This page covers sad moments from the fourth Ace Attorney game: Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney.
As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
- The part where you play as Phoenix in his last trial, and the game forces you to present evidence that you know will get him disbarred because he doesn't know it's a forgery. Even if you try to lose the case in any other way or NOT to present the forged evidence, the whole thing won't stop until you've done so. In fact, anything concerning Phoenix losing his badge is saddening, but special mention has to go to one of the best tragicomic lines in the game, which you get when you examine a doll doing the classic objecting pose and Phoenix bellows his old Catchphrase one more time, before saying 'it's been seven years! I need to stop torturing myself with these things! I know, I'll just pretend it's saying something else. 'Why yes sir, the post office is right over that way.'' It's difficult to know whether that should be met with laughter or tears.
- You know that Phoenix just made a very big mistake when Klavier does his wall slam and there's a noticably longer-than-usual delay before he says his next line, as if the game's letting it sink in that Phoenix is about to lose his career.
- Really, the whole idea of Phoenix losing his badge is completely heartbreaking. After all he did, all the people he saved and all the trouble he went through, he lost it all and had to see how many of his old friends left him and went on with their lives, even becoming very successful, while he rotted in a shady job that, to top it all off, was a reminder of his last case (playing cards) and had to exercise as a piano player with no talent, all to raise a little girl he never asked for and that, in all fairness, helped the guy who caused his disbarment escape. It kind of makes you feel all the effort you put in the previous games feel in vain.
- The bad ending of Apollo Justice. If you don't vote Vera innocent, she dies of the poisoning in the hosptial. It's extremely easy to avoid, given how you get it, but it's also extremely easy just to see. And one of the achievements in the Apollo Trilogy requires that you get said ending. Have fun with that."The verdict was postponed...for eternity."
- The whole damn game except for Turnabout Corner is, in hindsight, one for Klavier Gavin. The man gets to see his brother convicted of murder, then realizes his best friend was a) a murderer, b) a Dirty Cop, and c) using him as a G-rated drug mule (which resulted in the Gavinners, Klavier's passion project, being disbanded). Then comes case 4-4 repeatedly beating him over the head with awful truths:
- Yes, his brother is a murderer. Twice over. And he also tried to kill a traumatized and agoraphobic preteen girl by taking advantage of her trust in him.
- That time he managed to expose the corruption of an extremely prominent attorney based on a tip from the brother he trusted absolutely? That wasn't his 'solving DL-6' moment, that was him being an Unwitting Pawn to a petty bastard who used him to ruin one of the greatest men in the legal field.
- His brother emotionally abuses him in the middle of court, and is also an elitist who throws a fit at the mere idea of a jury.
- Klavier was ecstatic to have his court debut be against his brother, without knowing that Kristoph was planning to cheat to win the case.
- The sheer horribleness of what Klavier went through is easily illustrated by the sprites he uses. During normal cases, he's a Perpetual Smiler with a relaxed posture, and doesn't even break it when he's losing- hell, he even welcomes losses as long as he's sure the verdict is correct. In case 4, we get: clenching his fist with an anguished expression, sweating, covering his ears in a manner suspiciously similar to Athena's 'despair' animation in the next game, and finally looking at the ceiling with Hidden Eyes, clearly holding back tears. And all this happening to one of the absolute nicest people in the series.
- Speaking of the end of Apollo Justice, the final reveal that Trucy is an even greater master of the poker face than Phoenix himself, as Phoenix explains that he's the only one who knows how she truly feels at the same time as the player gets a shot of her crying. Realizing how hard the return and death of her real father must have hit her.
- Earlier, there's the moment where Apollo realizes that Shadi Smith, the murder victim of the first case, was Trucy's father. While Apollo wonders how to break the news to her at this time, Trucy tells him it's fine and to say what he has to. He wonders if she knew the entire time.
- Turnabout Serenade could also have a moment of this, when you first see Machi in the Detention Center. Just think how far away he was from home... and possibly unable to tell what was going on, due to being blind and couldn't speak English. Of course, it turns out he wasn't blind and could speak basic English, but the thought of that loneliness if he was...
- Think of it this way: the kid can't go home. Because the government there will execute him. Not to mention he'd been framed for murder by his smuggling accomplice. It's a lot to take in for a fourteen-year-old boy.
- To make it worse, the court system in Ace Attorney has a tendency to sentence murderers to death, regardless of their circumstances. There was a real possibility that Machi would have been sentenced to death for his alleged crime, so his only option to avoid death was a rookie attorney that has only participated in two trials.
- At the end, when Phoenix is talking to Lamiroir about Apollo and Trucy, he promises her to take care of them, because they're important to him. That's one thing about him that has never changed. He goes on to add that he must especially look after Trucy, because he's the only one who knows what she feels inside — and then it cuts to an image of Trucy with tears on her cheeks. Poor Trucy!
- Pretty much all of the investigation in the past during 4-4 was pretty depressing, but the one moment that really hit hard was when Phoenix was about to leave the Mishams, young Vera comments on the deeply sad look in his eyes. Phoenix doesn't even deny it.
- Equally heartbreaking is Phoenix attempting to find a way to draw Vera out of her shell and the fact that Psyche-Locks guarded her good-luck charm. It's clear how easy she was to manipulate and how much she needed a friend, which makes the game's ending a case of floodgates opening. What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic? kicks in if you compare Phoenix and Vera's situations: both are trapped inside themselves and unable to leave the past, and both possess extraordinary skillsets that are being wasted (Vera's on forging, Phoenix's disbarment). It's not until the end of the game that both are truly set free and able to believe in the goodness of others again.
- It's sort of a Fridge Sadness one, but Apollo's life before becoming an attorney was probably this — his father died when he was very young, and his mother apparently abandoned him when she returned to Troupe Gramarye, meaning he had no family at all for all but the first few months of his life. His half-sister Trucy went through a lot herself, but at least she had parents for a while and ended up with Nick in the end; we have no idea who raised Apollo! The closest thing he had to a father figure was Kristoph Gavin, and the poor guy has to see his entire perception of his own freaking mentor shatter to pieces right in front of his eyes during the game.
- Not helped by the events as of the beginning of 4-2. After a long time practicing his legal skills and Chords of Steel, Apollo is finally given the chance to defend his first case, accompanied by his boss and teacher. The trial ends with him accusing his boss of murder and being tricked into using illegal evidence by his client and role model, and now he's jobless. For the first part of 4-2, we see him basically doing odd jobs to pay the bills, and when someone finally hires him to be a defense attorney again, it's because she thinks he'll screw it up. There's a line between being the Butt-Monkey and your life falling apart in front of you.
- Becomes even more of a case of Harsher in Hindsight with the reveals about his backstory in later games. And while the games never really delve into how Apollo was feeling during and after 4-1, there are little hints that the case hurt him far more deeply than he's willing to admit. He confesses in Dual Destinies that he nearly quit being a lawyer after that trial, refers to it only as "a disaster," and never mentions Kristoph Gavin's name again. Considering how in Spirit of Justice, he explains that his way of coping with abandonment was to try and forget about his foster family in Khurain, it's probable that he's doing the same thing to cope with Kristoph's betrayal.
- In the Phoenix Wright Trilogy, Phoenix's attorney's badge was his most prized possession. Presenting it to people (which was almost always an option) normally resulted in a humorous dialogue, typically about how much Nick loves his badge and shows it off. Present Apollo's attorney's badge to Phoenix. He doesn't fucking recognise it.
- Phoenix: Well, it's been 7 years. Things change.
- Of course, this could just be a case of Phoenix trolling Apollo.
- Phoenix has been friends with Kristoph for seven years, and defense attorneys always wear their badge in full view on their lapel. Even if it hadn’t been extremely sentimental to Phoenix, it’s doubtful he could have forgotten what one looked like.
- Gumshoe's last case with Phoenix ended with his disbarment. Poor guy never could have thought things would have turned out this way.
- Shadi Smith's final poker game. After returning to drop off Magnifi's diary for Trucy (which he refused to do seven years previously), he challenges Phoenix to one last poker game. Only this time, he planned from the start to cheat and destroy Phoenix's reputation as an unbeatable card shark. When his planted card disappeared (due to Nick hiding it after serendipitously finding it), Shadi became enraged that his final bit of spite to Phoenix failed, and attacked his partner, the dealer, with a bottle. Shadi wasn't that great of a guy to begin with, but whatever redeeming qualities he had were long gone before Kristoph murdered him that night.
- Trucy's reaction to finding the unconscious Lamiroir, which resulted in her holding onto Apollo's arm in fear while she was taken to the hospital and thankfully recovers. It gets worse when it's revealed that Lamiroir is actually Trucy and Apollo's mother and that she could've died of suffocation if they found her later, meaning that they've could've seen their mother dead without realising who she was.
