The series begins with Eric and Delilah taking on their first ever murder trial, defending an old buddy from law school: Millie Muskerson. To make matters worse, Millie has been accused of murdering a police detective, earning her and her defense the ire of the entire precinct.
Lead: Eric Badge
Turnabout Da Capo contains the following tropes:
- Car Fu: The victim was struck with Millie’s car and rammed into a junction box, though the prosecution does concede that it might not have been intentional. In actuality, the victim was already dead by that point so it was actually used as more of a means of transportation. You know, like a car.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- The victim’s nose ring is mentioned early on, and drawn attention to in her profile. It played a role in how she was actually killed.
- The jumper cables, the actual murder weapon, are also mentioned in the description of the Car Photos before Millie actually notices them.
- There’s also the stolen evidence itself, a bloodied ice pick, but in a grander fashion.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Millie mentions working under a pair of Tooth & Claw lawyers who took the evidence she’d collected and promptly left her to rot. We meet those lawyers in The Stinger.
- Establishing Series Moment: This first case strictly follows the rules and mechanics of all established Ace Attorney titles up to this point. At least until the very end, when Eric declines his right to a cross-examination and introduces a brand new mechanic to take down the killer his own way, showing that the fic won’t always stick to what’s already been established.
- High-Voltage Death: The victim was killed this way, initially believed to be the result of getting rammed into a junction box. In actuality, she was already dead by that point and was actually electrocuted with a pair of jumper cables attached to her nose ring.
- Improvised Weapon: The actual murder weapon was a pair of jumper cables that Detective Oates was trying to start his car with at the time.
- Meta Twist: Most tutorial cases in Ace Attorney will have the first testimony come from either the defendant or the detective as a warm-up before bringing in a witness (who will more often than not be the real culprit). This one seems to follow suit, with Detective Oates only giving exposition on the case and providing a few pieces of evidence before stepping down, followed by another simple cross-examination with Millie. After that, two witnesses are brought in, and most Genre Savvy fans will be expecting one of them to be the killer, especially the meek-looking sheep. They're both innocent. So is the surprise third witness that gets brought in later. That detective from the beginning? He's the killer.
- Obnoxious Entitled Housewife: Prosecutor Oinkbaum, the tutorial prosecutor, was presumably designed with this trope in mind. Just before the trial began, she was talking loudly on a phonecard in front of the whole courtroom, and even comments on Eric's weight for no particular reason, which is only a little example of what she's like during the rest of this trial. Eric even lampshades this, stating under her description,I wasn’t sure mammals like this really existed until today. I can’t shake the feeling that she’s just waiting to call my manager on me, and I don’t even have one!
- Once More, with Clarity: During the introductory scene at the very beginning of the story, we see the conversation just before Bea F. Wellington's death. At the end of the case, we revisit the conversation, with the other participant's half of the argument now revealed to the audience. This puts a new spin on a few of Wellington’s lines and reveals that the scene as a whole was (initially) a lot less hostile than originally implied.
- Plot-Based Voice Cancellation: The Teaser seems to show a confrontation between the victim and her killer, with the killer’s lines muted out to preserve the mystery. However, it becomes apparent during Samson’s testimony that this was in fact exactly what he heard, as he was able to pick up the victim’s voice but not the killer’s.
- Parking Garage: The murder took place in an underground one beneath Precinct 1. (Whether such a place actually exists in Zootopia canon is irrelevant.)
- Useless Security Camera: Downplayed, as security footage actually caught the entire murder on film. It’s just that the killer was aware of this and deleted the incriminating footage before reporting the crime, while leaving footage that implicated the defendant. Didn’t help that they employed a Surveillance Station Slacker who was especially easy to lure away from his post.
