Godot

"Godot"

- Blacker than a moonless night, hotter and more bitter than hell itself... that is coffee.

Godot was the mysterious coffee-loving prosecutor for Phoenix Wright's cases from October 2018 until February 2019. He held an open grudge against Wright (although it would be some time until Wright would find out why), intentionally mispronouncing his name as "Trite" to show his contempt.

Defense career

 * Main article: Turnabout Beginnings

"Diego Armando"

- A lawyer is someone who smiles no matter how bad it gets.

Godot was originally Diego Armando, a senior defense lawyer working at Grossberg Law Offices. He had spiky black hair and wore a red dress-shirt with a black tie. He was fond of referring to women as kittens, and often used metaphors revolving around such names.

Armando was Mia Fey's aide when she took on her first case, giving her advice as she went through and urging her to continue on the attack. Near the end of the trial, their client, Terry Fawles, died on the stand as a result of drinking poison given to him by the real killer, Dahlia Hawthorne. Angered by the outcome, Armando broke his mug of coffee with his bare hands which started bleeding. Soon afterward, the two lawyers started dating, with their boss Marvin Grossberg referring to them as such.

On August 27, 2013, Armando sat with Hawthorne to question her. Fearing that the lawyer was on to her, Hawthorne slipped a special poison into his cup of coffee. As a result of drinking the poisoned cup, Armando fell into a coma. The poison damaged his central nervous system, caused extreme damage to his eyes, and turned the hair on his head white.

Five years later, Armando miraculously woke up to the smell of coffee. Upon awakening, however, he learned that Mia Fey had been murdered two years prior by Redd White, CEO of the blackmailing Bluecorp company. Furthermore, Dahlia Hawthorne had already been brought to justice. Armando blamed Fey's understudy, Phoenix Wright, for her death, and resolved to protect Mia's sister Maya. He became a prosecutor to test Wright's worthiness to succeed her, as well as to gain privileges to spy on Morgan Fey, whom he knew had tried to frame Maya for murder before and perhaps would attempt to kill or otherwise harm her again. He began wearing a special visor over his eyes that enabled him to see, although it was limited in that he could not see red on a white background. Considering his old self to have "died", he took on the new name "Godot".

Prosecuting career

 * Main articles: The Stolen Turnabout & Recipe for Turnabout

"Godot"

- Men that are trapped by the chains of "Maybe" ...can never reach their dreams!

Godot made his debut as a prosecutor in the Mask☆DeMasque trials. Sly, sarcastic, and intolerant, he began to put pressure on Wright. When the defendant, Ron DeLite, was declared not guilty of theft, Godot prosecuted the subsequent murder case to challenge Wright again. Nonetheless, Wright managed to prove a private detective named Luke Atmey had created an alibi of larceny to prevent murder charges against himself. Near the end of the murder trial, Godot saw Maya channel Mia so that she could help Wright.

Godot challenged Wright again in another trial. He could not see the ketchup stains on the defendant's white apron, hinting at his vision problems. He also demonstrated his remarkable ability to keep his cool even when faced with fearsome characters like Furio Tigre. Nonetheless, Wright bested him again, and Tigre let out a final roar, causing a short blackout. During the blackout, everybody noticed that Godot's mask glowed in the dark.

Final trial

 * Main article: Bridge to the Turnabout

"Godot"

- Have you forgotten already? In my world, the color red doesn't exist. These must be... my tears.

One day, he overheard Morgan telling her daughter Pearl about a letter she had hidden, which would give her instructions for killing Maya Fey. Oblivious to the letter's purpose and unable to understand some of the words, Pearl attempted to carry through with the plan, telling Phoenix Wright and Maya about Hazakura Temple. Godot contacted Iris, a nun at the temple, and Misty Fey, Maya's mother, telling them about the plan and asking for their assistance. Misty had by then taken on the new identity of children's book author Elise Deauxnim, as she had left her hometown after being humiliated during the DL-6 Incident eight years prior.

Misty attempted to keep Pearl from carrying through with the plan by inviting her to read some books, but Pearl went anyway. She crossed a bridge to the Inner Temple, where Maya was training. Following her mother's instructions, she attempted to channel Dahlia Hawthorne, who had been executed a month before. Godot was already near the temple, prepared for the worst. When Pearl did not show up, Misty became worried and also crossed to the island, channeling Hawthorne to prevent Pearl from doing so.

Hawthorne, in Misty's body, found Maya in the temple's garden and attempted to kill her, cornering her on a lantern in the temple garden. Godot witnessed this, though he was unaware of who was channeling Hawthorne at the time. He found himself possessed by an intense hatred for the woman who had ruined his life, picking up Misty's sword-cane and stabbing Hawthorne with it, only to be attacked by her one final time, causing his visor to fly off his face and leaving a wound. Maya fainted after the visor flew off, and Hawthorne left Misty's body as she died.

Godot put on his visor again, which concealed his wound. He then carried Maya into the temple and cleaned up the bloodied snow. Unable to see the blood, he was forced to shovel a large rectangular area around the lantern. This also meant that he missed the bloody writing that read "Maya", which Hawthorne had written on the lantern before Misty died. Godot tried to carry Misty's body over the bridge, but it had burnt down, so he attached the corpse to a loose cable and swung it across the river for Iris to receive on the other side. Iris then stabbed the corpse in the Hazakura Temple courtyard with the Shichishito sword to make it look as if the crime scene had been on that side. Meanwhile, Maya woke up and wrote a letter to Mia for advice, and then channeled her. Following the advice that Mia subsequently wrote, Maya locked herself in the Inner Temple's channeling chamber and channeled Hawthorne to protect herself. Three days later, when Iris undid the lock she met her sister, who proceeded to switch places with her, masquerading as her dark-haired sibling and locking the real Iris in the channeling chamber.

During the trial of Misty's murder, Hawthorne, pretending to be Iris, testified that Maya committed the crime. However, Wright eventually uncovered her identity and, with the help of Godot and Mia, was able to come to the conclusion that Maya was channeling Hawthorne. Hawthorne, condemned to eternal failure at the hands of Mia, fled from Maya's body. Iris was about to be pronounced innocent, but Godot then challenged Wright to try and find the true killer, without the help and support of the Fey sisters.

Maya later testified as well. Filled with gratitude for Godot, she attempted to cover for him. Godot taunted Wright, asserting that he would "never be half the lawyer [Mia] was", but Wright, fulfilling his mentor's legacy, persevered and proved that Godot was the killer, causing Godot's visor to explode from frustration. Realizing this, and seeing Mia's spirit in Wright, Godot finally admitted his mistakes, accepting that he had only been angry at "Trite" because he had needed someone to blame for Mia's death. He further added that he had been at least partly motivated by a chance at revenge. If he had really only wanted to save Maya, he would have talked to Wright about the plan.

At this moment, his eye wound from the knife stab began to bleed through the visor. When told about it, he said simply that red does not exist in his world, and that they were in fact his tears. In truth, he had problems with forgiving himself. He gave Maya the same advice he had given Mia on her first day in court: "The only time a lawyer can cry is when it's all over."

His soul in peace at last, he shared one last cup of coffee with Wright in the courtroom, and they agreed that it was the best coffee they had ever tasted. In addition, Godot pronounced Wright's name correctly for the first time. Wright was upset that he had been unable to save Godot, but Mia assured him that he had saved Godot in a way that had nothing to do with living or dying.

Personality
"Diego Armando"

- The only time a lawyer can cry is when it's all over.

Armando's talent as an attorney was matched only by his hot-shot confidence that bordered on smugness. He was generally very calm and collected, rarely being rattled even when at a serious disadvantage. This sheer ability to keep his cool was on display while helping Mia Fey through her first trial. He retained this trait in his new persona as Godot, as he was the only one unfazed by Furio Tigre's intimidating demeanour.

Godot had a particular habit of using countless metaphors and quotes constituting his "rules", though their meanings were often lost on others. He would also often let out a short, derisive laugh before proceeding with his remarks. However, his most distinguishing feature was his deep love of coffee. He was known to drink seventeen cups of coffee per trial day and had at least 107 different personal coffee blends, with his personal favorite being #102. His coffee was known for being exceptionally bitter and hot, which he considered a point of pride. Many of his metaphors were related to coffee, leading Wright to refer to them at one point as "Coffeenese".

One of Godot's surprising talents was his accurate impersonations of other people. He has mimicked both Desirée DeLite and Victor Kudo to get his point across in court. Maya Fey admired these for their authenticity, while Phoenix Wright described them as the "best and worst impersonation[s]" he had ever seen.

Protecting others
Godot's actions since Mia's first trial can be understood in terms of his attitudes toward women. Some of his "rules" resembled a chivalric code toward women, and he was fond of referring to women by pet names, such as calling Mia "kitten". While his interactions with most men were relatively ordinary, with most women it seemed that he had to make it personal, whether in a positive or negative way. An example of this is in his dismissive attitude toward Franziska von Karma, saying, "Hey, Filly. Know your role, and shut your mouth. I can't stand women like you." Additionally, his murderous hatred toward Dahlia Hawthorne led him to "kill" her, even though she was already dead.

The most notable manifestation of this aspect of Godot was in his obsession with protecting Mia. Upon learning of her death during his coma, he felt immense guilt for not being able to save her, despite the fact that he had been very much powerless to do anything about it. Godot ended up projecting many aspects of this guilt onto Phoenix Wright, blaming him for Mia's death even though he similarly could not have had the foresight to do anything about it. In addition to this, he used Maya as a proxy for Mia in his fixation on protecting her. These two goals motivated him to become a prosecutor and eventually concoct an elaborate plan to have himself "save" Maya from danger instead of talking to Wright to prevent the whole thing from occurring to begin with. Such was the recklessness of the plan that it ended in Misty Fey forfeiting her life and Iris temporarily taking the fall for the crime, whilst Godot simply hid and waited for his opportunity.

Although Godot proved a formidable opponent to Wright, who called him "the most dangerous enemy I've ever faced" up to that point, his main concern was not in prosecuting but in carrying out what he would later admit was his "stupid fantasy". His actual arguments past his opening statement and witness testimonies would frequently boil down to repeatedly insisting that Wright had no proof to back his claims up. In fact, at times he would downright not bother to protect his case, such as when he let Wright prove Ron DeLite's alibi against his theft charge in order to stick a murder charge on him, or when he let Wright trick Furio Tigre into indicting himself for the poisoning of Glen Elg. This is a sharp contrast to Wright's previous opponents, who would go to great lengths to keep their cases alive.

Godot was more concerned with demeaning and taunting Wright, even occasionally throwing his coffee cup (filled with boiling hot coffee) at the defense attorney's head in court. He tried to make Wright feel the guilt that he felt, using Ron DeLite's murder accusation and Pearl's inadvertent role in Morgan's murderous plan to make his point. In the end, however, Godot realized that everything he was doing was based on his own guilt rather than any actual malice toward Wright, and accepted his fate as Wright proved that he was Misty's killer. Godot's actions ultimately forced Wright to confront his own conception of what it meant to protect and save others.

Name

 * The name "Godot" originates from the Samuel Beckett play Waiting for Godot. This is furthered by Luke Atmey's comment that "some people spend their entire lives idly waiting for his appearance", a reference to the aforementioned play, in which two men wait for an acquaintance named Godot to arrive, contemplating suicide if he does not show up, effectively "waiting a lifetime". Godot himself also references the play when he states that "There wasn't anyone waiting for me when I woke up".
 * Samuel Beckett stated that "GOD-oh" was the correct pronunciation for the character in his play. Despite this, in the United States the name is often pronounced "gə-DOH". In Japanese, the name is pronounced "ゴドー" (godō), which is also the case for the Ace Attorney character. This particular pronunciation is implied in The Stolen Turnabout, when the judge mispronounces his name as "Prosecutor Gobo".
 * His real name in the Japanese version, "Souryuu Kaminogi" (神乃木荘龍), may be a play on "kusonigai yumoru", which translates as "a bitter drink". "Kaminogi" translated means "Tree of God" and may be a reference to Waiting for Godot, which takes place at the foot of a tree. Interestingly, his given name contains the kanji for "dragon", a trait shared by Wright's Japanese given name.
 * His real full name was likely chosen as a reference to his alias; "Godot" is a portmanteau of the last syllables of "Diego Armando". It also shares the same initials as an acronym for both defense attorney, which Armando was, and district attorney (i.e., a prosecutor), which Godot became. Another possibility is that it is a reference to the famous Argentine soccer player and manager Diego Armando Maradona, who is famous for his "Hand of God" goal during the 1986 FIFA World Cup quarter final against England and suspension from the sport due to drug use.

Development

 * Ace Attorney art director Tatsuro Iwamoto based Godot's appearance on the character Roy Batty, played by Rutger Hauer in the sci-fi thriller film Blade Runner.
 * Godot was originally going to smoke and drink bourbon whiskey, but this was changed to an obsession with coffee to be less of a negative influence on children.
 * Godot was originally intended to have an animation in which he would slam his bench with his foot. This idea would be eventually implemented with Barok van Zieks in Dai Gyakuten Saiban: Naruhodō Ryūnosuke no Bōken.
 * Some of the English name ideas that were scrapped for Diego Armando included Joseph Cuppa, Xavier Barstucks and William Havamug.
 * Godot's color scheme is, on many levels, a completely inverted version of what he wore as Diego Armando. Red and green are chromatic opposites, as are black and white, which are evident in his shirt, hair, and tie. The absence of red (with the exception of his visor) and presence of white in his color scheme as "Godot" may be a reference to his inability to see red on a white background.
 * Godot's visor glows in the dark. This is shown in Recipe for Turnabout as well as in Bridge to the Turnabout. The light from the visor is brighter in the latter than the former.
 * Godot's mobile phone ringtone is a simplified version of his main theme music "Godot ~ The Fragrance of Dark Coffee".
 * In one of Godot's sprite animations, coffee slides from one end of the table to the other and into his hand. However, seeing as there is no one sitting next to him, the coffee comes literally out of nowhere.
 * Diego Armando and Tateyuki Shigaraki are, to date, the only defense attorneys met in-game who do not openly wear their attorney badges.
 * The intentional mispronunciation of Wright's name by Godot varies between language localizations. In the French, Spanish and Italian versions it's "Light". In the German version it's "Breit"; a pun in that it can mean both "broad" and "drunken". In the original Japanese version it's "Maruhodou".
 * Fittingly, but perhaps unintentionally, Redd White's name seems to fit with Godot's inability to see the color red against a white background, as he was unable to see Mia's murder by White take place.

Cultural references

 * Godot states that he likes his coffee "Blacker than a moonless night". This may be a reference to a similar line spoken by the character Dale Cooper in the second episode ("Traces to Nowhere") of the television serial drama Twin Peaks. When asked how he takes his coffee, he responds that he takes it "Black as midnight on a moonless night."
 * During Turnabout Beginnings and Bridge to the Turnabout, Armando/Godot says "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains must be the truth." This a paraphrase of something often said by the famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes in several of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novels including The Sign of the Four.
 * During "Iris'" testimony in Bridge to the Turnabout, it is (falsely) stated that Maya turned the tables on her attacker by taking her knife. Godot's response to this is: 'As they say... "A cornered fox is more dangerous than a jackal".' The quotation he uses is that of a line spoken by the character Gray Fox near the end of the stealth action video game Metal Gear Solid.
 * Godot's mask bears a superficial resemblance to the battle visor worn by the character Cyclops from Marvel Comics' X-Men team. However, in terms of functionality, Godot's visor more closely resembles the vision-enhancing VISOR device worn by the blind character Geordi La Forge from the science fiction television series Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Other media

 * In Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Wright has a number of alternative costumes he can wear, the color schemes of which are all references to other characters. One of the choices is based on the color scheme of Godot's outfit. Godot also appears, along with Franziska von Karma and Miles Edgeworth, as cards in the game's Heroes and Heralds Mode. One of Wright's post-victory lines mentions Godot's Sherlock Holmes-inspired quote, "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains must be the truth". Wright then goes on to say that a "coffee-loving prosecutor" once said that.
 * In Mega Man Star Force 3, another Capcom game, there is a subtle reference to Godot. If the character Omega-Xis is equipped with the "HumorWrd" ability, the player may receive a call from his teacher Mitch Shepar. In the call, Shepar reveals that the flasks around his neck contain coffee and milk, since he finds it convenient to be able to drink coffee whenever he wants. When quizzed by Omega-Xis about what kind of bean the teacher uses to make his coffee, Shepar says that he cannot tell him, but does reveal that it is called "Blend #107". This is the same number as one of the blends that Godot mentions. The scene in question can be viewed here.
 * In the Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney special episode Reunion, Hershel Layton tells Luke Triton that the group has had enough tea for the moment. Wright, Maya, and Espella Cantabella all then begin trying to work out how many cups they've had, which turns out to be 17 in total. Maya then wonders why the professor stopped there, and says, "Maybe the professor has a rule when it comes to drinking tea [...] You know, something like... 'I never drink more than 17 cups of tea during any given puzzle'." This is a reference to Godot, who would often state things to be "one of my rules", with one such rule being that he never drinks more than 17 cups of coffee during a trial. The fact that this is a reference is even pointed out in a fourth wall-breaking comment by Wright, who tells Maya that she "might want to think twice about using that kind of Ace Attorney reference here".