In 'Process' we Trust!

I do, sadly, think that the real Bobby Fulbright is canonically dead, and is unlikely to come back in another Ace Attorney iteration. In this interview, the director, Yamazaki, and character designer, Fuse, discuss Fulbright's "living" status. And they are kinda right - it would've been an odd decision to bring Fulbright back to life at the end of the case.

They do joke about bringing him back with a bionic arm, which, while I do find very amusing, I feel as though would be a move that would undermine Dual Destinies narrative wise, and thus, very unlikely. The fact that we never meet the "real" Bobby Fulbright is meant to be a gut punch, and meant to force the player to reconsider everything they believed up to that point. Reversing that choice would mean discarding that important element to his character.

To me, the phantom reveal meant a lot of things. It made me question how we define a person, what makes them "real" to us, and whether we can love something we don't truly know or understand. A lot of Dual Destinies fans love Bobby Fulbright, despite never having (technically) met him! I think a big reason for that is because we don't meet him. He is like a manic pixie dream girl, really - we can make up his flaws, his strengths, his habits... I do wonder how much people would like the "real" Bobby Fulbright if he were to come back as a character. He would likely be different from the expectations we've built in our heads.

Point is: If Bobby Fulbright, the real Bobby Fulbright, were to come back as a character, it would pop the illusion of the pure justice-seeking detective a lot of the fandom loves. I would personally really enjoy this, as I already view Fulbright as not an entirely positive character (I actually made a post about it!), but I don't think it would fulfill general fan expectations if Bobby Fulbright showed up in AA7.

So yeah, I don't think he'll be a part of AA7 (Though I would be happy to be wrong about this) and I think that's actually kinda a good thing! I think meeting the real Bobby would contradict the point of DD, and it wouldn't be quite the Bobby we think of anyways when we tinker with such ideas.

However! That doesn't mean I don't enjoy a good fanmade AU every now and then! Sometimes, concepts are better as fanworks rather than canon, and I think that in this case, AUs make for a much better and fun alternative to having one specific story for the real Bobby Fulbright coming back to life. In fact, I don't think I would be as interested in Dual Destinies if it didn't have the many narrative flaws that it has, as well as its ambiguity regarding the phantom/Fulbright lol. Being able to consider alternate versions of events, potential stories and how they could go, as well as doing deep dives into a character that has very little "self" to work with? This thing was made for fan AUs!

There are many plot holes regarding the phantom, but were talking about the potential for the real Fulbright to be alive, so I'll simply talk about the most glaring one - the one that you bring up - the unidentified body (Quote from my beloved transcript).

[ME] “But there’s more. I’ve yet to share my most important finding. ............Mr. Wright. Prosecutor Blackquill. You’d best brace yourselves.” [PW] “Uh, oh...” [SB] “............” [ME] “The man you see there before you... Bobby Fulbright............ is already long dead.” [PW] “Huh? Wh-What’s that supposed to mean...?” [ME] “An unidentified body that was found a year ago... ...has now been proven to possess Bobby Fulbright’s fingerprints.” [SB] “Then does this mean...?” [ME] “Yes. That man there is an impostor pretending to be Bobby Fulbright.”

I think a big issue of Dual Destinies, is that it pulls things out of its ass without explanation sometimes. This scene is meant to be interpreted as the complete truth, but it doesn't give us new evidence in the court record, we don't uncover any of this ourselves... In fact, I really dislike the fact that Edgeworth just jumps in at the right moment to give us the exact evidence we need. I know that it's canonical and should be interpreted literally, but the way the story is put together here just really makes me question the legitimacy of this new piece of evidence.

In fact, this flaw opens up several avenues of issues: why did it take a year to identify the body, if all they needed was fingerprints? How was the body unidentifiable? How did Edgeworth link this specific body to this specific case? In what world would the phantom leave a body physically unidentifiable, but leave fingerprints? Why don't we get a general autopsy report, or at the very least, see this evidence? The list of questions goes on.

Because of these flaws, you could argue that the identification was falsified in order to further the case and catch the phantom. Or that the fingerprint database got messed with for... some reason, and only now did they get a match. Or that the body isn't Fulbright at all. Basically, there's a million different options for why Fulbright could still be alive in a fanon setting. In canon though? Ehhhh, it would mean undoing a tad too much of the build up that already exists.

There's also the aspect of Athena. And, boy, is there a lot of shit going on there... I think Dual Destinies really dropped the ball on her arc with how they focused on Phoenix and Apollo more than I think was necessary. My ideal Athena game would drop those two losers and focus on her entirely. Reopening a closed case once more, though? I think her traumas should be explored more, specifically, her panic attacks, but solving the spy ring case would be too similar to AAI to me, as well as a bit redundant? There's also the previously mentioned point of it eliminating the intended mystery behind the phantom, which would suck narrative-wise. In this case, it would be phantom-focused, not Athena-focused.

While I do agree that giving her the Apollo treatment would suck, I think it would be wayyy more natural for her to be in foreign countries considering she has traveled Europe and studied there, and with a focus on that, we could also find out how she and Phoenix met, etc!

Though, I will say, I don't have the strongest opinions on this. I like many interpretations and ideas, and personally, I'm just patiently waiting for the games release, regardless of what it'll be. I do think some outcomes are more likely than others, but again, I won't complain if we get more of Fulbright/the phantom.

In summary, I think that the phantom/Fulbright are as fun to me as they are because we don't know that much about them, and there's a lot of space for interpretation. While I wouldn't hate for Bobby to survive and show up in a later game, I don't think it's likely, and I think his characterization would be a big hit or miss. And while I also really like the idea of Athena working on a case to catch the phantom/the ring of spies, I don't think it would work well as a canon story and is more fun to explore in fandom.