Visual Novel / Gyakuten Kenji 2

Find the right balance on the Scales of Justice.

Gyakuten Kenji 2 (also unofficially known as Ace Attorney Investigations 2) is an Adventure Game and sequel to 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 Justine Courtney, a member of the Prosecutorial Investigation Committee, 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 Raymond Shields, 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 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.

Gyakuten Kenji 2 features a new system called "Logic Chess". This does not necessitate playing chess, but instead acts as a visual metaphor. When Edgeworth can't find a fault in the witness' testimony, he can instead ask one of two questions. Asking the correct one will cause the player to "take" one of their "pieces", allowing the "game" to move further. An incorrect choice will have the reverse happen, and the player will lose points from their Truth meter.

Currently, there are no plans for the game to be localized, but there is a Let's Translate on YouTube (complete as of September 29, 2013) while a full Fan Translated patch (subtitled "Prosecutor's Path" and featuring a complete localization of the dialogue) is currently available in English, and can be found here. To keep consistent with other Ace Attorney entries on TV Tropes, all entries referring to the sequel use the Prosecutor's Path localized information rather than the official Japanese information. ^note The reason why the game went into No Export for You territory was because the team itself was unable to get together in the timeframe whilst everyone was moving and leaving after the game was completed.

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This game provides examples of:

• 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.
• Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable: Horace Knightley's objection soundclip. OBJection!
• Accidental Hero: While bringing an unconscious Kay to the Grand Tower rooftop for his plans, Simon Keyes stumbled upon a secret meeting between the fake Di-Jun Huang and Justine Courtney. Hearing the balloon Simon was riding in, Huang ushered Courtney away and tried to shoot down Simon with a gun he was likely going to kill Courtney with if she realized he was a fake, only to get squashed by the hot-air balloon. Had Simon not discovered the meeting, the victim of Case 5 would've been Justine Courtney instead and John Marsh would've been erased next to clean off any loose ends.
• 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 Case 3. The present portion of the case seemingly has no victim, until a body is found. Turns out, it's the same victim from 18 years ago, whose body was never found.
• Amoral Attorney: Blaise Debeste, the former Chief Prosecutor and current head of the P.I.C. In addition to his present-day jackassery, he also turns out to have been the instigator of DL-6 (indirectly) and the prosecutor who disgraced the Lang family.
• 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.
  • Case 5 has you briefly present evidence as Sebastian Debeste.
• 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 turn out to even be the final evidence that needs to be presented in order to bring down the Big Bad.
• 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 Courtney and Kate 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 GK2, and actually gets a sprite this time.
  • Remember Gregory Edgeworth? You get to play as him in case 3 of the sequel and find out what really inspired von Karma to take his life.
  • That nameless chief prosecutor from the first main series game who gave von Karma his penalty? He shows up here in the sequel, 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 the sequel, she sticks for the near entirety of the final two cases.
• Asshole Victim:
  • From the final case, Di-Jun Huang's impostor, the man who prepared the president's assassination and poses as him for years, is killed by the game's Big Bad.
  • From the second case, Horace Knightley, who was shown to be a rather obnoxious Jerkass even before he turned out to be the first case's culprit.
  • From case 3, Isaac Dover. is guilty of blackmail, kidnapping and assault, and is about as bad as the real killer.
• 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, Jill Crane, 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.
• Back for the Finale: Every surviving character from the first two cases except for Jay Elbird and Frank Sahwit return to play some role in the final case.
• Batman Gambit: As it turns out, Simon Keyes's entire plan and therefore the game's entire conflict involved this trope, including some elements of the Xanatos Gambit.
  • In Episode 1, he manipulated Knightley into killing Ethan Rooke by playing into his inferiority complex.
  • In Episode 2, he manipulated the evidence, using Patricia Roland's intense fear of Sirhan Dogen to trick her into falsely believing that Knightley was an agent of his, provoking her into killing him.
  • Episode 4 is where the Batman Gambit and Xanatos Gambit tropes most clearly overlap: he set up a meeting between Blaise Debeste and Jill Crane by communicating their secrets to each other, where one would inevitably kill the other. If Jill killed Blaise? Great, revenge achieved. If Blaise killed Jill (which he did)? Well then it was a good thing Simon also kidnapped Kay and made it look like she was working together with Jill. Blaise would then have to either kill Kay or frame her for Jill's murder (which is what happened), thus provoking the wrath of Miles Edgeworth, who would stop at nothing to bring Blaise to justice.
  • Episode 5 was when it all came to light.
• Barely-Changed Dub Name: From the game's Fan Translation:
  • Delicy Scone to Delicia Scones
  • Ami Aizawa to Amy Marsh ("marsh" being the literal translation of "aizawa")
• Be All My Sins Remembered: Edgeworth's checkered past as Manfred von Karma's disciple haunts him for most of the game, especially when Raymond Shields returns and he comes under suspicion by the P.I.C. He is pretty much the only one who doesn't bristle at "Uncle Ray's" bitter anger toward him, since Shields had every reason to feel that he had betrayed his father Gregory by joining von Karma.
• Big Bad: Simon Keyes. Being the mastermind of the entire game, he plotted to use everyone involved to take down a government conspiracy consisting of Blaise Debeste, Patricia Roland and the fake Di-Jun Huang, 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. Sebastian also pulls one off earlier in the case when Justine Courtney can no longer stall the trial.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • Case 3's resolution ends with the possibility that the true killer may get away with the murder charge due to a Catch-22 Dilemma, but the heroes did achieve their own goal to exonerate the wrongly-convicted Jeff Masters, although Katherine Hall has to serve her own sentence regarding attempted murder.
• 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 Huang 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: Sebastian 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:
  • Sebastian stops being a "Well Done, Son" Guy after Blaise reveals his treachery through the final two cases of the sequel (as well as being a heartless jerk towards Sebastian). Curiously, however, he still says he 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 the second game that the pedestal Franziska held her father and his ideals on has crumbled, since she actively avoids directly referring to him, except where Sebastian 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 Sebastian's father.
    Kay: That person... he really loves his father, doesn't he...?
    Franziska: However... one must be able to accept the mistakes of their father... However much they may look up to them...
  • Shelley once again falls under this trope, having another client that betrays his trust.
• But Thou Must!: A more comedic example. When we first meet Raymond, he gives Edgey a pop-quiz: What is the name of the room Knightley was murdered in? The three choices are "Lecture Room", "Morgue", and "Entertainment Room". The correct answer is "Workroom".
  Edgeworth: (All three answers were wrong. I hate it when he does that.)
• Catch-22 Dilemma: Dane Gustavia's conviction on IS-7 requires the false conviction dealt to Jeff Masters, but because of the expired Statute of Limitations that took Gustavia leaving the country for 3 years and Masters' trial being dragged for a year to extend the Statute, if Jeff 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 Gustavia 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 the sequel (Patricia Roland, Blaise Debeste, and Di-Jun Huang'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.
  • 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 Justine Courtney, who was only there to gather documents and wasn't the murderer.
  • 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.
• Call-Forward: 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.
• Celebrity Cameo: Planned In-Universe with the in-production Moozilla movie, which was a remake of the original that the Zheng-Fa president Di-Jun Huang 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. The entire game, particularly after Ray appears draws constant parallels between Miles and Gregory. Sebastian 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 Gustavia and Dover 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 Courtney and John. Courtney actively states that carrying an image of her son around with her gives her strength and courage in her job and John, 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 Courtney really is. The end shows that John also respects his biological parents, who truly cared for him after all. Miles lampshades to Courtney that the Goddess of Law is also a motherly one, since she understands attenuating circumstances, like Courtney's own.
  • The Big Bad, Simon Keyes 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 Sirhan Dogen, it's implied that Sirhan has softened to him and he became the one person Simon actually relies on, becoming a Family of Choice.
  • Several main characters struggle with their relationship with their parents in the end of the game. Lang, in the last case, is attempting to solve the case that send his family into shame, particularly, his father several of the evidences he gather are actually what his father could gather with his own investigation. Franziska has decided to leave her father's influence behind her, and make something of herself, independent of whatever her father did in the past. 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, he intends to take his father 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 3 people (Katherine Hall, Jill Crane, and Simon Keyes) 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.
• Chekhov's Boomerang: Knightley's chessboard, ring, the correspondence chess memo, and the photo of Dover and Gustavia with their sons. The Moozilla 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, Simon Keyes 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 Simon used it to travel to the crime scene and ended up killing one of his targets with it.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • Horace Knightley and Simon Keyes 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, Simon Keyes, both literally and metaphorically. Has orchestrated a plan that involves criminals getting their comeuppance throughout the game.
• Chess Motifs: Repeatedly. Besides Logic Chess and the physical chessboards in Dogen's cell, Edgeworth's office, and Knightley's case, there are a lot of characters who are metaphorical chess pieces. Knightley and Rooke are obvious examples, but there are more subtle nods, like Sebastian Debeste, 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 Simon Keyes, who manipulated the entire case and is also likely Edgeworth's chess opponent in the final argument.
  • While less direct than Rooke and Knightley, the game clearly invites players to continue the chess metaphor. Dogen's pointed head, monk/priest themes, and the fact he becomes much more valuable in the endgame phase makes him a bishop. Blaise and Patricia have competing right to be called the queen. Blaise is the most powerful piece on the board, who's capture weakens every other piece on the board, while Patricia 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 "The Forgotten Turnabout", 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: Blaise Debeste and Patricia Roland to Di-Jun Huang's body double.
• Continuity Cavalcade: Grand Tower'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.
  • In case 3, Ron and Desirée DeLite from Trials and Tribulations can be found... "admiring"... a sculpture in the Winter Palace 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 "When I Found the Body" 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: Then I saw him lying there... A man... not moving... dead! I quailed in fright and found myself letting out a scream.
• Copy Protection: Much like in Ghost Trick, if the game is detected as a pirate copy, all the dialogue text will be in Borginian and all the item descriptions are replaced with Xes. Due to how the fan translation patch works, the program that causes this 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: Ray says that Katherine Hall wouldn't have needed to buy back Jeff Master's mansion and set a poison gas trap for Isaac Dover's real killer if she'd just trusted him and come clean about stealing the statues containing Dover's body from the crime scene. Katherine, 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 him.
• 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 Blaise Debeste 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 The Forgotten Turnabout Kay was attacked by a mysterious mastermind and suffered amnesia and was implicated for the murder of a PIC member. Then the Chairman of the PIC, Blaise Debeste entered and 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 PIC, Edgeworth gives up his badge and whole career as a prosecutor.
• 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. And with good reason.
• Demoted to Extra: Gumshoe in the second game, though it doesn't kick in until after the first case, when loads of characters start showing themselves. Raymond takes the role of Edgeworth's Lancer while still providing comic relief, while Sebastian 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, AAI 2 is also the first game in the series where he never gets to testify.
  • Franziska and Lang in the second game as well, with Justine mainly filling Franziska's role and Sebastian (sort of) providing the "rival" dynamic that Lang did.
• Dialogue Tree: Logic 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. The player must choose wisely between the two or three options available 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.
  • Sirhan Dogen in both of the cases in which he features. You even get the Presto theme during his testimony in the last case.
• Distressed Dude: Sebastian in case 5 of AAI2 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, Raymond Shields asks the soon-to-be arrested Katherine Hall 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 "The Grand Turnabout", 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.
• 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: Sebastian 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.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Sirhan Dogen, 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 deKiller for the life of that same boy, and succeeds.
• Face Death with Dignity: The real Di-Jun Huang upon being confronted by Dogen. He refuses to beg for his life, and only asks for some time to see his son John Marsh before Dogen kills him. Dogen declines and kills him immediately.
• Failure Is the Only Option: Played for Laughs in Case 2 when Raymond Shields asks Edgeworth what room the crime scene is out of a possible three. However...
  Edgeworth: All three answers were wrong. I hate it when he does that.
• 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 Shelley de Killer to actually assassinate the President, but de Killer took offense when he learned that the "President" is actually an impostor 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).
• 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.
• Foregone Conclusion: Victory in the second 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:
  • 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. Namely, he says he was hired by "a key individual". Said client, and the mastermind, turns out to be Simon Keyes. It's even more explicit in the Japanese script, as Shelly outright refers to to the client as a monkey.
  • At the end of Case 2, Regina comments that Simon is smarter than he looks. He most certainly is.
  • In the first case, Huang'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. He was crushed to death, with every bone in his body broken.
  • Given Courtney's age (26), it's really unlikely that she could be the biological mother of John Marsh (13). Then "The Grand Turnabout" rolls around, and you find out that she isn't.
  • At one point in the game, Simon says that he doesn't like sweets. Given that he used to have a grand affinity for them by being his father's taste tester, but nearly died because of this.
  • If you're familiar with American history around the 20th century, you might find a name in the fan translation very familiar. Sirhan Dogen shares his first name with Sirhan Sirhan; the man responsible for assassinating Robert F Kennedy, brother to President John F Kennedy. Sirhan Dogen is later revealed to have assassinated President Di-Jun Huang.
  • During Logic 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 Huang 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 now-deceased Di-Jun Huang, his map marker is now a black King, which he truly represents.
  • In Case 1, Horace Knightley 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.
    • Also, Knightley 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 Huang was a fake.
  • Kay's confusion resulting from mixing up Gourd Lake with the Grand Tower'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 Simon Keyes had access to a hot air balloon and could in fact float in mid-air.
• 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.
• For Want Of A Nail:
  • The entire series would not exist if not for Isaac Dover, who made his son kidnap and detain Dane Gustavia's son. Without his son to taste his food for him, Gustavia had no hope of winning the dessert contest, forcing him to sneak into Jeff Master's room and take a picture of the cure to his taste disorder, where Dover caught him and threatened him with blackmail. This led to Gustavia killing Dover, Kate finding the body, Gustavia hiding the body before the cops showed up, and Kate accidentally hiding the body even more. Since the cops Never Found the Body, von Karma forced a confession out of Master, received his first penalty for it and had his precious perfect record ruined, causing him to murder Gregory Edgeworth and adopt Miles, turning him into a infamously ruthless prosecutor, which made Phoenix decide to become a defence lawyer in order to face him in court and find out why he had changed so much.
  • In Case 5, the victim would've been Justine Courtney instead of the fake Di-Jun Huang hadn't Simon accidentally happened upon their meeting on the Grand Tower's rooftop while flying the circus' hot-air balloon, causing the fake to usher Courtney away and try to shoot Simon with a gun he was planning to kill Courtney with, only to get squashed by the hot-air balloon.
• Found the Killer, Lost the Murderer: The Big Bad's plan hinges on this trope. Every culprit Edgeworth catches killed someone ( Horace Knightley with Ethan Rooke, Patricia Roland with Horace Knightley, Blaise Debeste with Jill Crane), 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; Simon only came up with the idea of setting Edgeworth on his enemies after he was arrested for Horace's murder (which he'd set up, but Patricia had enacted) and Edgeworth had defended him by proving Patricia did it- thus allowing him to kill two birds with one stone by having Horace killed and Patricia 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 Debeste but passes any useful information on to Edgeworth and Raymond Shields. Detective Badd played a similar role for Gregory Edgeworth in the IS-7 incident, for similar reasons.
• Go Through Me: When Sirhan Dogen shows up at the climax, Judge Courtney's sprite does the "hug" pose with John Marsh.
• Greater-Scope Villain:
  • Played with. The corrupt organization encompassing P.I.C. head Blaise Debeste, prison warden Patricia Roland and Zheng Fa "president" (actually body double) Di-Jun Huang is significantly and obviously more powerful, influential and menacing than the game's actual Big Bad Simon Keyes, 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, Blaise Debeste 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, Dane Gustavia for committing the murder that lead to the DL-6 incident, and Issac Dover, for being the instigator. Issac is also responsible for the rise of the game's Big Bad.
• Guide Dang It!: The Logic Chess battle against Blaise Debeste 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 one corrupt scumbag 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...
• Idiot Ball: When Courtney 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 Knightley at knifepoint.
• Impersonation-Exclusive Character: President Di-Jun Huang 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 4 together through the three conspirators, case 3 is left unrelated until Sirhan Dogen 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 Nicole aimed a laser pointer at the President's head before you find it out yourself.
• 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 the fourth case 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, Courtney mentions "the contradiction of law", which Shields 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, enabling at least the release of the defendant he mistreated years ago.
  • Raymond points out at the end of case 3 in Investigations 2 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 Master's trial as a supposed accomplice to the murder. There's no way to hold Gustavia without accepting Master's conviction as genuine; conversely, showing Master 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).
  • Dogen is an interesting play on this trope. At the start of the game, he is sitting in a luxury prison cell. 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.
  • Shields reveals that it's still possible for Dane Gustavia to get Off on a Technicality even after being caught, as his conviction relies heavily upon Jeff Master's accomplice charge, though it's also implied that the law can be changed in time for this to be averted.
  • Justine Courtney 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 this illegal shenanigans.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: By the end of the game Blaise Debeste, Patricia Roland, and the body double all finally receive some form of punishment for past or current crimes. It can also be assumed that Blaise and Roland will be tried for the murder of the Zheng-Fa president as well, as the incident is only 12 years old, still three years within the statute of limitations.
• 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 Horace Knightley and Simon Keyes. When Simon regained his memories, he also got a few things mixed up, such as who his father was and who Knightley's father was.
• 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?
• Like Father, Like Son:
  • Ray 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. They even have the exact same opinion about Katherine's desserts being too sweet for their taste. It comes to a head where Ray ends up taking near-identical photographs with the two Edgeworths in the past and present.
  • Deconstructed with Dane Gustavia and Simon Keyes. Simon hated Gustavia for killing Isaac Dover, because a traumatic near-death experience had jumbled his memories and caused him to think that Dover was his father and not Gustavia. However, both Simon and Gustavia have the same habit of laughing maniacally when they believe there is no way their plans can fail, and Simon uses the exact same method of preserving the body of his victim that Gustavia had used: by freezing it, to throw off the time of death, even though he had no possible way of knowing that Gustavia used it. This is lampshaded by Edgeworth while he's cornering Keyes for the crime.
  • Blaise and Sebastian Debeste 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, Sebastian 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. Blaise and Sebastian are also the only two prosecutors in the series who actually wear their prosecutor's badge instead of keeping it in their pocket.
• Locked Room Mystery: Played with in Case 5, which features a locked rooftop mystery. Lampshaded in this case.
• 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. The fan translation is unable to convey this change.
• Luxury Prison Suite: Dogen 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.
• Mexican Standoff: The last case has one between De Killer and Dogen — 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 Karin Jenson, as Kay actually fell down a height of a single floor rather than from the roof of the Grand Tower 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. Roland and Dogen both hide weapons in their respective pets' mouths; Jill Crane and Blaise both try to ambush each other during the black market auction; and Simon and Blaise both try to kidnap the judge's child to influence a trial's outcome. Simon also shares several mannerisms with Dane Gustavia, who he believed killed his father and thus despised (in actuality Gustavia was his father and Simon's memories were mixed up). He even uses the same method as Gustavia to throw off a victim's time of death even though he had no way of knowing Gustavia used it too, which Edgeworth points out.
• Miscarriage of Justice:
  • Jeff Master. He confesses to the crime because the prosecution threatens to charge Katherine 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 at the end of his case, thankfully as the real killer was caught.
  • This trope is also the reason Simon Keyes decides 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 can trust the Prosecutor's Office again.
• Missing Floor: Edgeworth is able to deduce this in the fourth case, where he compares the photo of the Grand Tower in the newscast to the photo in the pamphlet.
• Mundane Utility: In most cases, the Logic 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 Sebastian Debeste out of his misery. Interestingly, despite being a more mundane use, it's actually the longest and most involved Logic 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: Would you entrust your life to the "Dye-Young Hospital"?
• 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 15 years later when they revisited the case at Raymond Shields' request.
• Non-Standard Game Over: Giving a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Sebastian in the game's final Logic 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 Logic 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 Logic 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. He only wrote letters letting 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 The Mighty Moozilla vs. Gourdy.
• 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.
• 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 Simon Keyes.
• Ominous Pipe Organ: Justine Courtney's theme features it heavily, presumably to reinforce her "holy" appearance.
• Origins Episode: Remember the trial where Manfred von Karma got his first penalty? The IS-7 incident 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.
• Pet Positive Identification: The murder investigation at the prison uncovers a breakout attempt by Jay Elbird. Elbird 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: Sirhan Dogen to John Marsh in The Grand Turnabout. Marsh 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.
• 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.
• 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. In the end, he manages to elongate it to 6 months left.
  • Case 5 has Edgeworth and Kay scramble to find John Marsh and the evidence for Patricia Roland's trial during its recess, as the former had been taken hostage to force his mother Justine Courtney declare a Not Guilty verdict as its judge and the latter had been disposed of by Blaise Debeste to also force the Not Guilty verdict. Plus, the prosecutor; Sebastian Debeste also went missing.
• Request for Privacy: President Huang requested a private meeting with Judge Courtney without his bodyguards shortly before he was found dead in a nearby film lot. It's later discovered that he was planning to kill Courtney to keep his true identity as the real president's Body Double a secret.
• 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, including making Gregory playable in a flashback.
• Revealing Cover-Up:
  • Subverted with Simon Keyes in "The Grand Turnabout". He inadvertently uses the hysteria surrounding Moozilla and Gourdy to cover-up the fake president's murder and his own involvement in the crime.
  • Played straight with Blaise Debeste attempting to dispose of the evidence for Patricia Roland's trial. Sebastian Debeste only found one piece of it, but a glove print found on the newspaper it was wrapped in was determined to have belonged to Blaise's gloves, proving that evidence was disposed of in the garbage heap Sebastian found it in, enabling him to put a request in to perform a bigger search of it.
• 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 Katherine Hall and Jill Crane 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, John Marsh 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.
• Say My Name: Blaise screams Sebastian's name after being defeated by him and Edgeworth in court.
• Schmuck Bait: At the start of the Logic Chess round with Sebastian Debeste, you get the option to call them "a failure as a person". This predictably results in a One-Hit Kill, so you'll receive a penalty before you can try again.
• 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, Horace Knightley has a habit of reloading his gun and spinning it.
  • In Case 2:
    • The guard petting the cat says the cat's name is Nermal.
    • When Simon's ponytails are pulled by his pet, his arm moves, a reference to how Remy manipulated Linguini thusly in Ratatouille.
  • In Case 4:
    • Kay suggests that the 51st floor could be accessed via a portal. Ray tells her, "Now's not the time to be thinking with portals."
    • Sebastian says his father is "the very best, like no one ever was!"
  • Also in Case 4, Miles tells an amnesiac Kay, suspected of murder to "believe in me, who believes in you." Doubles as Actor Allusion, as Kamina's English VA also voices Edgeworth in Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice
  • Sirhan Dogen, a guy with a dog motif, is looking for a young person in a red hood. Coincidence?
  • Early in case 5, Lotta proclaims that "On this day, mankind received a grim reminder: we live in fear of the great Moozilla!"
• Snail Mail: Justified when Knightley's last correspondence chess letter arrives to Simon at the Berry Big Circus well after his death and inconveniently when Edgeworth is indicting Simon as the mastermind. Since the circus travels a lot and has no fixed address, all of their mail arrives late as a result.
• So Last Season: Extraterritorial rights are a major plot point in the first game; to the point where the final boss repeatedly invokes them in order to evade arrest. For several chapters. In the very first case of the second game, 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 Huang very clearly took place on Japanifornia grounds, meaning that Extraterritorial Rights wouldn't apply and there would be unrestricted investigation.
• Speak Ill of the Dead: When Knightley in the first case speaks ill of his fallen co-worker, almost everyone believes he's crossed the Moral Event Horizon by doing so.
• 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 "Rooke" and "Knightley" having hair and collars that make them look like said chessmen. The President is the King, so what does he look like? A lion.
  • Elbird 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.
• 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.
• Talking Is a Free Action: Averted in Case 1: During the Logic Chess battle against Di-Jun Huang, Horace Knightley 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 Ethan Rooke's murder on Nicole Swift.
• Take a Third Option: Downplayed. Halfway through the game, when Raymond 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 Raymond'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 Simon, but a prosecutor would've been able to protect him.
• Take Me Instead: In Case 1, Shelly de Killer holds Horace Knightley at knifepoint in order to force Di-Jun Huang into doing this, knowing that Huang is a Father to His Men who won't permit Knightley to be killed in his place. The fact that this fails tips off de Killer to the fact that "Huang" is actually an imposter.
• Tempting Fate: In Case 3, Ray 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.
• Title Drop: In addition to the phrase "ace attorney" popping up a few times, Edgeworth drops the subtitle of the fan translation 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 Edgworth is outright stirpped 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 Shields 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: Simon Keyes qualifies, doing things like imitating Edgeworth's voice and faking a breakdown.
• Turn in Your Badge: Edgeworth decides to surrender it rather than give up on defending Kay. He gets it back in the ending, though.
• 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 Gustavia's, Gustavia had no choice but to sneakily take pictures of the medicine formula he was seeking. Dover tried to blackmail him over it, and got himself murdered as a result.
  • Isaac Dover's son prevented Simon Keyes from helping his father in IS-7. This led to the series of events that made Keyes manipulate the present day events.
• Verbal Tic: Blaise has one of these, y'know. Despite how evil he is, he's pretty laid back most of the time, y'see.
• We Will Meet Again: The killer of Case 1 curses Edgeworth after being defeated, stating that "this game isn't over yet". Knightley never pays off on this, as he's the victim of the immediate next case.
• Videogame Cruelty Potential: During the logic 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 logic chess against Sebastian, if you choose "You are a failure as a person!", you instantly receive a 100% time penalty, and a loss of part of the health bar.
• Visual Pun: The Logic Chess battle against Di-Jun Huang in Case 1 has his King defended by a single Knight, as Rooke is now dead and Knightley now remains as his last defender.
• Wham Line:
  • A great one in Case 4, signifying Courtney's Heel–Face Turn.
  Courtney: The defendant.... Blaise Debeste! I hereby indict you!
  • Case 5 has an even bigger one.
  Ray: He's a member of the circus, Knightley's friend...and Dane Gustavia's son. Wh-Who'd have thunk it...?
  Edgeworth: An apprentice beast tamer? Heh...he's no amateur. For the beast he has tamed is none other than this entire case! Simon Keyes! He is the mastermind behind this entire incident!
• Wham Shot:
  • 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 Knightley'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 Pierre Hoquet's signet crest fashioned into a ring, revealing Knightley to be Issac Dover's son, as that was part of his inheritance.
  • Also in case 5, Edgeworth has figured out there's more to SS-5 than on the surface, but can't uncover the truth because Blaise Debeste 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 Huang standing there with the assassin Sirhan Dogen, making it clear that SS-5 was not a presidential kidnapping. It was an assassination.
• 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: Bookcase.
  Kay: [Beat] ...Broken safe.
  Edgeworth: Stained glass.
  Kay: ...Stolen goods.
  Edgeworth: Books on the law.
  Kay: ...Crooks on the lam.
  Edgeworth: [serious face] Statue of the goddess.
  Kay: [cowering] ...Snatched loot of the Great Thief.
  Edgeworth: (Are all of her mistakes biased towards a certain way...?)
• Xanatos Gambit: See Batman Gambit above (the Big Bad's gambit invokes both tropes).
  • Katherine Hall's trap against the real IS-7 killer 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 Jeff Master and/or committing a Vigilante Execution to avenge him.
  • Gregory Edgeworth's insurance in case that Jeff Master breaks and gives a false confession due to Manfred Von Karma and Rip Lacer's brutal interrogations was to ask Detective Badd to record said interrogations, which allowed Gregory to expose Manfred's corruption and get Lacer 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 "Logic Chess" feature. Most notably Blaise Debeste.
  • Simon Keyes probably pulls off the craziest gambit ever. He plots an insane plan to kill not only his best friend, Knightley (whose actions somewhat impacted Dover's death, and Keyes had incorrectly believed that Dover was his father), but also the three co-conspirators who tried to kill his mentor, Sirhan Dogen. 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 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 Sebastian Debeste 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 Grand Tower in Case 4, Edgeworth, Gumshoe and company wrongly believe John Marsh to be in real danger, but Penny Nichols correct them by announcing they were filming. The filming is an important part of Case 5.

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