Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney/YMMV

This page covers the first three games. Take general series tropes to Ace Attorney, and take tropes specific to Apollo Justice or Investigations to those pages, please.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

• Awesome Music: Has its own page
• Complete Monster: Manfred von Karma is an absolutely ruthless prosecutor who cared more about winning cases than serving justice. Manfred had a flawless, decades-long win streak thanks to using every dirty trick in the book to ensure a guilty verdict and ruining the lives of countless defendants in the process, until defense attorney Gregory Edgeworth managed to have von Karma penalized for his illegal workings in the courtroom. Although Gregory still lost the case, von Karma was enraged by the black mark on his previously perfect record. In retaliation for this, von Karma shot the unconscious Gregory in the heart in the fallout of an earthquake and power outage that hit the courtroom. This instigated the case known as the DL-6 Incident, where the baliff Yanni Yogi ended up falsely accused of murdering Gregory but was ultimately acquitted but his life was left in shambles in the aftermath. Afterwards, von Karma took Gregory's young son Miles under his wing to raise as his own and, for fifteen years, he groomed, molded and shaped Miles to be the antithesis of everything that Gregory Edgeworth was, twisting the boy to fit his views and become a ruthless, cold-hearted prosecutor who cared for nothing but getting a guilty verdict every time. Purely for revenge against Miles' late father and to have someone else (other than his own daughter Franziska) to carry on the von Karma prosecutor legacy. Years later, before the DL-6 case was to closed forever, von Karma set up a murder by manipulating Yanni Yogi's desire to take revenge on the people who'd ruined his life (his old defense attorney Robert Hammond and Miles Edgeworth, who he believed was the real killer in that case) and pinned the blame on Edgeworth, intending to have his own foster-son locked up and executed for a murder he didn't commit because Edgeworth's two losses to Phoenix Wright made von Karma consider him a liability to his career. Worst of all, though, is that he'd also had Miles convinced that he himself was the one who had killed his own father and planned on the guilt over this eating at him to the point where he would confess to and be charged with that murder as well, just in case the Frame Up didn't pan out. When Phoenix Wright and Maya Fey find out that von Karma masterminded the murder that he'd had Edgworth framed for and confront him about it, von Karma assaults them both with an electric taser (which he admits could potentially kill them) so that he can take away all the DL-6 case evidence and the letter he wrote to Yanni Yogi that could prove his guilt, and it was only through Maya saving one vital piece of evidence that ended up used against him in court later that his schemes were thwarted, at which point von Karma threatens to kill Edgeworth during his Villainous Breakdown. While he claims his actions are for the sake of ensuring criminals are punished, von Karma proves himself to be simply a narcissistic hypocrite willing to commit any atrocity for the sake of his "perfect" record.
• Crazy Awesome: Many characters have their moments. One of the best example is Manfred von Karma who retrains a parrot. No, he doesn't want to lose.
• Ear Worm: Some of the music will get put on repeat in your head. Jake Marshall's theme, for example.
  • The. Blue. Badger. Theme.
    • Da-da-da-da-da-da, DA, da, da-da-da...
      • Dum. Dum. Dum. Dum. Dum dum...
• Fanon Discontinuity: Some people ignore the fifth case of the first game (which was not part of the original Japanese GBA game but instead added in as a bonus for the DS remake) because, despite providing us with Memetic Badass Damon Gant, it actually subtly retcons the backstory of the game: Most of the rumors about Edgeworth being a Well-Intentioned Extremist are false and he never intentionally used fake evidence. This, to many people, effectively makes a good portion of the first game pointless.
  • Interestingly enough, when Phoenix sees Edgeworth again in 2-4, he assumes Edgeworth quit because his perfect win record was tarnished, when actually, in 1-5, particularly on the third day of investigations and the last trial segment, Edgeworth is already questioning himself and admits shame over his Amoral Attorney past and fear that he might become like Manfred Von Karma and Damon Gant in the future.
  • Well, to be fair, the backstory supposedly being retconed has a possible explanation in that, while Edgeworth might not have intentionally forged evidence, but he probably used all of vonKarma's other dirty tactics like witness manipulation and illegal searches. No idea for the point right above this, though, as you'd think Phoenix would be a bit more understanding of Edgey after 1-4 at least, even if 1-5 wouldn't have happened...
• Funny Aneurysm Moment: When you show Lana Skye the Attorney's Badge, she comments that the gold plating will flake off in a few years, then we'll see the real Phoenix. The conversation ends like this:

Lana Skye: "Give it three years. Then we'll see what you've become."

• • Phoenix is disbarred approximately three years later in-game.
    • That could have been deliberate foreshadowing.
• Hell Is That Noise: Manfred von Karma's villainous objections.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Redd White murdered Mia Fey in the first game. In the third game, an important fact is Godot being unable to see red on white. Additionally, Godot/Diego Armando cared for Mia Fey in the past and was resentful of Wright of doing nothing to prevent her murder.
  • Case 1-3 is the first case that makes it clear that the American version takes place somewhere similar to Los Angeles. Three of the characters are William, Hammer, and Penny.
• Magnificent Bastard: 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.
• Memetic Molester: Damon Gant.
• Memetic Mutation: Damon Gant--in spades. He will RAEP you, indeed. Also, Phoenix Wrong.
  • Peachifruit's comics does this constantly.
• Most Annoying Sound: Manfred's frequent, demonic Objection!s in 1-4.
  • Speaking to Mike Meekins in case 5; that megaphone...!
  • Oh God, Manfred's fingersnaps. They might just be worse than his Objections. Stop doing that.
• Nightmare Fuel: In case 1-4, running into von Karma in the police station and getting tased by him promptly thereafter.
• Player Punch: Having to prove towards the end of 1-5 that Ema, who's been your sidekick for the whole case, accidentally killed Neil Marshall two years ago.
• That One Boss: The first half of the first day of the trial in 1-5 is one of the hardest parts in the game, especially since much of it consists of finding subtle flaws in Angel Starr's testimony, mainly concerning the point from which she supposedly saw Lana stab Goodman.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice for All

• Anticlimax Boss: Breaking Wendy Oldbag's psyche-locks in 2-4. It's the first time you have to deal with 4 locks at once, but if you show her Juan's autograph, all four of them break at the same time.
  • Well, given how it's Wendy Oldbag we're talking about here, who is very dramatic, they probably did that on purpose.
• Base Breaker: Case 2-3 (Turnabout Big Top).
• Complete Monster: Despite never lifting a finger to kill anyone himself, Matt Engarde is widely considered to be among the most evil people within the entire franchise for good reason. There is no motive given for the atrocities he committed (outside the murder he had Shelly de Killer carry out), leading some to believe he did it all For the Evulz. These atrocities include throwing away his manager Celeste Inpax (who he knew had feelings for him) like a used tissue, and when she fell for his rival Juan Corrida and got engaged, he told him that he was previously intimate with her in the hopes this would cause him to call off the wedding. It worked: Celeste Inpax was so heartbroken that she committed suicide and as a result Engarde was overjoyed. Of course, he doesn't just stop there. When he found out Corrida plotted with his new manager, Adrian Andrews, against him, he hired Shelly de Killer to kill his rival, but still puts in extra plans to blackmail the assassin despite De Killer having nothing but absolute trust in his client. Knowing that he'd be the prime suspect for Corrida's murder, he had de Killer kidnap Maya and starve her so that Phoenix Wright would become his defense attorney and get him acquitted for his crimes, having de Killer threaten to end Maya's life if he didn't. His actions also led to de Killer shooting Franziska von Karma in the shoulder so that she wouldn't prosecute against Engarde, and Detective Gumshoe risking his life in order to secure the location Maya was being held at. In the last trial, he made it so that Phoenix had to PIN the blame for Corrida's murder on Adrian, already an insecure, miserable woman with dependency issues who'd attempted suicide in the past. The kicker for this is that Engarde probably knew all that about Adrian and still did it for extra lulz, relishing the idea of making her suffer more and forcing the morally upstanding Phoenix to compromise all of his beliefs in truth and justice by condemning a woman he knew to be innocent in order to get acquitted a man who'd admitted his guilt to his face in the Detention Center earlier. Ruining lives and viewing people as toys he could break and dispose of after he was done playing with them, Engarde was among the vilest and most sadistic psychopaths that Phoenix Wright ever faced in his legal career.
• Ending Fatigue: The last trial eventually boils down to just stalling for time.
  • Canonically!
• Harsher in Hindsight: Maya, despite being cleared of all charges, laments at the end of Case 2-2 that every time something like this happens, she loses someone close to her. In the next game, she loses her long-lost mother
• Magnificent Bastard: 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.
• Most Annoying Sound: Franziska's whip will have you wanting to strangle her with it by the time those two cases are over.
• Player Punch: Pretty much all of the last case, starting right at the beginning when Maya gets kidnapped to blackmail Nick, and just getting worse when you find out the client is guilty as sin.
• Squick: In Justice for All, Pearl gives us this gem:

"Let's go let her whip us, Mr. Nick!"

• • Also, "Director Hotti" implies that he'd like to "research" the crime scene photos if you show them to him in 2-2.
    • Even worse when you remember that it's Ini/Mimi in the pictures, and he'd been going on about how she was a favorite patient...

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations

• Alternative Character Interpretation: In an odd example, a couple gets this. The DeLites are either a Happily Married couple of a man who isn't above stealing for the happiness of his wife and a woman who likes strong emotions, and authentically loves her husband for many factors besides money, or a Happily Married couple of a crook and a gold digger.
  • No reason they can't be both.
  • At least they are Happily Married either interpretation.
  • Then there's the question of Terry Fawles' mental state. If he's mentally healthy, then he's an ephebophile, but if he suffers from mental problems or learning difficulties, then it's possible that he just doesn't understand the implications of a relationship with such an age gap. At least in the American version of the game (where Word of God claims takes place in California), the question is one of whether or not he was knowingly skirting the line with 14-year-old Dahlia, as the local age of consent is 18.
  • Iris can be subject to this based on your interpretation of her statement that the plot to poison Phoenix's cold medicine was the first time that Dahlia didn't tell her about a plot in advance. Does this mean that she knew about things like Diego's impending poisoning and let them happen? Does she deserve to be punished as an accessory to all of Dahlia's crimes?
• Base Breaker: Godot.
• Complete Monster: Dahlia Hawthrone shows just how dangerous judging a book by its cover can be. No other villain in the series cackled with delight at the prospect of forcing a 19 year-old girl who would never hurt a fly to commit matricide or tricking her mentally-disabled first lover into a suicide pact that she had no intent on fulfilling so she could avoid getting caught. She later poisoned Diego Armando, the lover of attorney Mia Fey, when he got too close to her crimes, before going on to seduce Phoenix Wright when the two of the attended college together just to use him as her personal evidence disposal and was planning on eventually disposing of him. Dahlia used her twin sister Iris to date Phoenix in her place, but when Iris started falling for Phoenix, Dahlia accelerated her plans to poison him. When an ex-lover of hers tried to warn Phoenix, Dahlia electrocuted him to death and tried to frame Phoenix for his murder. Despite being convicted and executed for her crimes instead, Dahlia returned as a vengeful spirit aiding her mother Morgan Fey in a plot to kill Dahlia's cousin Maya solely to spite her elder sister Mia's spirit. Taking steps to manipulate her twin sister again to help with the murder, she came back from the dead to possess Misty Fey (albeit due to Misty's desire to protect her niece Pearl from being taken instead) and attempted to murder Maya, being stopped only by the intervention of Godot (formerly her victim Diego Armando), who killed her host in order to get rid of her spirit. Despite this she became convinced that she'd forced Maya to murder her own mother and caused her to commit suicide, which she gloated about to her opponents' faces when Maya channeled her spirit in court later on. She's also a ginormous hypocrite; she shows nothing but disgust towards Morgan because of the "petty revenge" that she was after, but at the same time, Dahlia was going along with Morgan's plan specifically in order to get her own revenge on Mia. A thoroughly malicious and spiteful sociopath and a Serial Killer with a high victim count whose evilness far transcends any plausible justification for it, Dahlia Hawthorne gave new meaning to the term "demon with the face of an angel", and stands as one of Phoenix Wright and friends' cruelest and most deeply personal foes.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Godot. There's a pretty big difference between sympathetic murderer and absolving him of all his crimes and bad decisions. Then again, the writers could have arguably been doing the same thing.
• Evil Is Sexy: Dahlia Hawthorne.
• Fridge Horror: Dahlia calls Mia a spinster out of spite, which would normally just be insulting had she not been the one who poisoned Mia's boyfriend.
• Funny Aneurysm Moment: Phoenix's behavior in case 3-1 gains a whole new dimension when it turns out that the woman he dated for six months and the one that tried to kill him are not the same, and that his insistence on her innocence wasn't a result of him grabbing the Idiot Ball.
  • Perhaps it also counts as a bit of foreshadowing...
• Harsher in Hindsight: Phoenix's comment in 3-3 that the only way to win a phony case is with phony evidence becomes a lot harsher after the events of Apollo Justice, where he loses his badge due to evidence forgery.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: 3-5 has one when you examine the incinerator. "A fight between a lawyer and an overgrown boiler? Who'd want to see that?"
• Jerkass Woobie: Dahlia in Iris's perspective, although most likely not the player's. Both sisters were separated from their mother and received no love from their father, and while Iris had a mother figure in Sister Bikini. Dahlia had no one. Iris realizes Dahlia has done many unforgivable things, but still cares for her and wants to help her because of what she's been through (including recovering the necklace so she won't commit any more crimes).
  • Godot could be considered as one, but only to Phoenix, whom he refused to acknowledge for the greater part of the game. He seems to be pretty nice to everyone else.
• Magnificent Bastard: While not being a Big Bad, Luke Atmey certainly counts. He uses a guilty verdict as his alibi for a murder, and this same verdict makes him look like a genius thief smarter than everyone, while giving him what he wants the most from others, their attention.
• Squick: STOP TALKING ABOUT HEMORRHOIDS!
  • There's only one reason! One as obvious as Jean Armstrong in a thong on the Riviera!
• Values Dissonance: 3-4 gives us a 20 year old man in a relationship with a 14 year old girl (quite a heated one too) - the mention of the age gap is Played for Laughs.
  • Only the reactions of Mia and Diego are played for laughs. The relationship itself is portrayed as unhealthy, although less because of the age than because Dahlia was very obviously using the mentally disabled Terry.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Ron DeLite.

Multiple games

• Iron Woobie: Maya Fey: smiling through even the most hardcore misfortunes.
  • Maggey Byrd, who gets caught up in three murder trials over the course of the series (and that's not even covering half the things that have happened to her,) but remains plucky and optimistic throughout.
• Jail Bait: Get into any location that contains Phoenix/Maya and Phoenix/ Iris shippers and ask whether Maya is too young for Phoenix.