Remembering Light Theory

Remembering Light Theory

Alright, let's get down to these lights and how they work! So, to start with let's look at how Monokuma explained the Remembering Light in chapter 2:

-- How the light functions, as told by Monokuma --
Monokuma: That flashlight doesn't illuminate just any old darkness. It sheds light on the darkness of all your 'lost memories'.

Monokuma: Well you see, that 'Remembering Light' has the power to cure a variety of symptoms, including 'memory loss'. The light emitted from it stimulates the basal ganglia and the hippocampal formation, affecting not only your memories but the physical condition-

So, doing some basic research this is what we get about those two:
Basal ganglia: Coordination of movement
Hippocampus formation: Involved in forming, storing and processing memory

so essentially what he's saying is that the Remembering Light can restore function related to lost memories or lessened physical condition (More importantly because he says the light cures symptoms that means it can't magically make people capable of doing something they couldn't already do). But is he telling the truth? Now let's look at what Shirogane says, in that they stop working when doubted. Clearly now we have two contradicting accounts here, so let's see if we can find another account that supports what either says:

-- Monokumarz --
Monosuke: The problem isn't who we are. If at anything, you're the big issue here.

Monosuke: You all forgot your talents and became normals!

Kaede: Forgot our talents?

Monotaro: Due to the Hunt, you all forgot your memories and became different people.

-- Who's telling the truth? --

Here we can see that the Monokumarz are in agreement with Monokuma; as the cast doesn't agree that they have talents at all Shirogane's explanation isn't congruent to what we actually observe happening in the game while Monokuma's explanation is consistent to how the first Remembering Light worked. But is that the whole truth? Probably not, as I'll discuss below.

-- 'Implanted' memories? --
The options we see in chapter 6 would seem to imply that everything was fake, but I don't think that's quite true considering we've already seen from above that the first light used is consistent with Monokuma's explanation and it's suspicious how SHSL Hunt is always glossed over.

Also, look at this part:
Monokuma: Oh my, it seems as if your 'sealed memories' are still being quite stubborn. It looks like one 'Remember Light' wasn't enough to bring back all the memories you lost.

Ouma: Wow, you suck at lying-. Even though this is something you're doing on purpose.

Why does Ouma say this? It's hard to say why but I have a theory relating to this that will come up later but the main point here is this: There's a degree of control as to how much a person remembers using this light, and SHSL Hunt being glossed over while the rest aren't is something we should remember.

Anyway, implanted memories! Shirogane was probably not lying about this, but she's lying about what was implanted- Namely, Remembering Lights can be used to introduce false memories but it's something that needs to be remembered in some way for it to be brought 'back up to light'. Okay, but what does that mean? It's like this:

1) A child who forgot his errands can remember them if a light is used on him because the memory isn't gone, it's just out of mind. This is also consistent with Saihara's narration:
"It was a device which could hide away certain parts of your memory, using a combination of hypnosis and brain waves. I used that device "in order to hide away my memories about my own talent".

Note that this same device turns up in the prologue when Kaede tries to remember being kidnapped, and what's interesting about this is that she's clearly wearing her SHSL outfit when she should not have be able to remember this if she was truly a normie up until the killing game. Some people have wondered if it was at all possible that a light was used prior to the events in the game or this was implanted in the first light but I don't think so because a) The panel is in the school itself, and the narration makes a big deal about how this place hasn't had people in ages b) The memory is noticeably filled with static, as if Kaede has trouble recalling it

Aside from that, when Saihara 'recalls' something later too his memory is clear unlike Kaede's memory. Why? Because the Remembering Light's brought his 'sealed memories' to light, which is sort of consistent with that Monokuma says. However!

2) If I tell this same child many times that he has errands to run and he can't figure out whether he remembers this or not, it's entirely possible for him to recall this thing even if he doesn't actually have an errand to do as long as I do at least one thing he should be familiar with. For example, if his dad asks him to do such things in a commanding tone I should use the same tone so when this light is used on him he'd recall how his dad tells him to do things and this triggers his memory of well...errands, even though that's a lie.

This technique is known as 'priming' in psychology, in which a stimulus is introduced that makes a person 'primed' to respond to the next in a certain way. For example, by giving two different people differing sets of words to read and giving them a second set that has all of those words, I can predict to a great degree that they'll quickly choose what they remembered before from the first set of words they got.

It would however be impossible to do things like convincing Maki she's an assassin who had a terrible life to such a finely-tuned level if she was only ever a normal high school girl, for the simple reason that she wouldn't have had an experience consistent with the proposed narrative. As you might also have noticed from the prologue, the Monokumarz do not do individual prompting yet everyone has different memories of their talent from one light, meaning to say scenario 1 is true here.

So you might ask this, exactly when did scenario 2 happen? Chapter 5 and 6 would be examples of this as you get information about the Gopher Plan and Ouma explains basically everything you see from the Remembering Light BEFORE they actually get that light (I'll explain why this is suspicious later), and chapter 6 is kind of a continuation of that.

This is why Saihara says things like "It all connects now!" and Himiko says things like how obviously a Remnant of Despair did this when they clearly haven't a single clue in the previous chapters, and that's because priming was not involved prior to make them believe things they really should be questioning like why Ouma has to take the remote from Saihara that Monokuma handed to him if he's the mastermind. All that matters is Ouma said things that related to things they remembered, the light shows them more or less what he said and so the cast doesn't find anything fishy about it- They know it, after all!

Tl;dr: It's possible to implant false memories, however this requires a lot of preparation beforehand and it certainly doesn't match up with what we're shown from the Remembering Lights in the prologue, chapter 2 and chapter 4 (The meteor one).

-- Chapter 3 and Ouma, though --
Chapter 3 is a bit special. Why so? Because:
1) Monokuma was not around to (Probably) make a light, having been defeated
2) This is the only chapter that had two actual lights, with one broken by Angie
3) It's the only chapter where the light is brought to you (By Monodam)
4) The memory you see here is not tied to anyone you know- But is that true?
5) This is the only light that doesn't make anyone remember anything, they're surprised by it but no one makes any remarks about remembering unlike in chapter 2 and 4

Some people have wondered whether the memorial scene in chapter 2 for Kaede is supposed to be the same thing here, but I don't think so for the following reasons:
1) Only Kaede is mentioned in chapter 2, the entire cast is mentioned in chapter 3
2) The guy who talks in this chapter says he doesn't think they died in an accident, but in chapter 2 he's pretty certain Kaede was killed by 'those people'
3) 'Those people' are mentioned in both scenes, but it's only in chapter 2's scene that they're described in a hushed tone: "I can't really say too loudly, but..."

Anyhow, let's get to point 4. Ouma is consistently one of the last people to comment on each light used and there's never a single time he's shocked by anything shown, not even with regards to the SHSL Hunt memory. Some people have taken this as confirmation that he knew the lights were fake, but this again contradicts how he clearly is talented like the rest and noticeably says that his backstory is a secret- why does he need to keep it a secret if he knows this is all lies?

He's really unhelpful in all three cases because he makes mysterious remarks and that's about it, but if he somehow knew all the memories were fake Ouma should have been happy that the cast doesn't believe what they see in chapter 3, however this is completely the opposite and Ouma's silent for a good while before saying 'This is below my expectations' and clarifies that he meant the entire cast and not the Remembering Light memory but doesn't bother explaining further.

Also, Ouma is the one who invites everyone to see this light and this is unusual because he has a habit of taking things away like how he was quite annoyed when the 'junk' in chapter 2 isn't given to him. And as noted above, Monokuma isn't around to notice if someone made a Remembering Light that doesn't align to his script.

-- What does that memory mean, then? --
Notice how Ouma says a lot that he isn't going to run away and for someone who talks about lying out of kindness he really did not like it at all when the cast goes out of the way to deny the truth of their situation? He also talks about a secret organization at the beginning, tries to get Kaede and Saihara to believe in said organization in his FTEs, is unhappy when they say he's delusional or think it's a lie and chapter 6 confirms his organization isn't evil and neither does it have 10,000 members. So what could he be talking about then? Well, the possibility exists that it's TDR as the true mastermind since even normie!Kaede and Saihara talk about 'them' and whoever 'those people' are it's definitely not anything people say in the open- A secret, as Ouma called it.

That memory is special because neither the normies nor the SHSLs are supposed have met each other at all, but Ouma claims he knows Kaede and certainly knows enough about her to guess what she's going to do, and he also accurately foreshadows Maki's true talent in spite of her attempts to keep it hidden. He also called Amami and Kaede his beloved when seeing them dead, which is quite inconsistent with how he maintains distance noticeably from everyone, and he's so pissed off when Hoshi dies and yells at everyone to apologize that it'd be weird for someone who didn't know him well to do so. So for this memory to show them as people who at least had something in common enough to have a group memorial suggests that we might want to consider that everyone might have known each other, sadly they forgot this and that memory was something Monokuma didn't restore precisely as it'd ruin the killing game.

Other possible evidence:
1) The group stood resolutely against killing each other, to the point two motives were needed
2) Monokuma says something about how they should kill each other since it's not like they're comrades. That's an interesting thing to say when the cast isn't supposed to have known each other, in my opinion
3) The cast tries to defend one another, again very weird since they're not supposed to know each other
4) As I said before, SHSL Hunt is never quite touched on
5) Hoshi is shown to be struggling in the Climax Inference, it's possible he remembered they were all comrades so he would in fact have had something to live for, too bad he drowned before he could say anything

-- So what the fuck is SHSL Hunt? --
I'm pretty sure it's the killing game, which is why Ouma said Monokuma was lying about how the light couldn't restore their sealed memories of it and we can definitely see how much more specific memories of things like the meteors are with the cast recalling different things depending on where they stayed.

In other words, good old Hoshi was spot on with what he said here:
Hoshi: Couldn't it be...that we managed to get caught by the 'Super High School Level Hunt' after all?
Kaito: So if that's the case, then this killing game...
Hoshi: Yeah...that'd mean it's the work of the 'Super High School Level Hunt'.

If so, it's possible Saihara might have wanted to 'die with everyone else' not because he's a suicidal normie or anything but the intention was to fight back against 'those people' in some way, and when Ouma said he isn't going to run away that's because he decided not to throw away his talent or memories. That's the real reason why he fought tooth and nail to end the killing game, because how could anyone who knows the horrible truth of this killing game look away?

-- What is TDR's purpose? --
I'm not quite sure if they're criminals by way of having talent, but considering how movie-like that poster with Kiibo is and how we're shown a theater at the end of V3 HICKSHON is probably true in the sense that the 'plot' is structured and scripted to seem like a sci-fi movie. My guess would be that the cast was going to be summarily executed one by one and erased as lies for entertainment, and this is exactly why both Amami and Ouma wanted to crash the killing game- IIRC they're also the only ones who ever bring up the government, which is curious considering the Monokumarz also link the Gifted System to the government and Kaede says she already knows that which confirms this system is linked to them.

-- Tl;dr --
1) Remembering Lights aren't omnipotent, they're just particularly effective on the cast because they're actual SHSLs
2) False memories can be introduced but priming must be done
3) Ouma is a mystery