The Ace Attorney franchise is full of these in addition to the many Smug Snakes around. Sure, all the villains in this series get their comeuppance, but some of them were just better at getting their evil ways before their eventual Villainous Breakdown.
- Manfred von Karma and Kristoph Gavin in particular are quite worthy of this status for playing long-term gambits to ruin other people's lives. von Karma raised Miles Edgeworth to be a ruthless prosecutor like him, partially to have a worthy heir and partially for revenge against Miles' deceased father, who he himself had murdered in secret. And when Miles was falling short of expectations, von Karma set up a murder by manipulating Yanni Yogi's desire to take revenge and pinned the blame on Edgeworth, and just in case the Frame Up didn't pan out, he'd already long had Miles convinced that he himself was the one who had killed his own father so that the guilt over this would eventually get him to confess to it and ask he be charged with that murder in court. Kristoph, meanwhile, did not take kindly to one of his clients summarily dismissing him after a game of poker, so when that client went on trial, he got the lawyer defending him disbarred by using some evidence that he had ordered forged for his own trial, then tipping off the prosecution that it was a forgery. The cherry on top? The defense attorney he got disbarred was Phoenix Wright himself.
- Damon Gant, the police chief himself in the post-game "Rise From The Ashes" episode in the original game's second edition. Once a legendary police officer, Gant murdered a prosecutor and pinned the crime on a convicted Serial Killer to ensure his rise up the ranks of the police. Gant also has his old partner, Lana Skye, installed as the head of the prosecutor's office, having clandestinely framed her sister as the true murderer years ago so that he could control both the police and the prosecution office, using blackmail to keep Lana in line with his demands. When Detective Goodman reopens the old case, Gant murders him and has Lana stab the corpse, resulting in her being framed and Gant knowing she'll plead guilty to protect her sister. Despite his crimes, Gant operates with nothing short of whimsical good nature and accepts his own defeat with good humor, claiming that at the end, he can leave the defense of the law to his rivals and one day they will understand the need to rise higher by any means to protect the law as a whole.
- Introduced in Justice For All, Shelly de Killer is (as his names suggests) a Professional Killer who's the third heir to a long line of assassins for hire. Always performing his jobs calmly and with precision, and always leaving behind a Calling Card so that the authorities know of his involvement and suspicion is not shed on his clients, de Killer was hired to murder actor Juan Corrida by his rival, Matt Engarde, who wanted Phoenix Wright to defend him in trial when he inevitably fell under suspicion. Under the guise of a bellboy, de Killer lured Maya Fey away by alerting her of a phone call at the front desk so that he could abduct her, and gave Phoenix a transceiver for two-way communication, through which he demanded Phoenix get Engarde acquitted, holding Fey as ransom to ensure Phoenix complied. Shortly before the trial, de Killer shot the case's prosecutor, Franziska von Karma, in the shoulder as a "present" to Wright and a warning to those seeking to convict Engarde. Keeping ahead of the law so that Maya would not be rescued all while posing as Engarde's personal manservant, de Killer contacted Miles Edgeworth to testify truthfully about his client, but when the radio transceiver was brought to the witness stand, de Killer betrayed Edgeworth and instead named Adrian Andrews as his client, failing only due to his ignorance of Andrews' gender exposing the truth that he never met her face to face as a client. When told about how Engarde was planning on blackmailing him with video evidence of his killing, de Killer furiously broke contract with Engarde and informed the court that he swears bloody vengeance upon any client who betrays him, a threat that drove Engarde into a panic and got him to willingly confess his own guilty. After the trial, de Killer allowed Maya's safe release and fled the country, being sure to add a recommendation to his website should Phoenix ever be in need of his services before the transceiver self-destructed, leaving nothing to trace back to him. Despite his nasty line of work and the terrible things he'll do to get a job done, de Killer is a calm, civil and polite individual with his own professional moral code, valuing the bond of trust between him and his clients above all else just as much as any good defense attorney.
- A year later in Investigations 2, fellow Magnificent Bastard Simeon Saint hired de Killer to assassinate President Di-Jun Huang of Zheng Fa, which only ended up getting the assassin's left arm injured by bodyguard Ethan Rooke. Learning of the President's planned speech at Gourd Lake, as well as a planned staged assassination attempt, de Killer bandaged his wounded arm and hid a knife inside the dressing before infiltrating the site posed as ice cream vendor "John Doe," waiting to turn the staged assassination into a real one. When caught in the act by Edgeworth, de Killer agrees to help Edgeworth' investigation just to find the real President Di-Jun Huang. Once satisfied with the investigation's progress, de Killer made his escape by turning out the lights on the President's plane and knocking out all those present, and before Edgeworth passed out, de Killer informed him that he had not killed Ethan Rooke, as he respected him far too much, and left his trademark calling card before fleeing to the other side of Gourd Lake, which was devoid of any police presence to stop him. He makes a return by the end of the game, intent on taking Simeon' life for revenge but ultimately being able to see reason when Edgeworth talks him down from carrying out the deed.
- In the first Investigations game, Calisto Yew is able to slide off most accusations with either a bored stare or a fit of laughter, and even though she eventually breaks down, she doesn't really break. In fact, rather then surrender after her confession, as every other villain does, she pulls a gun out to escape. Twice. She was the one who infiltrated the Yatagarasu and destroyed the group from the inside out. "Calisto Yew" even turns out to be a false identity. She sets up prosecutor Byrne Faraday to be accused of being the Yatagarasu by criminal, Mack Rell, before murdering them both, quickly placing suspicion on Detective Gumshoe when deduced that the two couldn’t have killed each other. Even when Edgeworth reveals that she’s the true murderer, she manages to trick Edgeworth into giving her the Yatagarasu’s key, her true objective, before escaping arrest. She goes on to create another persona - Shih-na, an enigmatic right hand woman to Shi-Long Lang - while acting as a mole within Interpol and leaking information to the smuggling ring. When Quercus Alba murders the traitorous Manny Coachen, the spy creates a fire in order for the two to move the corpse between embassies to create confusion of where the crime scene occured. After Shi-Long Lang saves her life from Tyrell Badd, the spy gracefully accepts defeat and out of gratitude, gives information to Edgeworth to help him discover the truth about the case.
- The second Investigations game gives us
- The nefarious yet affable Simeon Saint is a circus animal trainer who poses as an innocent defendant while truly manipulating the entire game's events from the shadows. In the first case, he orchestrates a staged assassination attempt on President Wang's body double to tempt someone into committing murder, even getting Shelly de Killer involved. In the second case, intercepting the correspondence between a blind assassin and a friend who had betrayed him, Simeon tricks a woman into killing his former friend, and after unwittingly being arrested for the murder, convinces Miles Edgeworth to go against the Prosecutorial Investigation Committee (PIC) and defend him in court. In the fourth case he sets up the Chairman of the PIC to kill an attorney, then has Edgeworth — who has been stripped of his Prosecutor Badge — defend the amnesiac Kay Faraday for the murder to get the chairman proven guilty. Even when defeated by Edgeworth in the end, Simeon congratulates his Worthy Opponent and ultimately succeeds in "taking care of" all of his own and Bodidharma Kanis's enemies.
- Judy Bound from the third case was the assistant to her adopted father Jeffrey Masters and a fan of Paul Halique's art. After Masters was convicted for a murder he didn't commit by Manfred Von Karma, Judy took matters into her own hands and hid the body of Halique still frozen by the true culprit to throw off the time of death, in the autumn constellations room in the Zodiac Art Gallery and set a poison gas trap involving two lethal chemicals for anyone who dared to obtain the body nearly killing the culprit, Carmelo Gusto, and endangering the public. When that failed to get Gusto convicted, she dumped the frozen body in the fountain. Despite cooperating with the investigation, Judy still held a grudge against Gusto for getting away 18 years ago and when he was imprisoned gracefully gave herself up to be imprisoned for her attempted murder so her adopted father could be free. While not an inherently bad person, Judy lost faith in the law shortly before the infamous Dark Age of the Law, and did what she had to, to ensure justice was served.
- Spirit of Justice gives us Pierce Nichody, seemingly the helpful butler of the Sprocket Household who at first appears to only be executing the wishes of Sorin Sprocket's parents, but it later turns out he's a surgeon and had a hidden agenda. Wanting revenge on Sorin and his fiancée Ellen, for the loss of his fiancée, Nichody kicks up a framing plot that involved the usage of false time travel, Pierce organized a near perfect operation, to get both Sorin and Ellen confessing to the crime of murdering Dumas Gloomsbury, Pierce's co-conspirator. Despite insulting the judge and attorneys when cornered as well as bribing them with the company's wealth, Pierce still has a distinct kinder side to him in that he realizes albeit too late that Selena would not have wanted him to take revenge and is a surprisingly helpful witness despite being the killer. After admitting his guilt, Pierce's pocketwatch begins to function once more, thus giving him a rather tragic arrest. He even refuses to talk unless directly questioned knowing very well of Phoenix's tactics.