Talk:Timeline

Cohdopia?
I feel it is significant to put Cohdopia's splitting into the timeline. Since Coachen is still referred to as a "Cohdopian" during Turnabout Reminiscence, it can safely be assumed that the country still was one at that time. However, should I put it under the 2011-2015 mark, or one of the later ones? Tutuboy95 21:43, March 16, 2010 (UTC)

Gyakuten Guidebook birth dates?
Supposedly, birth years are given in the Gyakuten Guidebooks. However, recent edits have been prone to deductive speculation and some inconsistency in presentation, so some asking around will be done before a list of sources is made. capefeather 15:50, September 4, 2011 (UTC)


 * Why would AAI and GK2 have the same inonsistencies as JFA and T&T? Both are only in the year 2019. Actually I find this whole inconsistency thing is rather confusing. Maybe that's why the Guidebook ages seem inconsitent because they're made by the same people who messed up to begin with? Sooo... if I understand it correctly, the inconsistency is because the first three games go over more years (like 20016-2017 for AA, 2017-2018 for JFA, 2018-2019 for T&T)? So in the Investigations games, this would only apply to Gumshoe, Franziska and Edgeworth (because their ages are the same as in T&T), wouldn't it? 178.41.218.103 19:11, September 4, 2011 (UTC)
 * In case you're wondering why the few Inherited Turnabout characters had to be born at a certain date: in example Tsukasa was 16 by December 24 2000, yet she was also still 34 on April 2 2019. So her birthday must be somewhere between April 2 and December 24 1984 (otherwise, if she were born in 1983 after December 24, she'd be 16 in the past, but already 35 in the present; alternatively if she were born before April 2 1985, she'd be 34 in the present but only 15 in the past). Same goes for every other character with two profiles (except obviously Gregory who has no profile and the victim who had no age listed in the present portion). 178.41.218.103 20:27, September 4, 2011 (UTC)

Wait, the guidebooks list ages? I'm not sure how helpful that is since the organizer profiles already have the ages. Do they agree with each other? Also, are you sure GK2 case 3 happened a year before DL-6? (AAI is treated the same as T&T because, well, the profiles effectively treat them the same. If the profile makers still think they're in T&T time, then it's less presumptuous to do the same in the wiki timeline.) capefeather 01:15, September 5, 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, that's because the problem with the case is that it starts in April 2019 and when Shigaraki starts talking about what happened in the past, it just says "18 years ago". And when you then start playing as Gregory, all you see is the date, December 24. The person who created the Inherited Turnabout page on the wikia automatically assumed it was December 24 2001 and ever since then the mistake circulated over the internet. You are never actually told what year it is, but it can easily be deduced and it is actually a vital part of the case due to the statute of limitations. It is always 15 years but when a witness flees the country, the years don't add up. The witness in question (I won't name to avoid spoiling much) was in Zheng Fa from 2001 to 2004. The present portion is in April 2019, so even with the time frozen for that duration, it's 15 years and 4 months. But this was way before the 3-day trial rule was introduced, so the trial took a whole year (so Tenkai's arrest was in 24 December 2000, but he wasn't convicted until 28 December 2001, in the trial which lead to DL-6), thereby making the total 14 years and 4 months (so less than the statute of limitations) and this allowed Edgeworth to do what need be done with the witness. It is actually a focal point in the case, where you first convince the witness he has nothing to lose by testifying since it's way past the statute of limitations, then you point out some things witness doesn't like so he gets defensive and hides behind the statute yet you prove that it was a moot point from the beginning.

A simpler, less spoilerish way - when Shigaraki was helping Gregory in the case, he wasn't a lawyer yet. It is stated he got his badge the next year. He inherited Gregory's law firm after Gregory died. Which he couldn't take over if he weren't a lawyer (like Phoenix in 1-2). And since we know Gregory died in 2001, this happened in the year before - therefore 2000.

Something similar happened when people wrote the articles about the characters who were in the previews with Souta Sarushiro. For some reason, the person who edited it at that time (before the game came out) thought that Sarushiro was Onyanpokon. It referenced the Nintendo Dream article which previewed some of the Imprisoned Turnabout characters, but in actuality, the only Onyankopon reference with Sarushiro was the mask on his shirt. That's about it. He was always just a monkey trainer, even before he joined Tachimi circus I think. Yet this little misinformation managed to infect the whole internet (at least the English portion). If you'd actually put Souta's Japanese name and the Japanese name of Onyankopon into Google, one of the first result is a Japanese imageboard where someone is asking why foreigners think Sarushiro is Onyanpokon and they quote the Ace Attorney wikia... (just saying, by the way) 78.98.11.50 09:35, September 5, 2011 (UTC)


 * Come to think of it, the same thing works for the new AAI characters who were in Turnabout Reminiscence (Faraday, Badd, Coachen and Yew) and had a profile later on. If Badd was 53 by September 2011, yet also only 60 by March 2019 (which is 8 years later), his birthday logically had to be between March and September (same goes for the other 3). I understand that writing March to September is pointless, but it pinpoints their birthdates to a specific year at least. I just copypasted it before from the website (sure, it does have some mistakes, with Devorae in example), but it actually makes sense. Same goes for Ema Skye, she must have been born in October to December 2000. The only real contradictions in the game are the ones described in the policy page with Edgeworth and Wright (and of course, the minor characters who only appear once in JfA and T&T since you have no other date to compare it to). 78.98.11.50 10:07, September 5, 2011 (UTC)

You've basically confirmed my worst fear of having this wiki run without a Japanese-literate to look after the Japan-only articles :( I suspected something fishy about the users editing the GK2 articles by the way they were editing other articles, but without someone who's played the game, there wasn't much that I could do.

It's true that there are only two actual birthday contradictions, but they stem from the wider problem of the relevant people having zero regard for absolute dates and birthdays when giving ages. There's also the issue of AJ having to take place in 2026, which is not a "contradiction" in itself but causes a very awkward situation and makes Phoenix in particular defy all logic in attempts to identify a birthday. Specific birthday ranges could easily be falsified whenever a new game comes out. That is why I find it much safer (especially with a lack of people who care a whole lot about this) to emulate the profile makers' behaviour (as it were) and use the year ranges, because IMO being imprecise is better than being wrong. An alternative could be to include a field for deduced date ranges in the character infobox, but I'm wary about having to maintain these with each game release.

The reason I used two-year ranges for AAI case 4 was due to their use of ages from T&T case 4. Edgeworth is stated as being 20 years old when he very likely should have been 19 at that time. It's possible that they increment the age at some consistent point every year rather than at every birthday, since that's how ages increment in Korea and I'm fairly certain it's how Japan at least used to increment ages as well. I get the point on Ema, though, since the deduced date range would be October 2000 - February 2001, making the possible birth year range 2000-2001, similarly to the other 1-5 people.

capefeather 16:28, September 5, 2011 (UTC)


 * Just to be clear on Tateyuki....


 * According to his page it said he became a defense attorney at the year 2009. And the IS-7 did happen at the year 2000 not 2001... The reason for making this Gregory's last case is because of the fact that Gregory appealed over and over throughout the year... until you know...


 * AmeftoWriter 02:26, September 6, 2011 (UTC)


 * Dunno about that. Seems like just a mistake/oversight to me. It says he "passed the bar" and I suppose you're already a lawyer after that. There's no other way he'd get his Law Offices anyway. Also, whether he became a lawyer before or after his birthday in 2001 is unclear. 178.40.64.134 06:29, September 6, 2011 (UTC)

IS-5 and SS-7
Is there anyone else who noticed that the creators made a huge logical fallacy with the numbers? I mean, everything would line up so perfectly. Each background case would have two unique letters and a number representing the chronological order when it happened. But no, they had to switch the numbers. 95.103.220.81 21:54, September 10, 2011 (UTC)

Dual Destinies time frame
Considering Turnabout Countdown takes place in December, I'm not so sure about pegging the year of that case as 2027 right now. I know that the game is supposed to take place "one year after" Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, but even that is kind of vague considering the weirdness that's happened before. (Also, one year relative to what?) What do people think? capefeather (talk) 23:28, May 15, 2013 (UTC)


 * I've changed the date to December 18 (2027?) on the Turnabout Countdown page. I think that'll do for now until we get more info. Maybe something similar would work for the timeline itself? - Strabo412 (talk) 16:05, May 16, 2013 (UTC)


 * Dual Destinies is supposedly set in 2027, a year after Apollo Justice's timeline. I checked the UR-1 Incident page and the year is 2019, that's 8 years ago but it's supposed to be 7 years ago. Should I just leave the year as it is for now till we get confirmation (By playing the English version.)? Because it is confusing whenever I open the page. Tiddlypops (talk) 17:55, August 27, 2013 (UTC)

Where's Waldo Armando?
Godot is not mentioned at all in the timeline. Neither is Diego Armando mentioned coming out of his coma, which happens some time in 2017. 108.212.129.166 11:18, January 8, 2014 (UTC)

Trial Dates
I noticed that many of the dates for trials also include the first day of investigation, even though the trial itself didn't technically start until the next day. For example, the dates for Reunion, and Turnabout say that the trial went from June 20-22, but the first day of court was June 21. Not all of the cases follow this; the date for Maya's trial in Turnabout Sisters only includes its one day in court, September 7, and not the first day of investigation, September 6. Should the first day of investigation be included in the dates for trials, or not? 216.49.181.254 21:06, February 18, 2014 (UTC)

Proposal: Split the timeline in two
I've been thinking about this for a few months now, but I wanted to concentrate on the episode articles of DD and GK2, and wait until the editing craze of PLvPW had calmed down. Basically, I believe that the "school year" system that's been used up to now is getting increasingly inadequate with the increasingly glaring discrepancies between the timeline and the ages stated in character profiles. Maybe a future game will even cross over into the next year again, and then things would get really awkward. Combined with the issues with the age field in Template:Character that have been brought up, it makes for a rather confusing state of affairs.

It may make sense to have two timelines and have each event (births in particular) be shown in one or the other (or both) depending on whether they happen before or after a year turnover. For example, the births of Redd White, Max Galactica and Luke Atmey would be in the first timeline; the births of Matt Engarde, Viola Cadaverini and Apollo Justice would be in the second timeline; and the births of Will Powers and Maggey Byrde would be in both timelines. The main concern I see is that we'd potentially split events from the same game and that might get awkward. Maybe it's not even necessary to split the timeline. Nonetheless, I'd like to see what people think and maybe this could later transition into other discussions like what to do with the ages in character pages.

capefeather (talk) 23:51, April 16, 2014 (UTC)


 * I'm afraid I'm a simple soul and I don't 100% follow what you mean. Could you give examples in terms of what it would look like on the page? - Strabo412 (talk) 17:29, April 17, 2014 (UTC)

The original idea I had was to split the timeline into two different articles. Some events can be compared directly to the DL-6 Incident without any problems. Others cross over into a different year and can't be compared directly to the DL-6 Incident without messing up birth dates / ages. I hope you see what I mean if you consider the births of the characters I mentioned above. capefeather (talk) 01:05, May 9, 2014 (UTC)


 * I think I understand? What were you thinking exactly in terms of splitting the article into two (article names and so on)? - Strabo412 (talk) 16:12, May 9, 2014 (UTC)

I was considering having one timeline that only contains events from the original trilogy, and another timeline that contains events from every game except the first. I was considering this because I wasn't sure if the games really cared about anchoring to a specific event (namely the DL-6 Incident) anymore. However, it occurred to me today that The Inherited Turnabout shows that the writers are still at least paying attention to the relative timing of events other than dates of birth. It also occurred to me that every canon game "spills over", including the first game as of the inclusion of Rise from the Ashes.

Now I'm thinking of something less violent and less complicated than splitting the timeline. Namely, base every character's stated year of birth on the post-2004 games. Phoenix Wright is born in 1993, Ema Skye is born in 2001, Pearl Fey is born in 2010, Shi-Long Lang is born in 1992, etc. in line with the Apollo Justice / Dual Destinies character profiles. Even the characters in the original first game should probably get the same treatment, in line with the stance that Rise from the Ashes is just as much a part of the first game as the other cases, even though it didn't exist in the original version. We could even make an "old" timeline solely concerning the events and characters of the original GBA trilogy, from the perspective of the original GBA trilogy (so Phoenix Wright is born in 1992).

This seems like a very clean solution to me. It would dispel the confusion in the timeline we've experienced thus far by treating the trilogy as spilling over into a previous year, rather than spilling over into a subsequent year. Let's just hope that if another game pulls the year-crossover shenanigans, it doesn't complicate matters even further.

capefeather (talk) 03:15, May 10, 2014 (UTC)


 * That sounds pretty reasonable to me. - Strabo412 (talk) 09:44, May 10, 2014 (UTC)

Apollo Justice in 2025?
I seem to get the idea that the authors meant for Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney to happen in the year 2025 and they apparently intend to keep the profiles consistent with it in the future releases, as we can conclude from Phoenix being 34 in "2027" (aging 10 years, while "11" years have passed).

"The developers of the Ace Attorney games, in particular the people in charge of putting down the ages of characters in court records, have not paid much attention to any absolute timeline." - this line is incredibly presumptuous to me. The fact that the ages don't change when a year passes in a single game, while true, I don't think can be a reason to disregard information contained there.

Given the fact that Turnabout Succession occurs in October, had it happened in 2025, 6 and a half years would have passed since Phoenix's disbarment, which then could be easily rounded up to 7. That way, all the contradictions in characters' ages would also be cleared up.

What I'd suggest is moving everything that happened in Apollo Justice and Dual Destinies a year earlier, which would clear up the inconsistency between the in-game profiles. - Sligneris (talk) 17:32, June 28, 2014 (UTC)

The game talks about "seven years ago" throughout, including in the very first case, where they seemed very particular in making Phoenix's disbarment seven years ago the same month. capefeather (talk) 02:19, June 29, 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, but then it spirals into "canon information vs. canon information", like I said, moving the whole thing into 2025 and asuming that AJ is actually the start of the seventh year of Phoenix's disbarment will lead to a single semi-contradiction in this one game, while keeping it like it is, will lead to a lot of contradictions in ages in character profiles in every single game from AJ on... - Sligneris (talk) 09:52, June 29, 2014 (UTC)


 * While I do concede that it's hard to believe that 9 people's birthdays happen to be between October 9th-April 19th, there are inconistancy's in believing that Apollo Justice took place in 2025. Mainly some other people's profiles. Phoenix is 26 at the end of Trials and Tribulations (2019) and is 33 at the beginning of Apollo Justice (2026). Hardly inconsitant. Now that might be into doubt with the whole oh he's 24 in Ace Attorney (2016), I [resent Turnabout Samurai. This is the case in which we first hear Phoenix's age. It's 24. The important thing here is not so much the age but the date. Turnabout Samurai takes place between October 16th-20th. A little improbable but hardly impossible. Another example would be in The Stolen Turnabout when again Phoenix's age is mentioned. he's 26 but again it's not October 9th it's October 11th. Highly doubtful but again not impossible. (Who know's maybe they just forgot his birthday.)


 * Ok maybe Phoenix is not the best example but I bring you two other people who can disclaim it within Apollo Justice. They are Trucy and Klavier. The ages match up within their profiles for AJ era and 7 years in the past. Even if we assume they just had their birthdays immeaditly afterwards and that Apollo Justice Era takes palce in 2025 that would mean 7 birthdays inbetween! That's very inconsistant! I believe the better explanatin is just simply that Dual Destinies people messed up on some ages.Franzyfan1998 (talk) 19:46, June 29, 2014 (UTC)


 * You are wrong about T&T. That game took place in the latter half of 2018 and then, only one case occurred in Feb. 2019, which means he had his birthday before The Stolen Turnabout. He'd turn 27 that year, which contradicts the game that took place fully in "2026" - in which he aged 6 years in "7" years.


 * Assumimg Dual Destinies takes place in 2027 completely ruins the continuity of ages of characters such as Phoenix Wright, Miles Edgeworth or Pearl Fey. I am convinced Capcom will keep the age progress as it is, and I don't think contradictions like characters becoming one year younger at one point in time before Apollo Justice should be present on this wiki.


 * The solution I propose is just assuming the "seven years ago" refers to the "six and a half years" from the Mason System in Turnabout Succession. The "seven years" in Turnabout Trump could be just a build-up for this final case.


 * It' a somewhat loose interpretation that clears up critical contradictions in the profiles in the series that happened already and will continue to happen in future releases, unless we actually make that change in the timeline. I really prefer loose interpretations of a single game to critical contradictions in the whole series.


 * We also shouldn't refer strictly to the characters who made their debut in AJ, basically because... they made their debut in AJ. Their birthdates can be easily moved along with the timeline. I'll soon make a spare article on Trucy to show what I mean.


 * There's also another bonus: that change would allow us to narrow down the ages of the characters, like I did with Phoenix. I honestly think it's worth it. - Sligneris (talk) 20:59, June 29, 2014 (UTC)