"From the day I was born to the day I died, I never helped anyone! I lived for myself and, in the end, I died for myself. I thought that was obvious."
— Dahlia Hawthorne, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations
Really, a good deal of Ace Attorney's multiple-murder killers are either outright sociopathic or borderline. There is always at least one in every game.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney:
- Redd White, the killer of 1-2. He remorselessly kills Mia, frames Maya for it, ruined their mother and family's reputation, makes Grossberg's life a living hell for 15 years, plans to abandon his secretary to the court's judgement, assaults Phoenix and later frames him for Mia's murder as well, and drove countless people to suicide with his blackmail racket, all just to preserve his own hedonistic lifestyle. He even refers to his blackmail victims as "mere toys. Playthings for [his] amusement!" He is also highly impulsive, risking his own neck by appearing in court to frame Phoenix on a whim.
- Manfred von Karma is an arguable case. On one hand, he is shown to only care about his perfect trial record, completely willing to ignore the fact that he could be condemning any number of innocent people to prison. He also considers Gregory Edgeworth getting him a penalty and ruining said perfect record to be sufficient grounds for murdering the guy and raising his son to be the sort of person Gregory hated. Miles Edgeworth: Investigations does have a flashback case that implies that von Karma really did care for Franziska and Edgeworth; however, it's up for question whether he really wanted Edgeworth to succeed as a prosecutor or just wanted the world to know that "Gregory Edgeworth's son" had become an Amoral Attorney.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice For All: Matt Engarde openly states that people are things to be "used and thrown away." This person is so disconnected from any sort of moral compass that he honestly believes that he's innocent of murder because he didn't kill the victim himself, despite hiring the assassin who did. Plus he callously writes off Celeste Impax's suicide, taunts Phoenix over having Maya hostage, and brags about trusting nobody. He ultimately goes down because he couldn't comprehend that Shelly de Killer wasn't lying about his code of honor and hatred for backstabbing clients, instead planning on blackmailing de Killer- which, when it's revealed in court, pisses de Killer enough to immediately break his contract and vow to kill Engarde if he goes free. His only redeeming quality is that he really does seem to care about his cat, Shoe, even asking Phoenix to feed the cat while he's in jail.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations:
- Dahlia Hawthorne is pretty much a sociopath trait checklist in a dress.
- Lack of Empathy? She's callously manipulated everyone in her family and all her boyfriends.
- Superficial charm? She charmed not only the aforementioned boyfriends ( including getting one to kill himself for her), her family, but also the judge and prosecutor Winston Payne. She's a pathological liar and a Manipulative Bitch to the extreme, and the only truths she ever utters is an Awful Truth.
- Consummate Liar? Everything she says that isn't an Awful Truth is a lie, to the point where her final testimony is presumed to be mostly truthful because while she has no stake in the outcome (being already dead), telling the truth would screw someone over ( her mother Morgan, who's still in prison), so she happily spills the beans.
- Hedonistic? Her motive for criminal activities is stealing a diamond (and covering up her involvement when the theft went south) - and even then she has other people do the hard work with herself playing the kidnap victim so that she can live an easy, parasitic lifestyle. She's also incredibly reckless, acting in broad daylight and being overly hostile even when it could blow her cover.
- Shallow relationships? Every relationship she bothers to keep is one where the other party could do something for her (i.e. dating a chemistry student to get access to poison), and she immediately moves on when that's no longer the case. Even her twin sister is just Twin Switch material, her half-sister is merely an accomplice, her father had importance just because he was rich, and her mother was just a revenge opportunity against Mia.
- Lack of long-term planning? Her series of murders is ultimately because she couldn't plan a good theft and immediately resorted to murder whenever anyone threatened to expose her role in it. Ultimately, the reason why things went the way they did was because of luck, not because of good planning.
- Grandiose sense of self-importance? She's a Smug Snake extraordinaire who blames Mia entirely for getting her convicted of murder, and even comes back from the dead to try to hurt her one last time. She is unable to take any criticism at all, as she says that it is Never My Fault because she believes they were made by others, and is entitled to an incredible degree, believing herself worthy of wealth despite doing nothing that would deserve that.
- Phoenix’s Criminal Doppelgänger Furio Tigre is a lower-functioning example, being openly hostile to almost everyone and being quick to threaten. Behind that bluster is a manipulative man with enough superficial charm to sway Viola Cadaverini, an inability to think of anyone as anything other than an asset or an obstacle, and no shame in murder. He kills Glen Elg for a computer virus to sell for money he needs to pay back his debt to the Cadaverinis (since Bruto Cadaverini made Tigre pay $1 million for his daughter Viola's medical expenses) upon learning that Elg won the lottery and no longer needs to pay his own debt. He demonstrates the lack of long-term planning by panicking and poisoning Elg instead of calming down and convincing him to give the virus anyway (or just taking it from him), a decision that screws him over in the long run. Tigre later tries to kill Phoenix and Maya when they are trying to expose him as Elg's murderer.
- Dahlia Hawthorne is pretty much a sociopath trait checklist in a dress.
- Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth:
- Calisto Yew from the first game. For most of the case, she's simply a Jerkass defense attorney who is using her corporate clients to investigate the smuggling ring that killed her sister Cece Yew. Except that Cece Yew had no sister. Calisto was sent by the smugglers to pose as her in order to trip up Prosecutor Faraday and Detective Badd's efforts to bring them down, becoming The Mole of their three-person Yatagerasu and playing the part perfectly for several years. When part of her identity is uncovered she describes how she loved the thrill of breaking into her client's offices to steal their secrets and says that Edgeworth's investigation is giving her the same thrill. She also murdered Faraday without hesitation or remorse, did a very good job at disguising the crime scene, and didn't bat an eye that Faraday's kid was in the courthouse that day—then she nearly murders Edgeworth before escaping and becoming Shih-na to hamper Shi Long Lang. When she's eventually exposed, again by Edgeworth, she betrays her boss by dropping incriminating evidence. The only genuine emotions they ever show are either amusement and mockery, or excitement over a battle of wits and has no remorse for betraying everyone they ever work with.
- Gyakuten Kenji 2:
- Blaise Debeste takes the prize for Most Corrupt Law Official in Ace Attorney- and that's compared to several other outright murderers. Much like Simon below, he hides his true vicious personality behind a harmlessly goofy mask, in his case preferring to appear childish and playful. When he's exposed, however, he quickly proves to have a long rap sheet: stealing from the police (by participating in auctions of old evidence), convicting innocents (with evidence forgery if need be; remember the forgery that got Manfred von Karma a penalty? Blaise was the forger, and von Karma thought it was legitimate), making sure his friends got off, framing other prosecutors for his misdeeds, participating in an international conspiracy, attempting to murder a child witness to said conspiracy, murder, and to top everything off, he's an Abusive Parent who pulled strings to get his son Sebastian as a prosecutor because he knew Sebastian was The Ditz who made a good Unwitting Pawn. He seems to enjoy breaking the law and has no compunctions with carelessly using and abusing those around him- see his ultimate responsibility for DL-6 and his treatment of Sebastian, who he gives a Breaking Speech that nearly sends Sebastian over the Despair Event Horizon just because he wanted the kid out of the room.
- The main Big Bad and Final Boss, Simon Keyes. While they do have their reasons for the way they turned out, they are nevertheless a remorseless murderer who got enough innocent people (Kay, Justine Courtney, Jill Crane, and John Marsh) caught up in his Revenge by Proxy scheme, in an attempt to take out Blaise, the body double (whom he kills by crushing him with a hot air balloon), Patricia Roland, and Horace Knightley, his own best friend. Throughout the final case, it is shown they care for none but themselves, and attempt to get Miles' friends to turn on him, and ruthlessly manipulates Shelly de Killer, though like Engarde when their betrayal is revealed, they are cornered by de Killer and saved by their own assassin friend, that rescued them all those years ago. Full of hate, amoral, scarily smart, and The Unfettered, makes this person hands down one of the scariest villains in the Ace Attorney franchise.
- While we're at it, the Impostor President. He doesn't get much screen time and most of what he does get is posthumous, but even with what he does have he displays a lot of red flags for sociopathy. Even as early as the first case, we see that he's a Consummate Liar and a Dirty Coward who resorts to cheap manipulation instead of actually doing his job (using a fake assassination plot to fix his 0% Approval Rating, and foiling Shelly de Killer's separate attempt by being perfectly willing to let his bodyguard die rather than endanger himself), to the point where even his physical appearance is a lie. Later investigations show that he's also extremely entitled ( he stole the real President's identity because he felt entitled to his position since he was risking his life as a body double, ignoring that he really had no business running a country) and quick to resort to murder when he feels his deceptions are threatened ( which ultimately gets him killed, as Simon Keyes killed him in self-defense after the Body Double shot at him in his hot air balloon).
- Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney: The Big Bad, Kristoph Gavin is very likely a sociopath and/or a narcissist, showing a long list of signs.
- He's a Control Freak who has a desperate desire to be needed by others and play savior, which is why he became a defense attorney- he wanted to hold his clients' fates in his hands. When people show signs of breaking away from his control, he reacts with either manipulation or outright violence.
- The most genuine emotion we get from him is his Villainous Breakdown; outside of that, he plays up a calm and generically pleasant facade.
- He feels no positive emotional connection towards others and has no compunctions against covering up his crimes with murder, even targeting a young girl as she was the only one who knew that he was the one who actually ordered the forged diary page. He also intended to use the forgery against his own younger brother to get a win over him.
- He's exceptionally manipulative and most of his success comes from other people trusting him. Vera wears poisoned nail polish because he told her it was a good luck charm, and he got Phoenix disbarred by manipulating Klavier into exposing the forgery without questioning exactly how Kristoph knew about it.
- He reacts extremely violently to slights against his ego; in fact, the whole plot happened because one person snubbed him and he never got over it. He ruined Phoenix's career and stalked him for years because Shadi Enigmar dared choose Phoenix as an attorney over Kristoph (because he thought Kristoph was untrustworthy), and murdered Shadi himself when the man next came to Los Angeles.
- He is utterly incapable of admitting his own faults to a degree above and beyond even the other sociopaths on this page- when Phoenix asks him for his motives about his earlier crimes, he displays black psyche-locks. What these meant isn't clarified in-game, but Dual Destinies reveals that they signify a subconsciously held secret (such as Trauma-Induced Amnesia), meaning that his ego is so big that he can't even consciously acknowledge he might have flaws, such as being jealous of Phoenix's talents as an attorney, which was his true motive for all his crimes.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies: The phantom (AKA Imposter Bobby Fulbright) is a rather creepy example. According to a psychological profile done by analyzing his vocal inflections, he experiences little to no emotions. However, as his disguise proves, he's very good at faking them. He gives the perfect performance of appearing happy when Blackquill says he believes in Imposter!Fulbright's innocence, only for Athena to reveal that there's no indications of the actual emotion of happiness in his voice. When she tries to put his testimony through the Mood Matrix, he first comes up as completely blank. When he's called out on this, he then makes his emotions fluctuate so much that it's impossible to get a reading on him. Exactly how this works is left unexplained, but he implies that he simply trained himself to not feel emotions, hence his ability to fake them. Although it turns out that whether or not he'll admit it, he does still feel one emotion - fear, as brought on by the threat of death. He even demonstrates a lack of long-term planning in that, while he is good at rehearsed and prepared lies, he is terrible at improvising them; Phoenix and Athena walk in on him ruminating on how to act to others, he hastily claims that he is a patsy to the real phantom who is holding a family member hostage but cannot decide on who the hostage is, and intentionally wildly fluctuates between emotions when being questioned because he has no idea what the appropriate emotional responses are.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice:
- The villain Roger Retinz, aka the original Great Mr. Reus, is a fairly solid example. His goal is to frame Trucy for Manov Mistree's murder in revenge for Troupe Gramarye cutting him loose way back when, and absolutely everyone around him gets used as a pawn for this goal, including the murder victim, who was his disciple and biggest fan, and the de Famme twins, and just to rub things in, he tricks Trucy into signing an illegal contract and uses his influence to crash the Wright Anything Agency's reputation. When he is finally exposed and Trucy calls him out on his actions, he seems downright confused that she thought he would do anything other than take advantage of whatever he could.
- The Big Bad, Queen Ga'ran, is another big example. She's more than willing to use her authority as queen to have hundreds of people executed, thinks nothing about using her sister's family as pawns that she uses as blackmail material against each other, and thinks nothing of directly murdering anyone who would prove disadvantageous to her, and was disturbingly okay with letting a baby die in a fire. And to top it all off, she has a grandiose sense of entitlement, going as far as to rewrite the law itself in the middle of court to make standing up to her a crime punishable by immediate execution. She is never shown to care about anyone other than herself, and is an abusive foster mother who is more than happy to belittle and insult her own foster daughter/niece Rayfa at every turn- which is notable because even her husband and accomplice Inga still loves Rayfa.
- The Great Ace Attorney:
- Mael Stronghart, the chief justice of England, is willing to put multiple lives at risk if it means raising their status. He starts off as the justice minister, not unlike Ga'ran, and kills his way to the top through a Serial Killer known as The Professor. When his accomplice is killed, he pins the crimes on an innocent man, but offers to save his life so he can see his family, only to have him executed anyway when circumstances wouldn't allow it. He is the man behind the entire duology of The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles. This person is vicious, remorseless, and has little care for anything else.
- Adventures: Magnus McGilded is revealed to be this in case 5. While it's obvious in 3 that he's at least a little slimy, the 5th case reveals the true extent of his villainy. He has no loyalty to either persons or institutions; he murdered his criminal partner's father (a poor bricklayer) to keep said partner on his side, and gets away with it by threatening Gina into perjuring herself, and freely lies in court. And the crime he committed murder for was treason, meaning that he really does have no respect for England or its laws.
