Asshole Victim / Ace Attorney

The Ace Attorney games really like the Asshole Victim trope, because as it turns out, being a total asshole and screwing people over is a really good motive for them to murder you. Who knew?

Original game

• The victim in the third case, Jack Hammer, turned out to have been intentionally trying to frame the client, Will Powers, one of the nicest characters in the series, out of jealousy, by drugging him and stealing his costume. The real killer, Dee Vasquez, acted in self-defense, though she wouldn't have needed to if she hadn't been blackmailing Hammer, thus making him want to kill her in the first place. It's also possible that Hammer deliberately murdered another actor five years ago; we never hear his side of the story, but Vasquez strongly suggests the "accident" might have been deliberate, although it's also implied she and the other actor were lovers (and that her blackmailing of Hammer was primarily to make him suffer out of revenge) so she might be a tad biased in her assessment.
• The fourth case's victim, Robert Hammond, was a defense attorney who, like damn near every non-playable attorney in the series, was an Amoral Attorney who only cared about winning cases by any means necessary. He was killed by a former client, Yanni Yogi, who he got found innocent of murder by pleading insanity. Yogi really was innocent, but Hammond didn't believe him, nor did he care. Having to keep up the act of insanity ruined Yogi's life and drove his fiancée to commit suicide, so he eventually decided to take revenge.

Justice For All

• The second case's victim, Turner Grey, was a real Dr. Jerk who overworked his nurse Mimi Miney to the point of exhaustion, causing her to both accidentally mix up medications, which led to several patients dying, and falling asleep at the wheel while driving and crash her car, which gave her horrible facial disfigurement and killed her younger sister Ini — in an attempt to start over, she gave the doctors who would reconstruct her face a picture of Ini, and she lived as her sister from then on. Being one of the few victims we meet before their demise, his jerkass persona is well-evident. While Phoenix claims that Grey was right about Mimi being the one who (unintentionally) killed the patients, Grey not only makes it clear that he only cares about his reputation, but the fact that he brought a revolver (which private citizens can't legally possess in Japan) to the ceremony to channel Mimi makes one wonder how far he was planning to go to force her to take the blame so people would stop pinning the deaths on him.
• Juan Corrida of the fourth case initially seems like a nice guy, but it becomes increasingly evident that the feud between himself and Matt Engarde was an ugly reflection on both of them, and often wound up with other people in the crosshairs: most notably, when Juan found out his fiancee Celeste was Matt's ex, he called off their wedding and Celeste committed suicide. Her protege, Adrian Andrews, blamed them both for her mentor's death. Juan himself, on the other hand, forged the suicide note of Celeste to frame only the other culprit, Matt, just to spite him. And then there's his rival...

Trials and Tribulations

• The first case's victim, Doug Swallow, is a subversion; though Phoenix thinks he's one and calls him a "stuck-up British wannabe", this is mostly because Phoenix was in denial about his girlfriend Dahlia Hawthorne being bad news, and Doug was killed because he was trying to warn Phoenix of Dahlia's true nature out of concern for Phoenix's safety.
• Kane Bullard from the second case counts, for being a greedy Corrupt Corporate Executive and blackmailing Luke Atmey.
• In the fourth case, the victim is Valerie Hawthorne, a police officer who helped engineer a fake murder/kidnapping that ended with her and her sister in possession of a small fortune stolen from their father, and their co-conspirator sentenced to death for a crime that had not been committed. The twist is that she was killed because she had finally decided to come clean about everything, and the murderer stood to lose everything from her attack of conscience. Sad case all around.

Apollo Justice

• The first case's victim, Shadi Smith, is a bit of a complicated case, as his real identity (and the motive of his murderer) isn't clear until the very end. However, even before that it's made known that he was trying to frame Phoenix for cheating at poker (which would've likely ruined Phoenix's career as a professional poker player), and when the plan failed, he clocked his co-conspirator over the head with a bottle of grape juice. As first impressions go, it's pretty bad.
• The victim of the second case, Pal Meraktis, not only dealt with the criminal underworld and covered up a botched operation on Wocky (with severe consequences for Wocky's health- he could die at pretty much any time because the problem wasn't dealt with), but he tried to kill Alita Tiala. He failed quite miserably, and she shot him instead.
• The final victim, Drew Misham, is a played-with case. He's personally quite affable and a loving father to his daughter Vera, but the fact remains that he was a forger and it was evidence he forged that led to Phoenix losing his badge (admittedly, Vera was the one who was making the forgeries, but Drew got the idea and took on the clients). He deeply regrets Phoenix getting disbarred, but sees no other way to provide for Vera other than forging... which unfortunately leads to his own death and almost gets Vera killed when one of his clients poisons him so he can't reveal the scheme to disgrace Phoenix. Spark Brushel remarks that "Forgery is a serious crime, and they paid the price," after Vera's poisoning.

Ace Attorney Investigations duology

• In Investigations
  • The third case initially appears to play this straight; Oliver Deacon/Colin Devorae is thought to have been an escaped felon who betrayed his accomplices in Lance Amano's kidnapping for the money, but it turns out that Lance threatened his daughter's safety to force him to falsely kidnap him, and that his previous "crimes" were Taking the Heat for Ernest Amano.
  • One of the victims in the fourth case is Mack Rell, who murdered Deid Mann to keep him from testifying about the smuggling ring, and collaborated with the real killer to kill the other victim. After he's done his part, the killer kills him and sets it up to look like he and the other victim killed each other.
  • One of the victims of the fifth case, Manny Coachen, was a man who was heavily involved in an international smuggling ring and counterfeiting operation that almost destroyed 2 countries economy, and had gotten away with at least one murder in his lifetime (Cece Yew). He ends up being murdered by the head of the smuggling ring when he tries to take over. Lampshaded when the protagonists remark that he and his killer were both terrible people.
• In Investigations 2:
  • The victim of the second case is Horace Knightley, the culprit from the first case — even if later revelations make his death sort of tragic in retrospect, he was still a guy that murdered his innocent co-worker out of envy and ambition (plus he had a terrible personality on top of it all, having no problem casually harping on the faults he saw in his victim even though the person was already dead).
  • The victim of the third case, Isaac Dover, was an infamously greedy sculptor apparently Only in It for the Money, who forced his own son to kidnap the son of his partner Dane Gustavia so that he could have an easier time betraying and blackmailing him. Gustavia responded to this betrayal by killing Dover on the spot. Meanwhile, Gustavia, who becomes a poisoning victim in the present-day segment, was also an asshole who only valued his son as a taste-tester and fled the country the first chance he got after the murder, not particularly caring that his son was, as far as he knew, still kidnapped (both his and Dover's sons had been rescued from near-death by Sirhan Dogen and taken to an orphanage).
  • In the final case, the victim is the President of Zheng Fa, Di-Jun Huang, who turns out to have been much more of an asshole than had been initially suspected when we first met him in Case 1 (and he was already a pretty big asshole who staged a fake assassination attempt on himself just so he could look cool when he thwarted it) — he was in fact not the real Di-Jun Huang, but a Body Double who secretly had the real Huang assassinated over a decade ago and took his place, fabricated his own kidnapping in order to defraud the country of millions, and either killed or tried to kill anyone who could have exposed his real identity, including the assassin he hired to kill the real Huang. By comparison, the game's actual Big Bad, who arranged his murder, comes off as downright sympathetic, and possibly would have been seen as justified if he hadn't tried to pin the murder on a thirteen-year-old boy.
• All the victims of the Big Bad's revenge plot counted, having been part of a conspiracy to Kill and Replace the real Di-Jun Huang and made said Big Bad's life absolute hell after he witnessed it. Horace Knightley? See above- he was the son who kidnapped Simon Keyes on Isaac Dover's orders, and he was pushed to kill his coworker and then be killed in turn by Patricia Roland. Patricia Roland ran an Orphanage of Fear and pretty much tortured Simon to force him to admit that he was a witness, and was set up to kill Horace out of paranoia and then be caught by Edgeworth. Blaise Debeste covered up everything the conspiracy did and made it so that Simon couldn't possibly go to the law for help, and he was set up to either get killed by Jill Crane or kill her and, like Patricia, get caught by Edgeworth. The body double masterminded the whole thing, and Simon squished him with a hot-air balloon.

Dual Destinies

• Dual Destinies is notable among the games for having absolutely no Asshole Victims whatsoever. Every murder victim in the game, whether during the game itself or in the backstory, was a genuinely decent person (although Bobby Fulbright can only be inferred from the assumption that the phantom's impersonation was accurate).
• Subverted with Metis Cykes, when the prosecution tries to establish a motive for Athena to want to kill her mother, claiming she was very neglectful and used Athena as a science guinea pig. In reality she was doing this because she cared about her daughter and wanted to help her with her condition, and Simon tells Athena that while she had trouble expressing it, her mother truly did love her.

Spirit of Justice

• One of the third case's victims, Puhray Zeh'lot/Rheel Neh'mu is a member of the Secret Police, who is hunting members of the rebel group the Defiant Dragons. He is killed in self-defense while trying to kill the pregnant Beh'leeb Inmee, who saw him as her surrogate son, merely for being a member of the rebel group.
• The victim of the fourth case, Taifu Toneido, is an interesting case. While not a egregious Jerkass like other examples and more of a Grumpy Old Man, he still snubbed his beloved senior disciple Geiru, who was the daughter of the previous Uendo Toneido, giving the name Uendo to his junior disciple instead; and apparently stole the deed to Bucky Whet's noodle shop. Truth is, he had an ulterior motive for both. He stole the deed so he could make sure it was entitled to the right person (Bucky) and snubbed Geiru so he could ask her to find her own calling in life away from rakugo over a bowl of udon noodles which he had the tools to make (Geiru was allergic to soba noodles). Ultimately, it's this that makes Geiru regret what she's done and genuinely feel bad. Pretty sad case in hindsight.
• The victim of the first half of the final case, is another interesting spin on this. While he did love his daughter and quit his profitable job at Ivy U to move to Kurain to protect her from the world, he unknowingly caused her agoraphobia similar to Drew Misham from Apollo Justice. Plus, he even stole ancient relics, even if he just wanted to study them before returning them. So while he was good to his daughter, he was still a thief, and unlike the victim of the first case, was doing it For Science!.
• The victim of the second half of the fifth case, Inga Karkhuul Khura'in, is the man responsible for the secret police, along with the theft of the Founder's Orb. One of his sprites has him casually signing stacks of execution papers by stamping them with his Personal Seal without even looking at them. He's also extremely abrasive, doesn't have loyalties to anybody, was planning a coup against his own wife (not that she doesn't deserve it), kidnapped Maya, shot Apollo's foster father dead without remorse, and uses Je Suis L'Belle hair products.
• The victim of the DLC case, Dumas Gloomsbury, tried to kill Ellen Wyatt in order to get back at Sorin Sprocket, her fiancé, for making him The Scapegoat of the car crash that killed Sorin's older sister, Selena.

The Great Ace Attorney duology

• The first game may, like Dual Destinies above, seem to not have one at first, but the second makes a retcon to John H. Wilson. Firstly, he’s not actually the games' equivalent of John H. Watson.^note Iris was told that her father was the partner of Herlock, who was also a medical doctor who worked on autopsy reports. Looking through some documents, she found Klint van Zieks's autopsy report. In it, she found the signature of John H. Wilson. She assumed that John was the one who worked on the autopsy, and assumed he was Herlock's partner, and therefore her father. In reality, it was his student Yujin Mikotoba who wrote, he was Herlock’s partner, but not Iris’s father. Iris's father was not associated with Herlock at all, he just lied about that. Secondly, and more relevantly, he did fake the autopsy of Klint van Zieks to frame Genshin. Though it is worth mentioning he did genuinely believe Genshin was the Professor, the Serial Killer who killed Klint (he wasn't the Professor, but he did kill Klint, who was the actual Professor, in a duel, but John didn't know this), so as far as he knew he was Framing the Guilty Party (and Mael Stronghart was the one that came up with the idea) and he was reportedly a good teacher, so much so the murder is used as a supposed motive in the second game's first case, so it's clear that, while he was a factor in Genshin’s death, he didn't deserve to die. Speaking of his murder...
• The first victim of the second game is Jezaille Brett, who, similar to Horace Knightley above, was the first murderer of the first game and got away with it due to Diplomatic Impunity. In addition to being, well, a murderer, she was also extremely racist, so much so it’s what lead to her death, and tried to frame Naruhodō for the murder of John H Wilson. She got away with her crime even when caught and wasted no time gloating about it to her killer, who would be completely justified if he never framed someone who was not an asshole. It’s later learned in the last two cases of the second game; that, one, her real name is Asa Shinn, and two, as her name suggests, she is an assassin. Specifically, the main assassin behind the Reaper killings, which killed almost every defendant Barok van Zieks prosecuted that got a Not Guilty verdict, resulting in 16 deaths. While we know for a fact that some of them were definitely guilty, we don’t if all of them were, so it’s likely that she murdered innocent people who had the bad luck of simply being prosecuted by van Zieks. And unlike Gregson, we don’t know her reasons for doing this, so she may have had the same motivations as Gregson, or she may not have.
• Throughout Case 3 of Adventures, you slowly learn that your client Magnus McGilded is probably the most detestable one since Matt Engarde, as his true nature as a ruthless Loan Shark who tampers with evidence and public trust to get himself a Not Guilty verdict is revealed even as it becomes clear he's the killer. Just as he's about to get away with the Not Guilty verdict, however, he ends up burning to death inside the very carriage he tampered with, and nobody mourns his passing. As it later turns out, not only was he guilty of murder, but his murderer was the victim's son.
• Well, William Shamspeare isn’t dead, but he was the victim of attempted murder, so he still counts. In order to get his hands on an expensive treasure, he killed Duncan Ross and attempted to kill Sōseki. While the first one was accidental, as you can tell by the “attempted” part of “attempted to kill,” the second was certainly not.
• Odie Asman was a leader of a crime syndicate. He also ruined Enoch Drebber’s life by publishing the fact that he was the one who saw the Professor rise from the grave when he was robbing graves. He was also blackmailing Courtney Sithe for years. As such, it's hard to feel sorry for him when Drebber and Sithe get together on a plan to kill him
• Inspector Gregson was an interesting case of this. The first reason is the same reason John H Wilson is listed here, he helped forge the autopsy of Klint van Zieks. And like John H Wilson, he thought he was Framing the Guilty Party, though he was incorrect in that belief. He helped orchestrate the Reaper killings, detailed above in Jezaille Brett’s entry. But, unlike her, we know why he did it, he genuinely believed he was doing the right thing and crime did go down because of it. Later he came to regret his actions, and hoped that, after killing Jigoku, he would go to France with Gina Lestrade, who he took under his wing at Scotland Yard, and never have a part in killing anyone ever again.

Other media

• In the Ace Attorney manga:
  • Robin Wolfe. He essentially drove Eddie Johnson to suicide by restraining him in a chair in a room full of spiders, presumably knowing that he was arachnophobic. This was presumably because Eddie was disrespectful at work, but it may have been motivated merely because he didn't approve of Eddie dating his daughter Lira. Afterward, he laughed about it while telling his wife what he had done, and claimed that Eddie was "weak" for committing suicide. As a result, his wife and daughter hate him, and he also hates his reclusive spider fanatic brother Bobby, thinking of him as an eyesore, keeping him restrained and denying his existence while guests are visiting. As a result, Brock comes off as a Sympathetic Murderer. Lira still calls Brock out on it, though; no matter how much she may have hated Robin, he was still her father, and she still grieves for him.
  • Oracle Hecate was a Jerkass Phony Psychic who snuck peeks at customers' information, then proceeded to callously cast her friend and accomplice aside.
  • Buck Wheatley was an unpleasant person and an Abusive Parent to his daughter Diana, although it turns out that his death was an accident.
• Ace Attorney Investigations manga:
  • Hayden Maxwell, the first victim, bled her previous boyfriend dry, dumped him and moved on to another boyfriend with no remorse, causing her ex to be Driven to Suicide.
  • Holland ends up being murdered during Bird Wing's final concert. While all of the band members hated each other by the time the band broke up, Holland's decision to ditch the band to earn more money as a solo act resulted in him being the least sympathetic.
  • Hobart Tarkington was a robber who tried to steal diamonds, so it's hard to feel sorry for him when his accomplice betrays him.
  • Emi St. Cloud is one, being a selfish Jerkass who puts on a good image for the public and plays the heroine in Othello Detectives. However, she was not killed by any of the people she wronged, but out of a belief that her death and her fiance, who is one of the male leads, being arrested for her murder would prevent Othello Detectives from being released.
  • From Emi's murder case, there's also Yardley Kidman, who's a variation. While he was Driven to Suicide, one might assume that he did it because he was wrongly convicted of being the Giant Christmas Tree Bomber, especially since his killer kills Emi in order to prevent the case from being reopened and his conviction being brought into question. But no, Kidman was responsible for the bombing and several deaths, so all sympathy for him goes out the window.
  • Samuel Slylent was a thrice-convicted extortionist who was killed while trying to extort from his murderer.
  • Marco Swindell, a con artist who takes advantage of a kindly clinic doctor to bilk money out of the clinic, before being killed by one of the doctor's patients.
• Ace Attorney (2016) has an anime-exclusive episode, Northward Turnabout Express, in which Avery Richman, a foreign millionaire sentenced to death for the murder of a U.S.^note The Ace Attorney anime takes place in Japan, even in the localization official, takes a train hostage in order to force a retrial. It eventually turns out that an assassin by the name of Gale Gaelic had been hired to kill the official and frame Richman for that. When Gaelic tries to blackmail Tristan Turnbull, the prosecutor responsible for Richman's conviction, Turnbull kills Gaelic.