"To be honest, I can't think of you as a truly innocent and good person. You have done enough evil to drive a woman to suicide. But...At least on the charge of murder, it would appear you are innocent."
—The Judge to Matt Engarde, Justice for All
There are many characters in the Ace Attorney series, both sympathetic and not. These are the least sympathetic people that Phoenix and co. have faced, whether they be criminals, victims, or otherwise.
WARNING: Due to the following entries spoiling who the culprits are, all spoilers are unmarked!
open/close all folders
Phoenix Wright trilogy
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney:
- Redd White is the culprit of the second case. The arrogant head of Bluecorp, a company that collects blackmail material that he leverages against whomever he wants, he believes that he can get away with anything because of his status and blackmails everyone into silence, even going so far as to murder Mia Fey, blame it on her younger sister Maya Fey, and later casually accuse Phoenix of it just because he can. When his crimes are finally exposed, he is reduced to a screaming, begging wimp. White is less of this in the anime, where he becomes a scenery-chewing, hilarious blowhard with plenty of Gratuitous English, but his actions remain just as despicable.
- Manfred von Karma, the prosecutor in the fourth case, is an extreme perfectionist who has sent thousands of people, criminals or otherwise, to prison or the gallows in service of his perfect winning record. He is irritatingly smug, very unprofessional, and terrifying enough to frighten the judge into doing whatever he says. The worst part is that he can back up his ego. Unlike every other prosecutor in the series, Von Karma is an absolutely relentless adversary who butts in to interrupt you, shut you up, and otherwise bully you no matter what you try to do to tackle his witnesses' testimonies. And then it's revealed that he masterminded the entire case to condemn the defendant for the sake of the pettiest reason possible: defense attorney Gregory Edgeworth got von Karma a single penalty fifteen years ago, and von Karma went so insane with fury — even though he still won the case — that he decided it was appropriate to shoot Edgeworth and raise his son Miles to become an arrogant prosecutor who only cares about victory... while keeping his options open to frame Miles for murder, which he ultimately does. Phoenix Wright sums it up best in his Inner Monologue.Phoenix Wright: Von Karma, I think I hate you.
- Justice For All:
- Richard Wellington is the culprit of the first case and an annoying, arrogant Upper-Class Twit who constantly acts superior to everyone around him. Also a member of a Con Artist ring, he kills Dustin Prince after mistakenly thinking that Dustin has a list containing the names of him and his fellow members. He also frames Dustin’s girlfriend, Maggey Byrde, for it, then knocks Maggey’s lawyer Phoenix over the head with a fire extinguisher to give him amnesia and give himself an advantage in the case.
- Turner Grey is a medical doctor whose reputation has been tarnished by fourteen patients dying, which he blames on his supposedly deceased nurse Mimi Miney. He then seeks out Phoenix to hire Maya's help to channel Mimi's spirit, only so that he can clear his own name, and brings a handgunnote to the channeling to force Mimi to cooperate. It is alleged that he overworked his staff, and he has a Hair-Trigger Temper that goes off with little provocation, causing him to come off as an Asshole Victim when Mimi murders him in order to keep her secret under wraps.
- Matt Engarde is the true culprit of the final case. A TV star, Matt Engarde had a rivalry with fellow star Juan Corrida. When his ex-girlfriend Celeste, whom he dumped for no particular reason, got together with Juan, he tells Juan of their past relationship to get him to break up with her, driving her to suicide. When Juan intends to disguise himself as Matt and reveal the truth to the press, Matt hires Shelly De Killer to murder him. Matt then forces Phoenix to defend him in court by having Shelly kidnap Maya in exchange for his acquittal, and when Phoenix realizes the truth, Matt openly mocks Phoenix about having to defend someone who is clearly guilty of murder. Matt makes sure to also videotape the murder, planning to blackmail Shelly later down the road in case he turns on him, instigating the assassin's wrath when Phoenix reveals this. Once his smug demeanor is wiped away and he is faced with a "choice" between pleading guilty or pleading not guilty but at the mercy of the assassin he double-crossed, he breaks down and pleads guilty to save himself from the crosshairs of De Killer. He's even worse in the stage play, which makes him a rapist on top of everything else.
- Juan Corrida is a TV star and Matt Engarde's victim. He dumps his girlfriend Celeste Inpax when Matt Engarde reveals he used to date her, doing this only because he was too prideful to let Engarde get a point over him. He then hides away Inpax's suicide note to use as blackmail against Engarde, doing so purely for self gain rather than out of justice for Inpax. Even if he didn't deserve to be murdered, it's hard to feel sorry for him.
- Trials and Tribulations: Dahlia Hawthorne is the true Big Bad as the culprit behind multiple cases. The daughter of the neglectful Morgan Fey, Dahlia grew up bitter and hateful, openly dismissive of her kind sister Iris. Becoming the girlfriend of Terry Fawles, she stages a fake kidnapping between him and her stepsister Valerie to extort a $2 million diamond from her father. She then commits a series of murders, the victims of which are Valerie, Terry (whom she seduced into killing himself), and an ex-lover of hers. She also tried, unsuccessfully, to poison Diego Armando and Phoenix to further cover her tracks, turning the former into the Anti-Villain Godot. As a spirit, Dahlia possesses Misty Fey and tries to get her to kill her daughter Maya, indirectly leading to Misty being killed by Godot, and gloats about what she thinks she has done. By her own admission, the only person she ever cared about was her own self. Dahlia finally gets exorcised by Phoenix and Mia when they reveal her schemes ultimately failed in the end, with her throwing a bratty tantrum all the while.
Apollo Justice, Dual Destinies and Spirit of Justice
- Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney: Daryan Crescend, a detective and the third culprit, turns corrupt out of greed (despite already having two well-paying jobs as detective and guitarist in the Gavinners), hoping to smuggle a cocoon out of Borginia to sell to the Chief Justice to cure his son's disease, wanting a client who will pay well and not betray him. He enlists the help of Machi Tobaye, a young boy, but after being forced to kill Interpol agent Romein LeTouse throws Machi under the bus and allow him to take the fall for Daryan's crimes, manipulating the crime scene to place suspicion on Machi. Daryan is abrasive and verbally abusive to others, especially when Lamiroir accuses him of the crime, resulting in him assaulting and trying to kill her to keep her silent. When there appears to be insufficient evidence to convict him, Daryan mocks his accusers, showing him to be an unpleasant human being with no redeeming qualities.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies:
- Florent L'Belle is the second culprit and a narcissist who looks down on just about everyone as though he is nobility and others are peasants. He has his own line of beauty products he advertises yet doesn't sell because he wants to keep his beauty to himself, and when this leads him to money issues, he hatches an elaborate get-rich-quick scheme to blackmail his boss into forcibly merging two towns by threatening his daughter, then kills Rex Kyubii for opposing the idea and gains access to a fabled treasure (which is revealed to be long gone). Throughout the case, he acts so unpleasant that Apollo and Athena remark that they want to strangle him, and when exposed, he loses all his sponsors and gets sued for everything he has.Apollo: ("You've just won a one-way trip to the top of my "most annoying people ever" list, buddy.)
- Aristotle Means, the culprit of the third case, is a corrupt teacher of Themis Legal Academy. Believing that “the ends justifies the means” in the Dark Age of the Law, he corrupts his students into sharing his philosophy. He then kills a fellow professor, Constance Courte, who called him out for taking bribes from a student. While he offers to defend Juniper Woods, the student accused of the murder he committed, he throws that facade out the window and tries to incriminate her instead when he's cornered, using his testimony to belittle and gaslight Athena purely out of spite. He's loyal only to himself and cares far more about spouting his twisted ideology to anyone within an earshot than actually helping others, and his breakdown consists of him trying to weasel his way out of his well-earned fate. A crooked man who will do anything to get his way in court, Means is referred to by Athena as the embodiment of the Dark Age of the Law.
- Florent L'Belle is the second culprit and a narcissist who looks down on just about everyone as though he is nobility and others are peasants. He has his own line of beauty products he advertises yet doesn't sell because he wants to keep his beauty to himself, and when this leads him to money issues, he hatches an elaborate get-rich-quick scheme to blackmail his boss into forcibly merging two towns by threatening his daughter, then kills Rex Kyubii for opposing the idea and gains access to a fabled treasure (which is revealed to be long gone). Throughout the case, he acts so unpleasant that Apollo and Athena remark that they want to strangle him, and when exposed, he loses all his sponsors and gets sued for everything he has.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice might as well be the visual novel with the most amount of Hate Sink characters.
- Gaspen Payne, though unpleasant in the previous game, becomes utterly disgusting here. The younger brother of Winston Payne (who while a Smug Snake in his own right, avoided dishonest tactics) he sought to avenge Winston's frequent defeats by Phoenix and his friends. To do this, he tried to get the gentle Juniper Woods falsely convicted of murder and insulted both her and the defense attorneys throughout. After being fired from his job in his home country for corruption, he moves to Khura'in, a dictatorial Police State where defense attorneys are effectively outlawed and marginalized. He becomes the Chief Prosecutor, winning court cases with no effort or opposition, uncaring of the innocent people he condemns. When Phoenix arrives at Khura'in, Gaspen eggs Phoenix on into defending Ahlbi Ur'gaid, knowing full well that Phoenix will likely be executed under the Defense Culpability Act if he loses, simply because Phoenix Wright beat him in a previous court case beforehand. Whereas the actual culprit, Pees'lubn Andistan'dhin, is too quirky to qualify as a hate sink, Gaspen Payne is a servant of a dictatorship willing to convict and execute a child just to stroke his own ego.
- Puhray Zeh'lot/ Rheel Neh'mu, the Asshole Victim of the third case, was a Secret Police agent of the Ga'ran regime who hunted down suspected rebels. Two of the people he targeted were Tahrust and Behleeb Inmee, a married couple who had been his benefactors, and when he tried to kill Behleeb, who was pregnant at the time, she killed him in self-defense. By forcing Tahrust into a Heroic Suicide as part of a plan to protect Behleeb, Zeh'lot is the true antagonist of the case, as well as by far a more despicable individual than the Inmees.
- Paul Atishon-Wimperson is the culprit of the first half of Case 5, and a slimy, egotistical Corrupt Politician. Visiting Kurain Village to get everyone there to elect him as the village assemblyman, he becomes a pain in the neck for the villagers, obnoxiously shouting meaningless catchphrases and promises via his megaphone, and is rude and condescending to Apollo and his friends. He is also a proud supporter of the Khura'inese regime who is willing to kill Professor Archie Buff to give the Founder's Orb he was studying to Justice Minister Inga. When Dhurke Sahdmadhi finds the orb instead, Paul goes as far as blackmailing Phoenix into defending him in a civil trial by having his men kidnap Maya. Within the trial, he evades questions, talks down to people, and threatens Phoenix with Maya's life.
- Queen Ga'ran Sigatar Khura'in, the true Big Bad and final culprit, staged an assassination attempt on her sister and blamed it on respected lawyer Dhurke Sahdmadhi to paint lawyers as sinful people. She then ratified the Defense Culpability Act, which declares that any defense attorneys who lose their case will be punished along with the convicted criminal, to effectively remove them from the justice system, leading countless innocent people to be executed just for opposing her regime. She also blackmails Nahyuta, secretly the son of Dhurke, into working for her under threat of revealing his parentage and inciting Sins Of The Fathers on him and his sister Rayfa. Upon discovering the treachery of Justice Minister Inga, Ga'ran murders him and frames the already dead Dhurke. To ensure Dhurke is convicted, she becomes the prosecutor of the final case and is an Amoral Attorney worse than Manfred and Blaise combined, as she takes horrible advantage of her status as queen to blatantly change the laws in her favor, and when she is fingered for the murder, she declares that 'anyone who accuses the queen of any crime will be immediately put to death'. Finally, it is revealed by Phoenix and Apollo she had no legitimate claim to the throne to begin with, rendering all her insane laws null and void and publicly humiliating her as the fraud she truly is.
Investigations duology
- Ace Attorney Investigations:
- Jacques Portsman is a corrupt prosecutor who works with the smuggling ring, forging evidence to keep his cohorts out of jail. While he pretends to be a friendly man with a love for sports, in reality, he's a cold-blooded criminal who shows no hesitation in murdering his "friend" Buddy Faith when the detective catches him stealing evidence. Since he doesn't even bother to call Buddy by his name, Miles suggests that he viewed him as more of a pet than a partner. He tries to frame Gumshoe, and later Maggey Byrde, for his crime. To make him even more hateable, he's got an annoying habit of loudly taking off his jacket and putting it back on. He's also a smug bully who isn't nearly as competent as he sees himself, making it very satisfying when he ends up eating his medal after being exposed.
- Zinc Lablanc is a rare example of a Hate Sink witness who doesn't turn out to be a murderer or other criminal. He spends the majority of his time making derogatory and cruel remarks at everyone around him while going out of his way to be as difficult as possible. He's incredibly misogynistic as well as a severe Narcissist, seeing himself as being more important than other people. Seeing him get conned out of millions as well as made to look like an idiot is immensely satisfying, even if he isn't even the killer of the case.
- Lance Amano, while not being particularly evil by Ace Attorney standards, is a character that's obviously not meant to be liked. He masterminds a fake kidnapping to extort money out of his own father to pay off a Loan Shark, using his own girlfriend and her father as his accomplices. Being dumb enough to try and blackmail Oliver Deacon, his girlfriend's Papa Wolf father, he instigates a confrontation, forcing him to kill Deacon. When he is "rescued," he talks down to Miles Edgeworth and plays the victim when things stop going his way, refusing to take any accountability for his actions. Trying to use his father's wealth and status to escape responsibility, Miles Edgeworth reducing him to a sniveling wreck is downright cathartic.
- Manny Coachen is easily one of the most loathsome victims in the series. While his actions aren't seen, he is one of the driving forces behind the smuggling ring. Ordering the deaths of innocents as well as actively committing treason by attempting to install Colias Palaeno as a puppet leader, he helps destabilize several countries purely for personal gain. When he tries to take the smuggling ring for himself, he's murdered by his own boss for his efforts. A cowardly and ruthless opportunist, Coachen is an odious figure.
- Ambassador Quercus Alba is the leader of the Cohdopian smuggling ring. Though once a beloved war hero, Alba became a crime lord to enrich himself, masterminding every murder in the game to keep his secrets. When Alba is revealed to be the head of the smuggling ring, he reveals himself to be a smug, preening bastard who only cares about himself. Most of his testimony consists of him gloating about his connections and power, talking down to Edgeworth, and making things as difficult for everyone around him as possible. And thanks to the amount of time needed to take him down, that of course means he'll have plenty of time to flaunt all those lovely and endearing character traits and make you ponder how nice it would be to punch him in the face.
- Gyakuten Kenji 2:
- The body double of Zheng Fa president Teikun O/Di-Jun Huang is nothing but a mere shadow of the man he impersonated. Envious of being a mere double, Huang's imposter collaborates with Patricia Roland and Blaise Debeste to Kill and Replace the real president. He quickly proves to be nowhere near as respectable as the real man, letting a smuggling ring run rampant that prints fake currency and cripples "his" country financially. Shortly afterwards, he conspires with one of his bodyguards to get another guard killed and stages a Fake Assassination attempt on his life for the sake of brownie points. When Shelly de Killer holds one of the fake president's bodyguards hostage, hoping to lure him out, he proves to be a Dirty Coward and signals the assassin that the president is a phony. Later on, after being murdered by the Mastermind, people mourn "Huang's" passing only until the truth is revealed; then the impostor's grave is quickly spat on.
- Warden Marie Miwa/Patricia Roland, the culprit of the second case, is a co-conspirator of Blaise and the fake president. When Simon Keyes witnessed them assassinating the real president, she interrogated and tormented him to keep him quiet. In the actual game, she is in turn tormented by Sirhan Dogen in retaliation for what she did to Simon. When the both of them trick her into killing Horace Knightley, she has Simon accused of the murder, and though she acts nice, when her evil acts are revealed across the game, she shows zero remorse, even helping Blaise attempt to kidnap John Marsh to force the judge (also John's adoptive mother), Justine Courtney, to declare her not guilty. While she is not a hate sink in chapter 2 (as she does a fantastic job at acting affable, only slipping when she's close to being exposed for her crimes,) she's certainly one in chapter 5, being far more smug, ruthless, narcissistic, and cruel, with her cruelty to children being revealed as well as how little empathy she really has.
- Yutaka Kazami/Dane Gustavia is the culprit of The Inherited Turnabout and another despicable human being. Using his son purely as a taste-tester, his response to his son being kidnapped was anger at no longer having an advantage in a confectionary competition he was participating in. While his murder of Isaac Dover was moderately sympathetic (Dover did kidnap his son and threaten to discredit Gustavia by exposing his taste disorder), instead of taking responsibility, he abandoned Simon Keyes, his own child (contributing to the boy's turn to evil) and allowed an innocent man to take the blame instead. Eighteen years later, he is almost killed by Katherine Hall in a trap she set up for the true culprit at the victim's corpse. He uses this to try and manipulate sympathy out of Miles Edgeworth, and when that inevitably fails, he shows his true colors as an aloof, selfish coward who overestimates his own intelligence and treats everyone around him like dirt while boasting that he was the culprit of the incident, but nobody can do anything about it now that the statute of limitations has (supposedly) expired. Giving him his comeuppance 18 years later is an immensely satisfying moment.
- Isaku Hyoudou/Isaac Dover (real name Paul Holic/Pierre Hoquet), the victim of The Inherited Turnabout, is a greedy sculptor who charges exorbitant sums for his work, and seeks to win Jeff Master's contest in order to sell the Angel Recipe. To that end, he enlists the help of the aforementioned Gustavia, since Gustavia can't sculpt his desserts and Dover can't cook well enough, only to betray Gustavia and have his son kidnap Dover's son after reaching the finals. He then tried to blackmail Gustavia and then assaulted him before being murdered. While Gustavia is just as despicable as Dover is, no one mourns Dover's death- only the fact that an innocent man spent almost two decades in prison because of the actions of Dover and his killer.
- Bansai Ichiyanagi/Blaise Debeste, also known as The Conductor, is one of the two main antagonists of the game. The former Chief Prosecutor and head of the Prosecutorial Investigation Committee, he is an Amoral Attorney who has all the detestable qualities of Manfred von Karma with none of his class nor half his intelligence. He openly admits that he can create his own "truths" in his position, is an Abusive Parent to his son Sebastian, putting him through an emotional train wreck just to get him out of the courtroom, is implied to have made his own wife and many others "disappear", and is the Greater-Scope Villain to much of the series's events, being the one who gave Manfred von Karma his only ever penalty, only doing so because he forged the evidence himself and had to divert the blame, leading to the DL-6 Incident. He also, as The Conductor, illegally auctions off evidence and kills someone who tried to expose him for it. By contrast, the Final Boss Sōta Sarushiro/Simon Keyes is significantly more sympathetic, and Blaise's actions were the major reason for Simon's turn to evil.
The Great Ace Attorney duology
- Jezaille Brett is the first culprit in Adventure. Despite presenting herself as a refined English lady, she has nothing but contempt for the Japanese, thinking of them as foolish and disliking speaking their language; her Catchphrase is a Big "SHUT UP!", given the same Big Word Shout treatment as "OBJECTION!" and other such outbursts. She is revealed to have committed a premeditated murder of the victim, Professor Wilson, as well as the framing of the defendant, Ryuunosuke Naruhodo, for no good reason. After recovering from her Villainous Breakdown upon being exposed Jezaille politely accepts her defeat... only for it to be revealed that she fully expects to go unpunished for her crime and saw the trial, in which an innocent man's life and freedom were at stake, as a mere game. In the end, Jezaille is nothing more than an arrogant and sociopathic murderer hiding her vile true nature under a veneer of sophistication. In the sequel game, she ended up being the first victim and is later revealed as an assassin in Mael Stronghart's employ.
- William Shamspeare may have been the 'victim' of the second case of Resolve and is incredibly flamboyant but behind his guise is an opportunistic thief who would stop at nothing to get a fellow inmate's treasure. He caused the death of an innocent bystander who was living where the treasure is located with a gas leak and was doing the same to the defendant Soseki Natsume knowing full well that it caused death. Even when he recovers from the poisoning that the culprit caused he still took advantage of it by suing the said defendant for attempting to poison him just to get to the treasure. The actual culprit is much more sympathetic in comparison to the 'victim' that by the end of the trial, it becomes incredibly obvious who the real villain is.Olive Green: William Shamspeare...How does it go? "To be, or not to be...that is the question." Well let me tell you, in your case...it's not to be. That is the answer. You deserve to die for what you've done.
