History VisualNovel / TheGreatAceAttorney

** Why it was so important to keep a secret message that [[spoiler:Gregson broke the law to do it]]. [[spoiler:In the second game, it's revealed to be part of an assassination exchange program, which is strictly monitored by the people involved in it, including Gregson.]]
** The meaning of the message [[spoiler: stored on the disk that Graydon tried to sell to [=McGilded=]. In the second game it's revealed to be part of an assassination exchange program, specifically, the killers and the victims]].
** What the four names in said message mean, and the identity of the fourth name. [[spoiler:In the second game, it's revealed to be part of an assassination exchange program, specifically, the names of the killers (A.Shin and K.Asogi) and the victims (J.Wilson and T.Gregson). A.Shin is actually Jezaille Brett's real name. Wilson and Gregson were related to the Professor case and needed to be eliminated.]]
** Why it was encoded [[spoiler:using Japanese Morse code]]. [[spoiler:In the second game, it's revealed to have been sent to Japan's Minister of Foreign Affairs Seishiro Jigoku, a co-conspirator who gained his position by working for Stronghart.]]
** Who the recipient and sender were. [[spoiler:In the second game, it's revealed to have been sent by Mael Stronghart to Japan's Minister of Foreign Affairs Seishiro Jigoku.]]

** [[spoiler:Nikolina Pavlova ran away while stealing an expensive tiara, while Kazuma was willing to go through an assassination.]]

** [[spoiler:Olive Green wanted to kill William Shamspeare, who she was sure (and turned out to be true) that had killed her fiancé, and now was trying to kill the man that resided in the same room he was in.]]

* YouAreNumber6: Most of the jurors are only known by their current number, [[RunningGag unless they're someone Ryunosuke happened to meet outside of the courtroom]].

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[[caption-width-right:350:''A new age of law begins.'']]

* AmbiguousTimePeriod: While clearly and explicitly set during the Victorian/Meiji era, the particular decade is much harder to pin down, as specific historical events mentioned within the games' one-year timeline occur as early as 1848[[note]]The year Miss Mitchell's Comet's discovery is officially recognized, noted in an article in case 2-3[[/note]] and as late as 1905.[[note]]the year ''I Am a Cat'' was published[[/note]] It is possible to narrow down the possibilities [[AllThereInTheManual based on promotional material.]] Each case aside from the last two [[https://www.ace-attorney.com/great1-2/us/story1/ has an associated newspaper article]] which includes both a date and a weekday (e.g. Wednesday, November 20th for the first case). Based on these and the fact that Japan didn't adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1873, there are three possible times within the aforementioned period the games could take place,[[note]]1878-79, 1889-90, and 1901-02[[/note]] the last of which (1901-02) lines up fairly well with the real Soseki Natsume's study trip to Britain (1901-03). There is also some in-game evidence in favor of this timeline, such as the Russian newspaper in the second case mentioning "The Incredible Comeback of Raсhmaninoff"[[note]]Rachmaninoff suffered from major depression after a disastrous premiere in 1897, and only returned to music in autumn 1901, with his Piano Concerto No. 2[[/note]], Vilen Borshevik being described as a notorious Russian revolutionary[[note]]Though communist intellectuals first became organised in Russia during the 1880s, it is worth noting that Russia's first explicitly Marxist party, the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, was founded in 1898. His name is also an obvious pun on 'Bolshevik', a term that first appeared in 1903.[[/note]], John Garrideb mentioning having fought in some war when he was younger, "back in 1880", and Susato mentioning the theory of evolution being proposed "forty years ago now".[[note]]Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" was first published in 1859[[/note]]

* CompletelyUnnecessaryTranslator: [[spoiler:Jezaille Brett]], a ForeignExchangeStudent, doesn't need an interpreter, but has one anyway because she's ''[[PoliticallyIncorrectVillain so racist]]'' that she doesn't want to "sully her tongue" by speaking Japanese.

* WeirdnessCoupon: In the British trials, the locals' various degrees of xenophobia mean that Ryunosuke is sometimes more successful at pulling off a desperate CourtroomAntic than Phoenix would be because, as the judge once bluntly tells him, they [[InscrutableOriental don't understand how his mind works]] and assume it's just like that in Japan.

* WeirdnessCoupon: In the British trials, the locals' various degrees of xenophobia mean that Ryunosuke is sometimes more successful at pulling off a desperate CourtroomAntic than Phoenix would be because, as the judge once bluntly tells him, they [[InscrutableOrientals don't understand how his mind works]] and assume it's just like that in Japan.

-->-- '''Ryunosuke Naruhodo''', "The Adventure of the Unbreakable Speckled Band"

* BreakingOldTrends: While the structure of an ''Ace Attorney'' case has been pretty standard across the series, there are two instances where this duology massively deviates from the status quo:

** Picking "Wait and See" will usually end up with either Ryunosuke or Susato reconsidering the choice.

** Knowing the true nature behind the "Reaper of the Bailey" phenomenon makes it amusing knowing that [[spoiler:no one is in any real danger from it, since the true killer, Jezaille Brett, is in Japan for the first game and dies at the start of the second. The two times the "curse" supposedly kills someone (Magnus [=McGilded=] and Odie Amsan) are actually complete coincidences; [=McGilded=] is killed by his criminal partner and Asman by someone he's blackmailing]]. However, it also makes it darkly ironic in that [[spoiler:two out of three supposed "survivors" of the curse (Natsume and Lestrade) end up being in uncomfortably close proximity to two members of the Reaper organization after their trials]].

* SoleSurvivor: It eventually turns out that Judge Jigoku was actually acquitted of contempt of court charges with Barok von Zieks as the prosecutor ten years prior, making him the only man to face the Reaper of the Bailey in court and escape with both his freedom and his life until Ryunosuke's court appearances.

** Knowing the true nature behind the "Reaper of the Bailey" phenomenon makes it amusing knowing that [[spoiler:no one is in any real danger from it, since the true killer, Jezaille Brett, is in Japan for the first game and dies at the start of the second. The two times the "curse" supposedly kills someone (Magnus [=McGilded=] and Odie Amsan) are actually complete coincidences; [=McGilded=] is killed by his criminal partner and Asman by someone he's blackmailing]].

* LockedRoomMystery: Most of the cases, but special mention goes to Case 2, in which the victim is found dead behind a bolted ship door. The whole case is a shout out to the Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Speckled Band." [[spoiler: But the solution is completely different.]]

* InformedAbility: The "Reaper of the Bailey" as it is described. [[spoiler:The two times it seems to apply -- the deaths of Magnus [=McGilded=] and Odie Asman, two prominent-but-shady Londoners who faced Barok van Zieks in court and used duplicity to secure an acquittal -- exactly the sort of thing that the Reaper is said to hunt for -- had nothing to do with the huge assassination conspiracy that was originating from Mael Stronghart. Instead [=McGilded=] meets his fate by the hand of the vengeful son of the man he killed and while Asman's killer was connected to the Reaper conspiracy itself, the murder did not come as a result of a directed hit from Stronghart and instead committed for injustices the murderer herself had to endure from Asman]].

* InformedAbility: The "Reaper of the Bailey" as it is described. [[spoiler:The two times it seems to apply -- the deaths of Magnus [=McGilded=] and Odie Asman, two prominent-but-shady Londoners who faced Barok van Zieks in court and used duplicity to secure an acquittal; exactly the sort of thing that the Reaper is said to hunt for -- had nothing to do with the huge assassination conspiracy that was originating from Mael Stronghart. Instead [=McGilded=] meets his fate by the hand of the vengeful son of the man he killed and while Asman's killer was connected to the Reaper conspiracy itself, the murder did not come as a result of a directed hit from Stronghart and instead committed for injustices the murderer herself had to endure from Asman]].

* SuddenlySignificantRule: The first time Ryunosuke finds himself in a jury trial, the jurists quickly reach a unanimous verdict of guilty, which should have brought an end to the trial... However, Susato quickly pipes up that the defence has a right to a "summation examination", where they can interview the jurists and try to convince them to change their verdict. It's apparently an archaic rule that's fallen into disuse, with Van Zeiks even arguing that it should be ruled defunct for never having been used in recent memory, but the judge ultimately allows it. The summation examination then becomes a regular tool in Ryunosuke's defences for all jury trials from that point onwards.

** Because Ryunosuke is so incredibly easy to read, other characters -- mostly Susato -- will frequently comment on Ryunosuke's inner thoughts, right down to mentioning some details that would be impossible for a non-mindreader to know.

** In the Western versions of the games, the names of the two most prominent Sherlock Holmes-related characters are changed to similar sounding names with the letters swapped around, [[WritingAroundTrademarks likely due to the copyright reasons]] that many speculate kept the games from being localized in the first place. Sherlock Holmes is now "Herlock Sholmes" and Iris Watson's surname is now "Wilson"[[note]]Both of these are clever nods to ''Literature/ArseneLupin vs. Herlock Sholmes'', which called Sherlock and Watson as such for similar reasons.[[/note]].

** The game also has people use some period-appropriate language that would be considered offensive and inappropriate for use in a courtroom today, especially in case 1-3; van Zieks repeatedly calls Magnus McGilded a [[Theatre/TheMerchantOfVenice Shylock]] as an insult, a usage that is usually considered antisemitic in the present, while Gina calls him a "bogtrotter."