Fly away, far away

Pointless trivia time again. It's been a while, hasn't it? This time, I'll be covering Ace Attorney.

In actual legal proceedings, at least in America, an "objection" is a protest issued when one counselor wants to keep a part of the testimony out of the official record and the ears of the jury, or to deem evidence unusable because it's illegal or irrelevant to the case. The games use it as a fancier translation of the Japanese "igi ari", which literally means "I disagree".

The spin-off Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth was conceived as an April Fools' Day prank. In the week leading up to April Fools' Day, Capcom teased screenshots of Phoenix Wright freely walking through crime scenes, rather than using the usual point-and-click method. Because of the overwhelming positive reaction, they ended up making the game for real, though starring Edgeworth instead of Phoenix.

Most of the references to popular culture and Internet memes made throughout the games were added by the English localisation team (and other languages' localisation teams added some of their own references too), but most of the references to Perry Mason or Sherlock Holmes were actually in the original Japanese script too, as those serials are very popular in Japan.

Despite ostensibly taking place in Los Angeles, California, the game features a number of rather obviously Japanese elements. According to the localisation team, the explanation for this is that the games (which, in the original Japanese scripts, obviously take place in Japan) take place in an alternate universe version of LA where Japanese culture was allowed to thrive and flourish, the opposite of what happened in the real world.

The Americanisation of the games actually created a minor plot hole in Apollo Justice. Maya Fey, Phoenix's assistant in the first three games, was a big fan of ramen noodles in the Japanese games. The American localisation changed this to her having a hamburger fixation. So far, no problem, except in Apollo Justice, the owner of Maya's favourite noodle stand becomes a victim in a case, and he mentions how Phoenix and Maya used to frequent his joint, despite never having been mentioned in the localisation until this point.

In the final case of the third game, Trials and Tribulations, a hanging scroll depicting Misty Fey, one of the Masters of the Kurain Spirit Channeling technique, ends up covered in gravy. It turns out this was because Pearl Fey was given instructions to "gravely roast the Master in the fires of Hades", but, not knowing what "gravely" and "roast" meant, took her best guess and used gravy from a pot roast. In the Japanese version, the instructions say "Give Misty Fey magnificent bural rites" in kanji, which Pearl doesn't know how to read. She's told that two characters are read "karei indou", but not what this actually means, so she interprets it as "Indian curry" and throws that on the hanging scroll.


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