v3 theory: DID OUMA FAKE HIS DEATH?

let me preface this by making clear that I am in no way saying anything in this post is confirmed or canon, just some theorizing and trying to back it up, mostly for fun! needless to say, spoilers for the whole game going forward.

playing through v3 (which for the most part I found to be a very compelling and emotive game) myself, i found myself very frustrated or just bewildered about a number of details in the way chapters 5 was written resolved — details that made the entire chapter feel like it was in vain (particularly in light of chapter 6), which in turn made the key characters’ deaths feel near-pointless. additionally a number of their actions felt uncharacteristic, whilst saihara’s role in the trial comes across as ultimately hurting the survivors more than helping them. there are some other aspects of this chapter that stuck out as odd, contradictory or superfluous.

the thing is, with most of these funky details, i realised they would all make narrative sense if i turned one single assumption on his head: the one where ouma died. what if: instead of being crushed under the hydraulic press, ouma concocted a plan that would allow it to look like he (or kaito, with the other being the person in the exisal) was crushed, when in reality there was no body in the press and ouma got away?

now you might say this is wishful thinking on my part and i’m not going to pretend it isn’t partially that — ouma is one of my favorite dr characters to date and ofc i’m hoping he survived! but the more i reviewed the game for myself, the more credence this theory seemed to have and i hope to cast a little light on that. put on your tin foil hats lads. i mean, the guy already bamboozled us with a fake death once, what’s to say he didn’t do it again? and even if he didn’t in canon this is enough leeway for me to write postgame fics with him there without tagging it “AU”. which as we all know is the real goal.

so without further ado, here goes.

i’ll start by listing the issues i had with the narrative and go from there. if the formatting on my blog makes this hard to read, here’s a google doc version!

THE INCONSISTENCIES

➡ ouma’s sacrifice

the first thing that struck me as odd was the simple question of — why would ouma sacrifice himself in the first place?

it’s true that ouma’s goal was to create an unsolvable murder, however in practice this doesn’t necessitate him dying. he could have simply taken the antidote himself, disabled the surveillance and crushed kaito with the press and then disabled the press so it could not be lifted. it would be impossible for the mastermind to determine if kaito died due to the poison prior to being crushed, or died being crushed by ouma (or a third option — kaito found a way to kill himself, and then had his body crushed by ouma), making the murder effectively as unsolvable. this does remove the “mystery victim” aspect somewhat, but that part isn’t necessary to stump the mastermind and cause them to break the rules.

an argument can be made that ouma felt that kaito deserved to live more than he did, but the sacrifice would still be senseless in the circumstances: kaito was guaranteed to die of illness not long after. there’s no way that ouma wasn’t aware of his condition as he had both been the one to expose kaito’s illness in the first place and had just spent a number of days locked up with him in the hangar where he would have seen the symptoms.

it’s also true that ouma may have wanted to avoid maki becoming a culprit, but again this could be done by obscuring kaito’s cause of death as discussed above.

there’s nothing to indicate that ouma was suicidal or lacking in will to live, either. his motive video found in ch6 reveals that he has a his treasured DICE goons waiting for him, and his actions in chapter 4 where he convinces gonta to kill miu before she can kill him indicate a degree of self-preservation.



➡ kaito’s agreement to the plan

a second detail that seemed uncharacteristic to me personally, was kaito agreeing to a plan that effectively had him killing ouma.

kaito is one of the people most vocally opposed to killing in the game, no matter the net gain to come from it. recall him being one of the few (the only person?) to condemn kirumi after her whole prime minister saving the lives of the many thing came out rather than saying she was in the right, because ‘life is too valuable.’

so i think it is fair to say that kaito would not have regularly agreed to a plan to kill someone else no matter the goal unless he was somehow coerced or blackmailed into doing so.

(yes kaito was also interested in ending the killing game and says as much but again, an unsolvable murder to defeat the mastermind was still possible by agreeing to die himself, knowing his days were numbered as is this is.)

ultimately, ouma would have had to create a situation that forced kaito’s hand — coerce kaito into drinking the antidote and thus present him with a situation where he has to kill ouma or maki becomes the culprit who killed ouma. the climax reasoning (which is just saihara’s deduction) does indicate that this is what happened, but it’s inconsistent with kaito claiming he agreed to the plan ‘because he liked it’ with no indication that he’d been forced or blackmailed — why would he like this plan better than say, a plan where ouma drank the antidote, kaito killed himself and ouma obscured the cause of death, that it’d achieve the same result with one less person dying. again, possible he had no choice after being force-fed but if that was the case i think he’d have more negative feelings towards ouma (for giving himself up so senselessly — look at how kaito reacted to ryoma) in the end than he did. but if anything he’s praising ouma and his plan instead.



➡ destroying the electrobomb/remote:

before he is executed, kaito mentions that the final electrobomb (of the 3 miu created) and the remote control capable of hijacking communication signals were destroyed along with ouma by the press. this was one of the most illogical and uncharacteristic decisions made by anyone in the game:

ouma’s goal was to defeat the mastermind and end the killing game, it doesn’t make sense that he would destroy the items he commissioned from miu to do just that, especially as miu was dead, leaving them in finite supply.

it is likely that ouma thought that the killing game would end after chapter 5 meaning there would be no need for the items, but it would still be cocky/stupid of him to destroy a possible contingency plan. since he had left other back up evidence (the ‘will’ in his room containing the hint) in tow he seemed aware of the possibility his plan could fail.

it’s doubtful he was worried about the items falling into the mastermind’s hands as the mastermind already had full control over the electronics in question so they had nothing to gain from the items. additionally, if he thought the presence of these items would somehow screw up the ‘unsolvable murder’, he could have just given them to kaito to hold on to until the trial.

their destruction couldn’t be an accident either as ouma literally removed his clothes before getting on the press. where else would he keep them stashed but in his coat? (also doubt he’s that careless).



➡ saihara’s role:

the way the chapter plays out, saihara ends up looking like the bad guy and playing a detrimental role toward defeating the mastermind.

in deducing what really happens, saihara convinces monokuma of the actual truth, thus defeating the whole point of the unsolvable murder. it’s true at the end he realises what he’s done and tries to backtrack, but by this point monokuma is convinced enough that kaito is forced to confess or the rest of the students get executed. NOTHING saihara does this trial helps save the students or end the game and instead ruins what little chance ouma’s plan had for doing so. narratively this feels weird because saihara’s meant to be the hero we’re cheering for and instead you’ve got the mastermind relying on him instead.



it ALSO seems weird that ouma wouldn’t have accounted for saihara to figure it out given he knows what saihara is capable of (see basically everything he says to him in ch4) especially given he just left a lot of evidence that helps saihara expose the crime just lying around…like the blood smear and evidence left in the bathroom. almost deliberately so.



kaito also says he only agreed to the plan because he trusted saihara so much. trusted him to do what?? expose you and completely nullify the plan’s objective??



➡ kaito’s acceptance of his death:

days before being executed, kaito is coughing up blood and painfully declaring that he refuses to die here. now he happily goes to his death, asking monokuma to bring on the execution. while i agree that with time he may have accepted his mortality and was glad to be able to die on his own terms, his ‘no regrets’ approach toward his imminent death is still a bit interesting for a number of reasons:

from his POV the plan had failed; the trick had been exposed and he was still being executed, meaning the mastermind hadn’t been thwarted by the whole ‘break the rules’ thing as planned. shouldn’t he regret that? he mentions that the trial brought them closer to the mastermind’s lair, but as far as he knew - how exactly? it’s true that tsumugi’s had acted to manipulate maki’s actions and ultimately slipped up in doing so, leading to her being exposed in the next chapter, but kaito didn’t know about that. otherwise all breakthroughs to the mastermind’s lair came about in ch6 in ways kaito couldn’t have predicted.



the one thing he dies knowing he accomplished is that he saved maki from being the blackened, but in his position he cannot be sure he’s saved her (or saihara and the others) in the long-run; again he has no reason to think they’re any closer to ending the game.



i will concede that kaito’s whole thing is “believing in people with 0 basis” but i also feel like there’s a possibility he knew something that assured him things will be ok.



➡ mastermind’s reaction to kaito’s death:

kaito succumbs to his illness part way through his execution and the mastermind is shown to be angry about this, with everyone declaring that it’s because kaito didn’t die by the mastermind’s terms, which monokuma concedes. this is plain inconsistent with what we learn in chapter 6:

tsumugi claims in ch6 that she gave kaito the illness in the first place as it would make for a dramatic storyline that would entertain the audience. if this is the case, why is monokuma so pissed when kaito dies from the illness in a dramatic way that would almost surely please the audience?

even if it’s because he wasn’t reduced to bones in the execution or whatever the hot damn happened to jin kirigiri, it’s still weird for monokuma to act as though kaito died stubbornly on his OWN terms when the mastermind caused the illness anyway.

the chapter 6 reveal also narratively robs kaito of his achievement in dying on his own terms. seems weak.

this leads me to suspect that his death wasn’t entirely according to the mastermind’s script — he died of a cause distinct from the mastermind’s scripted illness.

➡ ouma’s script:

a minor detail but might as well list it: ouma wrote a script for kaito to follow during the trial. while kaito admitted to improvising sections of it, he also admits that ouma gave him a framework that took into account a number of different directions the trial could take. this feels off because if ouma died as stated, he did not have long to prepare the script. he couldn’t have written it in advance as he couldn’t have predicted maki’s actions, and after being attacked he supposedly prepared it within a small timeframe while in pain from the poison. seems like a very tall order.

➡ the final vote (chapter 6):

this isn’t from chapter 5, but it still struck me as weird and is relevant to what i think ouma’s final role is: at the conclusion of the chapter 6 trial, saihara rallies the students to refuse to vote, and thus bring about the end of the killing game by rejecting the hope and despair the audience thrive on. tsumugi counters this by saying that the audience will vote through kiibo thereby causing hope or despair to win. lo and behold the audience doesn’t vote. this is written off as saihara’s resolve supposedly inspiring the entire audience to abstain, but it came across as unnatural to me:

kiibo’s inner voice is explained as being drawn from a survey system. the audience votes on what he does. assuming the two options are hope and despair here (i don’t see why team dr would include an ‘abstain’ option in itself, when that’s absolutely what they don’t want), it would take just ONE vote out of an abstaining mass to cause either hope or despair to win.

you’re telling me in the internet age of trolls and contrarians there wasn’t a single person who voted? the entire masses who’ve thrived on this hope/despair dichotomy for seasons are inspired by (an admittedly very good boy) to get their fav show cancelled? yeah. i’m not buying it.



➡ the meta, and why it was all in vain

so the last point is just me going through the meta reasons why chapter 5 the way it’s presented just felt like a waste of time to me personally:

while it’s true that ouma did make some important moves that ultimately exposed the mastermind (him claiming to be the mastermind forced tsumugi’s hand, leading to some key slip-ups in trying to manipulate maki to kill him, that ultimately lead to tsumugi’s exposure) but the thing is these moves were independent of the grand murder plan which ouma came up with and orchestrated after she made some moves. the murder plan itself accomplished…nothing, if ouma died.

the one thing it did was expose ouma’s deduction that the game was being watched and the mastermind had to play by the rules, but ouma could have y’know….just told them about that, instead of killing himself. again, i’m aware he’s untrustworthy and not one to just tell people things (or he’d have just told everyone about miu planning to kill him in ch4, but dying this way feels unfortunate)

furthermore, the mastermind has ALREADY broken the rules, in executing kaede who hadn’t killed anyone. and also at the end of this chapter doesn’t seem to care much for the rules since they want to execute without certainty of the culprit. so ouma’s hypothesis ultimately doesn’t amount to much.

what i already said above about how this sequence of events defeats kaito’s “defying the MM in death” achievement & makes saihara look like a hindrance.

finally, you can compare this to sdr2 chapter 5 where yes, whilst komaeda’s plan to have everyone but the traitor executed fails, the conclusion is still thematic because it fulfills komaeda’s fantasy of “the stronger hope (ends up being hinata & co) will win”. ouma on the other hand has no such fulfilment with things ending up like this.



so is it all bad/unsatisfying (to me) writing or is there maybe another explanation. WELL SEE

SO, HERE’S THE THEORY

with all of the above in mind, here’s my alternate theory as to what really happened in chapter 5 from the moment ouma steals the antidote maki had handed to kaito (this will be followed by some issues with the theory and possible explanations):

ouma either drinks the antidote outright, or waits until after maki leaves to talk about his plan with kaito, but ultimately drinks the antidote.

kaito is left poisoned, but the nature of the strike-9 poison is that it takes an undisclosed amount of time to kill.

the scene was set up to make it appear as though kaito had been crushed by the hydraulic press, and “kaito getting crushed” is filmed. in reality, he gets out from the press before being crushed and nobody is in fact crushed. paint from the paint machine in the hangar is used to make fake blood placed in some container and left on the press, exploding as seen in the video when crushed. they then destroy the press cord meaning it cannot be opened.

the evidence is left in place to mostly make it look as though kaito is the victim, but some trace evidence (blood trail, arrows and antidote in the bathroom, ouma’s clothes etc) are left in place to suggest an alternate conclusion to saihara and ultimately confuse the mastermind as much as possible. ouma explains to kaito that the mastermind is strictly adhering to the rules because the killing game is being watched, and this plan will likely force them to break the rules and disappoint the audience, ruining the game. it will also allow ouma to escape (now that he’s concluded that there’s someone out there; whole world can’t be in ruins) and help free the others.

kaito agrees because this is a genuinely good plan that will only result in his own execution (if the crime is even pinned on him) rather than the deaths of 2 people, and give the others a real chance of survival. this is why he talks highly of ouma after the fact!

ouma who in fact isn’t poisoned and in pain and actually has more time to do so, prepares his script. kaito gets in the exisal. ouma sneaks out, avoiding detection (this bit in particular takes quite a bit of explaining, i’ll discuss that with the issues below!) and taking the electrobomb/remote with him.

the electrobomb’s effects run out, the other students discover the “body” and conduct an investigation.

class trial goes down, saihara’s deductions take everyone through multiple possibilities for the killer/victim increasing the chances of the mastermind screwing up, and exposing that the murder is really unsolvable. saihara doing this is part of ouma plan, hence why evidence was left out and deliberately allowed for different deductions. this way saihara’s contribution as actually useful.

saihara ultimately comes to the conclusion that the victim is ouma, killed by kaito and later backtracks so as to not help the mastermind but by then monokuma says “fuck it” and says he is going to execute someone regardless of not being 100% sure who the killer is himself and having no way to know out. kaito is forced to “confess” but it’s not a total loss because in doing so, he confirms to the mastermind that ouma is dead, and even secretly forces the mastermind to break the rules in executing him when he technically didn’t kill anyone (not that this is the first time the MM has done this!!!!)

kaito, who is visibly in terrible shape, praises saihara for his deduction (without which they wouldn’t have been able to toy with the mastermind as they did;) and goes to his execution with no regrets, knowing that he has actually put something that could save everyone into motion.

the poison kills kaito midway through the execution. kaito is able to pass it off as being a symptom of his illness until the very end, but ultimately it kills him faster than the illness was meant to - going against the mastermind’s script and pissing monokuma the fuck off.

chapter 6: ouma, in hiding, uses the remote/electrobomb he smuggled out to jam the audience signals sent to kiibo’s antenna, thereby making it look like the audience had failed to vote and thwarting the killing game once and for all.



THE ISSUES

➡ avoiding detection

this is definitely the big one, imo — even if ouma managed to fake his death, how could he manage to avoid detection by the mastermind? It’s definitely the iffiest to explain, but there is evidence to suggest that it was definitely possible:

the biggest hint here is that the nanokumas (the tiny bug-like security cameras) are described as preferring to move in swarms. this is especially interesting because this detail never comes into play in ch6, but has a big implications as it suggests the nanokumas are not omnipresent, monitoring the entire academy. instead they move in groups, and the reasonable conclusion would be that the mastermind sends a swarm to follow each student. therefore, if a student is assumed dead then there would be no swarm following them. ouma could thus use this pretense to avoid detection.

of course, the mastermind would have to be convinced he was dead before the investigation began for this to actually work. at some point, the person in the exisal (who we know to be kaito) spoke to monokuma and informed them of their presence. this much we know as there’s clearly an arrangement between the exisal and monokuma going into the trial. what we don’t know is when this conversation took place. remember that monokuma was being kept captive by the exisals up until a certain point; it’s possible that these exisals were disabled before the electrobomb’s effects ran out, and monokuma of course would have made his way to the hangar and seen what appeared to be a body in the press, whilst the other person in the exisal spoke to him, thus accounting for both people and tricking monokuma for the time being into thinking one was dead. ouma could have been hiding elsewhere around the hangar (perhaps the bathroom) at this point, and with monokuma assigning the nanokuma swarm to the exisal only (believing the other person to be dead in the press;) once the electrobomb ran out, ouma could have snuck out. this is supported by the idea that monokuma doesn’t seem bothered at all by the survivor between kaito and ouma not showing up for the investigation - wouldn’t he want them to, especially since he doesn’t know whos dead or what’s going on himself? he probably already knows that the person is in the exisal at that point.

once saihara and kaito convinced monokuma for good that ouma is dead, any doubt would be removed and the mastermind wouldn’t go looking for him, perfecting his escape.

of course, continuing to remain undetected would take some effort as he would have to avoid being caught by nanokuma swarms following others or being seen by monokuma or the mastermind, but this isn’t the first time in the story ouma managed to completely avoid everyone (see chapter 4 after he gets the keycard, and the whole early section of chapter 5). he also still has the electrobomb and remote just in case. i’d also like to remind you that the game makes a big repeated point of how good ouma is at hide & seek.

➡ where does ouma go after that?

this one, i’m not sure, but i have some theories:

i do think he paid a visit to his own research lab and planted the history of hpa book - the lab is suspicious, the history of hpa book is just lying around as though someone had placed it there, and it seems unlikely it was the mastermind who did so as this book ends up unravelling the mastermind’s entire facade in chapter 6 and not in a way that seemed intentional. additionally, the door is damaged when the others find it in chapter 6, so it’s impossible to tell if the lab had been locked or had in fact previously been opened - it’s possible this was a lab that was only known to ouma (befitting of his talent as the leader of a secret organisation) which is supported by it not being on rantaro’s survivor perk map and ouma also being able to successfully evade the rest of the students for the early part of chapter 5 despite them looking everywhere for him.

after that he either hid out until kiibo destroyed the dome in the final class trial, or used the keycard he was still in possession of to escape to the outside world, now convinced due to his (correct) deduction that the game was being watched, that the world was in fact inhabitable.

ultimately though, he didn’t go far as he was able to keep tabs on and affect the final trial.

➡ the poison

if kaito was poisoned, wouldn’t it have been obvious/wouldn’t he be dead by the trial?

we actually don’t know how long exactly it takes the poison to kill its target, all we know is that its eventually fatal. i’m aware the name and some of the effects (namely it being slow-acting) is taken from the real-life strychnine poison, i doubt it’s actually identical to that in the game: real life strychnine’s symptoms involve full body convulsions that set in within the first half hour and gradually worsen, ouma would not have been able to prepare the script afflicted with that. not to mention strychnine has no antidote.

so it’s fair to say, the two aren’t the same and it’s entirely possible that strike-9 is longer acting and milder than strychnine could take several more hours. kaito was only shot in the arm after all, and it would have taken longer to spread and kill him than it would ouma. and if anyone could will himself to live on through it for as long as possible, it’s kaito.



the only thing we know about its symptoms is that it’s painful (and we only know this from kaito’s account of how ouma was behaving prior to his supposed death) - i doubt the poison is completely incapacitating, as maki planned to interrogate ouma with it, hard to do that if it completely disables the target. at any rate, if the symptoms were pain or other bodily shutdowns, kaito could mask it as being part of his illness. the mastermind, who gave him that, wouldn’t think much of it, until it flared up and killed him out of nowhere (which, as we see, annoys monokuma).

kaito’s in notably terrible shape as he comes out of the exisal, suggesting that something sudden has indeed caused him to really flare up (after he seemed fine, talking to saihara the night before)

➡ the blood

there was a lot of blood, and you do see it come out as the press goes down.

personally i find it suspicious that the hangar was shown to have a paint machine which wasn’t used at all, conservation of detail thing y’know. so my running theory is that the paint machine was used to create blood.

paint can be watered to mask the smell; furthermore there was enough real blood in the hangar from the previous altercation with maki that it’s likely that the hangar still carried a blood smell. kaito could have puked up more too.

ouma has a history of being a prankster with DICE, he’s almost certainly got experience making fake blood.

it’s true that saihara and maki would likely have been able to tell that the blood was fake had they investigated it closely, but there seems to be no indication that maki investigated at all as she was hellbent on her conclusion (and believed the press was just a cover-up anyway) and saihara is notable avoidant when it comes to investigating around the press as he’s in too much shock to accept kaito’s apparent death; this is noticeable in his inner monologue during the investigation and he’s ultimately relieved when the press can’t be lifted to allow for a full investigation.



➡ why go to the trouble of making the victim look like kaito if ouma was faking his death anyway?

i think there’s a number of reasons why ouma’s setup would start the way it did:

first and foremost, it would allow saihara to take the the class through a number of conclusions rather than start the end conclusion of ouma being dead. this will stall the trial as long as possible and give ouma more opportunity to escape.

making it look as though kaito’s dead will deter saihara and maki from conducting a more thorough investigation out of shock (which it did), which may have led to them exposing the plan.

making kaito look like the victim would increase the chance of the plan’s original goal - making the mastermind break the rules in front of the evidence, succeeding. if monokuma declared kaito the victim and kaito popped out of the exisal, the killing game looks like more of a sham. of course in practice i don’t think monokuma would have ended the trial that early, thus necessitating the rest of the plan, but it’s worth a try.

this would make the mastermind not suspicious of the press cord being cut. the mastermind would think that was done to hide the identity of the victim, rather than the actual truth that there was no victim at all.



➡ so kaito lied?

yes. a lot of this theory does hinge on kaito lying about what really went down at the end, and i do think he did. it’s thematic as well - kaito actually lies a lot throughout the story (about his health, his fears, his reasons for his grudge against saihara at the start of ch5, his big made up fantasy stories in his ftes…) though with good intentions. he’s not a bad liar, and it can be seen in how he pretended to be ouma for most of the trial and pulled it off.

➡ the murder video shows an arm being crushed

this is fairly common knowledge but i figured i’d mention it here just to clear everything up: this is actually an (inexplicable??) localization error where NISA changed the cg in the murder video for some reason so the victim’s arm is still visible even after the tape is “paused”. idfk why they did this cause it messes up the whole trial no matter way you look at it but it sure is hilarious. in any case, in the original cg, no arm whatsoever is visible after the point where the tape is paused.

THE CONCLUSION

so that’s about it, my theory that ouma faked his death and stuck out and usurped the killing game from the outside. is it canon? probably not. is it possible? maybe. are there other explanations for all the inconsistencies i mentioned? yeah. could all the uncharacteristic and frustrating narrative decisions in chapter 5 and 6 just be bad writing? it’s more likely than you think. the point is i think there’s enough evidence to draw a reasonable conclusion that ouma could alive and not write that off as mere AU - until kodaka releases another half-baked anime to prove me wrong anyway.

but then again ouma’s a fan favorite, so while maybe the original intent was to kill him for real, a future installment might use these holes to say he was alive all along (like he did with komaeda i c u kodaka). and in doing so make the narrative a lot better imo. and that’s the tea.

tl;dr ouma is out there