery Phantoms that oppose Yuma Kokohead and Shinigami while they search for the truth, replicating whoever is trying to hide it in the real world..

• Eat the Camera: Sometimes, as part of transitioning between scenes in a labyrinth, a Q appears, and the camera zooms into its mouth.
• Fusion Dance: Qs gather together and transform into Mystery Phantoms.
• Mascot Mook: Are the primary face of opposition in the game while in Mystery Labyrinths.
• Meaningful Name: They are either spherical or cube-shaped, with a long tongue hanging out at an angle, making them look like upper-case letter Qs.
• Non-Malicious Monster: As Shinigami points out, while they do attack you as Mystery Phantoms and construct the puzzles and traps in a Mystery Labyrinth, they have no will of their own - Phantoms are copies of people trying to derail investigation completely independently of them, and the puzzles are aping the mysteries in the real world; they're echoing everyone with actual agency. The basic form of Qs seem to like Fubuki somehow.

The homunculi are supposed "immortal monsters" that are first revealed to exist in Kanai Ward by Kurumi Wendy after Yuma Kokohead solves the Aetheria Academy case, being the apparent reason that the Unified Government approved of Kanai Ward's isolation.

• Alien Blood: The only physical way to tell the difference between a homunculus and the human their DNA sample came from is the fact that homunculi have neon pink blood. Mystery Phantom Makoto suggests that the pink blood was to differentiate the homunculi from their original human selves.
• Artificial Human: The homunculi in the case of this game are basically exact clones that use the DNA of an original human sample, with every aspect of their human self being replicated onto the copy exactly. The only difference is their pink blood, being unable to encounter sunlight, and reverting to a zombified state upon being killed.
• Blessed with Suck: Being able to heal from any injury, even fatal ones, is pretty great! Doing so without your mind intact—meaning you'll probably wind up as a mindless zombie—as well as having a severe ultraviolet allergy that could turn you into a murderous monster at any time is... less great. Less restricting but still notable, they cannot sustain themselves on normal food, requiring either human flesh or specially formulated food at least once every two days to stay comfortable.
• Born as an Adult: The homunculus clones of all of the characters who receive one are born the same age as their original selves.
• Came Back Wrong: All of Kanai Ward's dead over the past three years to the present day when they were first replaced with the defective homunculi that have Resurrective Immortality all end up as mindless flesh-hungry zombies upon revival.
• Clone Degeneration: Of the Flawed Prototype variety. Aside from Makoto, who is a clone of the protagonist and functions perfectly, the homunculus clones of Kanai Ward are outright dubbed "defective" by Dr. Huesca himself, since unlike Makoto, they can't go out into sunlight, or they go on a murderous rampage until they eventually die, and when they die, they revive as mindless flesh-hungry zombies.
• Death of Personality: After they die, they are after a day resurrected into usually mindless zombies that no longer resemble their original selves. The "lucky" ones retain some vestiges of their former selves, some ability to speak, etc. but are still noted to not really be the same as the people they were before. Shinigami notably remarks that despite having resurrected they do not really "feel" alive to her, and she later refers to them as dead despite their bodies still moving about.
• Eat the Evidence: Unwittingly so. The meat buns that the residents of Kanai Ward eat to sustain themselves contain human flesh from the death row inmates that Makoto Kagutsuchi has been kidnapping as part of the story’s Ontological Mystery, essentially meaning they’re accidentally disposing of the only external evidence of his kidnappings that the detectives would otherwise have, if not for Makoto sending Yuma to the restricted area where the meat buns are made.
• Everyone Has Standards: As Kurumi states in the epilogue, the people of Kanai Ward quicky lost their love for meat buns once they learned what they're actually made of.
• Evil Doppelgänger: All of the homunculi seem to be naturally inclined towards villainy, compared to the original counterparts that they were cloned from (aside from the characters who are villainous regardless of whether they're defective homunculi or not), since the defects in Kanai Ward lapse into violence once subjected to sunlight, a flaw that led to them slaughtering their original selves by eating them down to their bones like mindless zombies, and Makoto Kagutsuchi, who is the homunculus clone of the heroic Yuma Kokohead/Number One, is the exception to this rule as he is a perfect homunculus. Despite being the exception, he is still obviously a villain of his own accord (unlike the defects) and makes the extremes he will go in said villainy clear after the events of Chapter 4. Regarding the "killing the original self" ordeal, Makoto tries to do the same thing to Number One in Chapter 5 as the final determiner of Makoto's plan to permanently hide Kanai Ward's truth, except he actually has the conscious ability to back down from the plan and does it while fully in control of himself, unlike the others.
• Failsafe Failure: What the defects' ineffectual Resurrective Immortality amounts to. Since their revival powers cost their intelligence, dying and then reviving turns them into a mindless zombie, as opposed to reviving them like normal.
• Flesh-Eating Zombie: What they become after resurrecting, since they lose their intelligence in the process of dying. There are few exceptions, but the majority turn out like this. It is at first believed that the Nocturnal Detective Agency get Devoured by the Horde due to this trait of theirs, though they turn out to have never killed them in the first place.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The homunculi are the motive for Makoto Kagutsuchi and why he's an extremist for Kanai Ward, which makes them greater than Dr. Huesca to some capacity. Albeit, not by much, since Huesca is still the one who created the defects and accidentally did so as part of his own agenda.
• Hero Killer: Subverted. When searching through the factory in Chapter 5, Yuma comes across the remains of what is believed to be the Master Detectives of the Nocturnal Detective Agency (Desuhiko, Halara, Fubuki, Vivia), being eaten alive and Stripped to the Bone during research on the homunculi and Kanai Ward. It turns out that it was Makoto framing the defective zombie homunculi and they didn't actually kill them after all. Makoto simply locked them up in Kanai Tower when they were no longer useful.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: A significant chunk of the game consists of the detectives fruitlessly searching for information on homunculi, all while every single person around them actually is one, and all the original residents of Kanai Ward have been long gone. Yomi and Dr. Huesca, along with seemingly the WDO and the UG, are unaware the defects in Kanai Ward are the city's mystery itself, and are the cause of Makoto creating said mysteries in regards to keeping them protected. Everyone eventually learns the truth in the end when Makoto confesses everything about them upfront.
• Horror Hunger: The defective homunculi require a specific combination of nutrients in order to keep their bodies functioning, a combination they instinctively can recognize and happens to be readily accessible in human flesh. Those that have resurrected into zombies will instinctively and ravenously attack humans if they have gone at all hungry, though they will still prioritize non-living food with the right nutrients if it is available, and the degree of aggression scales with the level of hunger (with even hungry ones often not attacking unless a human interacts with them first). The defective homunculi with still intact minds seem to have their human values and morals block any recognition that they desire human flesh and thus their hunger is normally no danger to people, but the instinct for the nutrients remains and will be directed at what their minds accept as a "safe" food (upon finding out the meat buns were made of human flesh, their desire for them vanished and attached to the specialized ramen that offered the same benefits). Judging by Kurumi's example, they require some amount of this nutrient combination at least once every two days. What results if they are unable to feed like this is unclear, and given what happens with resurrected homunculi who go hungry nobody seems to want to find out.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Turns out the meat buns they were eating the whole time contained human flesh from real people, of whom were killed and mass produced into a food product by Makoto Kagutsuchi. Who knew? The homunculi themselves were unaware of this, and once they were informed of this by Makoto after Chapter 5, they obviously stopped doing this.
• Inconspicuous Immortal: An unwitting example. They appear to be mortal humans at first glance due to continuing to live like humans, but they are actually artificial humanoids with Resurrective Immortality and everyone except Makoto is unaware of this. The defective homunculi in Kanai Ward revive as mindless zombies upon "dying", which would break the illusion of mortality, so Makoto conspires for them to be dumped into Kanai Ward's restricted area to prevent this from being witnessed.
• Kill and Replace: The defective homunculi which escaped from the lab three years ago performed an accidental version of this, slaughtering and devouring the original population of Kanai Ward and then- when Makoto's rain cloud generator restored their sanity- having no memory the slaughter happened and slipping into the roles of their DNA donors while trying to ignore how wrong the whole situation felt.
• Mental Shutdown: When the defective homunculi in Kanai Ward are killed, they lose their intelligence and turn into mindless Flesh-Eating Zombies, with some being able to partially retain their intelligence enough to communicate as Yuma discovers.
• Missing Time: The Blank Week, an incident where an entire week passed and everyone in Kanai Ward forgot what happened during it. In truth, all of them had only been alive for about a week and spent it killing the humans in the city due to sunlight driving them berserk before Makoto put a stop to it. The reason they thought time had jumped forward was due to sharing their human counterpart's memories. Not knowing what happened, they decided to simply move on with "their" lives and made the subject a taboo matter.
• Our Homunculi Are Different: In this setting they are a product of fantastical science rather than magic, specifically clones grown straight from blood samples with no need for a surrogate womb or other typical real world cloning techniques. They appear identical to the person they were cloned from, matching their age, personality and memories up to the point that the blood sample was taken (though their blood is intentionally made a bright pink to make it possible to distinguish them from normal humans). Through unknown means they also possess Resurrective Immortality (though in almost all cases going through this process still effectively results in the mental and spiritual death of the person they were), and they do not age past adulthood or (for those who are already adults) past the physical age their genetic donor was at the time of the sample was taken. The lack of any babies in Kanai Ward also implies the homunculi are sterile. Unintentionally, almost all homunculi also suffer from a fantastical version of an allergy to UV light as well as a need for a specific combination of nutrients (the same found in human flesh) to keep their bodies functioning, and in turn they instinctively seek out a source for these nutrients.
• Resurrected Murderer: Fake Zilch, the priest and worshiper, Yoshiko, Waruna, Kurane and an unseen Karen, Icardi, and Yakou are resurrected as homunculus zombies and dumped into the restricted area after Shinigami reaps their souls, returning in Chapter 5 as they chase after Yuma and Kurumi. The only completely Friendly Zombie is Yakou.
• Resurrective Immortality: The homunculi are supposed to have this, with the idea being that, following a fatal wound, the homunculus will wake up 24 hours later with their bodies and minds fully restored. Unfortunately, the ones inhabiting Kanai Ward only got the physical healing part down. At best their resurrected state has a vestige of their original mind/personality and limited speech, with most not even having that. The UG's initial plan to destroy Kanai Ward and the homunculi with it implies that their regeneration has limits, i.e. there needs to be enough body left to regenerate.
• Super-Strength: When berserk the homunculi are implied to possess some level of this, given how even as a mob it should have not been possible for them with human strength to force open the sturdy metal doors that kept them contained in the secret lab, let alone to do so in such a manner that the doors were peeled away. This also explains why no one survived their rampage, no matter how fortified their hiding place may have been. When we briefly see some of the revived homunculi going berserk, their movements exhibit a great deal more speed and power than their usual shambling behavior, a dark aura even erupting as their bodies violently react to the sunlight.
• Trauma-Induced Amnesia: A justified example occurs in that they lose their memories upon being subjected to sunlight and turn into murderous beasts, which is why they forgot when they killed their original human counterparts three years ago. The reason they don't remember is because they're defective homunculi, meaning that they lose their memories when they're forced into their flawed state. This is how Makoto Kagutsuchi is able to hide the truth from them and how they don't remember what happened while Makoto himself does; because they physically can't and their minds won't let them remember the moments they get subjected to sunlight.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: While they hadn't existed long enough yet to notice the lack of physical aging in adults (and perhaps the same goes for the lack of death from illness and age), the people of Kanai Ward had to go through quite a bit of mental gymnastics to keep themselves believing they were the original humans of Kanai Ward, or human at all for that matter. This included them ignoring or rationalizing away the fact they all bleed pink blood, everyone forgetting the same week of time, and everyone having a particular type of meat bun be their favorite food that they instinctively felt the need to eat every couple of days at least. Even the city having been wrecked with no explanation simply became part of the taboo of the Blank Week Mystery that everyone was too afraid to try to find out much about. Kurumi even relates how most people somehow largely ignored the destruction.
• Verbal Tic: After learning the truth about the constant rain in their city actually protecting them, the residents of Kanai Ward coin the phrase "Good rain to you." as a local expression.
• Walking Spoiler: Mentioning that homunculi have relevance to the game's plot is already a spoiler for the end of Chapter 2. The main twist of the game is that every single person in Kanai Ward is a homunculus, including Makoto, Yomi, and Dr. Huesca, who are the overall main antagonists, and Yuma is led to believe they're only "immortal monsters", an ambiguous term that can mean anything, until Chapter 5, when they're revealed to actually be humanoids who look like humans and are created from someone else's DNA, unless the player is already aware of what homunculi actually are.
• Weakened by the Light: Played for Horror and as a Plot Allergy. Their weakness to UV light is the very reason the defectives in Kanai Ward killed their original selves, and as a result, led Makoto to create a Weather-Control Machine to create artificial clouds to block sunlight, creating the rain and constant darkness in Kanai Ward, as well as to isolate Kanai Ward from the rest of the world so its people would not leave the safety of the cloud cover. By the end of the game the horror aspect is downplayed as sunscreens and UV-blocking clothing are revealed to be enough to allow homunculi to safely be in sunlight for at least a functional amount of time.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: With regard to the undead homunculi. Even after Makoto has begun to make amends for his misdeeds and deception, it's never directly said whether anything has been done about the undead homunculi, as not a single character in the epilogue makes any mention of them.
• A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: The people of Kanai Ward seem like your average city folks, but all of them are actually defective homunculi. If they die, within a day they turn into mindless zombies craving human flesh. Exposure to sunlight also drives them into a berserk frenzy, which was the reason they unknowingly killed all the humans in Kanai Ward. Unusually for this trope, they're not the ones pulling the wool. That honor goes to Makoto, who built the cloud machine and isolated the city from the rest of the world so they could live normal lives without discovering the Awful Truth.

Voiced by: Asuna Tomari (Japanese), Ryan Bartley (English)

Kei Colan is the boy who asks Yuma Kokohead to clear his father's name in Chapter 1 when the Peacekeepers accuse him of being the Nail Man due to being near the most recent crime scene.

• Clear Their Name: Acts as Yuma's first cilent and asks him to clear his father's name.
• No Name Given: He never introduces himself with his name, and his profile simply calls him "Boy", but one of the loading screen tips reveals that his name is Kei Colan.

Jiel Colan is the watchmaker and watch repair man whose son asks Yuma Kokohead and Halara Nightmare to prove the innocence of, having been framed as the Nail Man by the Peacekeepers because he was near the most recent crime scene, even being threatened with execution just to cover up the truth.

• Frame-Up: Is the victim of one since the Peacekeepers are keen to frame him as the Nail Man, to the point that they withhold certain details in officially released information such as his occupation.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: According to his son, he has a fear of heights. While he handles it professionally when it comes time to repair the clock in the clocktower every year, he always makes quick work of it and would not have been able to escape in the way the culprit did.

Voiced by: Katsunori Okai (Japanese), Sean Chiplock (English)

Fink the Slaughter Artist is an infamous assassin in Kanai Ward who has a 100% success kill rate. His identity is shrouded in mystery.

• The Ace: The man has never failed to kill his target once.
• Attention Whore: Yomi accuses Fink of wanting to be the center of attention upon receiving "his" death threat regarding Dr. Huesca. That would be true, if Fink was the one sending death threats in the first place. Not only does Fink not send death threats, but Yakou was the one who actually sent it under Fink's name as a lure for Yomi.
• Black Cloak: He obviously wears one, mostly to conceal his identity.
• Calling Card: A knife with the letter F engraved on the hilt, left stabbed into his targets to prove to his clients that he was the one who killed them. Of course, such an infamous calling card is easy to fake...
• Dark Is Evil: A local hitman-for-hire in Kanai Ward with a 100% success rate who enshrouds himself in a dark, black cloak and hides in the shadows.
• The Faceless: His entire face is never seen, the upper half always obscured by his hood.
• Frame-Up: Invoked. Yakou intentionally uses his name as a means to frame Fink as Dr. Huesca's and Yakou's killer to divert attention away from Yakou's actual goal of killing Dr. Huesca, and it works as planned.
• In the Hood: He wears a flowing black cloak with a hood that obscures much of the upper part of his face with its shadow.
• Killed Offscreen: Makoto killed him off after he finished the job. His death was never seen, but his zombie form does show up in the following chapter.
• The Killer Becomes the Killed: Fink is Killed Offscreen by Makoto after assisting Yakou in his Suicide by Assassin.
• Last Episode, New Character: Last murder case, more specifically. He's introduced in Chapter 4 as the key element within Yakou's plot, and that plot just happens to also be the game's last murder case before Makoto steps up onto the pedestal and finally shows his true colors.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: His zombie confesses that he wasn't really on board with Yakou's overcomplicated plan, but since Makoto was the one to set Yakou up with him, he was in no position to turn down the job, since defying the big boss would likely mean death. Of course, Makoto went and had him killed anyway.
• Professional Killer: Not only is he an assassin for hire in Kanai Ward, he boasts a 100% success rate of his jobs to boot.
• Psycho Knife Nut: His signature weapon for his successful murders is a knife with an F engraved on the hilt.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Fink is indeed a vicious assassin and is indeed someone who will follow through with any murder task, but will only do jobs he's hired for (a fact of which is hidden up until Yakou is revealed as Chapter 4's true culprit) and is Affably Evil outside of murder tasks, as shown when his zombie form confesses to Yuma that Makoto is guilty for what happened to Chief Yakou by introducing him to Fink in the first place without putting up much resistance. A little detail that confirms this is that, despite Yuma being right next to him after he kills Chief Yakou, Fink doesn't kill him alongside the chief despite him being a witness to Fink's crime and leaves the scene after completing the job he was assigned to do, that being to target only Yakou as Yakou himself hired him to do.
• Red Herring: His whole purpose in Chapter 4 is to serve Yakou's agenda to kill the doctor and frame Fink for it, making Fink out as the culprit. In reality, the true culprit is Yakou, and Fink is only a willing pawn in his scheme.
• The Scapegoat:
  • Even worse than Dr. Huesca being one for Yomi, somehow. He's the one who enabled Chief Yakou's plot to kill Dr. Huesca and undeniably attacked Yakou personally, but he was only pushed to being responsible when Makoto covertly introduced Yakou to him, allowing Makoto to kill Dr. Huesca without doing the dirty work of killing him himself. Along with this, Yakou himself uses Fink as one by framing him as the overarching threat against Dr. Huesca in Chapter 4 to divert attention away from Yakou's own plot.
  • Yuma makes him into one for a brief moment during Chapter 5's investigation, shouting at his zombie self for killing Chief Yakou. That is, despite Yuma already being well-aware that Yakou was bound to die long before Fink stabbed him, and Yakou arranged for Fink to stab him in the first place to cover up what he was dying from, that being the gas from Dr. Huesca's security system, therefore nullifying Fink having any real malicious intentions towards what he did during Chapter 4's murder in the first place since it was only under Yakou's (and Makoto's) command rather than of his own volition.
• Small Role, Big Impact: He only appears in Chapter 4 by name and by rumor, only appearing as a death threat and his additional physical appearance when escaping after killing Yakou, but he essentially serves as the trigger for Yakou's plot to kill Dr. Huesca and then himself, which allows Makoto the opening to indict Yomi and kidnap the NDA once Chief Yakou dies.
• Tom the Dark Lord: Let's be honest, Fink probably isn't the first name that you'd associate with a tall, ominous, cloaked killer that never fails. Probably why he felt the need to go so overboard with his title.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: After assisting Yakou with his Suicide by Assassin, Makoto has him killed as well to keep his mouth shut about the fact that Makoto was the one who introduced him to Yakou in the first place. Ironically, he ends up becoming one of the few zombies who retain enough of their faculties to speak, so that didn't quite work out.

Voiced by: Shun Horie (Japanese), Brian Timothy Anderson (English)

The ramen stand owner who first appears in a cloak reminiscent of one given to a detective at the World Detective Organization, who turns out to be the real Yuma Kokohead.

The real Number One of the World Detective Organization swapped places with him in order to investigate Kanai Ward without exposing his true self and the real Yuma agreed to the job with little resistance. After Number One came to Kanai Ward, Yuma followed behind him in uniform and set up a ramen stand somewhere in Kanai Ward, befitting the cooking ability that he actually has, which was initially assumed to be the protagonist Yuma's ability.

• Boring, but Practical: His special ability simply being that he's really good at cooking might seem like a letdown compared to the outright superpowers the Master Detectives have. But it proves to be invaluable when solving the matter of finding another source of nutrition for the homunculi that doesn't involve cannibalism and mass murder.
• Chekhov's Gun: It's mentioned that his ramen at first was considered terrible by the residents until he took inspiration from the popular meat buns, which then turned into a sensation. After it's revealed that the meat buns were actually human flesh, his ramen became a better substitute for Kanai Ward's nutrients.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Double subversion. A cloaked figure following Yuma around from near the start of the game certainly seems like an extremely transparent setup for this, a major ally or antagonist, but his true identity is ultimately a loose end for how Number One snuck into the city, and they never interact in any major capacity. Then, in the epilogue, turns out his cooking skills were vital to keeping the citizens of Kanai fed without the need for human flesh. The more or less happy ending could not have come nearly as cleanly as it did without him.
• Goofy Buckteeth: He has these along with his general goofy design, perfectly fitting for someone with a name like "Kokohead" in any other kind of story.
• Hero of Another Story: A detective in training who managed to get past Amaterasu’s active efforts to kill all incoming Master Detectives - only five of whom survived among an implied dozens or more - and survive in the city long enough to build a life for himself as a ramen salesman. He even manages to develop ramen that provides adequate nutrition to the homunculi without the need for them to eat human flesh.
• Nice Guy: Aside from his manners and willingness to help the residents, he's also nice enough to agree to the real Number One's deal to use his identity after quitting from the WDO, and even followed him over to Kanai Ward to check on his progress. After confirming that Number One had settled in nicely, he proceeds to open his ramen shop and start a new life.
• No Name Given: Given that Number One was borrowing his name, and is implied to have adopted it permanently at the end of the game, we have no idea what this guy calls himself now.
• Supreme Chef: His specialty is cooking. After quitting his job as a detective, he opened a ramen shop in Kanai Ward and eventually developed a recipe that the homunculi could both enjoy and provided them with the nutrients they needed to survive.

Voiced by: Hana Tamegai (Japanese), Kimberley Anne Campbell (English)

Enyne is a character exclusive to Desuhiko Thunderbolt's DLC who spread rumors about her initial appearance to divert suspicion from her true identity as the Nine-Tailed Cat, her true appearance being that of a bespectacled brunette woman. As the Nine-Tailed Cat, she steals expensive items and sells them for charitable reasons, meaning that Kanai Ward views her as a hero.

• Always Someone Better: To Desuhiko as far as being a hero adored by the general public goes. Not that that's a particularly high bar to clear.
• Everyone Has Standards: Even though she manages to get her hands on the real ring, she doesn't sell it, instead simply returning it to the museum.
• Just Like Robin Hood: She steals various expensive items from around Kanai Ward and sells them. That money then goes straight to charitable causes such as funding hospitals. It's the reason the people of Kanai Ward consider the thief to be a hero.
• Phantom Thief: The Nine-Tailed Cat steals without leaving a trace behind aside from their signature Calling Card. At the end of the story they leave one behind when returning the stolen ring to the museum, which Desuhiko feels spited by.
• Samus Is a Girl: The rumors of the Nine-Tailed Cat being a tall man with red hair and eyes were started by her as a means of sowing confusion. She didn't expect it to work as well as it did on the detectives.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: Since no one has seen the Nine-Tailed Cat, many have wondered what the thief looks like, with the rumor being spread that the Nine-Tailed Cat is a tall man with red hair and eyes, which makes it quite a surprise when the real thief turns out to be just an ordinary-looking mildly attractive bespectacled woman, something she uses to her advantage when she proceeds to present herself as a reporter to "interview" Desuhiko.

Tetra is a character exclusive to Halara Nightmare's DLC who asks the Nocturnal Detective Agency about her father's death, asking them to solve the case for his sake.

• Nice Girl: She is sincerely a friendly person and has no ulterior motives beyond wanting to avenge her father's death.

Jeryn is a character exclusive to Halara Nightmare's DLC who acts as Tetra's fiancé.

• Hate Sink: He pretends to be a loyal fiancé to Tetra, but in reality, it turns out he's a traitor and her father's true murderer, having killed him so he could inherit her father's property upon marrying her, with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. He proceeds to threaten to kill Chief Yakou upon being found out, and Halara promptly kicks him squarely in the face as karma to save the chief from him.
• Only Cares About Inheritance: His motivation for the murder, that being that killing Tetra's father means he inherits his property upon marrying her. That is all he cares about.
• Villain of the Week: He is the murderer in Ch. Halara: Raining Cats & Dog.

The casino owner is a character exclusive to Fubuki Clockford's DLC who causes the conflict behind the scenes.

• Fixing the Game: The owner runs his casino by tricking the players into losing, and the fortune teller works with him on this goal. Halara makes a bet with him to force him to confess to said rigging using Fubuki's Time Rewind Mechanic ability, and he loses the game when he gets distracted upon seeing Desuhiko disguised as one of his plants and Halara moves one of his die to ensure his loss.

Voiced by: Riho Sugiyama (Japanese), Erica Mendez (English)

Ryo is a character exclusive to Vivia Twilight's DLC and is a former nurse who happens to visit the same building where multiple suicides are happening in Kanai Ward.

• Dead All Along: The episode first makes her look as if she were a living person, but once Vivia reveals that she was the first person to commit suicide, she appears as a ghost for the rest of the episode.
• Foreshadowing: In Vivia's flashback of his first encounter with her, Ryo walks right in front of a car that never even tries to stop for her, as if it never saw her in the first place. That's because she's a ghost, already having died and only being an apparition.
• Good All Along: It's implied she might be a malevolent spirit guiding the depressed into committing suicide, only for it to turn out she was actually trying to stop those tragedies from happening by, unsuccessfully, talking them out of it.