List of Persona 4 Characters - Creation and Design

Creation and Design

Shigenori Soejima was in charge of designing the characters from Persona 4. With the series now taking place in a fictional rural town rather than a city like in the prequels, the characters coming from the city had their hairs made different from the ones from Inaba with 1UP.com commenting Yu's and Yosuke's were more stylish. The non-player characters with whom the player forms Social Links, a game mechanic wherein the player fosters friendships with the characters to unlock more powerful Personas, had no models in their creation but Soejima had vague memories about their actions based on his experience when first hearing the ideas. However, as a result of adding the mystery element in the game, the staff decided to make the characters act like real people. Therefore, none of them acted like stereotypes with director Katsura Hashino stating that this was since "the worldview was already pretty far from the ordinary."

Each player character's "Shadows Selves" are meant to act out-of-character in their first scene as a result of appearing in the Midnight Channel. While in this case, the Shadows were entertaining the audience watching the program; ince the player encounters the real person with their respective Shadow Self, they behave more coherently, trying to interact with them. This resulted in the portrayal of Kanji's Shadow which initially behaved liked a gay stereotype, but then revealed more about his real self. No changes were made to these type of scenes are meant to "depict the contrast between what people appear to be and how they really are."