#pinging these

The time loop game, where the game has already been going on for who knows how many rounds by the time we start playing it. By that I mean that the reason there need to be two survivors at the end is that one person needs to become the new mastermind, while the other is given two options: Freedom and leave the new mastermind behind, or stay and see all their dead friends revived. And so far, no one was able to resist seeing their fallen friends again, so every time the survivors stay, get their memories wiped, and everyone meets anew like they never knew each other. The way to break through this cycle is that the longer this endless game goes on, the more people have this sense of deja vu and almost-memories. Perhaps someone might also stumble upon the dreaded cauldron-on-the-head memory machine in a hidden room.

A sort of B-side to the above, everyone but the two survivors are clones. Each loop is a new batch of clones with implanted memories. Everyone has been dead for a long time.

Instead of opening the vault door to see the earth apocalypse, we were on the moon all along. The virus happened, but the meteors happened. Or maybe the other way around. The group was sent into space as a sort of safety net for humanity before Monokuma messed it up by wiping and replacing their memories. Not even Monokuma (An AI Despair Girls style) knows what earth is like at the moment though. It's up to the survivors to make it down to earth somehow and find out what's going on down there.

Idea: Since V3 is fiction, it is impossible to 'step into' reality the way the ending is shown to us. Instead, you step into another realm of fiction. The surviving three step into the light only to find themselves in a wacky magical girl realm or a western or fantasy elf land or some such. They find other versions of their dead friends, who can either be reminded of their V3 past (but why would you remind them of this pain) or not (they aren't really them, they are literal AU versions).

The survivors DO step into reality (unclear what kind. Maybe it really is peaceful, maybe it's the HPA real sort of deal) and are haunted by the dead. But they can only see them in mirrors and reflections, and they can only hear them in their dreams. Their dead friends are trying to tell them something, but what? And is this even really happening or are they wishful hallucinations?

Good ol' Shuichi is the true mastermind but it's a split personality sort of deal. The Shuichi we know genuinely doesn't know, he just sometimes blacks out and his other side does things. Sometimes that other side seeps into his day time self and he doesn't know why he said something so forcefully or lied so convincingly all of a sudden.

Spin a wheel to pin the mastermind role on a random character, see what happens.

Wow this is a bunch! I'm loving the time-loop-dejavu, sheltered-on-moon and the (cracked? Why did I think of cracked, symbolic I guess) reflections of the dead- that last one sounds ominous as heck. Fiction multiverse is wild, excuse to make variations actual mage Himiko much

I feel so vexed about the Shuichi personality one, I know we already have a Genocide Jill and all but still I'd probably do something with memory stuff generally than alters >< that said the Werewolf-style mastermind-pick on 7 could result in him being a special case in... some way (drawing a blank on how though, rip).