Headscratchers / The Great Ace Attorney

• If Vortex/Stronghart wanted to eliminate any loose ends in the Professor's coverup before his ascension to Attorney General, how come so many people (Barricade/Caidin, Sithe, and most importantly— Jigoku) were spared, despite also being involved?
  • Was it a personal thing? Did he think they wouldn't leak it, but Gregson and Watson/Wilson might? Was it not practical, since Jigoku was a public figure and was arranging the Japanese half of the exchange? Did he plan on eliminating them later? A mix of some of the above? None of the above?
  • A lot of Stronghart's actions make very little sense on retrospect. He was so paranoid that he'd concoct an assassination plot to kill off his followers but he's perfectly willing to bend rules to give Ryunosuke and Kazuma the opportunity to bring him down? Both Ryunosuke and Kazuma wouldn't have been involved in the legal system in Britain in the first place if it wasn't for him. And then Stronghart continues to give special exceptions that benefit them like letting Ryunosuke search crime scenes he wasn't supposed to, or let him talk to Kazuma after making him the prosecution. Not to mention, he himself was the one that gave Harebrayne's defense to Ryunosuke after allowing him to become a lawyer again, both things that led to more people digging up the truth about the Professor cases that he ostensibly wanted to keep covered.
  • Sithe and Jigoku needed to be alive probably because he still needed them around. I remember that it was mentioned that he was trying to use Sithe's forensic investigation unit as his ticket to get promoted to Attorney General so obviously she would still need to be alive for that to work. Jigoku was left alive probably because he wanted to have a lackey who could influence Japanese politics if needed and only Jigoku really fit the bill. As for Barricade, if I recall all he knew about was that a deal was struck between the the government and the professor to keep the professor alive. He didn't really know enough about the wider conspiracy and even if he decided to talk, Stronghart probably had enough influence that he could chalk the whole thing up to a conspiracy theory (remember there already were rumors that the professor had come back from the dead due to Enoch Drebber)
  • Also remember that it might not be immediately apparent what will and will not lead back to the Reaper case. Harebrayne's case, for example, started out looking like an elaborate shell game gone wrong and Stronghart himself might not have realized its significance to his own crimes until it was too late (i.e. when he was trying to keep Sithe from testifying.) A lot of his more benevolent actions to you that might not "make sense" can be chalked up to him not realizing what they will lead to, and also not wanting to look suspicious if he can help it. For the assassinations, in addition to still having use for some of his conspirators, he might have also not wanted to draw too much attention on all of them dying at once, so he decided to get rid of the two conspirators who were the most dangerous to him. Consider that Tobias and Wilson were the only two who knew Asogi's conclusive evidence was planted—and unraveling that thread is what led Kazuma and Naruhodo to learning that Stronghart was The Man Behind the Man for the Professor. Gregson in particular is also shown to have had a conscience about the whole thing and only went along with it reluctantly. Stronghart might have been especially nervous about Gregson balking if he took the Reaper conspiracy to any higher levels.
• In case 5 of the second game how did Jigoku get Gregson's body out of the fridge room? He hid it in the fridge in the first place because he couldn't get to the deck right then, and any time after the deck was clear his door would be guarded and he'd be seen, but for that same reason he'd never have an opportunity to retrieve it. You can imagine the guard was gone when they were disembarking but then he'd be with Mikotoba and the fridge room would still be off limits to passengers. If he got some crewman in on it why not just get the crewman to throw the body over for him? And where are you even hiding a body in a cold room that the chefs are still presumably going into regularly? For that matter, why did he need to refrigerate the body in the first place? He could've just disposed of the body in the Thames or some discreet dumpster instead of setting up a fake murder site and then it wouldn't *matter* if the time of death looked off.
  • There's also the fact that he could've twisted it as a tale of self defense, which is initially appeared to be what he was going for after Mikotoba and Holmes find him in the trunk before suddenly switching to admitting there was an assassin exchange program and that Gregson was meant to be targeted in court. Was he because he was intending to pin it on Kazuma? In fact, he could've acted like it was self-defense the moment he killed Gregson by immediately reporting the body and acting like the inspector was trying to kill him... which wasn't entirely untrue.
  • At least for the fridge room part, if he'd already stuffed Gregson in his trunk, he would just be able to put the whole trunk inside. It would be strange, but not as alarming as a dead body, and he could claim that he had food or some other perishable item inside that he was bringing to Britain. As for the self-defense angle, he might have panicked and not wanted to get involved with the authorities at all, fearing that any digging into the matter would reveal why Gregson was trying to kill him and his role in the conspiracy. By the time self-defense was the better option, he'd already made himself look too suspicious to bring it up.
• After beating both games it's never explained why Stronghart wanted Ryunosuke to defend Mcgilded and claim that it would be incredibly easy.
  • Most likely Stronghart was lying and setting up Ryunosuke for failure. Stronghart was expecting Asogi to be the one who would take up the "student exchange program," and he asked Ryunosuke what Kazuma's "mission" was, which Naruhodo admitted he didn't know. Said mission was the assassination exchange program, and Stronghart knew he couldn't expect Ryunosuke to fill out the duty to kill Gregson, so he set up an Impossible Task. The trial was clearly in Prosecutor van Zieks' favor, so Ryunosuke would lose the trial, wouldn't be accepted, and Stronghart could get another "student" to come to London. But McGilded tampering with the trial ended up putting a wrench in that plan. Since Naruhodo did win the trial, Stronghart had to keep his word and let Ryunosuke stay and wait for another opportunity.
  • I actually think it was the other way around. Since McGilded was a known loan shark and a criminal, Stronghart probably knew that he would rig the trial in his favor, hence the 'this should be easy for you' comment. With a Not Guilty verdict secured, he could continue The Reaper's legend. Also, Ryu didn't specify that he knew what Asogi's true goal was, but he didn't specify that he DIDN'T know, so Stronghart probably wasn't risking it: he gave Ryu an easy trial to give him an easy victory, so Ryu could stay in Britain, and possibly assassinate Gregson.
    • A lot of people seem to forget that Ryuunosuke nearly lost that trial. The only reason he didn't is because Susato had an outdated book of British law otherwise the initial jury ruling of not guilty would've been the end of the trial and the manipulation of evidence and Gina's perjury wouldn't have happened.
    • Important to note though is that McGilded has been getting away with his crimes for a long time before he came to that trial. It's completely reasonable that Stronghart assumed McGilded would be pulling tricks to secure the win, even if in reality Ryunosuke almost lost the case. There's also the fact that McGilded had Gina poised and ready to distract the entire courtroom in order to pull his forgery, there's nothing saying he wouldn't have signaled her to intervene if Ryunosuke and Susato hadn't immediately contested the ruling. Smoke out the courtroom, and once the recess is done some of the jurors just happen to have "changed their minds" about their verdict.
  • He does seem to be trying to work up to asking him to do the assassination a few times, or at least tests the waters about it (asking if Naruhodo really means he'll do everything Kazuma came to Britain to do, if he ever realized what his true goals were, etc.) He could have even asked Naruhodo to defend McGilded as a test of his character—if he was willing to win a case on forged evidence, and if he could be manipulated to do worse.
• A certain detail that's very briefly brought up in Case 5 of Adventures becomes somewhat questionable when you consider the added meaning it gains once you get into the plot of Resolve. Namely, the word 'Professor' being used as the pawnshop password for the music box disks. If the disks contained sensitive government information meant to be relayed securely, it makes sense to imagine that some of them would have mentioned the Professor incident, but beyond that assumption, the lack of concrete information on what would have led Graydon or McGilded to make that the password is rather glaring. The only message of this nature whose content we know about when all is said and done is the names of the people involved in the assassin exchange, which we're told is encoded in Japanese Morse code, meaning it's not even clear whether Graydon could understand it. Just how much did those two know before they were put away?
  • It's implied, if not directly stated, that Stronghart not only sent the names of the assassins and their victims to Jigoku, but also "reminded" the judge that he could ruin him by telling the Japanese government what he did, in order to coerce him to agree to the exchange—he likely just sent this in a previous telegram, which Graydon would have already successfully sold to McGilded if he intercepted it. Something like "Remember, I know what you did to The Professor" would have easily put it in McGilded's mind to use that as a code word. Additionally, Graydon could very well be familiar with Japanese Morse code, or could have found a way to decode it. His business was to sell state secrets for exorbitant sums; with that much money at stake, it'd be very risky to do this if he or McGilded couldn't double check that those secrets actually meant anything.
• In Resolve, something that's brought up a couple times concerning Genshin Asogi's false execution and escape from prison is that besides Genshin, two people were present at the time of the sham execution: the coroner (Courtney Sithe) and the executioner. Late in Case 5, during the line of questioning to determine where the hidden 'will' Genshin had in his cell ended up, Naruhodo tries to think of any person who may still be alive and willing to give reliable testimony on what happened at that time... and yet the executioner is never brought up. Just who was the executioner? The only people we are even aware of who would've been working at the prison at the time are the chief warder, the governor, and the coroner (and her daughter, though she probably wouldn't have been working at the time). We can't assume the chief warder did it as he consistently denies having very detailed knowledge of that part of the incident, and the coroner is expressly mentioned as a separate person from the executioner. Was that a potential witness it never even occurred to the characters to call upon, or are we meant to assume the governor was pulling double duty that day?
  • Perhaps the assassin swap wasn't the first time Stronghart had arranged for one of his patsies to die, just the first one that went horribly wrong and caused both assassins to become indisposed.
• How exactly did Iris, a ten-year-old girl, get a college degree in medicine?
  • Same way Franziska von Karma passed the bar exam and became a prosecutor at thirteen. She just says she "studied" for it. It's completely unrealistic, but schooling was at least a little less structured back then, so conceivably she didn't have to go through all the channels that real-life doctors do. Iris is simply a super-genius who absorbs and applies information remarkably fast, and she was raised by Sholmes, who although scatterbrained knows a lot about medical and forensic science himself. It's implied her biological father was a bit of a prodigy too (albeit more downplayed) so her heightened competence might also be in her blood.
• How did Jezaille Brett screw up so badly? She actually had a pretty ironclad assassination plan - poison a man with a substance that is only toxic under specific circumstances, that almost nobody in the country was aware of or have a test for in the current state of forensics. If she hadn't hadn't been so intent on using "I was never at the scene of the crime" as an alibi and tried to frame Naruhodo for it, everyone with the possible exception of Mikotoba would have believed Wilson had died of heart failure or a stroke or some other natural cause. She could have even worked Naruhodo into her alibi, where she could have made sure he witnessed her and Wilson sharing the bottle of poisoned water as "proof" that poison wasn't a factor. Instead, she set up a situation that was a very conspicuous murder, which people had to investigate and got the court involved; and made herself extra suspicious by getting people to cover up the fact she was there.
  • Keep in mind that Dr. Wilson was an Englishman whose death was a matter of political importance. Writing his death off as a stroke and not looking into it was a possibility, but it was just as possible that there would be some amount of investigation done by the Japanese police to make sure the death was natural, at least as a show of deference to the British Empire. If it was known that Jezaille was eating at his table with him at the moment he died, then she would naturally be investigated too. If she is investigated at all in this scenario where Wilson died of mysterious causes, then she's put at extreme risk. The poison she used wasn't known to the police at the time, yes, but she was publicly researching it at the university and her colleagues knew this. All Mikotoba would have to do is inform the police of the possibility of curare (which he absolutely would do if he suspected it) and how the poison works, and then even her "alibi" of drinking the same water would fall apart the same way it does in the game. Framing Naruhodo not only disguises the cause of death so that people aren't looking into potential poisons that could have been used, but provides a convenient suspect for the police to wrap the case up quickly and without investigating anyone else at the scene of the crime, which is almost precisely what happens. Considering it was a heat of the moment decision, it's not strange that it came with consequences she didn't foresee. And in fairness, she wasn't the one making other people lie about her presence there—that was Hosonaga.
  • Also remember, she wasn't even planning on shooting him at all. She originally just planning on poisoning him then leaving him while Dr. Wilson slowly died. Naruhodo came over to introduce himself while she had already poisoned the water but before he had a chance to drink it. She had to come up with the plan to frame Naruhodo on the fly.
• Why was Joan allowed to serve on the jury for Soseki's first trial? Even assuming that the courts didn't know she was John's wife or the culprit, they should have known that as the maid to the house where Soseki was staying, she had at least a tangential connection to the case, and thus chose someone else out of the 6 million people in London to fill her spot on the jury.
  • The Ace Attorney-verse has always been really lax about conflicts of interest. Joan serving on the jury is no worse than, say, Manfred von Karma prosecuting Edgeworth.
• Why didn't Jigoku try to claim that his murder of Gregson was justified self defense? After all, Gregson was actually there to kill him and did indeed threaten him with a gun. Sure, hiding the body and then planting it at Fresno street looks extremely sketchy but he could just claim that he was afraid that there wasn't enough evidence to prove that it wasn't murder so he felt he had to hide the body. While everyone did know about the assassination plan nobody had any idea that Jigoku decided to take matters into his own hands until he confessed it. If he simply claimed that he was simply defending himself from Gregson and that this incident was not actually related to the assassin exchange but was actually a completely separate task from the Reaper, he probably could've gotten a lighter sentence. Hell, he could even claim that Gregson was sent to assassinate him because the assassin exchange failed.
  • There may be some possible reasons:
    • Self-defense is a pretty tricky subject in itself. In real life, the United Kingdon only instated it through the Criminal Law Act 1967, and even then, there's the "duty to retreat" in where you can only use force if you can't escape, which is common in many places, including Japan and the UK. Now let's keep in mind, while Ace Attorney isn't 100% accurate, most likely this applies in-universe.
    • In Jigoku's testimony, he said he did do that in that he used an ippon seoi throw to disarm Gregson and forced Gregson to leave the room. But if so, then there's the question about the guard like "Why didn't Jigoku report Gregson while he was unconscious?" Whether Gregson died or was just unconscious, he should have reported it immediately if he were to plead self-defense. And for Jigoku to claim it was self-defense, there would have to be a motive for Gregson to be trying to kill him rather than appearing that Jigoku killed a police inspector who was looking for him. Any connection between the two would have to be verified and could possibly leave a clue to the Reaper conspiracy or the assassin exchange, something Stronghart wouldn't have taken kindly to...
    • And alongside transporting the body and dumping in it on Fresno Street, Jigoku deliberately set up a decoy crime scene and ran away from the country. If Jigoku admitted to those, it would probably pile up on his sentence of supposed self-defense killing and there could be two possible outcomes. 1.) Jigoku would be sentenced to jail and might have a chance of release and going home, but considering he still killed a man and was arrested, the Japanese government would be informed, he'd be dishonorably stripped of his job and rank, and be deemed a pariah in Japan. 2.) Jigoku would be sentenced to jail in London but considering that Stronghart is in charge of law and punishment and wanted to "get rid of any loose ends" in the reaper conspiracy, Jigoku would become one of those loose ends. Which is also probably why in-game, Jigoku refused to reveal Stronghart's involvement in the conspiracy since it was his last hope of survival.
  • The issue is, he had to choose between that option (which involves confessing to the killing but claiming self-defense) and accusing Kazuma (which is what he did canonically.) He'd forgotten that the timeline made it impossible for Kazuma to commit the murder; without that detail, accusing Kazuma, who was literally supposed to be there as the assassin, was the obvious choice. And after he'd made that mistake it wouldn't have been credible for him to try to go back and claim self-defense - he can justify hiding the body because he was scared, and could even justify being silent when someone he didn't know was implicated by accident, but it wouldn't make sense that he would implicate the son of (supposedly) one of his best friends simply to avoid revealing a killing in self-defense. His failed attempt to pin the blame on Kazuma plainly incriminated him and left him nowhere to go after it was shot down.
• Why didn't Graydon just buy the disk off of Gina? He saw she was trying to pawn it right away, a quick improv routine where he chides the pawnbroker as a cheapskate and buys the disc from Gina would have avoided all of the later hassle. Instead, he went through with his gambit to steal the jacket, which wound up unravelling everything.
  • The answer is probably just a combination of his own pride and contempt for Gina. But it's also been established that Graydon's been traumatized by a poor upbringing, and this fuels his desire to hoard wealth. He could thus be uncomfortable with spending large amounts unnecessarily, and Gina was certainly expecting to be well-compensated for the disc, so that and his pride probably stopped that from being his first option. And after all, he had no reason to believe that his gambit to steal the jacket wouldn't work—it would have if not for Herlock.
• What's the deal with Stronghart wanting to become Attorney General? If that position was unoccupied at the time of the game and he was the highest judicial authority after the Queen, he should've already had all the prerogatives he wanted, and if that position was occupied, we would've met the occupying character. The explanation I'm thinking of is that the Queen can basically withhold the rights of an Attorney General to herself if she doesn't consider anyone fit for the position.
  • It could be occupied by someone who's intending to step down soon. I don't know what the Attorney General's duties encompass in real life, but I don't think it's unreasonable for us to never meet the man onscreen if he exists. We never see the queen onscreen either.
• Why are Sholmes and Iris allowed to observe the closed trial? Sholmes is a private investigator, not a member of the judiciary.
  • Perhaps the argument was made that they're part of the defense's team, so they need to stay aware of what's going on. Iris has stood in as Ryunosuke's co-counsel before, and Ryunosuke was Sholmes' co-counsel in the DLC case.
  • They aren't. Stronghart tells Sholmes multiple times to leave but he just doesn't listen. The man is able to pick locks in seconds and is slippery and evasive.
• Why kill Genshin Asogi? Stronghart says the reason is because their plans were screwed up because Drebber was in the cemetary and witnessed Asogi rise from the grave, so that they had to kill Asogi to prevent the ruse about the execution from being known. But wouldn't it make far more sense just to kill Drebber, some relative nobody, instead? Especially since he still witnessed The Professor rise out of the grave and then immediately went to the press with it. Killing Asogi doesn't really accomplish anything at that point.
  • Killing Drebber only makes senee if keeping Genshin alive is the priority. The only reason Stronghart bargained with him in the first place is to get Klint's will, which he assumed Genshin had to have on him at that point—so there is no reason to believe that was a priority anymore. The priority at that moment was to prevent a massive scandal. It is much easier to cover up the break out without having to also cover up Drebber's death. Drebber was not a nobody, but even assuming Stronghart thought he was, at the very least it could be assumed he had friends and family who would want his death investigated. If that investigation led to an empty grave, that would be it for him. Sure, he went to the press about it—-but because Genshin was still dead and in his grave, the press at large didn't believe him. That was the whole point. Could Stronghart have covered it up? Maybe. But why do more work for someone like Genshin, who was actively a threat to him?
• How exactly was the Frame-Up of Gossip/Boone/Vigil going to work? At 5 PM, when the "shot" went off in the room, he was on the street below, with Venus and Sandwich able to testify to his whereabouts, not to mention the possibility of a customer being with him at that moment.
  • Jigoku's plan was that the gunshot sound would coincide with the time of Gossip/Boone/Vigil's meeting with Gregson in the room, which means he'd likely think of some excuse to head to the room at the specified time. If not for van Zieks' visit, it would've been Gossip/Boone/Vigil who was in the room with the body when the 'gunshot' went off. Thus, any alibi from before 5 PM would've been irrelevant.
• Why did Stronghart allow Barok van Zieks to prosecute the trial of Genshin Asogi? He says that Barok asked him so that he could avenge his brother's death at the Professor's hands, but this should have been clear-cut "Conflict of Interest", with his desire for revenge conflicting with Genshin's right to receive a fair trial. Granted, the trial was anything but fair, but still...
  • As you yourself indicated, Stronghart clearly didn't care about whether or not the trial was "fair" since he explicitly rigged it to convict Genshin. To that end, Barok's grief meant there was no real danger of him finding Genshin innocent, so from his perspective, he only benefits by accepting the request: Barok is now indebted to him for allowing him to get his closure (as Barok admits in-game) and if the irregularities in the trial (specifically the forged autopsy, if not other tampering) are ever pointed out, he can blame Barok as he was the prosecutor at the time. As far as the public would be concerned, Stronghart's only crime was making a well-meaning poor judgment call during a tumultuous case.
  • The game does also acknowledge that Barok's request was highly unusual and inappropriate (even by loose Ace Attorney legal standards) and was only made possible because Stronghart specifically allowed it.
• What was keeping Klint from killing Stronghart? Klint already proved he was willing and able to kill corrupt members of society who put themselves above the law, and in comes Stronghart who not only blackmails him instead of turning him in to the justice system but also wants Klint to act as his personal cleaner for the sake of his career. It should have been clear to Klint that Stronghart is just as dirty as the other people he wanted to kill, so why didn't he just sic Balmung on him and move on?
  • There could have been a number of reasons he never got the chance if Stronghart was smart about his blackmailing, but the simplest explanation is probably that Klint didn't think he could get away with it. The only murder he did by himself, he got caught by someone pretty much immediately because he couldn't cover his tracks. Even with Stronghart's help he was mostly saved from suspicion by his good reputation.
• The game doesn't really make this clear either due to the lack of info on all of The Professor's victims but how much was Stronghart dictating to Klint? At least from what This Troper understood it was really just the murder of the then-Chief Justice that could be attributed to Stronghart's machinations and the rest of the murders on his hand were still victims of his own choosing, with Stronghart not standing in his way of claiming the fourth victim with the terms of their agreement met with the previous murder. It's just the close and honorable relationship built on respect that Klint had with his third victim resonated so deeply and showed what a evil man Stronghart was stuck with him enough to finally end The Professor killings on his own terms but he still carried out his mission against others in high society who were bending the rules regardless.
  • No, even if we don't know much about the victims, it's made pretty clear that only the first murder was Klint's idea. Klint says he was found out almost immediately after his crime, and that furthermore he'd been explicitly blackmailed doing Stronghart's bidding for months, "killing those he demanded [he] kill", meaning it was definitely more than one person. There is no reason to believe that Klint was doing the murders of his own volition after that point. As a major point of correction, Klint didn't decide to end the murders after killing his mentor; Genshin confronted him and gave him a choice between being arrested or dying honorably in a duel. That he continued on to kill a fourth person at all past the third victim (which he describes as basically being his lowest point) is simply more evidence that he was only killing more people because he was being blackmailed, not because he wanted to.
• How did Magnus McGilded get off the hook? The only reason he couldn’t be found guilty was due to the bloodstains. However, the entirety of Scotland Yard can testify to the fact that they weren’t there before. It’s not just the words of Lord Van Zieks and Ryunosuke. There was a clear opportunity for him to have tampered with the crime scene, and no other possible explanation is given for the smoke bomb. And really, if the Judge didn’t notice that the floor bloodstain wasn’t on the omnibus before the smoke bomb, then it’s his fault more than anything, not Van Ziek’s. Even if you dismiss all of this evidence as hearsay, there actually is blatant proof the blood is fabricated. The blood on the skylight and floor is clearly bright red, unlike the blood where the victim was sitting. This proves that the blood hasn’t dried yet, so it couldn’t have been there when the crime happened, thus proving it was purposefully placed. Yet no one brings this up at all. I know it would ruin the entire case if someone mentioned it, but it’s such a blatant oversight that it’s impossible to believe no one would talk about it.
  • The bloodstains as well as the empty storage box. Like they say, van Ziek can claim all he wants (and so does Ryunosuke) that everyone was sure those pieces of evidence weren't there before the trial started, but without proof, it's no use. And I guess they can chalk the dark blood on the seat to the surface it was on (flimsy, but whatever). If anything, the question is very different: why did Scotland Yard not take any photos beyond the one where the victim was found? Had they taken photos of the storage box, the skylight or one where the floor is visible, the fabrication would be undeniable.
• Why is Ryunosuke stripped of his license in Resolve? They say it's because he used fabricated evidence and testimony to get McGilded acquitted, but in that very same trial he protests about the evidence (though he's unaware of the testimonies) when van Ziek raises the inconsistency, and there's even an option where he can try to appeal to the Judge to not give a verdict because everything is a mess. It's almost like a worse version of Phoenix in "Turnabout Succession" because you can protest this time...
  • The trial that got him his his license stripped from him was one where he was a novice at law, not to mention a Japanese man in England during the Victorian era, who had just declared he would make an enemy out of even the British government if it meant protecting his client, shortly before he intentionally tried to reveal what he and everyone else thought were government secrets to win his case. It makes sense that he was treated a bit unfairly in regards to the debacle with Mc Gilded after that.

---