I thought you'd come. I knew you would.

Phoenix: You sure about that?

Maggey: Look, it was a coincidence that on that same day, I accidentally stepped on mine!

Phoenix: (A "coincidence" she says... Urk...)

& this!!!!

Phoenix: As if the glasses alone didn't make you look suspicious, the victim even wrote your name clear as day on the ground!

Maggey: But, but, but, I already told you! Those glasses aren't mine!!

Phoenix: And how do you explain his dying message?

Maggey: ... It's a conspiracy! I'm not guilty, sir!

Like, lawyers just don’t tend to be high-profile publicly-known figures. Even within True Crime communities or the coverage of high-public-interest cases, people don’t tend to focus on the lawyers as much more than a representative of the defendant and the legal system as a whole. And yeah, you can say this is just because real-life lawyers are Boring and if they did the kind of Bonkers Shit AA Lawyers do we would pay attention to them… but we do actually have textual evidence that Japanifornia treats lawyers not-too-differently than real life.

Mia’s murder, and probably the uncovering of all of Bluecorp’s dirty dealing, was highly talked about, but Phoenix’s actions in court went kinda ignored. And note that this is the case where Phoenix literally defended himself and broke the Demon Prosecutor’s five years winning streak, and that wasn’t enough to draw eyes to his part in this whole case. 

And that’s also generally consistent with how characters treat Phoenix throughout the rest of the games. By the AJ Trilogy era, it’s clear that Phoenix has made quite a name for himself… in the legal world. If you are yourself a lawyer or another sort of legal professional or just unusually interested in court proceeding, you know the name ‘Phoenix Wright’ 

But if you’re just a regular person who cares about the law the Regular Amount, you probably have no idea who this is.

So I’d guess most of Japanifornian Tumblr would probably be aware of a lot of the cases in the games, especially considering how many of them concern, like, corporate corruption and organized crime and legal corruption and international politics and the entertainment industry and other such stuff that makes it likely to get national/international news coverage. And also so many of them are so bizarre and wacky and are thus prime meme fodder…

But most people wouldn’t necessarily know the name of the lawyer the Nickel Samurai blackmailed to defend him after he ordered an assassin to kill the Jammin’ Ninja, or even how involved that lawyer actually was in Matt Engarde’s downfall.

But there would probably be a small mini-fandom of Tumblrina Lawyers and other legal nerds who are ABSOLUTELY obsessed with the WAA, and trying to collect any piece of info they can find about their adventures. 

(That’s also another aspect to consider, the general public in Japanifornia does not have full knowledge of everything we get to see in the game. News coverage of the smaller cases would be extremely minimal and very regional - and even the bigger cases probably won’t give you a full line-by-line record of everything that happened in Court. Apollo Justice was, like, the Biggest Phoenix Wright Stan in the Universe and he had very choppy and partial knowledge of the Gramarye Trial. We have to consider that even folks who are trying to keep track of the AA Lawyers in-universe would not get the full picture from the media. And that’s before we get into fake news and rumors.)

And meanwhile, the rest of Tumblr would probably treat that Fandom the same sort of bemused delight we give to, like, the extremely dedicated gimmick blogs. Like, you’d probably see less posts about Phoenix and Co. as you’d see posts memeing about the fact there’s a Tumblr Fandom for ‘some random law agency in Japanifornia’, they’d be like five thousands people in the notes going “There’s a Tumblr Fandom for WHAT? WHY IS THIS THE FIRST TIME I’M HEARING ABOUT THIS??” and then one person from the WAA fandom going “NO YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND THIS IS THE GUY WHO UNCOVERED THE PHANTOM HE’S JUMPED OFF A BURNING BRIDGE ONCE YOU LITERALLY TALKED ABOUT A TRIAL HE DID YESTERDAY YOU JUST DON’T KNOW HE WAS INVOLVED”. 

Now, that’s all for the Defense Attorneys. The Prosecutors have a bit more publicity. I mean, Phoenix literally heard about Prosecutor Edgeworth on the news.

But also… I do think this publicity is highly regional. Like, Phoenix ended up stumbling on newspaper coverage of Miles because he lives in the same city as him. I’m guessing that most of the series’ Prosecutors are at least casually known not just to Legal Folks, but also generally to people within Los Angetokyo and people involved in Japanifornian Politics… but also not much outside of that sphere either. Again, the series does establish that they are not that well-known amongst laypeople even when they are famous amongst other lawyers

And are generally recognized by fellow legal professionals and journalists and people involved in criminal activity. So the situation with them won’t be that different than with the WAA, they might be a tad more high-profile, depending on how many Tumblr users are specifically from Japaniforina and wanna make memes about the local politics… but those who will get really invested in their misadventures won’t be that different from the kind of people who’d get really into Phoenix Wright. 

But also… I think people maybe don’t quite remember how frustrating it could be, when the profiles weren’t optional. In JFA and T&T, needing to Present Profiles to get a character to talk about someone (including themselves) as part of Mandatory Story Progression, was just uncommon enough that it was kinda unintuitive for folks to remember. Especially since it felt pretty random when “[person name]” just shows up on the Talk menu and when you needed to Present a Profile to unlock that. 

I’ve watched a lot of AA Let’s Plays, and I’ve seen so many people get stuck in JFA and T&T because they need to progress, and between Presenting evidence, Examining for areas they missed and Moving to see if there’s anyone else with an unfinished Talk option… Presenting a Profile kinda just slipped their minds.

Is actually the same screwdriver as the one that was a major plot-point back in ‘Turnabout Sisters’. 

Because, well, they look pretty much the same and also it is mentioned the screwdriver is from one of Miles’ previous cases… and Miles was the Prosecutor on ‘Turnabout Sisters’. Plus, it would explain why he’s so cagey about explaining it to Phoenix during RFTA. Obviously he wouldn’t want to bring this case up in front of Wright again.

And, well, the thing is that all of these explanations do make sense and do make it sound like this was the authorial intent, but….. There is one thing that bothers me. 

The whole Thing with the RFTA Screwdriver is that Miles got it from the Evidence Room where the crime took place. And that Evidence Room is specifically mentioned to be a special one reserved for especially violent crimes involving members of law enforcement.

And this doesn't apply to the 'Turnabout Sisters' case but.... feels like it’s meant to be the Turnabout Sisters Screwdriver, y’know? 

So, actually, you know what I think?

Well, after an Ace Attorney trial concludes and we find the real culprit and our defendant gets the ‘Not-Guilty’ verdict… it’s not like the Real Culprit gets Immediately Sent to Jail. They get their own off-screen trial to determine their guilt officially (as we saw briefly with Luke Atmey’s grand larceny trial in ‘The Stolen Turnabout’). 

So I think that after the story of ‘Turnabout Sisters’ ended for Phoenix and Maya and us the players, Miles Edgeworth also took it upon himself to be the one to prosecute in Redd White’s own trial. Either as a way to ‘double-check’ all that Phoenix has proven in his own trial, or as atonement for almost getting this guy off-the-hook in the first place, or because it’s pretty clear that Miles is one person that Redd doesn’t have specific dirt on, or probably because of some combination of the three. 

This case against Redd White is the AI-16 Incident that is labeled on the Screwdriver, and it covers all of the charges that have been put against White - not just Mia’s murder and the wiretapping of her law office but also his empire of blackmail. That we know have involved high-ranking members of the police, some of which have been driven to suicide by White.

It's been so long since my first watch of a 3-5 playthrough. But all I could think about was how patient Phoenix was with these people. I would have lost it.

Larry: defendant/witness in 1-1, witness in 1-4 and 3-5, present in 3-2’s investigation segment, also a witness in turnabout time traveler.

Lotta: witness in 1-4, 2-2, and 2-4.

Wendy Oldbag: witness in 1-3 and 2-4. referenced in 3-2, cameod in aa3’s credits

Will Powers: defendant in 1-3, witness in 2-4

Magget Byrde: defendant in both 2-1 and 3-3, served as co-council in the former

Morgan Fey: witness and accomplice in 2-2, doesn’t physically appear in 3-5 but the murder plot was conceived by her and dahlia

Marvin Grossberg: present in 1-2 and 1-4’s investigation segments, co-council in 3-1

Mike Meekins: witness in 1-5 and present in one of the MASON system flashbacks

Adrian Andrews: witness in 2-4, present in 3-2’s investigation segments.

Dr. Hotti: briefly present in 2-2, 2-4, and 4-2’s investigation segments

Jinxie and Damian Tenma: witnesses in 5-2, latter was the defendant, cameod in 6-2 (flowers from them are in trucy’s dressing room)