Something I've been wondering about Kokichi's Ultimate Lab (Spoilers)

[Sardonicus]

Does anyone know why the Complete History of Hopes Peak academy would be in Kokichi's Ultimate lab of all places? What does that have to do with her talent or backstory given to him?

It always made me wonder what the end goal of the mastermind was to put that there had he not decided to try to defeat the mastermind and ruin those plans which caught her off guard, and he was still alive when his lab opened up. Was she perhaps going to brainwash him into thinking he really was a remnant of despair but never got around to it do to his plan interrupting it, and so she gave that book to further implant that information? Or something else?

I was just curious what your thoughts were on why that book happened to be sitting in his lab since it seems pretty unrelated to his D.I.C.E group, and none of the other ulitimate labs had those kind of hints besides Rantaro but only cause he had the perk.

[Hurkyl]

I forget, didn't Kaito's lab have clues in it too? I vaguely remember that his lab had the clues that finished establishing the main lie of the setting (that they're in a spaceship, et al) so that the later clues would then be used to knock down the lie.

Anyways, "students spend the finale scouring the setting for clues to the mystery of what's going on" is a staple of the DR series. Putting the major clues to the mystery in places that would be unlocked in later arcs would be natural... and to be found by an intelligent student that was likely to antagonize the others? That would seem ideal.

Unlike DR1 where Monokuma could just show up wherever and whenever he pleased to drop hints, I get the impression that the DRv3 Monokuma didn't have free reign of the setting, so it's likely that those clues had to be planted before killing game started.

But, I get the impression that DRv3 went way off the rails; the plot didn't play like how the team had originally envisioned, and so Monokuma and the mastermind had to do a fair amount of improvisation to keep things going... so we'll never get to know for sure what the plans actually were for how it would all play out.

I suspect that keeping Rantaro's lab locked was not the original plan; that was damage control as the mastermind was trying to keep the students away from the original set of clues while trying to spin a new ending on the fly. Heck, I wouldn't even be surprised if Kokichi's lab was supposed to have opened up in the fifth arc.

Anyways, these are my initial thoughts, with only thinking them through a little bit, so don't take them definitively.

[Lots Of Blue]

Originally posted by Sardonicus:

Does anyone know why the Complete History of Hopes Peak academy would be in Kokichi's Ultimate lab of all places? What does that have to do with her talent or backstory given to him?

Personally, I believe that there was no significance to putting it in his lab in particular. It was necessary for the final trial, so placing it in a location that no one had investigated (and that people would want to investigate, given the opportunity) made sense.

Originally posted by Sardonicus:

It always made me wonder what the end goal of the mastermind was to put that there had he not decided to try to defeat the mastermind and ruin those plans which caught her off guard, and he was still alive when his lab opened up.

Unlike Hurkyl above, my opinion is that V3 played out almost exactly like it was intended to. Except for Kaito's death by illness, Tsumugi was more or less in full control up until the moment Shuichi managed to convince K1-B0 to abandon hope. So, I believe that Kokichi was never intended to see his lab. And considering how pretty much everything in the room made Shuichi suspect that Kokichi's "organization" was not what he claimed it to be, it seems like it would have been very damning to Kokichi's entire character if he had been alive when the lab opened. One could argue that this wouldn't matter to Tsumugi, since she wrote the story so that a similar thing happened to Maki, but the difference here is that the reveal of Maki's true talent served to make the cast dynamics and her character a lot more interesting, whereas a similar reveal for Kokichi would have the opposite effect for him and the sense of mystery he wanted to exude.

[Rohannu]

Originally posted by Sardonicus:

The fact that his lab is only accessible through a hole in the ground that was caused by Keebo implies that there was likely another entrance for that location somewhere. Many (me included) belief the actual entrance would have been in the strange pillar that you can see outside (i believe near the boiler room). It seems that there is some kind of entrance with something that looks like a card reader or elevator button. This could also be the entrance that Kokichi opened with his keycard but there is no proof for that I'm aware of.