[haguruma]

Originally Posted by AC-Phoenix

You can start tackling this from the wordgame angle, and say that they died later, the red was given out in the middle of the game though.
So game 5 was definitely not a prank.

When exactly was the Red about their corpses given exactly? I went over the manga again, because I can't access the VN right now, and it seems the bodies vanish from the rooms before the red statements about the corpses are given. And regarding wordplay...all of Umineko is about wordplay and writing, so finding the trick hidden in such things shouldn't be that surprising.

Another thing I found when I went over EP5 notes and the manga again:
In the little argument Battler and Erika have in front of Kinzo's study they mention two rather famous mystery novels, The Astrology Murder Case (占星術殺人事件; released in English under The Tokyo Zodiac Murders) and The Non-Serial Murder Case (不連続殺人事件) which both bear interesting similarities to Umineko in general.

The first one deals with the murder of a wealthy family head murdered in a locked room study, who left behind a note detailing the creation of the perfect being "Azoth" through the sacrifice of the virgin women of his family. A few weeks after his death the women die on a trip to a holy mountain and are found dismembered and with one body part missing.
The solution bears an interesting connection to Umineko as well:

Spoiler for Solution:

The murderer is in fact the family heads daughter from his first marriage who killed her father and the other women for treating her mother so poorly she ended up having to sell cigarettes on the street.
She was thought to be among the 6 victims of the Azoth, but in fact assembled the chopped up pieces of 5 bodies in a way that made it appear as if there were 6 corpses. She then fled Tokyo and changed her name, not to be found for over 40 years.

The second one is about a series of murders surrounding the wealthy Utagawa family. Several strange individuals were invited to the house through apparently faked invitations and 8 murders occur that don't seem to follow any reason or motive, earning this case the name of the Non-Serial Murder Case.
This solution is interesting especially in connection to EP5:

Spoiler for Solution:

The culprit is revealed to be the wife of the son next in line to inherit the family; she was after the family fortune and wanted to kill all other successors off. In order to hide her crime she started by murdering somebody unconnected to the family and continued killing people in between who she suspected of knowing too much.
She also used sex and blackmail to make people help her and pretended to hate that person on every possible occasion. The obvious lie was only concealed on a narrative level by the number of strange guests invited to the house.

I would really like to go over all of Umineko again and find which other works were mentioned or at least hinted at...