Due to its nature as a sequel, spoilers for Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth and preceding games in the Phoenix Wright trilogy games are left unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

Ace Attorney Investigations 2: Prosecutor's Gambit (逆転検事 2, "Gyakuten Kenji 2" in Japanese — lit. "Turnabout Prosecutor 2") is an Adventure Game and sequel to Capcom's Ace Attorney spinoff Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth. It was originally released for the Nintendo DS in Japan on February 3, 2011, with an iOS/Android version later coming on December 21, 2017.

Two weeks after the events of the previous game, Edgeworth finds his position as a prosecutor threatened by Judge Verity Gavèlle, a member of the Committee for Prosecutorial Excellence, as he is accused of going beyond the bounds of the law in the pursuit of the truth. Edgeworth also finds himself reacquainted with defense attorney Eddie Fender, a former apprentice of Edgeworth's father who suggests that the prosecutor considers returning to follow his father's footsteps. In the midst of all this, Edgeworth has to deal with several new cases, ranging from an attempted assassination of a foreign president to the last case Edgeworth's father worked on before his death.

Prosecutor's Gambit features a new system called "Mind Chess". This does not necessitate playing chess, but instead acts as a visual metaphor. When Edgeworth doesn't have evidence that can be used to draw the truth out of an opponent, he then manipulates the opponent's emotions in order to break the opponent's emotional defenses to trick them into giving up the truth. He can either bide his time if he senses that attacking a possible opening is a bad idea, or can choose one or two responses to attack an opening. Choosing a correct attack has him damage or destroy one of the opponent's chess pieces representing their mental defense, while chosing a wrong response or choosing to wait when he should have attacked will cause him to lose time. Running out of time causes him to fail a Mind Chess segment and take damage to his truth gauge.

For 13 years, the game never left Japan, but there was a Let's Translate on YouTube (completed on September 29, 2013 and briefly lost after Youtube removed its annotations feature, until a screen recording of the entire translation was found and restored which can be found here) while a full Fan Translated patch (subtitled "Prosecutor's Path" and featuring a complete localization of the dialogue) was made available in English, and can be found here. However, on June 18, 2024, the game was finally announced to be releasing worldwide alongside the previous Investigations game as part of the Ace Attorney Investigations Collection, now subtitled "Prosecutor's Gambit", with the compilation releasing on September 6, 2024.

Trope Chess — Commence:

• 10-Minute Retirement: Edgeworth turns in his prosecutor's badge midway through Case 4, and reclaims it at the end of Case 5, a few in-universe days later.
• Accidental Hero: While bringing an unconscious Kay to the Bigg Building rooftop for his plans, Simeon Saint stumbled upon a secret meeting between the fake Di-Jun Wang and Verity Gavèlle. Hearing the balloon Simeon was riding in, Wang ushered Gavèlle away and tried to shoot down Simeon with a gun he was likely going to kill Gavèlle with if she realized he was a fake, only to get squashed by the hot-air balloon. Had Simeon not discovered the meeting, the victim of Case 5 would've been Verity Gavèlle instead and Shaun Fenn would've been erased next to clean off any loose ends.
• Achievement Mockery: One of the achievements you can get is for telling Eustace that he's a total failure of a human being while he's distraught and in need of guidance, which is a needlessly cruel response that results in failure for that particular Mind Chess segment.
• Achievement System: Like The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles and other re-releases before it, Prosecutor's Gambit has a few in-game accolades that can be earned as part of the Investigations Collection.
• Acting Your Intellectual Age: Judging from Gregory Edgeworth's comments, Miles was stoic and serious even as a kid. His father even laments that he'd rather read law books than fairy tales, and that it seems unlikely he'll be able to get along with kids his own age.
• Always Murder:
  • The initial victims of cases 1 and 4 survive, necessitating that two additional people get killed.
  • Subverted in the present portion of Case 3. Again, the initial victim survives, but then a body is found. Turns out, it's the same victim from 18 years ago, whose body was never found.
• Ambidextrous Sprite: Most notably with Kay in Case 4 after she loses her memory. The bandages swap sides depending on which side she's facing.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different:
  • Case 2 has you briefly play as Gumshoe using a metal detector.
  • Case 3 has you switching between Gregory and Miles Edgeworth, with Eddie Fender telling Miles the last case that he worked on with his father.
  • Case 5 has you briefly present evidence as Eustace Winner.
• Arc Symbol: The Lion Lilies in Case 5. The flowers appear constantly in several locations, including a reenactment of the scene of the SS-5 Incident. The flower's meaning is "the bond between parent and child", the Central Theme of the game. The bouquet of Lion Lilies turns out to even be the final evidence that needs to be presented in order to bring down the Big Bad.
• Arc Welding: Case 3 reveals what exactly happened between Gregory Edgeworth and Manfred von Karma which led to DL-6, featuring Gregory's last case. Case 4 adds more info behind Manfred's sole penalty following the fallout of the IS-7 incident, revealing that Excelsius Winner was who gave him it and set him up with the fake evidence.
• Arc Words:
  • The "path of the prosecutor" or the "prosecutor's path".
  • In case 5, the words "The bond between parent and child" are constantly repeated as the symbol of the Lion Lilies. Said bond is a Central Theme to the game.
• Art Evolution: In-Universe; Larry is back to his Laurice Deauxnim persona, and in contrast to his drawing in Trials and Tribulations, which was even treated as a joke by the characters, his art of Gavèlle and Judy in this game is a lot more polished and shows his growth as an artist. Elise Deauxnim was on to something when she took him under her wing.
• Artistic License – Physics: In the first case, a pistol with a Laser Sight is treated as a poor choice for an assassin because it would immediately give away the shooter's position. This is a fair assessment to some degree, but everyone's dialogue and the game's artwork implies that in this universe, the laser was a visible beam of light and not just a single point. Possibly justified by the fact it had been raining, and the moisture in the air would make the beam more visible, but still counts because no one mentions the weather as a reason. Note that the game itself is a bit inconsistent about this, with the laser appearing as a line in one photo and a dot in another.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Lotta can be spotted in AAI, and it's implied she takes a picture important to the case, but she's never identified. She plays a very significant role in the last two cases of Investigations 2, and actually gets a sprite this time.
  • After spending the entirety of the story as a Posthumous Character, Gregory Edgeworth gets half of an episode dedicated to himself detailing both his final case and his first encounter with Manfred von Karma.
  • That nameless chief prosecutor from the first main series game who gave von Karma his penalty? He shows up here in this game, gets a name, and acts as one of the Co-Dragons to the Greater-Scope Villain.
  • Ema Skye appears for a brief moment in the third case (and the credits roll) of the first Investigations game, before she is taken away by Lang. In this game, she sticks for the near entirety of the fourth case, even serving as the Assistant character while Kay and Gumshoe are unavailable or unable to assist, and then comes back towards the end of the fifth case to provide her forensic support.
• Asshole Victim:
  • Bronco Knight in Case 2, who was shown to be a rather obnoxious Jerkass even before he turned out to be Case 1's culprit.
  • Artie Frost in Case 3, who was guilty of blackmail, kidnapping and assault, and is about as bad as the killer.
  • Di-Jun Wang's impostor, the person who prepared the president's assassination and posed as him for years, is killed by the game's Big Bad in the final case.
• Auction of Evil: The fourth case centers around an illegal auction at the prosecutors' office for evidence from past cases, in which participants hid their identities using masks with voice-changers. The victim, Rosie Ringer, was a Mole posing as a buyer and trying to bring down the auctioneer. The true murder weapon even turns out to be an auction gavel.
• Awful Truth: Edgeworth internally cites this as the possible reason why Shi-Long Lang would overlook a glaring contradiction suggesting a second murder was covered up during the SS-5 incident while discussing their new findings in the present since he's usually an astute detective that would've clocked it instantly, because that would mean for Lang admitting that he now knows his country's president was actually Dead All Along.
• Back for the Finale: Every surviving character from the first two cases except for Rocco Carcerato and Frank Sahwit return to play some role in the final case.
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work:
  • Without the intervention of Shelly de Killer blowing his cover and taking Bronco Knight hostage, Edgeworth would have lost investigative control over the case of President Wang's attempted assassination and the death of Bastian Rook, which would have resulted in Tabby Lloyd being framed as the assassin.
  • Simeon Saint manages to dethrone three extremely corrupt and powerful individuals, by making them do the dirty work for him which leads to their self-destruction. Played straight where Simeon personally kills the fake Di-Jun Wang in a spur-of-the-moment.
• Batman Gambit: As it turns out, Simeon Saint's entire plan and therefore the game's entire conflict involved this trope, including some elements of the Xanatos Gambit.
  • In Case 1, he manipulated Knight into killing Bastian Rook by playing into his inferiority complex.
  • In Case 2, he manipulated the evidence, using Fifi Laguarde's intense fear of Bodhidharma Kanis to trick her into falsely believing that Knight was an agent of his, provoking her into killing him.
  • Case 4 is where the Batman Gambit and Xanatos Gambit tropes most clearly overlap: Simeon sets up a meeting between Excelsius Winner and Rosie Ringer by communicating their secrets to each other, where one would inevitably kill the other. If Rosie killed Excelsius? Great, revenge achieved. If Excelsius killed Rosie (which he did)? Well then it was a good thing Simeon also kidnapped Kay and made it look like she was working together with Rosie. Excelsius would then have to either kill Kay or frame her for Rosie's murder (which is what happened), thus provoking the wrath of Miles Edgeworth, who would stop at nothing to bring Excelsius to justice.
• Barely Changed Dub Name:
  • From the Prosecutor's Path Fan Translation:
    • Delicy Scone to Delicia Scones.
    • Ami Aizawa to Amy Marsh ("marsh" being the literal translation of "aizawa").
  • From the official English translation, Delicy Scone to Delicia Scone.
  • The official French localization changed Verity Gavèlle to Justine Delcourt, which is almost identical to her name in the Prosecutor's Path Fan Translation — Justine Courtney.
• Be All My Sins Remembered: Edgeworth's checkered past as Manfred von Karma's disciple haunts him for most of the game, especially when Eddie Fender returns and he comes under suspicion by the Committee. He is pretty much the only one who doesn't bristle at Fender's bitter anger toward him, since Fender had every reason to feel that he had betrayed his father Gregory by joining von Karma.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Excelsius Winner and Simeon Saint.
  • Excelsius is the Dragon-in-Chief of the conspiracy that either fuels or influences all of the cases of the entire game and many games in the Ace Attorney franchise. He is the biggest threat of the conspiracy between himself, Fifi Laguarde, and the fake Di-Jun Wang that has victimized many and eliminated all viable legal options within most people's power to dislodge him, forcing Simeon to become an opposing Big Bad to get any sort of justice.
  • Simeon, being one of the masterminds of the entire game, plotted to use everyone involved to take down a government conspiracy consisting of Excelsius, Fifi Laguarde and the fake Di-Jun Wang, whether it involves getting them arrested or killed, as well as plotting the death of his childhood friend as part of his ultimate plan.
• Big Damn Heroes: Gumshoe does this at the end of the final case when the real culprit is about to leave. Eustace also pulls one off earlier in the case when Verity Gavèlle can no longer stall the trial.
• Blood-Stained Letter: Case 4 features a bloody letter due to it being on the body when it was impaled.
• Body Double: The Di-Jun Wang we meet turns out to not be the real one, but a body double who had the real one killed over a decade ago and took his place, since he was sick of putting his ass in the line of fire all the time and getting no recognition for it.
• Break the Haughty: Eustace is smug, self absorbed, and thinks he knows everything better when he doesn't. He takes credit for things he didn't do, and constantly talks about how he's the best at everything...only to break down when he finds out the truth, and even then, fate has another nasty surprise for him in store.
• Brick Joke: The brick from the first game bounces and lands again in case 5, where Lang is working with only one of his subordinates, who offers to count off to cheer Lang up. When he realizes just "one" is unimpressive, he starts going through various ways of saying "one".
• Broken Pedestal:
  • Eustace stops being a "Well Done, Son" Guy after Excelsius reveals his treachery through the final two cases (as well as being a heartless jerk towards Eustace). Curiously, however, Eustace thanks his father for bringing him to where he is now, although he refuses to walk along the same path any longer.
  • It's very clear by this game that the pedestal Franziska held her father and his ideals on has crumbled, since she actively avoids directly referring to him, except where Eustace is concerned, and even then, she doesn't often say "my Papa" like she used to. The one time she does, it's because she's in shock from learning exactly what caused the black mark on his record all those years ago. On the rare occasions where she does refer to her father, it is without the pride she used to always use when talking about him, usually indirectly comparing him to Eustace's father.
    Kay: He... really loves his dad, huh...?
    Franziska: But that's no excuse for him to ignore his father's crimes. No matter how much he respects him.
  • Shelly once again falls under this trope, having another client that betrays his trust.
• But Thou Must!: A more comedic example. When we first meet Eddie, he gives Edgey a pop-quiz: What is the name of the room Knight was murdered in? The three choices are "A classroom", "A morgue", and "A recreation room". The correct answer is "workshop".
  Edgeworth: (...So all the options he gave me were wrong. How infantile.)
• Catch-22 Dilemma: Carmelo Gusto's conviction on IS-7 requires the false conviction dealt to Samson Tangaroa, but because of the expired Statute of Limitations that took Gusto leaving the country for 3 years and Tangaroa's trial being dragged for a year to extend the Statute, if Samson really is declared Not Guilty, the false conviction will be overturned. However, the Statute of Limitations has expired again by a few months meaning that Gusto will likely get off scot-free. Except it hasn't: it was paused the entire time he was out of the country, and this triggers his Villainous Breakdown.
• Call-Back:
  • A rather ironic one: the image of the conspirators in this game (Fifi Laguarde, Excelsius Winner, and Di-Jun Wang's body double) eerily mimics the image of the Yatagarasu trio from the first game (Calisto Yew, Tyrell Badd, and Byrne Faraday).
  • Even though both incidents happened by complete chance, Edgeworth seems to have learned a trick from one of Phoenix's cases by requesting a piece of evidence to be tested for his own fingerprints since he touched it earlier for a different reason at the time in order to prove that it was at a certain location, much like how Phoenix felt for something in a bag which turned out to be the missing Sacred Urn from Case 2 of Trials and Tribulations and requested a fingerprint test on it later.
  • In Case 2, Gumshoe presents several "secret weapons": Missile the dog, a fishing pole, and a metal detector. He had previously offered these three to Phoenix in Case 1-4. And just like before, only the metal detector contributes any meaningful results; in case 1-4, Missile eats a whole stock of hot dogs and the fishing rod triggers Lotta's sound-activated camera and wastes a lot of film; in this case, Missile is too disturbed to help out and the fishing pole attracts an alligator.
  • Case 4 has an ID card record like in "Rise From the Ashes", with the victim's ID card being used last and a potential suspect being the one preceeding them earlier. Subverted when it turns out the only other person was Verity Gavèlle, who was only there to gather documents and wasn't the murderer.
    • Apparently the Tangaroa Group was responsible for the production of medications such as Coldkiller X, the medication that Dahlia Hawthorne used to store poison in her attempt to kill Phoenix Wright in Trials and Tribulations, although the attempt backfired spectacularly.
  • A retroactive one added in the official localization is Eddie Fender nicknaming Gumshoe "Detective Flatfoot Sholmes". Similarly, one of the prison guards is playing with a cat he named "Waggy", bringing to mind Soseki Natsume's cat "Wagahai" and Iris' Affectionate Nickname for her, which was "Waggy".
  • Another retroactive one occurs in Case 2, in reference to the Asinine Attorney segments:
    Gavèlle: ...Not all of us enjoy the freedom of a prosecutor relieved of his only current responsibility.
    Edgeworth: [inner monologue] (Gnrk...)
    Gavèlle: Oh, I do apologize. I meant, of course, an associate attorney.
    Edgeworth: Pfft, "associate"! More like "asinine"!
• Call-Forward:
  • Case 3 has the Organizer renamed as the Court Record like in the main games, as much like Phoenix, you're playing as a defense attorney, specifically Gregory Edgeworth.
  • In the flashbacks to Gregory Edgeworth's last case, detective Badd's coat isn't riddled with bullet holes like it was in the first game; after all, the KG-8 incident, where he got ambushed resulting in those bullet holes, hasn't happened yet.
  • Also in the flashback, when Fender compares Manfred von Karma to a stern teacher, Gregory Edgeworth shudders to think what it'd be for his son, Miles, to study under him. As the very first game revealed, von Karma would ironically be his son's mentor years later.
  • In Case 5, the background of the Rebuttal sections taking place in the Empty Lot has a Gavinners billboard in the background (made clearer in the Collection).
• Celebrity Cameo: Planned In-Universe with the in-production Taurusaurus movie, which was a remake of the original that the Zheng-Fa president Di-Jun Wang was a fan of, leading to plans for him to make a cameo in the remake, but it fell through due to his death.
• Central Theme:
  • Gets more and more obvious with time: "The bonds between parent and child" and by consequence, the influence of a parent in their child's life and vice-versa, particularly after Eddie appears and draws constant parallels between Miles and Gregory Edgeworth:
    • Eustace is the victim of an abusive father and this turns him into a "Well Done, Son" Guy with little interest in anything besides getting the love of his father becoming instantly more competent and grounded once he decides to turn his back to his father. Other Abusive Parents also appear in the game, namely Gusto and Frost who respectively only used his son for his work and the other threatened his son to kidnap his friend, both are considered inhumane by the other characters and severely messed up their sons.
    • On the other end of the spectrum, you have Gavèlle and Shaun. Gavèlle actively states that carrying an image of her son around with her gives her strength and courage in her job and Shaun, being Happily Adopted is a incredibly well adjusted, if a little hot headed, kid, who even tampered the crime scene in order to help his mom and refused to avenge his father simply because he knew that it would make his mom sad. Their healthy and loving relationship is a Foil to the Abusive Parents in the game and shows how far in the side of the good Gavèlle really is. The end shows that Shaun also respects his biological parents, who truly cared for him after all. Miles lampshades to Gavèlle that the Goddess of Law is also a motherly one, since she understands attenuating circumstances, like Gavèlle's own.
    • The Big Bad, Simeon Saint was betrayed and abused by every authority figure they should have been able to rely on, including his father and the caretaker of the orphanage he was in. The former only used him for his career and the latter tortured him in an attempt to keep him quiet about the SS-5 Incident. When he seems to have found a Parental Substitute in Bodhidharma Kanis, it's implied that Bodhidharma has softened to him and he became the one person Simeon actually relies on, becoming a Family of Choice.
    • Several main characters struggle with their relationships with their parents in the end of the game. Lang is attempting to solve the case that sent his family into shame, particularly his father, by using the evidence his father collected long ago. Franziska has decided to leave her own father's influence behind her and make something of herself, independent of whatever he did in the past. Eustace, having resolved to walk a different path from his father as a prosecutor, goes as far as to find a new nickname. The end of the game shows that Gregory is still a huge influence in Edgeworth's life, even as he intends to keep on being a prosecutor, taking his father's teachings with him about how to save people. The ending implies that Kay will also attempt to get out of her father's shadow and start her own path as the Yatagarasu.
  • There's a second theme of the imperfections of the law and how the villains abuse it for their own gain. At least three people (Judy Bound, Rosie Ringer, and Simeon Saint) resorted to vigilantism either because the law didn't allow them to legally pursue justice, or there was some corrupt official burying the truth and preventing the whistle from being blown. Edgeworth concludes at the end that many of the tragedies of the game could have been prevented if the law itself had been properly safeguarded by worthy guardians, and chooses to stay as a prosecutor so he can work his way up and reform it from the inside.
  • The third theme is unworthy successors to great legacies; Bronco Knight killed Bastian Rook to become head of the Di-Jung Wang's bodyguards, but everyone acknowledges that he's a poor substitute to Rook. Eustace Winner is brought in to replace Edgeworth as the prosecutor for cases, but it's Edgeworth who gets things done (as always). Eddie Fender admits that although he took over the Edgeworth & Co. Law Offices, he can't hold a candle to Miles' father. And in the final case it is revealed that the cowardly and incompetent Zheng-fa president was really a Body Double who pulled a Kill and Replace on the more effective genuine article.
    De Killer: Hmm... I wonder if you have what it takes to step into such capable shoes...
• Chekhov's Boomerang: Knight's chessboard, ring, the correspondence chess memo, and the photo of Frost and Gusto with their sons. The Taurusaurus doll owned by the president also gets quite a bit of legwork in the last two cases after showing up in Case 1.
• Chekhov's Gun: At the end of Case 2, Simeon Saint gives Edgeworth a flyer for Berry Big Circus, inviting him to visit for a show. The hot-air balloon in the background of the flyer becomes a major key of the final case, as Simeon used it to travel to the crime scene and ended up killing one of his targets with it.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • Bronco Knight and Simeon Saint seem to have paid off in the first two cases, but they're still important later on.
  • A boy with strange headgear makes brief appearances in the third and fourth case. He enters the plot in the fifth one.
• The Chessmaster: The Big Bad, Simeon Saint, both literally and metaphorically. Has orchestrated a plan that involves criminals getting their comeuppance throughout the game.
• Chess Motifs:
  • Repeatedly. Besides Mind Chess and the physical chessboards in Kanis's cell, Edgeworth's office, and Knight's case, there are a lot of characters who are metaphorical chess pieces. Knight and Rook are obvious examples, but there are more subtle nods, like Eustace Winner, who would surely claim to be a King while unaware that the King is the weakest piece on the board, and the generic bald bodyguards in Case 1, who are meant to resemble pawns and are even marked as such on a diagram. Edgeworth himself, however, is very likely depicted as the chessplayer. He then goes head-to-head against Simeon Saint, who manipulated the entire case and is also likely Edgeworth's chess opponent in the final argument.
  • While less direct than Rook and Knight, the game clearly invites players to continue the chess metaphor. Kanis's pointed head, monk/priest themes, and the fact he becomes much more valuable in the endgame phase makes him a Bishop. Excelsius and Fifi have competing right to be called the Queen. Excelsius is the most powerful piece on the board, whose capture weakens every other piece on the board, while Fifi was promoted to a powerful position from a relatively lowly one, and is easy to bully around the board in the early game, and both are right hands of the literal and metaphorical King.
• Clothing-Concealed Injury: In "A Turnabout Forsaken", there is an inverted example of the victim having a unrelated burn mark on her hand that was visible when her body is discovered, but then it turns out she normally wears gloves to hide them. There was a taped recording of the murder, with the lone piece of dialogue determined to be the culprit mentioning the victim's burns. But when it was revealed the victim was actually wearing gloves during her murder, this meant the recording was actually the victim talking about the culprit's burn mark. A straight example of this trope follows, as the culprit was exposed when it was determined he was hiding his burn under his fake beard.
• Co-Dragons: Excelsius Winner and Fifi Laguarde to Di-Jun Wang's body double.
• Continuity Cavalcade: The Bigg Building’s 51st floor. It turns out to be a single room full of evidence sold for the black market auction on the 50th floor. The evidence ranges from the real Alif Red statue from I-2 to Redd White's office desk from way back in 1-2.
• Continuity Cameo:
  • Phoenix and Maya appear during case 5, although here it's easier to generate than in the first game, because it happens during an investigation taking place in the same area so it's much more likely you'll examine the large, obvious spot twice that triggers the cameo. Triggering this Easter Egg is an in-game accolade in the Investigations Collection.
  • In case 3, Ron and Desirée DeLite from Trials and Tribulations can be found... "admiring"... a sculpture in the Winter Wing room.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Gregory Edgeworth and Detective Badd have a conversation about ladders and step ladders.
  • Edgeworth alludes to Psyche-Locks during a conversation in case 5.
  • There are reappearances of "John Doe" (Shelly de Killer), Frank Sahwit, Polly the Parrot and Gourd Lake. Plus, there is a flashback case involving Gregory Edgeworth.
  • Pretty much the entire Case 3 is this. But it doesn't stop there — you also find out who the Chief Prosecutor who gave Manfred Von Karma the penalty was and who brought down Lang's family reputation in Zheng Fa.
  • The last two statements in Frank Sahwit's "Finding the Corpse" are direct references to his testimony from the first Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney:
    Sahwit in 1-1: Then I saw her lying there... A woman... not moving... dead! I quailed in fright and found myself unable to go inside.
    Sahwit in I2-2: And then, I saw him lying there... A man... not moving... dead! I quailed in fright and found myself screaming in sheer terror.
  • In case 4, when Edgeworth is imprisoned in the detention center for continuing his investigation illegally, he comments that he "Never thought [he'd] have to spend another night here", as he'd spent a few nights there previously while suspected of murder during 1-4.
• Contrived Coincidence: In Case 5, the victim could have been Verity Gavèlle instead of the fake Di-Jun Wang hadn't Simeon accidentally happened upon their meeting on the Bigg Building’s rooftop while flying the circus' hot-air balloon, causing the fake to usher Gavèlle away and try to shoot Simeon with a gun he was planning to kill Gavèlle with, only to get squashed by the hot-air balloon.
• Copy Protection: Much like in the DS version of Ghost Trick, if the game is detected as a pirate copy, all the dialogue text will be rendered in Borginian and all the item descriptions are replaced with X's. Due to how the fan translation patch works, the program that causes this in the DS version is written out completely.
• Corpse Temperature Tampering: The victim of the IS-7 Incident was frozen with the intention of throwing off the time of death, but a series of events beyond the culprit's control led the body to disappear for over 18 years. Later on in case 5, the victim is frozen to throw off the time of death, which leads to parallels being drawn between the two killers.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Eddie says that Judy Bound wouldn't have needed to buy back Samson Tangaroa's mansion and set a poison gas trap for Artie Frost's real killer if she'd just trusted him and come clean about stealing the statues containing Frost's body from the crime scene. Judy, however, replies that this is her way of atoning for her crime, and that since the police had hidden the fact that they hadn't found the body, she couldn't trust them.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • The game has many instances of corruption in the series' justice system and the first and last cases feature a case of political corruption as well. The biggest of these instances is Excelsius Winner, who manages to put every other Amoral Attorney in the series to shame with his corrupt actions, and sends Edgeworth into a Heroic BSoD and a 10-Minute Retirement as a result. Then there is the game's Big Bad, who is a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds in contrast to the sociopathic and Large Ham villains in past games.
  • Case 3 in particular is darker in tone than the rest of the series. It's a flashback case with almost no comic relief characters, primarily focusing on some of the most serious characters in the series (Gregory Edgeworth, Von Karma, and Tyrell Badd), and the player knows that it's a Foregone Conclusion that this case will lead directly to Gregory's death.
• Darkest Hour: In A Turnabout Forsaken, Kay is attacked by a mysterious assailant, suffers amnesia, and was implicated for the murder of a member of the Committee for Prosecutorial Excellence. Then the Chairman of the Committee, Excelsius Winner, shows his abuse of power by twisting the truth to have Kay convicted of the murder no matter what evidence Edgeworth tried to argue with. Then realizing the corruption in the Committee, Edgeworth gives up his badge and whole career as a prosecutor. Later, Edgeworth is jailed for aiding and abetting Kay and conducting an illegal investigation. At that point, Edgeworth is placed in the detention center, and not only is all the evidence except the Yatagarasu Pin taken away, but it is also completely silent. It really sinks in that Edgeworth is powerless before Excelsius, and that the hearing is his last chance to expose Excelsius and save Kay.
• Dark Reprise: Three notable ones: of Lang's theme, one of Kay's, and theme for the SS-5 incident is a tragic remix of the Zheng Fa Presidents theme.
• Death in Custody: Case 2 sees the culprit of Case 1, Bronco Knight, being found dead in the prison, when he was supposed to be in the Detention Center awaiting his murder trial. It turns out he was murdered by the prison warden Fifi Laguarde, who feared that Knight was a minion of another prisoner, Bodhidharma Kanis, who was blackmailing her. She snuck Knight's body out to the prison in an attempt to frame Kanis for the death. In Case 5, it was revealed that the evidence supposedly connecting Knight and Kanis was faked, in order to exploit Laguarde's paranoia and trick her into murdering Knight.
• Demoted to Extra: Some of the previous game's major characters get much less screentime and smaller roles this time around:
  • Gumshoe, though it doesn't kick in until after the first case, when loads of characters start showing themselves. Eddie takes the role of Edgeworth's Lancer while still providing comic relief, while Eustace fills the clueless logic comedy Gumshoe used to provide, leaving him with less and less screentime as the game goes on. After Case 2, his only real role is to occasionally transfer evidence and make arrests. To drive it home, AAI2 is also the first game in the series where he never gets to testify.
  • Franziska and Lang as well, with Verity mainly filling Franziska's role and Eustace (sort of) providing the "rival" dynamic that Lang did.
• Dialogue Tree: Mind Chess combines this with a Timed Mission: Edgeworth has to extract information from certain characters by giving the proper replies and asking the right questions, with the player usually being given two or three topics to choose from at a time.
• Disc-One Final Boss:
  • Manfred Von Karma in Case 3. Justified, since the case switches between a flashback and the present, and it's a Foregone Conclusion that the case wasn't solved then and Gregory was never able to confront the real killer. Manfred von Karma is also imprisoned or dead by the present day, so he can't return for when Miles finally solves the case.
  • Bodhidharma Kanis in both of the cases in which he features. You even get the Presto theme during his testimony in the last case.
• Distressed Dude: Eustace in Case 5 is accidentally kidnapped by his father's men when he's mistaken for another boy. Kay and Edgeworth find him Bound and Gagged in his own house while investigating and have to free him. He's pretty heavily traumatized by the incident, and it's up to Edgeworth to get him back on his feet.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: At the end of Case 3, Eddie Fender asks the soon-to-be arrested Judy Bound if he can act as her defense in a manner that sounds a lot like a proposal if you swap out "defense attorney" for marriage-related terms.
• Downer Ending: It's a Foregone Conclusion that the flashback portion of Case 3 isn't going to end well. Fortunately, von Karma's eventual downfall is also established in canon.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • When pressing Frank Sahwit, he reveals that he has a deep hatred of defense attorneys. Edgeworth correctly guesses that he had run afoul of one in the past, having no idea that it was Phoenix Wright since the prosecutor of that case was Winston Payne.
  • In "Turnabout for the Ages", Kay says that she doesn't see anyone special around her either as the camera pans up to reveal Phoenix and Maya across the street.
• Dressed to Cook: Delicia Scone and Carmelo Gusto both wear chef's attire in the flashback portion and present day in Case 3, which involves the investigation of a murder committed during a dessert making contest.
• Enhance Button: Twice. The first time is in case 2, where you must examine surveillance footage from the detention center to determine who was attacked by what in the holding cell. The second time is in case 5, where you enhance the practice video. This could easily have been Hand Waved by saying that everything in the near future (the game's setting) is recorded in HD, including surveillance footage, and that "enhancing" it is actually just zooming in to video data that's already there. Instead, Lang mentions that "the police have a device that lets you analyze the video footage up close and personal", effectively making it this trope.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Eustace may be annoying, but everyone — even Franziska — is utterly disgusted when his father reveals that his "achievements" were all a lie and belittles him, causing him to run away, sobbing uncontrollably.
  • Florence Niedler went along with Excelsius' order for her to replace Rosie Ringer, but decided to preserve the woman's modesty by putting a rain coat on her dead body, which ends up helping solve the case.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Bodhidharma Kanis, the feared blind assassin who's pulled off countless jobs, once saved the life of two boys his guide dog found freezing to death in a car on a particularly cold winter day. He brought them to a local orphanage, and later kept in touch with one of them over the years through correspondence chess because he helped him escape being killed by clients from a hit. In Case 5, he pleads with Shelly de Killer for the life of that same boy, and succeeds.
• Face Death with Dignity: The real Di-Jun Wang upon being confronted by Kanis. He refuses to beg for his life, and only asks for some time to see his son Shaun Fenn before Kanis kills him. Kanis declines and kills him immediately.
• Failure Is the Only Option: Played for Laughs in Case 2 when Eddie Fender asks Edgeworth what room the crime scene is out of a possible three. However...
  Edgeworth: So all the options he gave me were wrong. How infantile.
• Fake Assassination: The first episode opens with an attempted assassination on the visiting President of a foreign country. However, the President engineered it himself as a PR stunt to boost his popularity. However, there were a few complications that arose: First of all, somebody hired Shelly de Killer to actually assassinate the President, but de Killer took offense when he learned that the "President" is actually an imposter who pulled a Kill and Replace on the real President a decade ago (a fact the player doesn't learn until the final episode of the game) and therefore his client was lying to him, so he abandoned the job. Second of all, one of the President's bodyguards was killed, which wasn't part of the plan. The other bodyguard killed him hoping he would be promoted to head bodyguard in his place, and tried to frame de Killer for it, who naturally got pissed off by this and forcefully conscripted Edgeworth into solving the case (ironically by holding the real killer hostage).
• Fake Facial Hair: The key evidence that ultimately exposes the real culprit in the episode "A Turnabout Forsaken" is that culprit's beard is actually fake. During the murder the culprit's disguise involved a mask that exposed his chin, which had distinctive burn mark on it. The culprit realizing he's been caught ends up burning his fake beard and hair off when his lighter goes out of control, exposing his burn mark.
• Finishing Each Other's Sentences: In Case 5, if you press Lang about the plushie (Kay even lampshades the following):
  Edgeworth: The plushie? It has a recording device conceald inside it, correct?
  Lang: It does. And it was used by Shaun's mother Amelie...
  Edgeworth: ...To record a message asking the president to meet her at the orphanage at midnight.
  Kay: Whoa! You're finishing each other's sentences now? What a team!
• Flashback B-Plot: Case 3 has two flashbacks to when the originating incident happened, with the rest taking place in the present and revolving around finally solving the incident.
• Foil:
  • Judy Bound to Simeon Saint. Both were effectively abandoned by their parents, raised and mentored by an imprisoned man who is the only family they've ever had, and resort to illegal means to exact their revenge on those who've wronged them. Whereas Bound is ultimately a misguided kind-hearted person, Saint's mentoring by an assassin shows when it's revealed he's not above psychological manipulation and murder (by proxy or directly).
  • Verity Gavèlle and Shaun Fenn to the plethora of abusive parent-child relationships.
• Foregone Conclusion: Victory in the game's third case seems shallow when you're already aware that it's the very case that puts a stain on Manfred von Karma's spotless record and drives him to murder Gregory Edgeworth. With that established, the point of final, big confrontation of Gregory's segment is not proving who the killer is, but proving von Karma forged evidence.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In the original Japanese, Shelly de Killer drops a hint to the mastermind's identity in the very first case, long before you even know there is a mastermind - he uses the phrase 'saru okata', 'a particular personage', which contains a homophone of the word "saru", which means "monkey". Sure enough, the mastermind is Sota Sarushiro. Each of the three translations makes an attempt to replicate this:
    • In the official English version, which is probably the most vague of the three (and thus probably the closest in intent to the original Japanese), he says 'a certain someone' hired him - if you say it a certain way, 'Simeon' can sound similar enough to 'someone'.
    • In the Prosecutor's Path fan translation, he says he was hired by "a key individual". Said client, and the mastermind, turns out to be Simon Keyes.
    • In dowolf's 'Let's Translate' series, he mentions how he was "put on the trail" to assassinate the president. The mastermind is then later revealed to be Simeon Trail.
  • At the end of Case 2, Regina comments that Simeon is smarter than he looks. He most certainly is.
  • In Case 1, Wang's body double "survives" his staged assassination attempt because he supposedly had on a bulletproof vest (it was prepared ahead of time). It's then mentioned how even while wearing a bulletproof vest, the impact from a bullet can still hurt you and even break your bones. In the final case, the body double is killed for real, having been crushed to death with every bone in his body broken.
  • Given Gavèlle's age (26), it's really unlikely that she could be the biological mother of Shaun Fenn (13). Then "Turnabout for the Ages" rolls around, and you find out that she isn't.
  • At one point in the game, Simeon says that he doesn't like sweets. This is due to having been his father's taste tester in the past, with his dislike stemming from his Dark and Troubled Past that came as a result of it.
  • If you're familiar with 20th century American history, you might find a name in the fan translation very familiar. Sirhan Dogen^note Bodhidharma Kanis in the official translation shares his first name with Sirhan Sirhan; the man responsible for assassinating Robert F. Kennedy, brother to President John F. Kennedy. Dogen is later revealed to have assassinated President Di-Jun Wang.
  • During Mind Chess, Edgeworth's imaginary pieces involve him playing with white pieces against his opponent, who he imagines is defending with black pieces. His second opponent, Di-Jun Wang also defends with black pieces, and his Chess Motif and map marker depict him as the white King, but when it's revealed that he's a body double/imposter of the long-deceased Di-Jun Wang, his map marker is now a black King, which he truly represents.
  • In Case 1 of the fan translation, Knight notes that the strange one-horned cow toy the president owns is apparently a very treasured keepsake to him, yet the president just refers to it as "that stuffed animal". Guess the body double didn't know the real president that well. The official localization has the body double correctly identify it as his plushie.
    • Also, Knight being held hostage by de Killer holding a knife to his throat hints at the nature of his death: stabbed in the neck with an assassin's blade.
  • After Edgeworth is hit with a major snag in Case 1 regarding the facts, his logic, and the evidence that breaks his case, Kay suggests that if the facts don't match with the evidence, then there's probably something wrong with the evidence. Not only was she right about this as Case 1's murder weapon was switched, Case 4 has Edgeworth discover that the autopsy report itself was tampered with.
  • The culprit of Case 1 has a Villainous Breakdown that involves getting hit in the head with a Thinker statue, foreshadowing his future role as a murder victim.
  • Later on, Edgeworth finds a moping Shelly de Killer, who's still griping about the events of Case 1 where he was sent to kill a false target, foreshadowing that President Di-Jun Wang was a fake.
  • Kay's confusion resulting from mixing up Gourd Lake with the Bigg Building’s viewing platform results in her thinking that the man in the red raincoat was floating in mid-air. Case 5 reveals this is technically true, as Simeon Saint had access to a hot air balloon and could in fact float in mid-air.
  • Eustace Winner's initial theories about what happens in Case 2 and 3 turn out to be a lot closer to the truth that one would be inclined to believe at first. Yes, Simeon Saint was (indirectly) responsible for Knight's death, and Gusto's incident was made to look like a suicide.
  • In Case 4, if you choose to present the Taurusaurus Plushie to Kay in the Storage Room, she'll suddenly get a severe headache just by looking at it. Near the end of the case, she remembers that Rosie Ringer was holding it as she died, and it ends up proving to be a vital piece of evidence.
• Forged Message: A plot point involves a hidden mastermind manipulating individuals by typing letters signed as other people, predicting that a few keywords would push them to act as the mastermind wanted. Edgeworth gets clued to the existence of the mastermind after de Killer drops a hint about them regarding Kay's supposed letter to Rosie Ringer, which she realises she never wrote at all.
• Found the Killer, Lost the Murderer: The Big Bad's plan hinges on this trope. Every culprit Edgeworth catches killed someone (Bronco Knight with Bastian Rook, Fifi Laguarde with Bronco Knight, Excelsius Winner with Rosie Ringer), but these deaths only came about because the Big Bad set up the circumstances to prod the culprits into murder, knowing Edgeworth would get involved solve the case but be unable to find decisive evidence against the true instigator. It's especially impressive because this wasn't the original plan; Simeon only came up with the idea of setting Edgeworth on his enemies after he was arrested for Bronco's murder (which he'd set up, but Fifi had enacted) and Edgeworth had defended him by proving Fifi did it — thus allowing him to kill two birds with one stone by having Bronco killed and Fifi arrested.
• Friend on the Force: Detective Gumshoe more than usual in this game; when Jurisdiction Friction forces Edgeworth out of the official investigation, Gumshoe (reluctantly) assists Winner but passes any useful information on to Edgeworth and Eddie Fender. Detective Badd played a similar role for Gregory Edgeworth in the IS-7 incident, for similar reasons.
• Gambit Pileup: Case 1: Di-Jun Wang, the President of Zheng Fa, stages an assassination attempt on himself as a PR stunt; however, one of his bodyguards, Bronco Knight, hijacks the plan in order to kill head bodyguard Bastian Rook and usurp his position; meanwhile, someone has hired Shelly de Killer to actually assassinate Wang, but Knight's plan is set in motion before de Killer gets his chance. Then, when Edgeworth arrives on the case, Knight tries to frame Tabby Lloyd for killing Rook, but de Killer forces Knight at knifepoint to let him and Edgeworth into the President's plane, where de Killer tries to draw Wang out by threatening to kill Knight. When this doesn't work, de Killer realizes he's been lied to about the nature of his target and leaves, but his intervention still allows Edgeworth to solve Rook's murder and indict Knight.
• Go Through Me: When Bodhidharma Kanis shows up in Case 5, Judge Gavèlle's sprite does the "hug" pose with Shaun Fenn.
• Grand Finale: For Edgeworth's story. While he does appear in later entries, this game is what finishes his series-wide character development as he decides just what type of lawyer he wants to be now that he's overcome the trauma of Manfred von Karma and DL-6.
• Greater-Scope Villain:
  • Played with. The corrupt organization encompassing Chairman Excelsius Winner of the Committee for Prosecutorial Excellence, prison warden Fifi Laguarde, and President Di-Jun Wang of Zheng Fa (actually his body double) is significantly and obviously more powerful, influential and menacing than the game's actual Big Bad Simeon Saint, but they aren't the ones who drive and instigate the main conflict. In fact, he ends up destroying them all behind the scenes, thus technically elevating himself to a similar scope.
  • In a sense, Excelsius Winner ends up being this to the original trilogy, due to being the Chief Prosecutor who gave von Karma his one penalty, which would drive Manfred to commit murder and start the DL-6 incident.
  • In a similar way, Carmelo Gusto for committing the murder that lead to the DL-6 incident, and Artie Frost for being the instigator whose actions caused to said murder. Frost is also responsible for the rise of the game's Big Bad.
• Guide Dang It!: The Mind Chess battle against Excelsius Winner in Case 4. Among other things, it requires you to go back on previous lines of questioning to discover options that weren't there before.
• Happily Ever Before: The game ends with several corrupt authority figures revealed and Edgeworth securely on his path in life — to reform the justice system. Five days later, a certain magician is found dead in his hospital room, and six days after that, a certain defense attorney is disbarred for presenting forged evidence. The Dark Age of the Law is about to begin...
• Hounds Hunt a Ham: Episode two has Missile the dog reappear. This time he only gets sidetracked for a little while before finding a secret tunnel. Subverted when it later turns out the perfume on the corpse being tracked did enter maximum security in between being in the tunnel and entering the work room. Missile did seem to genuinely want the cake once he saw it though.
• I Will Show You X!: In Case 3, after Manfred von Karma prevents Gregory from speaking with Gusto, we get this:
  von Karma: ...Now, if you are quite done obstructing my investigation, I have things to be getting on with. [walks off]
  Fender: [clenches his fist in anger] That smug, self-righeous JERK! I'll give him something to be getting on with!
• Idiot Ball: When Gavèlle chews out Edgeworth for investigating the president's plane, which was outside his jurisdiction, it doesn't occur to him to point out that he had no choice due to Shelly de Killer holding Knight at knifepoint.
• Ignoring by Singing: In case 2, when questioning Kanis about Helmut:
  Fender: Geez Louise. You could've just taught the guy to shake hands!
  Kanis: Kheh heh heh. Oh, he does that marvelously, too. Although, the way I taught him to do it is somewhat... unorthodox. First, he bites down hard on the victim's hand. Then...
  Kay: LALALALALA! I'M NOT LISTENING!
• I'm a Doctor, Not a Placeholder: In Case 4, when Gumshoe urges Edgeworth to care for the amnesic Kay:
  Edgeworth: [inner monologue] (Let's not get carried away here, Detective. I'm a prosecutor, not a miracle worker...)
• Impersonation-Exclusive Character: President Di-Jun Wang was assassinated 12 years before the events of the game. The president encountered in-game is his body double, and at no point does Edgeworth ever meet the real president while he's alive.
• Incredibly Obvious Bug: A variation. Kay's conspicuous homemade Yatagarasu's Badge is used to hold a tiny bug device inside by the Big Bad, which Edgeworth doesn't discover until he picks up on a few details that the Mastermind shouldn't have known.
• Innocuously Important Episode: Case 3 stands out as the sole flashback case in the whole game, mostly to explain the events leading up to DL-6. Even after the threads start connecting the other four cases together through the three conspirators, Case 3 is left unrelated until Bodhidharma Kanis reveals that it's actually the Origins Episode of the Big Bad.
• Interface Spoiler:
  • In Case 1, you can talk to your partner, Kay. She'll reveal Tabby aimed a laser pointer at the President's head before you find it out yourself, although it's easy to surmise it at that point.
  • Because of the HD graphics in the Collection, in Case 5, it's easy to see that the thumbnail for Bronco's belongings shows his ring in just enough detail where you can see it has the familiar "PH" on a snowflake like Artie Frost's "Paul Halique" signet crest, spoiling the connection between them as father and son way before it's properly looked at in the plot.
  • The art gallery in the Collection explicitly warns you about this when opening it for the first time, since it contains unspoilered media such as design sheets for Simeon Saint and his final appearance when he shows his true colors, where it's clear that he's an antagonist by that point. One of the Accolades even spoils that Eustace Winner is the Mind Chess opponent of Case 5.
• Internal Deconstruction: Usually, in this series, when the player character lacks investigative privileges, they can just Hand Wave the issue aside and do whatever they want at the crime scene. When Edgeworth conducts his own investigation in Case 4 after giving up his Prosecutor's Badge and reports his findings to the authorities, he gets thrown in jail, because an illegal investigation is illegal.
• Ironic Echo: Two near the end: first, Shelly de Killer repeats Edgeworth's "It's game over" line after the final villain is taken down, and during the ending of the case, Gavèlle mentions "the contradiction of law", which Fender had spoken about earlier.
• Irony:
  • Manfred von Karma, of all people, becomes the key to closing Gregory Edgeworth's final unsolved case due to dragging the IS-7 trial out for a year, which at the very least enables the release of the defendant he got falsely convicted years ago.
  • Eddie points out at the end of Case 3 that the very technicality that allowed the real killer to be apprehended could quite possibly be the element that sets him free as well: the statute of limitations was on hold during the year of Tangaroa's trial as a supposed accomplice to the murder. There's no way to hold Gusto without accepting Tangaroa's conviction as genuine; conversely, showing Tangaroa to be entirely innocent means the statute had expired and the killer can go free.
• Karma Houdini:
  • In what continues what has so far been a series-long tradition, Shelly de Killer didn't face any comeuppance for his actions (but to be fair, he didn't actually kill anyone in this game).
  • Kanis is an interesting play on this trope. At the start of the game, he is sitting in a luxury prison cell, and at the end of the game, he is sitting in a luxury prison cell. And the game never properly resolves the fact that this Professional Killer had access to a dog, a luxury cell, and (as was revealed in Episode 5) is able to get out of prison whenever it suits him.
  • Fender reveals that it's still possible for Carmelo Gusto to get Off on a Technicality even after being caught, as his conviction relies heavily upon Samson Tangaroa's accomplice charge, though it's also implied that the law can be changed in time for this to be averted.
  • Verity Gavèlle uses fabricated evidence to get Kay arrested for murder, and withholds evidence that would remove her from investigative authority in Case 4, and she receives no comeuppance for these illegal shenanigans. It is heavily implied she was forced to do so by Excelsius, though. And, well, in the next episode, her son gets kidnapped and used as a bargaining chip, causing no small amount of distress in her, and she's also accused of killing Wang, but that's overkill.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: By the end of the game, Excelsius Winner; the then-unnamed and unseen Chief Prosecutor from the first game mentions he had been covering for Manfred von Karma's misdeeds prior to DL-6, where he had to issue von Karma a penalty just to save face and even after Phoenix brings down von Karma, Excelsius isn't connected to the DL-6 incident and gets away with his cover-ups. Here, not only is it revealed he meddled with most of the IS-7 incident which directly lead to DL-6, he gets put away for murder and likely investigated for his involvement in IS-7 thanks to Verity collecting evidence of his connections to it alongside his other crimes of conspiring in a presidental assassination 12 years ago (within the Statute of Limitations from Case 3) and trying to dispose of evidence in two different cases.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia:
  • Kay Faraday gets hit with this in Case 4 after being pushed down a ladder by the Big Bad.
  • As were childhood friends Bronco Knight and Simeon Saint. When Simeon regained his memories, he also got a few things mixed up, such as who his father was and who Knight's father was.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • At the end of Case 3, after committing murder and letting Samson Tangaroa take the fall for it eighteen years ago, Carmelo Gusto is finally brought to justice. Though the possibility remains that he'll get Off on a Technicality, his reputation as a world-famous pastry chef is still irrevocably ruined at the very least.
  • By the end of the game, Excelsius Winner, Fifi Laguarde, and the body double all finally receive some form of punishment for past or current crimes. It can also be assumed that Excelsius and Laguarde will be tried for the murder of the Zheng-Fa president as well, as the incident is only 12 years old and still within the statute of limitations by three years.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In the final confrontation, the villain boasts that if Edgeworth is so confident in his case, he shouldn't have any problem accepting a greater risk. The Life Meter then appears to show that a wrong answer will cause you to lose half of the meter, causing Edgeworth to exclaim "THAT much???" Just what were they referring to in-universe, one wonders?
• Legally Savvy Crook: The final villain is an Indirect Serial Killer who, when confronted, rightly points out that they cannot be charged for inciting murder because they never directly encouraged anyone to kill; all they did was look for people who already had reason to kill each other, and gave them a nudge in the right direction.
• Like Father, Like Son:
  • Eddie constantly makes mention of the similarities between both Edgeworths. The game even allows the player to play as Gregory in the third case, who makes the same remarks as Miles in multiple situations, and they even have the exact same opinion about Judy's desserts being too sweet for their taste. It comes to a head where Eddie ends up taking near-identical photographs with the two Edgeworths in the past and present.
  • Deconstructed with Carmelo Gusto and Simeon Saint. Simeon hated Gusto for killing Artie Frost, because a traumatic near-death experience had jumbled his memories and caused him to think that Frost was his father and not Gusto. However, both Simeon and Gusto have the same habit of laughing maniacally when they believe there is no way their plans can fail, and Simeon uses the exact same method of preserving the body of his victim that Gusto had used: by freezing it to throw off the time of death, even though he had no possible way of knowing that Gusto used it. A full on Father-Son Nice Job Fixing It, Villain! ! This is lampshaded by Edgeworth while he's cornering Saint for the crime.
  • Excelsius and Eustace Winner have a shared tendency to believe they are more clever and brilliant than they actually are, to say nothing of certain childish quirks like playing with objects while they talk. They also got to their high positions by taking advantage of others. However, Eustace had no idea his father "helped" him so much (and is genuinely dismayed to find out) and decides to do things on his own merits once it all comes to light. Excelsius and Eustace are also the only two prosecutors in the series who actually wear their prosecutor's badge instead of keeping it in their pocket.
• Lost in Translation:
  • In the original Japanese, Kay, after losing her memory, refers to herself by the personal pronoun "atashi" rather than her usual "watashi" for almost the entirety of the chapter, and acts rather meek and timid compared to her usual Genki Girl self. After she recovers her memories, Kay switches back to her usual personality, with the change being shown as she switches pronouns mid-sentence. Both the fan translation and official translations are unable to convey this change.
  • In the original Japanese, during Episode 2, Fender was intending to bring some California rolls to the prison. This was supposed to be off-putting to the rest of the cast and Japanese players as California rolls were invented in America, and not considered actual Japanese sushi, much less regularly sold in Japan. The fan translation kept the California roll mention, losing that awkwardness since the setting was moved to Los Angeles, California. According to an interview with the localizer Janet Hsu, the official localization changed the food item to maintain the awkwardness, specifically a food item common in America, but served in a form more associated with another culture. This turns out to be weenies - specifically, Japanese octopus sausages.
• Luxury Prison Suite: Kanis has one in the detention center that looks more like a Buddhist shrine than a cell. Justified in that he's blackmailing the warden.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": Case 3 has Gregory and Manfred walk into a room at the crime scene, and both discover in horror that the sherbert ice sculptures have suddenly completely melted.
• Metal Detector Checkpoint: In "The Captive Turnabout", there is a security gate at the detention hall entrance that would make it impossible to bring a sharp metal object through undetected, but it is discovered such an item can bypass it by being hidden inside a personal item that goes through a separate check by the guards without them closely checking.
• "Metaphor" Is My Middle Name: In Case 4, when Lotta Hart is asked to tell the facts about the murder in the auction, we get this:
  Hart: Don't you worry yer pretty little head on that front! I'm a journalist! Truth's my middle name!
  Edgeworth: [inner monologue] (...Color me officially worried.)
• Mexican Standoff: The last case has one between de Killer and Kanis — each has a knife to the other's throat.
• Minor Injury Overreaction: Turns out that the overabundance of bandages and the eyepatch on Kay after her accident was actually an overreaction by Florence Niedler, as Kay actually fell down a height of a single floor rather than from the roof of the Bigg Building to the ground.
• Mirror Character: Several of the characters, in an attempt to defeat their personal nemeses, use exactly the same evil methods they use. Laguarde and Kanis both hide weapons in their respective pets' mouths; Rosie and Excelsius both try to ambush each other during the black market auction; and Simeon and Excelsius both try to kidnap the judge's child to influence a trial's outcome. Simeon also shares several mannerisms with Carmelo Gusto, who he believed killed his father and thus despised (in actuality Gusto was his father and Simeon's memories were mixed up). He even uses the same method as Gusto to throw off a victim's time of death, even though he had no way of knowing Gusto used it too (which Edgeworth points out).
• Miscarriage of Justice:
  • Samson Tangaroa. Eighteen years ago, he confesses to the crime because the prosecution threatens to charge Judy for being an accomplice. Gregory Edgeworth is able to prove that the confession was coerced, but is unable to prove that the body was falsified due to a coverup in the higher ranks of the prosecutor's office. This gets undone in the present day, thankfully, as the real killer gets caught.
  • This trope is also the reason Simeon Saint decided to enact justice on his own — knowing the Prosecutor's Office was corrupt at the highest level, he never dared come forward with the truth. Edgeworth resolves to spend the rest of his life as an Internal Reformist so that people like him can trust the Prosecutor's Office again.
• Missing Floor: Edgeworth is able to deduce this in Case 4, where he compares the live footage of the Bigg Building in the newscast to the photo in the pamphlet.
• Mistaken Kidnapper: In Case 5, while looking for the missing Shaun Fenn, Edgeworth discovers the crooks Excellius hired to kidnap him took Eustace instead, as the only info they had about Shaun was that he knew Judge Gavèlle.
• Mondegreen Gag:
  • In Case 2, Simeon Saint thinks that Eustace Winner's name was "DeWinner", presumably because he kept referring to himself as "The Winner" at the time of Simeon's arrest.
  • In Case 3, Eustace thinks that the mostly harmless "Ubiquium" itself can be used to create a poison gas after mishearing the forensics report over the phone thinking that "Ubiquium causes asphyxiation" when you need to combine it with "Asphyxion" to create the gas.
• Mundane Utility: In most cases, the Mind Chess segments are used to weasel info out of people who are being uncooperative by carefully guiding them to giving up information. In the final case, Edgeworth uses it to try to shake Eustace Winner out of his misery. Interestingly, despite being a more mundane use, it's actually the longest and most involved Mind Chess battle in the game.
• Musical Spoiler: In Case 4, when you first meet an amnesiac Kay Faraday, her theme is playing slowed down, even before you learn it's her.
• Mysterious Waif: The "Mysterious Girl" brought to Edgeworth's office in Case 4. She is very quickly revealed to be an amnesiac Kay Faraday.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast:
  • In Case 3, a poison gas is created from combining the mostly harmless "Ubiquium" with the highly-toxic "Asphyxion"^note "Normallium" and "Fatallium" in the Prosecutor's Path fan translation.
  • Would you entrust your life to the "Hertz Hospital"^note Dye-Young Hospital in the Prosecutor's Path fan translation?
• Never Found the Body: The body of the victim of the IS-7 Incident disappeared before the autopsy, meaning the report Manfred von Karma used in the trial was a forgery. Edgeworth and company Finally Found the Body eighteen years later when they revisited the case at Eddie Fender's request.
• Non-Indicative Title: An in-universe example - the Angel's Cookbook that's used as the grand prize for a confectionary contest in Case 3 in the past is a book of recipes alright, but they're not for culinary dishes; they are instead for groundbreaking new medicines.
• Non-Standard Game Over: Giving a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Eustace in the final Mind Chess match will result in you being hit with a 100% penalty, resulting in an instant failure at the match. You don't get an actual game over, because losing at Mind Chess only costs you a sliver of your Life Meter and forces you to start over, but the same principle applies since other mistakes only cost you a tiny percentage of the Mind Chess timer, while this one wipes out the whole thing.
• "Not Illegal" Justification: The "mastermind behind it all" justifies himself in that he did not kill anyone, nor tell anyone to murder, only writing letters to let people know of issues such as others knowing of past murders.
• Not Zilla: Cases 4 and 5 have the filming of a monster movie featuring Taurusaurus Vs. Gourdy. In the Prosecutor's Path fan translation, Taurusaurus is named Moozilla.
• Obfuscating Postmortem Wounds:
  • The victim of Case 2 is killed by a stab wound in the neck, and the murder weapon appears to be a chisel belonging to a prisoner. The culprit actually stabbed the victim with the chisel after killing him with a knife.
  • The victim of Case 4 suffered a head wound and a stab to the chest, with one of them being inflicted after death. The culprit blackmailed the coroner into listing the fatal wound as the postmortem wound and vice versa.
• Odd Friendship: In Case 1, we meet Bronco Knight, an arrogant bodyguard who murdered his colleague out of petty jealousy. In Case 2, we meet his best friend, Simeon Saint, a shy, quirky circus performer. Simeon later clarifies that they were Childhood Friends who both grew up without their parents and presumably bonded over that. It's actually much more complicated than that, and Simeon secretly hated Bronco largely due to a misunderstanding over a traumatic incident in their childhood. However, the trope is still somewhat played straight given that Bronco is shown to have genuinely liked Simeon.
• Oddly Small Organization: Case 2 reveals that the Berry Big Circus has divisions specializing in each act, and only Regina's Animal Tamer division has more than one person — it consists of herself and her apprentice Simeon Saint.
• Ominous Pipe Organ: Verity Gavèlle's theme features it heavily, presumably to reinforce her "holy" appearance.
• Or My Name Isn't...: In the official localization of Case 4, we get this:
  Hart: Yer kiddin' me, right? Them folks was talkin' crime-related turkey, or my name ain't Lotta danged Hart!
  • And another one in Case 5, when Edgeworth and Kay need to take a look around the crime scene:
    Hart: [gets infuriated] Don't nobody need to do no lookin' around! I done told y'all who did this! It was Taurusaurus, or my name ain't Lotta Hart!
  • In case 5, Lotta yells something similar after screaming "GIANT! MONSTER! FOOTPRINT!":
    Shaun: ...On the set of a giant monster movie. It's not like there isn't all kinds of other weird stuff around here.
    Lloyd: I don't buy it for a second! Chief, there's somethin' hinky about this kid, sure as I'm standin' right here!
    Hart: Danged skippy there is! He's hidin' a scoop under them there horns, or my name ain't Lotta Hart!
• Origins Episode: Remember the trial where Manfred von Karma got his first penalty? The IS-7 incident, as shown in flashbacks during Case 3, is what the trial was about.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Shelly de Killer is able to walk about completely undetected while sporting his signature shell design on his "ice cream salesman" outfit. Even Edgeworth is kicking himself afterward for not recognizing it.
• Parodies for Dummies: The official localization has a lawbook called "Statutes for Dummies" in the third case. It actually becomes relevant evidence later in the case to prove Carmelo Gusto can still be tried for an 18 year old murder he just confessed to.
• Persecuting Prosecutor: Excelsius Winner, the former Chief Prosecutor and current head of the Committee for Prosecutorial Excellence. In addition to his present-day jackassery, he also turns out to have been the (indirect) instigator of DL-6 and the prosecutor who disgraced the Lang family.
• Pet Positive Identification: The murder investigation at the prison uncovers a breakout attempt by Rocco Carcerato. Carcerato was wearing a guard uniform as a disguise, but he gets outed when his pet polar bear Rocky walks up to him.
• Please Kill Me If It Satisfies You: Bodhidharma Kanis to Shaun Fenn in Turnabout for the Ages. Fenn decides against it.
• Prison Episode: Case 2 involves Edgeworth investigating a murder committed inside a prison. He later gets arrested and spends time in a detention cell in Case 4.
• Production Foreshadowing: Eustace wears a blue school uniform, and had the best marks in this classes though it is later revealed that his father rigged his grades to make him seem better than he actually was. The school Eustace attended was Themis Legal Academy, the setting of the third case in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies, with the original DS version of the game releasing two years ahead of Dual Destinies'.
• Post-Betrayal Justification: The game has two, both involving the same people:
  • When they were both still young children, Bronco Knight ambushed, tied up, and locked his best friend, Simeon, inside a car, where they both nearly froze to death until they were rescued by a stranger who happened to be passing by. Throughout the whole ordeal, he was crying and apologizing, but told Simeon that his Abusive Parent was forcing him to do it.
  • How do Edgeworth and the player find out about the above story? When Simeon himself is giving his own Post-Betrayal Justification for orchestrating Bronco's death out of a desire for revenge, eighteen years after the original betrayal. Except that, thanks to Laser-Guided Amnesia, his motivation had less to do with the act itself and more to do with him misunderstanding exactly what happened, thinking that Bronco did it as part of a plan to murder Simeon's father. When he finds out that he had it all wrong, and that it was actually his own father who murdered Bronco's father, he doesn't take it well.
• Publicity Stunt: The first case involves an attempted assassination of the President of Zheng Fa. It turns out it was engineered by the president himself with one of his bodyguards, where the president hoped that pulling an Assassin Outclassin' would boost his flagging approval ratings.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!:
  • In Case 5, when asking Shaun about the giant monster footprint:
    Shaun: Gah! ...Oh, give me a break. You know about it now, don't you? Sure, the footprint was there. But I just ran my lines and went home. That was it.
    Hart: Hold it! What, an' nothin' about the GIANT MONSTER FOOTPRINT struck you as weird!? It's a GIANT! MONSTER! FOOTPRINT!
  • In Case 5, when you press Saint on the "same story as always" comment:
    Edgeworth: Hold it! "The same story as always"? What do you mean by that!?
    Saint: Eeeheeheehee! Why does THAT matter!? That's not important here. You know what IS important, though? That you. Can. Prove. Nothing. NOTHING!
    Edgeworth: [gets stunned] Nrgh!
• Race Against the Clock:
  • Case 3 has an interesting variant; the clock had already stopped 3 years ago due to the Statute of Limitations, leaving Edgeworth to find a way to restart it again in time to catch the killer and save the wrongly-convicted defendant. In the end, he manages to elongate it to 6 months left.
  • Case 5 has Edgeworth and Kay scramble to find Shaun Fenn and the evidence for Fifi Laguarde's trial during its recess, as the former had been taken hostage to force his mother Verity Gavèlle to declare a Not Guilty verdict as its judge and the latter had been disposed of by Excelsius Winner to also force the Not Guilty verdict. Plus, the prosecutor Eustace Winner also went missing.
• Request for Privacy: President Wang requested a private meeting with Judge Gavèlle without his bodyguards shortly before he was found dead in a nearby film lot. It's later discovered that he was planning to kill Gavèlle to keep his true identity as the real president's Body Double a secret. It didn't happen because Simeon unexpectingly appeared in his hot-air balloon, forcing the body double to deal with Simeon first.
• Respect at First Punch: Shelley de Killer develops a deep respect for bodyguard Ethan Rooke after he manages to foil his attempt on the president's life by breaking and shooting his arm. Such is his newfound respect for him that when Rooke is found dead in the president's plane, de Killer takes another bodyguard hostage to coerce him into allowing Edgeworth to investigate Rooke's death.
• Resolved Noodle Incident: In the original Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney trilogy, all that was revealed of Gregory's final case was that Gregory's managed to get von Karma penalized for faulty evidence, which is basically why the DL-6 Incident, and by extension, the original trilogy, happened. Investigations 2 would end up revealing the major details of IS-7, including making Gregory playable in a flashback for his final case a year before his death. Miles would eventually resolve the case in the present time, completing his father's work.
• Revealing Cover-Up:
  • Subverted with Simeon Saint in "Turnabout for the Ages". He inadvertently uses the hysteria surrounding Taurusaurus and Gourdy to cover-up the fake president's murder and his own involvement in the crime.
  • Played straight with Excelsius Winner attempting to dispose of the evidence for Fifi Laguarde's trial. Eustace Winner only found one piece of it, but a glove print found on the newspaper it was wrapped in was determined to have belonged to Excelsius' gloves, proving that evidence was disposed of in the garbage heap Eustace found it in, enabling him to put a request in to perform a bigger search of it with the help of the authorities.
• Revenge Is Not Justice: The game isn't shy about stressing that the pursuit of Revenge is wrong. Not only is the Big Bad motivated by a desire for revenge against the people who wronged him, but otherwise moral people such as Judy Bound and Rosie Ringer take actions in pursuit of revenge, resulting in them being imprisoned for attempted murder and getting killed by the intended target, respectively. At the end of the game, Shaun Fenn is offered a chance to take revenge for his father's death, but refuses it, knowing it would cause pain to those who care about him.
• Rewatch Bonus: A second playthrough with various important secrets in mind can bring attention to certain details like Shelly's cryptic reference to his client's name and most importantly, Simeon's entire gambit falling into place starting from Case 1.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons:
  • Near the end of Case 1 when Edgeworth is figuring out the truth behind the case, the first Logic piece he obtained notes that the attack on the President was premeditated. Turns out it was...as a publicity stunt that was premeditated by the president.
  • It turns out that despite arresting Simeon Saint in Case 2 on extremely flimsy logic and evidence, Eustace Winner was actually correct in assuming that Saint was behind the murder, albeit indirectly.
  • A tragic example from Case 2: Edgeworth reassures Simeon that Bronco did think of him as a friend by presenting the chess set. His argument is that Bronco clearly trusted him enough to ask him to bring something that secretly contained an escape tool, and didn't tell Simeon it was in there to protect him in case the chisel was discovered. He's completely wrong about the chess set. Simeon planted the chisel to provoke Fifi Laguarde into killing Bronco. But a later flashback shows that Edgeworth is correct in believing that Bronco genuinely cared about Simeon.
  • In Case 3, Eustace's inane conclusion that Carmelo Gusto tried to commit suicide via poisoning is far from the truth as usual, but this was actually Judy Bound's intention for the authorities to assume.
• Say My Name: Excelsius screams Eustace's name after being defeated by him and Edgeworth in court.
• Seinfeld Is Unfunny: An in-universe example - in Case 3 in the past, the cure for taste disorder was new and revolutionary at the time, and as such it was one of the recipes published in the Angel's Cookbook (which despite its name actually provides recipes for medicines rather than culinary dishes). By the time of the present, the cure is commonly produced.
• Sequel Gap: In-Universe. The final case features the film set for an upcoming Taurusaurus movie; at the time the game takes place, it has already been over 12 years since Taurusaurus last had a film.
• Shoe Phone: For some reason, the Taurusaurus plushie owned by Di-Jun Wang has two recording devices inside of it where you can play/record a message each by twisting one horn. One side contains the last words of Rosie Ringer when confronting the Conductor (Excelsius Winner), while the other (hidden because the respective horn went missing) contains a message from Amelie Fenn to D-Jun Wang about their son.
• Shoo the Dog: In case 4, Kay tries to drive Edgeworth away, believing that she's a criminal ruining the life of a good man. He doesn't listen. Edgeworth, in turn, prevents Gumshoe from following him when he surrenders his badge rather than remain a prosecutor in an openly corrupt system.
• Shout-Out:
  • In Case 1, Bronco Knight has a habit of reloading his gun and spinning it.
  • Kay's initial reaction to Eddie Fender offering a hug? "You've GOT to be kidding."
  • When Simeon's ponytails are pulled by his partner Money the Monkey, he pretends to be Money's puppet in a reference to how Remy manipulated Linguini in Ratatouille.
  • Bodhidharma Kanis, a guy with a dog motif, is looking for a young person in a red hood. The reference is even more explicit in the official localization, as Edgeworth calls the red-hooded assassin in the first case (who isn't the same person but is a related entity) 'Little Red Riding Hood'.
  • In Case 2, Eddie Fender says, "Don't have a cow, man!".
  • After Simeon says he's a new animal trainer, we get this exchange that references The Wizard of Oz (1939):
    Kay: Do you get to train lions and tigers and bears and stuff?
    Simeon: Lions? Tigers!? BEARS!? Oh my! Nonononono!
  • In Case 3, Delicia Scone's nickname for Eustace Winner is "Winniepooh".
  • From the Prosecutor's Path fan translation:
    • In Case 2, the guard petting the cat says the cat's name is Nermal.
    • In Case 4:
    • Kay suggests that the 51st floor could be accessed via a portal. Raymond Shields^note Eddie Fender in the official translation tells her, "Now's not the time to be thinking with portals."
    • Edgeworth, about a Winged Unicorn statue: "It is a statue of a pony, sparkling in the twilight."
    • Sebastian Debeste^note Eustace Winner in the official translation says his father is "the very best, like no one ever was!"
    • Miles tells an amnesiac Kay, suspected of murder to "believe in me, who believes in you." Doubles as retroactive Actor Allusion, as Kamina's English VA also voices Edgeworth in Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice.
    • Early in Case 5, Lotta proclaims that "On this day, mankind received a grim reminder: we live in fear of the great Moozilla!"^note Ironically, despite its popularity, the referenced phrase also exists only in the fan translation of Attack on Titan.
• Snail Mail: Justified when Knight's last correspondence chess letter arrives to Simeon at the Berry Big Circus well after his death and inconveniently when Edgeworth is indicting Simeon as the mastermind. Since the circus travels a lot and has no fixed address, all of their mail arrives late as a result and Regina had only managed to pick it up that morning before Simeon did.
• So Last Season: Extraterritorial Rights are a major plot point in the previous game; to the point where the final boss repeatedly invokes them in order to evade arrest. For several chapters. However, in this game's first case, the President of Zheng Fa attempts to do the same, but Edgeworth quickly finds a way to nullify them, and they aren't mentioned ever again aside from a throwaway line in Case 2 that because Edgeworth proved that the true murder took place inside the plane in order to exonerate the innocent suspect, it fell into Zheng Fa territory once again, meaning that he did end up violating the Extraterritorial Rights. It also pops up again later as a nonexistent inconvenience, where Shi-Long Lang acknowledges the murder of Di-Jun Wang very clearly took place on American grounds, meaning that Extraterritorial Rights wouldn't apply and there would be unrestricted investigation.
• Speak Ill of the Dead: When Knight in the first case speaks ill of his fallen co-worker, almost everyone is disgusted by him.
• Statute of Limitations: A major plot point in the IS-7 incident: the killer claims that they can't be arrested for their crime because the statute of limitations has already expired. Your job is to prove that it hasn't run out yet.
• Stealth Pun:
  • The President of Zheng Fa and his staff have Chess Motifs, with "Rook" and "Knight" having hair and collars that make them look like said chessmen. The President is the King, so what does he look like? A lion.
  • Carcerato is a boxer on a Nintendo console. He is also a literal Bear Hugger.
  • Case 3 has one in the Japanese name for the cooking show, "Dansweets". The hosts sing and dance while making various confectionery items.
  • In their duo sprite in Case 4, Florence slaps Hilda and Hilda hits Florence with her stick.
  • Case 4 has Edgeworth (incorrectly) assume the victim was the auction Ringleader due to the clothes she's wearing. Guess what the victim's name is? Rosie "Ring"er.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Miles attempts to prove that Simeon Saint was a middleman who transcribed correspondence chess letters between Kanis and Knight in order to manipulate Laguarde into believing the two were connected and killing Knight as a result, since she was already deathly afraid of Kanis...only for Miles to turn up empty-handed since Simeon usually disposed of his letters. However, Simeon's boss Regina then shows up with a letter that arrived late. Simeon does work for a traveling circus after all, meaning that it would take them quite a while to process letters and other written correspondence.
• Swiss-Cheese Security: Turns out that the electronic bracelets the prisoners wear to keep them from roaming the prison freely can easily break if the prisoner just happens to randomly trip and fall. Although given that Sahwit was the warden's accomplice in smuggling, his tripping story was probably a lie, and he was deliberately given a bracelet that never worked in the first place. You can also have practically anything snuck in illegally via the Jail Bake method, such as asking a friend to deliver a portable chessboard that has a chisel in a secret compartment, as the guards perform simpler checks on visitor's packages.
• Take a Third Option: Downplayed. Halfway through the game, when Eddie tells Edgeworth to choose whether to continue being a prosecutor or become a defense attorney, he phrases it as a choice to either "fight crime as a prosecutor" or "save people as a defense attorney". At the end of the game, Edgeworth chooses to continue as a prosecutor, but this trope comes in when he combines both of Eddie's prompts by saying his path will be to "save people as a prosecutor", pointing out that a defense attorney couldn't have done anything for Simeon, but a prosecutor would've been able to protect him.
• Take Me Instead: In Case 1, Shelly de Killer holds Bronco Knight at knifepoint in order to force Di-Jun Wang into doing this, knowing that Wang is a Father to His Men who won't permit Knight to be killed in his place. The fact that this fails tips off de Killer to the fact that "Wang" is actually an imposter.
• Talking Is a Free Action: Subverted in Case 1 where during the Mind Chess battle against Di-Jun Wang, Bronco Knight meddled with the evidence he took from Edgeworth and swapped the bullets and laser sight from the supposed assassin's gun with his one to change the rifling marks results and pin Bastian Rook's murder on Tabby Lloyd.
• Tears of Blood: In Case 3, when Edgeworth looks at Larry's Pisces Statue Sketch, he sees that the statue was apparently shedding "tears of blood." Turns out, the "tears" were a chemical compound used in a murder attempt.
• Tempting Fate: In Case 3, Eddie says that von Karma reminds him of an old schoolteacher of his. Gregory Edgeworth comments in his inner monologue that he would hate to have his son being taught by someone like von Karma...
• That One Case: IS-7, the case where Gregory caused Manfred von Karma to get a penalty and lead to DL-6. Then there's also SS-5, the case where the Lang family's reputation was tarnished.
• The Good, the Bad, and the Evil:
  • The Good is represented by Edgeworth and his allies, seeking to find the truth about the Mastermind and his actions to save the day.
  • The Bad is represented by the Mastermind/Simeon Saint, whose real mission is to take down the faction below, even though he is willing to manipulate and exploit everyone around him to achieve this goal.
  • The Evil is represented by the alliance formed by Excelsius Winner, Fifi Laguarde and Di-Jun Wang's body double, all of them being corrupt and power-hungry figures that are willing to twist the law for their selfish desires, and that are also responsible for Simeon's downfall to villainy.
• Title Drop:
  • The phrase "ace attorney" pops up a few times, notably when Fender introduces himself.
  • In the fan translation, Edgeworth drops its subtitle in case 4 while explaining his reasoning for relinquishing his badge.
    Edgeworth: If it's the prosecutor's path to turn a blind eye to the truth, then that title is worth nothing to me!
• To Be Lawful or Good: Plays an even bigger role here than in the first game as Edgeworth is outright stripped of his prosecutorial power when he refuses to back down from investigating something fully to find the truth. Throughout the course of the whole game, Fender is constantly in Edgeworth's ear about what his father's values towards justice and the truth were and if Edgeworth still holds them in his role as a prosecutor, which gives Edgeworth a fair amount of pause on whether or not he chose the right path to be on for his personal beliefs.
• Troll: Simeon Saint qualifies, doing things like imitating Edgeworth's voice and faking a breakdown.
• Truth in Television: The brutal treatment Samson Tangaroa receives from von Karma and Sideman that ultimately leads to his false admission of guilt, where he was unflinchingly interrogated to exhaustion, has precedence in the real Japanese legal system. A demand for change came about as such cases were made public.
• Turn in Your Badge: Edgeworth decides to surrender it rather than give up on defending Kay. He gets it back in the ending, though.
• Undignified Death: Rosie Ringer dying of a blow to the head? Pretty standard Ace Attorney death. The undignified part comes from the fact that when her wound turned fatal, she died in nothing more than her underwear and a rain coat, and she was only even wearing the coat at all was because Florence decided to preserve her modesty, considering Excelsius certainly didn't care.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • In the IS-7 incident, an innocent person unknowingly manipulated the crime scene, leading the Chief Prosecutor at the time to forge evidence (because the victim's body had gone missing) and then stick Manfred von Karma with a penalty. This resulted in DL-6 and set up a whole host of problems for many characters in the series. The case's murderer could also be considered this, but he at least knew he was doing a despicable deed. Hell, the case's victim counts here. By forcing his son to kidnap Gusto's, Gusto had no choice but to sneakily take pictures of the medicine formula he was seeking. Frost tried to blackmail him over it, and got himself murdered as a result.
  • Artie Frost's son prevented Simeon Saint from helping his father in IS-7. This led to the series of events that made Saint manipulate the present day events.
• Verbal Tic: In the Prosecutor's Path fan translation, Blaise Debeste^note Excelsius Winner in the official translation has one of these, y'know. Despite how evil he is, he's pretty laid back most of the time, y'see.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: During the mind chess segments, you get the opportunity to say some really hurtful things to your opponents. Doing so will usually give you a penalty. In particular, while playing Mind Chess against a distraught and broken Eustace Winner, if you choose "You're a total failure of a human being!", you instantly receive a 100% time penalty, and a loss of part of the health bar.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment: At the start of the Mind Chess round with a humbled Eustace Winner, you get the option to call them "a total failure of a human being". This predictably results in a One-Hit Kill, so you'll receive a penalty before you can try again. In the Investigations Collection, selecting this option is required to earn the "How Could You, Sir!?" accolade.
• Visual Pun: The Mind Chess battle against Di-Jun Wang in Case 1 has his King defended by a single Knight, as Rook is now dead and Knight now remains as his last defender.
  • Another one in Case 3: when young Fender jots down the words on one of his notepad papers, he tears it off, crumples it into a ball, and chews it up before swallowing it. In this case, he's literally eating his words.
• We Will Meet Again: The killer of Case 1 curses Edgeworth after being defeated, stating that "this game isn't over yet". Knight never pays off on this, as he's the victim of the immediate next case.
• Wham Line:
  • From Case 1, when the main suspect for the attempted assassination of Di-Jun Wang blows his cover as "a simple ice cream salesman" and takes Bronco Knight, the acting leader of the president's security detail about to wrest control of the investigation from Edgeworth, as a hostage and makes his demand:
    Shelly de Killer: ...I would like for you to allow Mr. Edgeworth to remain in charge of the case.
  • From Case 2, a line from Bodhidharma Kanis reveals that something happened between Bronco Knight's arrest and his murder to modify his charge from having killed his team leader:
    Kanis: The attempted assassination of a president... That is no small matter.
  • A great one in Case 4, signifying Gavèlle's Heel–Face Turn.
    Gavèlle: By the power vested in me... Excelsius Winner, this court hereby indicts you for your crimes!
  • Case 5 has an even bigger one, as Edgeworth and Fender realize who has been masterminding everything.
    Fender: Circus worker... Friend of the Broncster... Son of Gusto… Wh-Whoawhoawhoa... You're not serious!?
    Edgeworth: You forgot to mention trainee animal trainer. Heh. It's hard to believe... But he's the one who's been pulling the strings this whole time. That's right! Simeon Saint is the one behind all this!
• Wham Shot:
  • During the investigation at Gourd Lake during Case 1, the police find one of the members of the crowd fits perfectly the description of a person of interest to the case, being injured at the left arm. Who is it that the police escort to Edgeworth? Shelly de Killer.
  • Case 2's intro starts with the aftermath of a murder. And then the victim's face is shown. Who is it? Bronco Knight, the killer of the first case.
  • Case 4 has a major one when Edgeworth willingly surrenders his badge in order to continue defending Kay. Nobody in the room sees this coming, and everyone reacts with surprise and incredulity.
  • In Case 5; Edgeworth is inspecting Knight's possessions, being his portable chessboard and mysterious ring, the latter of which hasn't been properly looked at aside from Frank Sahwit describing it with a snowflake design. When Edgeworth does, it's revealed to be Paul Haulique's signet crest fashioned into a ring, revealing Knight to be Artie Frost's son, as that was part of his inheritance.
  • In Case 5, Edgeworth has figured out there's more to SS-5 than on the surface, but can't uncover the truth because Excelsius Winner used his authority to suppress all information and evidence. Then a single picture drawn by the sole eyewitness that Lang's father kept safe for 12 years arrives. Even though it's crudely drawn, there's no mistaking President Wang standing there with the assassin Bodhidharma Kanis, making it clear that SS-5 was not a presidential kidnapping. It was an assassination.
• Whole-Plot Reference: Simeon Saint, a timid animal trainer, takes revenge by manipulating Laguarde, Excelsius, and Rosie Ringer into committing acts of murder in order to get innocent people framed, just like Mr. X does in Curtain. Saint also manipulated his friend Bronco Knight into staging an assassination attempt on "President Wang", although killing Bastian Rook was all Knight's idea.
• Word Association Test: Has elements of it. To kickstart Kay's memories, Edgeworth gives a chance for her to repeat after him. It turns into this trope.
  Edgeworth: Hmm... It seems you've even forgotten the names of some everyday objects... Let me try to jog your memory, Kay. Repeat after me: Bookshelves.
  Kay: [Beat] ...Books... elves?
  Edgeworth: Stained glass.
  Kay: Stolen... glassware.
  Edgeworth: Law books.
  Kay: Law... breaker...
  Edgeworth: [serious face] Goddess Statue.
  Kay: [cowering] Got this... Snatch two...?
  Edgeworth: (Is it just me or are all her mistakes pointing in... a certain direction...?)
• Worthy Opponent: While it never results in Manfred becoming more cordial towards him, Gregory's persistence in pursuing the inconsistencies of the crime scene in Case 3 do lead to Manfred shifting from calling him "the attorney" to using his name.
• Xanatos Gambit:
  • In case 3, Judy Bound's trap against the culprit of IS-7 has shades of this. She doesn't care if she gets caught in the end, so long as she ends up forcing the authorities to release Samson Tangaroa and/or committing a Vigilante Execution to avenge him.
  • In case 3's flashback portion, Gregory Edgeworth's insurance in case that Samson Tangaroa breaks and gives a false confession due to Manfred von Karma and Ian Sideman's brutal interrogations, was to ask Detective Badd to record said interrogations, which allowed Gregory to expose Manfred's corruption and get Sideman fired, enabling him to get more time to investigate and demand a retrial. However, then comes DL-6...
• Xanatos Speed Chess:
  • Edgeworth literally gets to do this with several major characters through the "Mind Chess" feature. Most notably Excelsius Winner.
  • Simeon Saint probably pulls off the craziest gambit ever. He plots an insane plan to kill not only his best friend, Knight (whose actions somewhat impacted Artie Frost's death, and Saint had incorrectly believed that Frost was his father), but also the three co-conspirators who tried to kill his mentor, Bodhidharma Kanis. He manipulates the circumstances around him and waits for the perfect opportunity to stage the murders (the events of case 2 and 4) so that his own hands wouldn't be dirty in the process. The only murder he doesn't plan is that of the body double; however, he successfully throws off the time of death to divert suspicion from himself. He would've gotten away with it all, too, if he had properly destroyed the evidence on the bottom of the hot-air balloon's basket.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are:
  • In case 4, Edgeworth repeatedly does this to an amnesiac Kay who thinks she killed someone and just can't remember.
  • He also gives Eustace Winner some perking up after the guy experiences some serious self-esteem issues in the final case. It pays off.
• You Just Ruined the Shot: When arriving at the Bigg Building in Case 4, Edgeworth, Gumshoe and company wrongly believe Shaun Fenn to be in real danger, but Penny Nichols corrects them by announcing they were filming. The filming is an important part of Case 5.