If you're rooting for Dahlia Hawthorne by the end of Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations, there's something seriously, seriously, seriously, seriously, seriously wrong with you. No other villain in the series cackled with delight at the prospect of forcing an nineteen-year-old girl who would never hurt a fly to commit matricide or tricking her woobie of a boyfriend into a suicide pact so she could avoid getting caught.
And in Apollo Justice, Kristoph Gavin. When one of his clients summarily dismissed him after a game of poker, he took it rather personally. So personally, in fact, that he didn't just ensure the man's case was lost - he got the lawyer defending him disbarred, using some evidence that he had ordered forged for his own trial, then tipping off the prosecution that it was a forgery. This, on its own, would only qualify him as a Magnificent Bastard, but there is more to the story. There were several loose ends to clear up, including the defendant's disappearance. First, he staged an attempted kidnapping of the forger - a sheltered, timid twelve-year-old girl - and then, when it left her too traumatized to go outside, he stopped by and gave her a good luck charm of a bottle of clear nail polish...which had a painful, extremely virulent, slow-acting poison in it. Kristoph had noticed her habit of biting her nails when nervous, so surely that would take care of her if she was ever pressured about what he'd had her make. He then meticulously kept tabs on everyone who had been involved with the case for seven whole years to make sure nothing went wrong - including befriending the man whose career he had ruined. And if that man hadn't been Phoenix Wright, he probably would have gotten away with all of it.
Don't forget his cold-blooded murder of Zak/Shadi Smith. Sure, the guy may have been a jerk, but still...
What really seals Kristoph's status as a monster is that he is like a combination of Dahlia Hawthorne and Quercus Alba: he cares nothing for anyone else but himself, he sees other people only as tools, and he will carry out whatever atrocious deeds he feels serve his own interest.
Matt Engarde may well be the biggest Complete Monster in the Ace Attorney series. There is no motive given for the atrocities he committed (outside the murder), leading some to believe he did it For the Evulz. These atrocities are throwing away his manager, Celeste Inpax (who he knew loved him), like a used tissue, and when she fell for his rival and got engaged, he told him that he was previously intimate with her in the hopes this would cause him to call off the wedding. It worked. Celeste Inpax was so heartbroken that she committed suicide. Of course, he doesn't just stop there. When he found out his rival now plots with his new manager, Adrian Andrews, against him, he hired Shelley de Killer to kill his rival, but still puts in extra plans to blackmail him. Oh, by the way, he also laughed when Shelley de Killer kidnapped Maya so Phoenix Wright would become his attorney and get him acquitted for his crimes. Then he let Phoenix PIN the blame on Adrian, already an insecure, miserable woman. The knocker for this is because Engarde probably knew about Adrian's past and still did it for extra lulz.
Additionally, Manfred von Karma. As a prosecutor, he had a flawless, decades-long win streak, until defense attorney Gregory Edgeworth managed to (rightfully) have von Karma penalized for his illegal workings in the courtroom. Although Gregory still lost the case, von Karma was enraged by the black mark on his previously-perfect record. Unfortunately, right after the end of the case, an earthquake hit the building. It trapped Gregory Edgeworth, his nine-year-old son Miles, and a bailiff inside an elevator. As oxygen was beginning to run out, the bailiff panicked and attacked Gregory. Miles threw a piece of evidence from the trial at them to get them to stop fighting, which turned out to be a gun. The gun fired once, a terrible scream was heard, and then Miles passed out from lack of oxygen. Unbeknownst to the people in the elevator, von Karma had come across them. The bullet from the gun shot through the glass and hit his shoulder, causing him to scream. In revenge for the black mark against his record, von Karma picked up the gun and shot the unconscious Gregory in the heart. Afterwards, von Karma took Miles under his wing and, for fifteen years, raised Miles to be the antithesis of everything that Gregory Edgeworth was, twisting the boy to fit his views and become a ruthless, cold-hearted prosecutor who cared for nothing but getting a guilty verdict every time. Finally, on the very last day before the Gregory Edgeworth murder case was closed forever, von Karma set up a murder and pinned the blame on Miles Edgeworth, intending to have his own foster-son executed for a murder he didn't commit. Von Karma also planned it out so that Miles would be convinced that he himself was the one who had killed his father and would confess to and be charged with that murder as well. If Manfred von Karma isn't a Complete Monster, I am worried about your standards of morality.
A minor point, but Von Karma was legitimately unaware of the fact that the particular piece of evidence that Gregory objected to was illegal. This does not change the fact that he had and continued to use other pieces of falsified evidence
Redd White does not care how many people commit suicide after he reveals their secrets or get ostracized because of hurtful information that isn't accurate, as long as he gets money to buy gems and women he can show off. He doesn't care whether the woman investigating him is a great mentor, sister, advocate, etc.; he'll still watch to see if she gets too much on him and kill her if she does. He also doesn't care how innocent the people he's setting up to take the fall for his actions are.
Investigations has Quercus Alba, the head of a large smuggling ring. The other criminals of the game (except Lance) answer to this guy. He is the one who ordered the deaths of Cece Yew and Byrne Faraday and killed Mask*DeMasque II and Manny Coachen with his own hands (well, with a statue and a knife, but you know what I mean). His reasons for these killings are as follows: Cece Yew was a witness who needed to be silenced, Byrne Faraday was a member of the Yatagarasu whose goal it was to expose his operation, DeMasque II was going to steal his fake statue and, with it, some plates used for a large-scale counterfeiting operation, and Manny Coachen because he ordered DeMasque II to steal it. Manny ordered the theft because he was planning to betray and usurp Alba and was unaware that the fake statue had been switched with the real one. He almost gets away with it due to Diplomatic Impunity, too. Also, confronting him and getting him to admit to his crimes is...difficult. And lengthy.
Arguably, the worst part about Alba is not so much his killings or even the reasons for them, but the fact that he has no remorse or regard for human life, which Edgeworth is disgusted by.
The Dragon for Alba, Calisto Yew, isn't very nice either. She arguably takes being an Amoral Attorney to even greater lengths than Gavin. She had no good reason to shoot at Edgeworth at the end of case 4. She kills people and laughs about it.
Most cases in the series focus on one victim — Calisto killed two people in I-4, one of whom was her "coworker" in the Yatagarasu and the other was her own defendant. She faked being the sister of the woman Manny Coachen killed, but then helped Alba try to cover up Coachen's murder. She's The Mole on two separate occasions. She's quite a fitting dragon to one of the biggest monsters in the series.
Investigations 2 has Bansai Ichiyanagi. Sided with the Bigger Bad of the story to assassinate the real president of Zheng Fa years ago and killed the reporter of that witnessed the murder. Later on, he killed the reporter's girlfriend and framed Kay for it. He also gave Manfred Von Karma the only penalty he ever got because he got caught forging evidence, despite the fact that he helped Von Karma with the evidence and is thus responsible for the DL-6 incident that shortly followed. Additionally, he blackmails many characters in the series to work with him if they value their lives which include tampering with the crime scene and hiding crucial evidence. He even blackmails the judge Mikagami to get her to work against Edgeworth because he kidnapped her adoptive son.And let's not get started with the traumahe puts his son, Yumihiko, through the entire game, who he constantly berates and tells in the worse way possible that all his achievements was because of his connections (and knowing that Bansai has a lot of connections with shady folks, one can only imagine what would have happened if they didn't comply) and not from Yumihiko's hard work. Later on, he kidnaps his own son (but, to be fair, he was aiming for Mikagami's son), and when Yumihiko finally snaps out of his Heroic BSOD thanks to Edgeworth, when he tries to confront his father, he proceeds to humiliate his son even more in court to the point of disowning him in front of many people. Finally, the game implies that he murdered his own wife, but the circumstances around that remains unknown (but from his personality and relationship with his son, it was probably from abuse). This guy here is definitely worse than Von Karma.
