We all got infected with the Despair Disease a little bit from some of these...

By the time you get to Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, you’re a veteran of the gruesomeness, red herrings, and twisted techniques for disposing of your classmates. The first game pulled no punches on what to expect, and Spike Chunsoft was back a second time to give us another heaping helping of Despair.

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But, as with the first game, some plans were more out-there than others. While Danganronpa excels at never providing a straight path to the answer, we’ve gotten pretty good at analyzing the neon pink-splattered crime scenes by now. Still, we’re not immune to the methods of getting rid of our classmates, though – some of them were pretty wild.

This article contains spoilers for Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair.

While Hiyoko made herself a thorn in everyone’s side throughout the first two trials with her cruel little attitude and biting remarks, it still didn’t feel great to stumble upon her body. To make things worse, she’s a bonus discovery – when you bring everyone back to show them that Ibuki has died, you also discover Hiyoko’s corpse there.

But poor Hiyoko just was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Mikan intended to kill Ibuki while infected with the Despair Disease, but Hiyoko walked in on her getting everything set up to make it look like a suicide. Since she knew too much, Mikan took her out as well, killing her and stringing her up alongside Ibuki in the music hall, disguising her body as part of the stage until a bit later. Her death wasn’t planned, but it sure did hurt.

The dynamic between Fuyuhiko and Peko was rather intriguing – she’s a swordswoman who grew up alongside the bitter, babyfaced yakuza leader, sworn to protect him at all costs. So, when Chapter Two rolls around and the motive for the next murder is a video game depicting the death of Fuyuhiko’s sister, he flies into a rage.

Peko helps him lure Mahiru and Hiyoko to the beach house to discuss what happened in the game and their involvement in his sister’s death. Fuyuhiko got into an argument with Mahiru there, and right before he moved to hit her himself, Peko stepped in and killed her before Fuyuhiko could do it, assuming the title of the Blackened in his place.

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As the Kuzuryu clan’s protector, Peko knew she needed to fall on the sword (pun intended) on behalf of Fuyuhiko, protecting him from making himself the Blackened. She shoos Fuyuhiko from the room and sets up the crime scene, leaving behind a creepy superhero mask as a “calling card” as a serial killer red herring.

This death was rough for several reasons – Ibuki was a weird ray of sunshine who came down with the Despair Disease and unfortunately didn’t see the other side of it. She’s so excited that Fuyuhiko has recovered from his injuries that she puts on a concert in honor of his return, and even if it was kind of… loud… her heart was in the right place.

But it’s not long before the Despair Disease has infected her, Nagito, and Akane, who were admitted to the hospital so that Mikan, the Ultimate Nurse, could look after them, enlisting Hajime and Fuyuhiko for help.

Mikan, however, also contracts the Despair Disease and remembers her life as a Remnant of Despair. As part of this revelation, she strangles the confused Ibuki before dressing up the scene to look like a suicide. She creates a video of “Ibuki” about to kill herself, and you then find your friend dangling from the stage, right where she’d just given the performance of a lifetime.

While you find out later that this isn’t the Byakuya Togami, the Ultimate Imposter’s death is what starts the Killing Game. The Imposter leans heavily into being Byakuya, acting cold until the Killing Game begins. Then, it feels natural to us, the players, that he knows what’s going on and tries to take action to stop what he knows to be coming.

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“Byakuya” tries to keep the dinner party he throws safe, doing pat-downs at the door and keeping everyone together so they can keep an eye on one another. He tries to remove all dangerous objects from the room but notes that one of the skewers from the kitchen’s inventory is missing.

When a blackout hits the party, “Byakuya” uses night vision goggles and sees Nagito acting suspiciously, and he dives under a table to push the Ultimate Lucky Student out of the way of whatever sinister something he was doing. Unbeknownst to either of them, Teruteru had also seen Nagito acting strangely and was planning to kill him instead. But, with the Imposter playing hero, he takes that fatal blow from the missing skewer in Nagito’s place.

We thought we lost Nekomaru long before we actually did – he takes a bazooka blast in Akane’s place and has to sit out the third trial to recuperate. Monokuma announces that he could only save Nekomaru by giving him a robot body and introduces you to the version of Nekomaru that comes to be called Mechamaru.

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His robo-body has a litany of sweet new features, including but not limited to a Good Night Button that immediately knocks him out when pressed. The group is brought into the fruit-themed funhouses shortly after, where they learn they won’t be allowed to eat until someone dies.

They persevere for a while, but their energy depletes quickly. Nekomaru and Gundham have seen the toll starvation is taking on everyone, and the pair agree to fight to the death to save them. Gundham gains the upper hand by pressing the Good Night Button and stringing Nekomaru up, allowing the rotating of the funhouse to drop him several stories when it rotates, which finally kills him. The two men knew exactly what they were doing, meaning Nekomaru’s sacrifice was for the greater good of hoping his classmates might carry on and escape, even if it had to be without him.

Love him or hate him, Nagito added another really intense element of mystery and intrigue to a game that was already rife with it. He makes no effort to disguise his oddities at the beginning of the game, losing his thin veneer during the first trial and showcasing to everyone that, yeah, he’s... a little out there.

He plans to start the Killing Game himself in a backward attempt to bring Hope to his classmates, which renders them distrustful of him. However, he’s not all bad – he proves your innocence in Chapter Three, and you even get to play as him for a bit in Chapter Four, too, right up to when he learns the truth: everyone there is one of the Ultimate Despairs, Junko’s legion of devoted followers.

Because he knows the vile things you’ve all done, he decides in Chapter Five that he has to kill everyone for the sake of Hope, beginning with himself. He sets off an explosion at the hotel and threatens to explode the entire island unless the traitor hiding among them confesses.

After coercing the group into splitting up to make it near-impossible to have an alibi, he sets up what looks like a torture scene, mutilating himself in the process. When the group goes to confront him, they trigger a trap he set up to begin a fire, unaware that he’s replaced one of the fire-extinguishing bombs with a vaporizing poison to trick one of them into unknowingly killing him. Chiaki eventually reveals herself as the traitor and takes the fall. Nagito’s Ultimate Luck had ensured his twisted plan to expose the traitor would somehow be a success, even if he died in the process.

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A recent Creative Writing grad with three fiction novels under her belt, you'll usually find Gabrielle at her laptop. When she's not, she's a big fan of scratch baking, bass guitar, RPGs, and awful jokes.