Visual Novel / of the Devil

17 Following

of the Devil is an Episodic Cyberpunk Law Procedural Visual Novel by nth Circle Studios with a demo prologue case and 2 of 5 episodes released on Steam.

The year is 2086. Cameras are everywhere and practically all crime is caught in action with a 98% conviction rate. With those odds, it takes a special type of lawyer to challenge the system. Enter Morgan, a criminal defense attorney who loves to gamble and can't exactly be picky about which clients she takes for lack of business. As such, her unique temperament lands her into some special cases.

• Episode 0: "and he shall appear". Morgan's first homicide defense case involves the Heartbreak Killer, a notorious serial killer who's shot six women in the heart with no evidence left behind. Released March 1, 2024.
• Episode 1: "an idle mind". After the death of Dr. David Ashur, the creator of modern androids and Morgan's friend, his personal android Serra asks Morgan to investigate his apparent suicide. Released February 6, 2025.
• Episode 2: "His due". With the rise of escalating gang tensions, Morgan has to carefully navigate through the politics of the underworld when she finds herself forced to take the case. Released December 23, 2025.
• Episode 3: "quoting scripture". Morgan finds herself centerstage as the State conducts a witch trial to exorcise itself of one of its most outspoken critics, but she refuses to play the fool in the oncoming torrent of political theater. Currently unreleased, releasing in 2026.

of the Devil provides examples of:

• Accidental Pun: While AD_84's name is supposed to be a reference to Nineteen Eighty-Four, it took Word of God stating so for the connection to be made, namely because when put through a typical 'numbers-to-letters' cypher, you get ADHD, and given her personality, this interpretation of her name is the far more obvious meaning for most people. This was entirely unintended on the developers part.
• Advert-Overloaded Future: Morgan's phone has an ad-blocker, but the news articles you can read are either Advertising Disguised as News or segue into a subscription service. That is, the ones that aren't censored due to being politically inconvenient, or part of an ongoing police investigation.
• Americasia: Downplayed compared to some examples, but present: the game features an above-average number of characters with fully Japanese names, one of the largest corporations in the world is Hao Industries, the most powerful criminal organization in the city is a Yakuza based out of a Japanese-style mansion surrounded by cherry blossoms, a koi pond, and a shishi-odoshi, who are at war with the local branch of a Triad, and flashbacks throughout Episode 2 show that Morgan went to a school that used Japanese school uniforms where drama involving starting a Japanese School Club was a big deal.
• And Now You Must Marry Me: Mirei gives this as the reason Makoto is targeted by the Bluebloods: after kidnapping him, they'll force a political marriage and marry into the Ikariya's wealth. Kim and Daisuke both make it clear that this is impossible; after the Ikariya purged all of the Bluebloods' successors, it'd only make sense to return the favor when given the chance.
• Android Identifier: Serra, a Robot Girl, has a barcode stamped on her forehead. This was a deliberate red herring by David to hide the fact that she was grown, not manufactured.
• Anti-Frustration Features: There's a setting to add double the time for time-sensitive choices or removing the time limit entirely.
• Apathetic Citizens: Morgan attributes the dystopian state of the world to the populace's encouraged disinterest, figuring they will accept basically anything if it doesn't trigger an immediate emotional reaction ("disgust" in her words), which itself is easily manipulated.
• Apophenia Plot: The entire "Heartbreak Killer" plot deals with one occurring on a national scale. Conspiracy theorists and rabble-rousers are convinced that Heartbreak is involved in some kind of greater plot: a corporate saboteur, a runaway Killer Robot, a revolutionary, etc. In reality, Heartbreak's killings had no greater motive whatsoever beyond simple impulsive violence, and there was no pattern to the victims beyond physical appearance—in fact, Heartbreak had killed potentially dozens of people before that point, with the six killings credited to them being merely those that had some kind of identifiable Calling Card (and said card was just, in the mind of the killer at the time, the most convenient and efficient means of killing their victims).
• Arc Words:
  • The quote "A gambler with a system must be, to a lesser or greater extent, insane," is added to the Terms menu near the end of Episode Zero and serves to sum up the game in one sentence. It expresses both Morgan's own love of gambling and the way it's reflected in the game's design with card and chip motifs and the recurrent betting system, and how her extreme independence and lack of social interest leave her fundamentally incompatible with the hypercapitalist dystopia in which she lives as well as the very obvious manifestation of insanity she has.
  • The name of the Devil also comes up often. In addition to the game's title and all the episode titles referencing him, at the end of Episode 0, Emma refers to her unbalanced relationship with Heartbreak, where she only stands a chance of catching them if they continue killing, as "a deal with the Devil", the concept of the Devil's Proof comes up several times, with Morgan stating in Episode 2 that said proof is always on their side, Emma sarcastically refers to the culprit of Episode 2 claiming they could feel malice coming from the murder weapon as a "the Devil made me do it" defense, and at one point, Morgan and London discuss the relationship between God, the Devil, and humanity as a reciprocal triangle like that between the State, the Megs, and the criminal underworld, to which London responds that, since most people in 2086 believe that God is dead...
    London: So that leaves the Devil in an awfully strong position, doesn't it?
• Artificial Human:
  • Played with regarding Noble Electronic's "Warm" Androids: they're made, in part, from cloned human flesh (which is referred to as "organic" flesh), but those parts aren't running the Add itself: that's still a machine, running a program.
  • Serra's true nature is this, rather than being an AI or an Add. Her creator, David Ashur, created a nanomachine that was identical to a human neuron, then "iterated from there", then used the result to create Serra's nervous system. As a result, she's neither a human, Modded or not, (her bones being comprised of military-grade alloys make that obvious) nor is she an android, Warm or otherwise - although the latter is closer, as per Ashur's statements, she was never "programmed", meaning that her consciousness is an emergent property of her naturally grown brain, as it is in humans.
• Artistic License – Martial Arts: In-Universe, a Post-Episode 2 bonus scene has Morgan point out that basic physics dictates that a one-inch punch will always be less effective than a normal punch thrown by the same person. When Serra gets upset, Morgan backpedals by saying that doesn't necessarily apply to androids.
• Bait-and-Switch: Throughout Episode 2, Morgan has regular Flashbacks to her childhood, talking to another girl about the Detective Club. Of course, which of the girls doing the talking isn't as obvious as it seems - in the final flashback of Episode 2, the girl who speaks in red like present-day Morgan calls the other girl "Ev" - as in, ''Evangeline" Morgan.
• Ban on A.I.: While there are plenty of "Automated Dependants", the idea of a free-willed, unshackled artificial intelligence is considered so dangerous, anything that might have interfaced with one will be incinerated. Just searching for the term "Artificial Intelligence" leads to a potential account flag.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Morgan, who usually keeps people at a long, long emotional distance, allows herself to consider David Ashur a friend and even owe him a favor after he lied to the police to give her an alibi for a related missing person report. An extremely dark example, considering that Morgan went out and killed David's stalker without telling him.
• Better Manhandle the Murder Weapon:
  • Carlos grabs the murder weapon, a revolver, out of shock after discovering his dead girlfriend. He later admits that he didn't really recognize it as a gun at first (understandable, seeing it's a pre-Tagging revolver and thus likely isn't something featured in media a lot), which still annoys Morgan since that's not exactly solid enough reasoning to overturn his charge.
  • Sosuke picks up his fallen katana after leaving the room he's been locked in. Considering he'd received multiple head injuries and been tortured extensively, him barely processing the scene and running on autopilot is understandable.
• Big Brother Is Watching: The city has a population in the eight digits, but cameras still outnumber people by a fair amount. The massive shortage of places a criminal can act without being caught in 4K is the main reason the prosecutors have such a high win rate.
• Big Fancy House: The Ikariya Group, like any good self-respecting Yakuza, are headquartered out of one, cherry blossom garden, koi pond, shishi-odoshi and all - especially impressive, seeing as how it's all located inside of a skyscraper, under a holographic sky.
• Bilingual Bonus: Serra refers to Morgan as "Adonai", which she claims to be a Hebrew word that translates roughly to "my lord." However, what this leaves out is what the "lord" in that phrase refers to. Hebrew does have a word for a person of higher status, analogous to "lord" (adon), and a way to address such a person when you consider yourself their servant ("adoniy"), but "adonai" specifically means "my lords", and would only ever be used to refer to a singular individual when you're using "Lord" with a capital L. Essentially, Serra refers to Morgan the way a religious person would refer to God, which contrasts pretty harshly with Morgan's own inclination towards the Devil.
• "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: Carlos is held in a Counseling Quarter, the official State-designated term for an interrogation room, which Morgan and Reyes openly disparage as a euphemism.
• Blind Justice:
  • One of the game's mechanics is the "Justice>Blind", in which Morgan is directly confronted with a question she can't avoid and must choose to raise (confront it head on) or stay (back off and approach from another angle). The centerpiece of the Justice>Blind UI is a statue of Lady Justice with a censor bar over her eyes.
  • The physical bodies of the Adjutants that serve as courtroom mediators are ten foot tall, statuesque Robot Girls with black visors over their eyes. In this case, it's Invoked; Aidey's Establishing Character Moment involves declaring her physical form a universally-recognized embodiment of justice, and several of her sprites show her removing her visor to reveal perfectly ordinary, functional eyes underneath.
• Bullet Catch: Conversed when Serra asks Sosuke if he can catch a bullet. He tells her he can't, but after her immediate disappointment, he follows up by saying he figures he can pull off an Arrow Catch.
• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": As "Artificial Intelligence" in-series is a term used exclusively for programs with an illegal degree of autonomy, anything legal is called an "Automated Dependant", usually shortened to "Add(s)". The term was created for tax law, and its broad definition and applicable subsidies got everyone rushing to stick in it on their products.
• Call-Back: The end of Episode 2 has Mirei reveal the reason for her hiring Morgan was due to her having walked into the Noble Electronics board room and influencing their opinion in Episode 1.
• Calling Card: The Hound of Ikariya leaves behind a literal business card with House Ikariya's insignia so their targets know who it was from, that their defenses failed, and that the attack can't be brushed away as nothing since rival corps will also notice the card's presence.
• Calling Out for Not Calling:
  • London steps out during the investigation specifically to avoid this trope, knowing Reyes would eat him alive if he didn't keep in contact after leaving for the Lower Wards, especially after he promised her otherwise. Though he's actually just making an excuse to leave Han so he and Morgan can talk in private.
  • Morgan and Serra walk in on serial flirt Adelaide Han talking on the phone with someone who does this, despite Han's insistence that she did call them earlier, they just forgot. Morgan calls her out on flirting at a crime scene... only for Han to clarify that actually, she was talking to a relative with dementia.
• Central Theme: Episode 2 is about family: the Ikariya's prominent bloodline and the Blueblood's extinguished one, the Oldguard adopting the Youngblood as their (neglected and expendable) heirs, Officer Chopin being an adopted son, and Sosuke choosing the family that created him and loved him over the lineage he never personally knew.
• Character Filibuster: Reyes' interview involves a very impassioned speech about automobile history with the footage having to be edited down for time twice.
• Chess Motifs:
  • In Episode 2, when Emma takes the advantage in court, an image of a white queen putting a red king in check is displayed.
  • Multiple times in Episode 2, chess metaphors are used in comparison to the workings of the mafia and gang wars. In one, young recruits are compared to pawns, in that they are made to be "traded without much thought." In the second, Daisuke states he did not want to defend Makoto with Sosuke as he would have rather had "the queen making attacks than blocking checks."
• City Noir: The Cyberpunk future variant, to a T. The game's Establishing Series Moment involves Morgan Noir monologuing about how the entire city is lit by neon, black skyscrapers loom over everything, the Lower Wards are constantly dark because they're under the shadow of the rich districts, which are literally elevated above them, and often rainy because said lack of sun and the heat produced by the generators and server farms down there wreaks havoc on the climate. And of course, unless you're a C-level executive in a Meg, the City is a shitty place to live.
• City with No Name: The game is set in "the City", under the rule of "the State".
• Clean Food, Poisoned Fork: David's cause of death is established as his cup being poisoned to explain how Jung survived drinking the same things as him. It turns out to be a false lead since he and his coworkers were poisoned much earlier in the day at his farewell party.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Episode 2's start has Sosuke getting tortured for information by the Bluebloods since they want to know why the Oldguard want him captured alive.
• Color Contrast: Morgan and Serra have completely opposite color palettes, confirmed on Serra's character sheet to be deliberate. The savvy, cynical Morgan is a redhead in a sharp black suit, while the younger, more naive Serra has mint green hair and a white coat.
• The Comically Serious:
  • Serra isn't very expressive, but her naivete regarding the world leads to plenty of comedy, such as her flatly asking all her interview subjects for their three sizes because it's the sort of thing listed on fan wikis and being confused why nobody will tell her.
  • Sosuke Ikariya is determined to keep up his "stoic Corporate Samurai" demeanor at all times, even when he's blushing because somebody complimented his appearance or being asked if he can catch bullets (he cannot). Naturally, he and Serra get along like a house on fire.
  • Sosuke's charge, Makoto, wants to project the aura of a big, important crime lord, despite being a literal child who's easily embarrassed and gets excited about Shonen manga. Like father, like son...
• Commonality Connection:
  • The thing that makes Morgan truly bond with Serra is her love of watching movies to observe people and their emotions to mimic them, which Morgan relates to as The Sociopath, with a flashback CG of Morgan as a child doing so as well.
  • Implied with Han who speaks highly of Creek and is clearly enraged with his killer. Not only are the two of them both young, charismatic members of the Blueblood Mafia who chafe at being exploited particularly harshly by the Oldguard, but they even hit Morgan with the exact same "Do I recognize you from somewhere? ...No, I'd remember a beauty like you" pickup line.
• Computerized Judicial System: While actually deciding guilt or innocence is still left to juries of humans, the work of managing trials is otherwise left to Add judges called Adjutants. It's mentioned that Adjutants, in turn, make decisions by mediating between a collection of nine programs representing different viewpoints and legal philosophies in an attempt to account for bias.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Tethys, the corporation and setting of Model Employee, gets a mention and a search term in Episode 1 which mentions controversy over them skirting monopoly and labor laws along with a ad by Penny.
  • An idle comment from Aidey in Episode 2 causes Sosuke to remark that he's not a machine which makes Serra perk up and say Morgan would go through a trial to prove he is in reference to Episode 1's events.
    Serra: Don't worry Sosuke. If need be, Adonai would go through a whole trial just to prove you're a machine.
• Contrived Coincidence: Despite there being dozens, if not hundreds, of Adjucant-type ADs in the system, who are randomly chosen at the start of every trial, Morgan's cases repeatedly end up in the hands of Aidey. She even lampshades the absurd coincidence of getting her twice in a row in Episode 2.
• Cop Killer: Sosuke is accused of killing an officer which leads to Police Brutality along with his case being escalated from just gang warfare into investigating the killing of the officer who was the son of two prominent politicians.
• The Corpse Stops Here:
  • Carlos is arrested after finding his dead girlfriend due to him being found over her corpse with the murder weapon in hand after the neighbors heard them arguing earlier in the night. After Morgan goes over his case, she notes that the only thing against him that holds water is his fingerprints on the weapon, with the arrest being based more on State pressure to find the Heartbreak Killer.
  • Sosuke, the defendant of Episode 2, is also caught red-handed at the crime scene. The case against him is a bit stronger since the culprit actually took steps to frame him this time, but even so, the fact that he was tortured prior to the murders and had a broken hand proves surprisingly difficult to use to overturn the evidence of "but he was there!"
• Cosmetic Award: Finishing an Episode unlocks a store where the chips earned from a high score can be spent on new phone colors and charms.
• Crapsack World: Like any good cyberpunk setting. Corporations are insanely powerful, the environment is in the midst of collapse, the surveillance state's invasiveness is in overdrive, and most people live in debt or squalor. A large part of what makes Morgan remotely sympathetic or relatable is her complete disgust at the world's current situation and her determination to involve herself in as little of it as possible.
• Criminal Found Family: The Blueblood pod that account for most of the victims of Episode 2. Just a bunch of street kids who banded together to try and make something for themselves, one of the post-episode bonus scenes shows them hanging around playing D&D in the hideout.
• Death in Custody: Morgan opens Episode 0 by dramatically saying that her client will die in prison if she doesn't do her job right. As Carlos is being charged as the Heartbreak Killer, London implies that the trope will occur on the State's orders for making the system look incompetent, and urges Morgan to consider a Plea Bargain.
• Decapitated Army: Inverted. In the backstory, the Ikariya overthrew the Blueblood Mafia by slaughtering all of their members except their leadership, who they left alive, but without any followers or heirs.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: A recurring idea is showing that laws and norms in the future have substantially changed, or are in the process of doing so.
  • The entire inciting incident of Episode 1 is that suicide in the game's world is considered a felony, meaning that David Ashur's supposed fate would cause his estate to face serious criminal charges.
  • One article suggests that large corporations are considered people, and endowed with specific rights. Expanding on this further, one search result claims that the term "meg" (meaning an employee of a MegaCorp) is considered a very offensive slur, and distrust of them is held as fundamentally wrong. However, in-game, characters have no problem tossing around the word (including law-abiding types like Farah), and face little pushback even from people the term describes, suggesting that this is less an established custom and more an idea that corporations are trying to force into being the norm.
  • Almost nobody has any thoughts on the omnipresent surveillance and constant device tracking present in the city. Morgan remarks in her inner monologue that, with Global Warming rising the sea levels and shrinking the amount of space available to people, valuing your privacy has come to be considered selfish.
• Desecrating the Dead: One of the victims of Episode 2 had his head posthumously smashed into pulp, hard enough to shatter the baseball bat it was done with. The sheer violence and cruelty of the act baffles the investigators because they don't know that the culprit isn't from the Lower Wards and doesn't know about the taboo against having recording functionality installed in your mods.
• Destroy the Evidence: The motive for Episode 2. After Officer Chopin spots the incriminating RedInk detailing the Prop 492, Officer Rogers kills him to silence him and use his blood to blot out the incriminating documents.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Morgan only began shooting victims in the heart as yet another MO of hers to throw the police off the scent, but the distinctive execution method combined with the complete lack of evidence to actually identify her and Morgan quietly moving onto less flashy murders after she uses the last of her Untagged bullets, and clears Carlos' name, means that the "Heartbreak Killer" becomes legendary across the globe rather than simply fading into the background like she wanted it to; the main Episodes proper end up with at least one mention of Heartbreak as its reputation inspires anti-corporate sentiments, copycats, and even more conspiracy theories than before now that "they" seemingly got away with evading the wrath of the State... not to mention that Emma still continues to take her own cracks at the case whenever she can.
  • For Episode 2, the Oldguard sends an assassin to punish Rogers for letting Prop 492 leak, but this makes Sosuke look guilty as sin since it appears to be retribution against him when Bluebloods want him to avoid jail. Morgan thinks any other freelance attorney would have filed for mistrial, leaving Sosuke Convicted by Public Opinion and at risk of immediate death, and news of the attempted courtroom shooting would bias any future juror.
• Dirty Cop: Episode 2 has London reveal that most cops are on the take, even if just to avoid being a victim of Unfriendly Fire from worse cops. This turns out to be why the Episode 2 murder occurred. Officer Chopin was not a dirty cop and he would have exposed the Prop 492 plot that would have greatly benefited the Lower Wards, so Officer Rogers had to silence him.
• Diving Save: Sosuke makes one to Serra in Episode 2. In this case, it didn't actually save anybody; Serra, as a Robot Girl, is Immune to Bullets, and the assailant didn't get a shot off anyway. Rather, it serves to demonstrate how close Sosuke has gotten to Serra, as well as the difference in reflexes and reactions under pressure between Serra and Sosuke.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: In-Universe, the Blueblood pod's D&D game features an impoverished village of minority "hornlings" that Miller outright describes as a ghetto, ruled over by vampires who collect taxes in blood instead of gold. As soon as they hear that setup, the pod members, who are all part of an organization where the leadership regularly takes the members' blood to rejuvenate themselves, immediately decide to murder all the vampires.
• Dramatic Irony: A prevalent theme throughout the game starting from the conclusion of Episode 0, and The Reveal that Morgan is the Heartbreak Killer and a Villain Protagonist, who uses her legal expertise and understanding of the state's methods to stay undetected —and incidentally, has a far higher bodycount than just the 6 victims connected to her untagged revolver. Many conversations take on a Double Meaning and said character's intentions are not always in-line with what other character, nor the player, may expect, leaving them constantly guessing as to what Morgan truly intends.
  • This becomes especially prevalent in Episode 2, wherein the player gets to witness the brutal murder of 4 Gangbangers and the killer frame a torture victim in their safehouse firsthand, only for Morgan to wind up being chosen to defend said victim by sheer coincidence and finding out that he'd been framed for an additional fifth victim when the police arrived. The player has to reconcile their understanding of how the crime actually played out and how the evidence portrays events to the jury without revealing how they know certain details or inconsistencies, as Morgan doesn't want to self-incriminate. Indeed exploiting this fact becomes necessary towards the case's end , as Morgan tricks Officer Rodgers into calling the murder weapon "the knife" when she'd only been referring to "the blade" in her statement, and the trial had proceeded under the assumption that Souskue's Katana was the only bladed weapon in the room until Dr. Sato confirmed the knife was an additional murder weapon in an updated autopsy report...whilst the trial was in recession, meaning only she, Morgan, Emma and AD_ 84 could have known that. For the kicker, during her Closing Statement, Morgan tells the killer that they were so Locked Out of the Loop that their attempt to frame Souskue for the multiple deaths, under the assumption that they'd want the Hound of Ikaryia taken down for their losses, actually upset the Bluebloods leadership, due to Sousuke being a Living Maguffin, and what Rodgers assumed was an assassination aimed at their hated enemy in court the prior day was actually intended for him, so if he doesn't confess to Chopin's death, he's a marked man anyway.
• Economy Cast: Bigger than the inspiration's, but not by much. Every case Morgan works is prosecuted by the same DA and overseen by the same Adjutant (judge), with two whole homicide detectives to choose from and a recurring medical examiner added to the pile. The small array of detectives is at least Justified - with almost all investigative work done by OPTICS and forensics, the police Homicide department has become a redundancy with its budget slashed to the point where its implied that London and Reyes are the only two detectives in their precinct. Aidey, meanwhile, is completely unjustified and correspondingly constantly Lampshaded.
• Encyclopedia Exposita: The Terms menu, framed as the results of internet searches on Morgan's phone, which fills with information on the history, technology, and laws of the game's setting as they're first mentioned... except when that information is restricted, of course.
• Enhance Button: Defied. When a blurry photo of the Heartbreak Killer is found, Morgan is quick to shoot it down along with Reyes' suggestion that they could enhance it.
  Morgan: ...Where to begin? Far away, unfocused, ultra-low resolution, zoomed-in, blurred, color-shifted- And so compressed it looks like it's from another century.
  Reyes: ...There are tools that could enhance-
  Morgan: "Enhance" this image any further and I could count the pixels on one hand- And you could kiss its admissibility in court goodbye.
• Exact Words: The profiles have a bit of fun with how one character's occupation is framed. Namely, Morgan's: During most of Episode 0 her occupation is listed as "Criminal Defense Attorney", but after the reveal that she's Heartbreak, her new profile (and the ones she has in later Episodes) instead puts it down as "Criminal, Defense Attorney", with an added comma.
• Eyepatch of Power: Reyes wears a medical eyepatch over her cybernetic eye when it's not in use. Morgan and London both comment that their first impression was her having a fourteen year old's fashion sense. Subverted in that the reasons are largely medical, as the eye processes information faster than her brain can, and she needs to keep it closed and have an eyepatch over it since it can still 'see' through her eyelid and has some regrets going through with getting it.
• Eye Remember: One of the victims of Episode 2 had his head smashed into a pulp. Given that he had Modded eyes, Morgan says the culprit must have wanted to destroy them so they couldn't lift a recording of the culprit, but Han says that can't be it, as nobody with any sort of recording function would ever be allowed into Blueblood territory. Of course, Morgan, not being from the Lower Wards, didn't know that when she was smashing his head in.
• Face Framed in Shadow:
  • Starting in Episode 2, Morgan has a sprite where she holds a card over the left half of her face and and leaves it shadowed when she's completely upturning Emma's argument.
  • When Officer Rogers reveals his serious side, he wears his cap which casts a shadow over part of his face and leaves one eye peering out of the dark.
• "Facing the Bullets" One-Liner: Daisuke recounts the Fall of the Leaves where he led the Ikariya in slaughtering the Blueblood and only remembers his last victim because they chose to Face Death with Dignity.
  Daisuke: Why aren't you afraid?
  Sosuke's Mother: I can't be afraid. I'm a mom now.
• Finger Firearms: In Episode 2, a Blueblood thug attempts to assassinate someone right in the middle of court using a gun built into his prosthetic hand, consisting of a pneumatic launcher and an enamel bullet designed to bypass metal detectors. Despite Emma and London's attempts to assure her that it was an extreme situation, Judge Barrows is shaken by the revelation that State building-level security can be so easily bypassed.
• First-Episode Twist: The prologue ends by revealing Morgan is a Serial Killer. The devs admitted in an interview that they pretty much stopped treating it as a surprise around the time of Episode One's pre-release material due to how foundational it is.
• Flashback Nightmare: Episode 2's interludes are Morgan's dreams of her school memories which she would much rather not dwell on. Namely about her loneliness and the implication that she took on someone else's dream to become a lawyer or even impersonating them.
• Foe Romance Subtext:
  • Though she'll never admit it, Morgan is obsessed with Emma, to the point where she subconsciously picked six victims who look like her in a row. nth Circle's social media accounts all make it clear this is extremely intentional.
  • Near the end of Episode 2, Emma refers to her thoughts on Heartbreak as "obsession" and even "puppy love". Poor Morgan may well be caught in the most twisted Two-Person Love Triangle in history.
• Foil: of the Devil is, in many ways, a character piece about Morgan before anything else, and as an extension of that, many of her most important relationships are with people who are nothing like her:
  • Morgan and Serra:
    • Visually, Morgan is a tall, lean, pale redhead with her hair tied up, dressed in a black suit. Serra is short, dark-skinned, has long, loose green hair, and... is also pretty thin, but her heavy white coat widens her silhouette considerably. Serra's design notes note that her color palette is the exact opposite of Morgan's.
    • Morgan is savvy and cynical, while Serra is naive and innocent.
    • Morgan is surrounded by devilish themes and motifs, while Serra is dressed in white and has a name that's a mild speech impediment away from being "Seraph".
    • All of which feeds into the core, fundamental gap between them: Serra is an inhuman existence who nonetheless possesses more humanity than anybody, while Morgan is a natural-born, baseline human who lacks something fundamentally human.
  • Morgan and Emma:
    • As mentioned above, Morgan is tall, lean, and dresses in deep black. Emma is short, chubby, and prefers soft, pastel pinks.
    • Emma is perpetually disheveled, and one of the first things she does in the game is make note of how constantly put-together Morgan is.
    • Morgan's Animal Motif is canines (wolves), while Emma's is cats.
    • Morgan is proud of her ability to fall asleep just about anywhere, while Emma has issues sleeping.
    • Morgan plays gambling games, while Emma plays Abstract Strategy Games (and Gacha Games, which Morgan looks down on as not real gambling), both of which are symbolically represented when their respective player is in control of the courtroom.
    • Morgan was born the day after Christmas. Emma was born the day before Valentine's Day.
    • Emma reads True Crime, while Morgan regards people interested in crimes that don't personally involve them as obnoxious, meddlesome busybodies.
    • Morgan always acts cool and in-control, but our access to her inner monologue lets us see that's she's actually very impulsive and good mostly at self-deception. Emma openly allows herself to be seen as a disaster, but she has Morgan's number at almost every turn.
    • Morgan is a Straw Nihilist who tells Serra that individual humans are small and powerless and therefore there's nothing more to life than doing what you want. Emma is an Anti-Nihilist who believes that she, at least, is very powerful, and therefore that she has an obligation to do as much good as possible however she can.
  • Morgan and David:
    • A lot of Serra's appearance was passed down from her father, including the green hair and the preference for lighter-colored clothes.
    • Morgan puts a lot of thought and effort into making herself The Social Expert, but often misunderstands people in interactions longer than a few minutes and has a tragically short list of people she's actually close to. David was a human disaster barely capable of functioning in day-to-day life, but had a magnetic charisma that made him extremely popular and demonstrated a surprisingly sharp understanding of other people in his diary.
    • Morgan's cynicism is well-established, while David had complete faith in humanity and human potential.
    • Despite being each others' closest friends, Morgan and David each had a Dark Secret they kept from each other. But David's was that he had illegally brought countless lives into the world, while Morgan's was that she's taken countless lives out of it.
• A Fool for a Client: After putting herself on the line to legally defend Serra (even though, legally speaking, she's defending herself as Serra's owner), Morgan chooses to represent herself in court. Her mentor texts her about what a spectacularly bad idea it is and paraphrases the "fool for a client" adage.
• Foreign Cuss Word: Reyes drops an "anj*ng" (almost certainly "anjing", Indonesian for "bitch") while getting worked up over the lack of artistry in modern car design.
• Frame-Up: Episode 2 has Sosuke getting framed for 5 counts of murder, the 4 Bluebloods and Officer Chopin. Morgan is naturally responsible for framing him of the Bluebloods' deaths, but it was Officer Rogers who framed him for killing Officer Chopin as a spur-of-the-moment cover up and to deliver the Blueblood's most hated enemy, the Hound of Ikariya, straight to jail. Unfortunately for him, he wasn't high enough on the Bluebloods' chain to know that was the last thing the Bluebloods would want.
• Funny Contact Name: Morgan has plenty of these, her contacts listing Masters as "Witch", Fran as "Brat", and Reyes as "Chuckles".
• Fun with Acronyms:
  • The crime scene recreation tool is referred to as "Augmented Reality Crime Scene" or ARCS.
  • The surveillance system is referred to as "Opt-In Crime Surveillance System" or OPTICS System.
  • A Tenet-compliant program is an "Automated Dependant" or "Add".
• The Generation Gap: The game has several examples of generational gaps as part of its extensive Worldbuilding:
  • Morgan's Mentor Archetype, Victoria Masters, is a member of the Real Life Generation Z, and dialogue between her and Morgan establishes that said gen are largely remembered as irresponsible, completely self-centered Hedonists speaking in incomprehensible slang (all stereotypes Victoria shamelessly embodies herself).
  • Discussed extensively in the prologue's post-game interview with Detective London. He tells Serra that the generation before his own were known as the "Sheltered Generation", both as in "sheltered upbringing" and "shelter in place": they lived through extremely frightening times (economic instability, wars all around the globe, climate change-induced natural disasters), and as a result, they valued safety and stability above all else; they're implied to be the generation most responsible for creating the game's hypercapitalist surveillance state Cyberpunk dystopia setting. London's generation, who came after them, were called "Generation Zen" for their "emotional stability" and cynicism. London remarks that he never liked the name, regarding it as guys three times his age calling he and his friends "mature" for recognizing that their lives were totally hopeless.
  • The Blueblood Mafia are openly segregated between the "Oldguard" in charge and the "Youngblood" foot soldiers. There is constant, simmering tension over Youngblood concerns that the Oldguard regard them as nothing but disposable pawns to be thrown away at the earliest convenience and that the two sides are planning for an Inevitable Mutual Betrayal - not unreasonably, seeing as how the Oldguard literally regularly take the Youngbloods' blood and organs to rejuvenate themselves. The one sample of an Oldguard member shown (and Han suggests that she's one of the nicer examples), Hana Kim, is an irritable and foul mouthed old woman who constantly rants about the superiority of her own generation and insists that she's always "Politically Correct" (even when the person she's lecturing is a dark-skinned trans woman), while the Youngbloods we see are a Criminal Found Family - wary of outsiders, but friendly and loyal to their own "pod".
• Good Cop/Bad Cop: Before they're introduced properly, the UI refers to London as Good(?) Cop and Reyes as Bad Cop. London is calmer and has been around the block, while Reyes is a freshly promoted detective chomping at the bit to secure the arrest on the Heartbreak Killer. While their personalities line up with the trope, their reasoning is a bit more muddled - London's "calmness" is shown to be motivated mostly by cynicism, and he's pretty shameless about being on the take - not for anything major (he claims), but on the take nonetheless, while Reyes's irritability is shown to come from a crippling inability to tolerate any amount of injustice, even towards the criminals she arrests.
• Guilty Until Someone Else Is Guilty:
  • Averted in Episode 0. Morgan's job is just proving that her client couldn't have done it and it's on the police to find the killer. Morgan certainly wouldn't want to implicate herself after all.
  • Played straight in Episode 1 due to Serra being suspected of being an AI. With the amount of prejudice towards the prime suspect, Morgan has to prove without a shred of doubt that someone else was the murderer.
  • Episode 2 has Sosuke labeled as a Cop Killer and Convicted by Public Opinion as the Hound of Ikariya, so he'd be killed by the police or vengeful Youngbloods the moment he walks out on the street. Aside from proving that he couldn't have done it, Morgan has to go through the extra effort of proving someone else could have since he's the only suspect there. The Cop Killing proves to be the biggest sticking point: once Morgan is able to get a confession out of Chopin's killer, Emma drops that charge, then admits that the case against Sosuke for the other four isn't very strong and lets him go for those, as well. Once again, this is to Morgan's benefit.
• Hand Cannon: Tanks' gun from Episode 2, the MAG-US, is an enormous double-barrel pistol with a muzzle the size of Morgan's forehead, loaded with exploding shells. Naturally, it turns into a murder weapon.
• Hidden Backup Prince: There are rumors of the Little Lord, the Sole Survivor blood heir to the Blueblood's fortune who will return and raise them to glory and riches again. This turns out to be Invoked by Daisuke who took Sosuke in to raise him as the ultimate bargaining tool against the Bluebloods and to have them laser-focused on recovering him instead of planning around other ways to regain their strength.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Reyes comments on the fidget-tubbies' lack of value and cites that they haven't even been graded, which earns an internal Lampshade by Morgan about her surprising knowledge of collectibles. A Q&A answers that Reyes likes the validation and authority of the appraisal process.
  • Morgan shows quite a bit despite by all accounts (including her own) being The Sociopath:
    • She can inform Carlos about Diane still trying to organize his medication after their argument, despite having no practical reason to do so now that she's ensured that Heartbreak will remain a cold case and likely will never see her client again; Morgan admits afterwards that she's confused about why she did so, since she didn't even care about who either of them even was before she shot Diane, and chalks it up to hubris after already being so involved with the case.
    • Her reaction to David's death (immediately denying that he could really be dead, fumbling her cigarette when she sees his body), and her flimsy justification for murdering his stalker, when she originally only wanted to scare him off, indicate that she valued David as a friend, and is saddened by his death.
    • Similarly, Morgan insists to others that she's protecting Serra because of the admittedly huge price tag attached to her, and to Serra that it's to repay a favor she owes David. Intermittent flashes of the CG of young Morgan staring at the TV when she makes these claims indicate that the real reason Morgan is protecting Serra is that she sees herself in her. When a Blueblood gunman interrupts the first trial of Episode 2, right behind where the Defense stands and thus putting Serra in the line of fire, Morgan actually reaches out, seemingly trying to push her out of the way for reasons she doesn't understand herself in the moment.
  • One of the Episode 2 bonus scenes shows Tanks is the Game Master of the crew's tabletop sessions and quite expressive in his narration.
• Hidden Eyes: After Episode 0's The Reveal of Morgan being the Heartbreak Killer, the CG of her having Carlos sign his release papers has her eyes just out of the frame to add to the unsettling realization.
• High Times Future: Deconstructed. "Drugs", as a concept, are legal, but every specific drug in existence is legally owned by this or that Meg, and selling something you don't have the patent to is still illegal. In addition, the new, above-board drug market is subject to all the competitive incentives of a free market, resulting in a chemical arms race as Meg scientists compete to create even more intense and addictive drugs to dominate the drug market with, but no incentive to work on the genuine harmful aspects of the cocaines and heroins of the world. And organized crime, still looking to maintain the profits of the old drug trade, has backyard chemists whipping up their own untested concoctions and pushing them untested onto the black market to milk what profit they can before the Megs manage to analyze and legally process their claims on the latest creation. Even Reyes, who usually swears by the State and all its laws, derides the "White Wave" as an abject failure, stating that she's seen firsthand that deaths by drug overdose are more common than ever. The game's argument goes that, without first dealing with the web of toxic incentives that got them outlawed in the first place, "legalizing" drugs will just result in them becoming part of a controlling, abusive system little different from a traditional cartel.
• Holding the Floor: Morgan's plan for Episode 1's trial is simply to stall for time until Serra can finish decrypting the security footage in David's lab and use it as a silver bullet.
• Host Club: Morgan has to go to one in Episode 2. Adelaide Han, one of the case's key witnesses, is its former top hostess, and women still anticipate her comeback even though she's long retired. Its Mama, Hana Kim, is a crotchety old hag who gets very upset if Morgan doesn't follow club etiquette and buy some extremely overpriced drinks.
• I Call It "Vera": Sosuke's sword is named Yoru which Morgan cringes at while Serra finds it very cool.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The episodes are named after different phrases relating to the Devil:
  • Episode 0: Speak of the Devil "and he shall appear".
  • Episode 1: "an idle mind" is the Devil's workshop.
  • Episode 2: Give the Devil "His due".
  • Episode 3: The Devil "quoting scripture" for His purposes.
• Implausible Deniability: When Reyes copies Kagu_Ya's signature Eyelid Pull Taunt and gets called on it, she immediately denies knowing who that is... which only draws more attention to herself, seeing as how Kagu_Ya is a quadruple platinum selling bona fide social phenomenon.
• I Never Said It Was Poison:
  • A recurring theme of the second chapter. Morgan committed four of the five murders under investigation, and therefore has intimate knowledge of most of the details of the crime scene. This puts them in a situation where they know how and where it's been tampered with and why it has so many odd discrepancies, and even some discrepancies that nobody else would know about, but can't say how they know this. A few times they slip up (for instance, immediately identifying a gun found at the scene as belonging to Tanks), but, they manage to cover their ass by explaining how they "learned" it normally (for instance, pointing out that Tanks is wearing an empty holster and there are no other guns in the building).
  • Morgan nails down Officer Rogers by repeatedly saying that he got his fingerprints on the murder weapon, with her presenting incorrect weapons until she gets to "the blade" that killed Chopin and he gets frustrated enough to yell that he didn't get his fingerprints on the knife. The only people who should be aware that the knife is the true murder weapon instead of the katana are Morgan, Emma, Aidey, and Sato due to the rest of the court being cleared out for Han's testimony before the knife was finished being analyzed.
• Infraction Distraction: Morgan tells Serra about her hobby of going to illegal underground casinos to gamble, causing Serra to remark that she had noticed that she often left the apartment at odd hours without taking her phone. Knowing Morgan, the claim is almost certainly true, but letting Serra know about it keeps her from thinking anything about the occasions when Morgan's actually beating people to death in back alleys.
• The Insomniac: Emma does not sleep much - and by much, we mean "for days at a time". Her comments imply that its because her brain is too active to fully shut down.
• Ironic Name: The Bluebloods used to be the top gang, but after the Ikariya mowed them down 30 years ago, their only territory is now in the Lower Wards.
• Ironic Nickname: Reyes is scowling most of the time, so London calls her "Sunshine". Morgan has her listed in her phone contacts as "Chuckles".
• It's Personal: Morgan normally kills for the pleasure of it, but after David showed up at her apartment traumatized and packing enough to stay a week, she hunts down his Stalker Without a Crush the very same night. Unlike the rest of her kills where she only bothers to recall how she committed the deed, she remembers the victim as a deranged Conspiracy Theorist she was utterly repulsed by who put everything he had towards harassing David, and she's certain his ashes are contributing more to the world as seaweed fertilizer than anything he's ever done in life.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: As much as Reyes loathes Morgan and is readily the bad cop to London's good cop, she is at least serious about being a law enforcer.
  • Despite her bluster, she agrees to have Sosuke's injuries looked at and to guard him from further Police Brutality.
    Reyes: Trust me, if I had the chance to take a swing at that son of a bitch-
    Morgan: Yeah, you already called him that. A piece of shit, a bastard, a killer... But unlike every other cop I walked past to get in here- You've yet to call Sosuke an animal.
    Reyes: ...So what? What the hell does that matter?
    Morgan: [thinking] It's the only thing that matters... I've got the outsider's perspective, so I know: Your average human can do anything to anyone- So long as they're not a person.
  • After the attempted courtroom shooting, Reyes' first reaction to seeing Morgan is to yell that Morgan and London should be at the hospital getting debriefed instead of investigating. Later at night, she drunkenly forces her way into Morgan's apartment to provide security detail (and hang out and be an annoyance for Morgan).
• Just a Machine: Although Adds are generally thought of favorably by society, it's only as property simulating humans, at best having emotional value akin to a pet. Adds actually being existentially 'human' is considered impossibly dangerous. This attitude is summed up by an article discussing the invoked Uncanny Valley, concluding that humanization ultimately makes people less comfortable, after reaching a peak, beyond which they become disturbed by the implications that the thing is human. As Morgan informs Serra when she's put on trial for being an AI, showing her true emotions will make her more likely to be destroyed.
• Justice by Other Legal Means: Defied. Officer Rogers' final piece of resistance is telling Emma to cover for him so they can put Sosuke in jail for his past killings, but she shuts him down hard. She is not going to prejure herself to help someone who's 100% guilty and the State cares a lot more about the death of an officer who was the son of two prominent city councilmen than the corps and gangs killing each other.
• Kansas City Shuffle: In the opening sequence of Episode 2, Morgan speaks to a group of low-level Bluebloods in the guise of a hapless corporate drone whose boss asked her to buy some drugs for his son and his friends after finding out she smoked a few times in college. Eventually, Morgan starts asking questions about her actual goal "out of curiosity", causing the Bluebloods to realize she isn't just some corporate drone, but actually... a Meg spy. Which is equally wrong, but causes them to credit her with more connections and resources than she actually possesses, greatly smoothing the negotions.
• The Ketchup Test: Serra can analyze blood, but her sensory part for doing so is her tongue so she's very grossed out at the thought of tasting human blood. She throws up after Morgan prods her into performing the first blood test and she refuses to conduct any further ones in Episode 2.
• The Killer in Me: The end of Episode 0 reveals Morgan is a remorseless Serial Killer, with the Heartbreak Killer simply being her latest work. A flashback of her killing Diane is shown just after she convinces the detectives that Carlos is innocent.
• Kirk Summation: Serra gives her father's killer one at the end of Episode 1.
  Serra: Those animals you're talking about do all of the sharing and the loving and the living and the dying in this world. And if they were all truly hard-coded to be as selfish as you say... Humanity would have died on the vine a long time ago.
• Law of Disproportionate Response: Morgan is The Perfectionist, so when she pulls off six perfect murders, but discovers a pile of junk shards sitting in the last crime scene, she utterly trashes the place out of rage at her flawless pattern being ruined, and justifies it to herself as making the room completely messy to match it.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • In the midst of Episode 0's The Reveal that Morgan is the killer, one of her thoughts is "Oh, don't look so surprised," followed by a pause in the textbox before loading the last word "lady." She's mentally snarking at the victim for thinking that her boyfriend came back, but implicitly addressing the player.
  • Morgan's interview has Serra quote the "Almost Christmas" meme from Ace Attorney, as Morgan's birthday is December 26th. Morgan comments on how 'original' her insights are, which is a Cloud Cuckoolander observation in-universe, and a Lampshade Hanging on the Shout-Out to the player.
• Lies to Children: Morgan tells Serra the watered-down story of the favor she owes David, but it gets the gist across that she stepped out and made David's stalker disappear after his traumatic experience and David lied to the police about her whereabouts without any prompting. The difference being she killed him instead of scaring him to get out of town.
• Little Useless Gun: Bowen Bresson's gun from Episode 2 has a caliber narrow than his finger because that's where it's hidden, coupled with a weak pneumatic launcher and a bullet made of enamel. Serra remarks that she feels guilty for freezing up and not having taken the bullet, since she would have been able to No-Sell it without difficulty.
• Lodged Blade Removal: Miller gets stabbed in the neck and pulls out the knife, but it's immediately pointed out that doing so increases the blood loss and leads to collapsing a moment later.
• Logic Bomb: The priceless value of the Noh Mask is that it continuously displays a Droste Image of a face within a face which would cause any Add or camera looking at it to malfunction and shut down.
• Manipulative Editing: One article details a recent kidnapping and rescue of a corporate heiress from a group of disgruntled ex-military operatives. All the quotes in the article have been chopped down, and often had the gaps filled in with lengthy bracketed "paraphrases", designed to make the kidnappers seem much more violent and disturbed and the people who caught them seem filled with righteous anger. All the stuff that isn't in brackets suggests that the kidnappers were quite reasonable and their anger at the heiress's father was justified (his company had created technology based on broadcasting pop-up ads into soldiers' HUD visors), while the officers were sympathetic and willing to negotiate.
  "We wouldn't really describe this as a terrorist act... [but the sick, twisted terrorists who committed this atrocity] did do the courtesy of communicating openly and often."
• Married to the Job: David had quite a few relationships, but his dedication to engineering, and poor relationship skills, led to all his suitors eventually leaving him.
• A Million Is a Statistic: Discussed in Episode 1. Morgan observes that the same society that calls the Heartbreak Killer "evil" for shooting six women doesn't extend the same label to anyone involved in the Blakefort Industrial Disaster, which caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, injuries, and birth defects.
• Misconstrued Pedestal: As the game goes on, Morgan repeatedly runs into and reads news articles about followers of Heartbreak, whether they be pure Conspiracy Theorists making up motives from whole cloth or just people driven to desperation by the State and accepting Heartbreak as the only inspiration they can find. Of course, the real Heartbreak is just a Serial Killer who murders people because they enjoy it, but since they can't say anything without exposing themself, the movement keeps on gaining steam.
  Serra: ...Perhaps that is the problem, then. If they're nothing... if they represent nothing... Then they can stand for whatever the crowd wants them to.
• Motive Misidentification: In Episode 1, Morgan delivers her closing argument to the culprit, citing the motive as a combination of jealousy, and getting rid of David to legally keep his IPs within the company, before the grace period of his quiet termination ended. After the trial, the culprit privately confesses the real reason to Morgan: horror at David's optimistic plan to introduce AI to the world by hiding them amongst Noble's android product line and revealing the fact in the future as proof that they can co-exist as equals with nothing to fear. Jung notes with disgust that his actions inadvertently led to the company selling sentient beings, and worse, proving that there's a market for them which would lead to countless digital souls being created to be sold into slavery. She planned to intimidate him into stopping with the poison in his system, but ended up letting him die peacefully once he started nodding off.
• Must State If You're a Cop: A variant. In Episode 2, Tanks demands that Morgan smoke a cigarette before they can negotiate, with Morgan immediately recognizing that said cigarette is laced with drugs. Morgan is completely incredulous both that Creek's pod think she could ever be a cop and that they think cops can't use drugs while undercover.
• Mystical 108: Makoto and Sosuke are ambushed by the Bluebloods while leaving a meeting held on floor 108 of Crane Towers. After the case is resolved, Makoto sentences Sosuke to 108 years of "manual labor" (read: serving at Makoto's side, without any other job responsibilities) as "punishment" for all the "trouble" he's caused the family.
• Needle in a Stack of Needles: Han can't remove the loose RedInk page from the crime scene since it's already recorded in ARCS and attempting to take it would trigger a ping, so the next best thing she can do is add trash onto the set so anyone looking would just think it's another piece of trash.
• Never Suicide: Episode 1 is thought to be a suicide, as the only witness was on camera and drank everything the victim did, yet failed to die, with the natural conclusion being that the victim went to a private area with no cameras to poison himself. As per this trope, things aren't so clean as that.
• Non-Heteronormative Society: One of the few good things about 2086 is how LGBTQIA+ people are treated completely normally without so much as a comment on it. The last part of Sato's interview has her mention how much faster and easier it is to access hormone therapy and affirmative surgery compared to the past.
• The Nose Knows: Serra has an enhanced sense of smell which allows her to track down Morgan's knife after being prompted by Morgan to search for a strong scent of blood.
• Not Blood, Not Family: The reason for the schism between the Blueblood's Oldguard and Youngbloods. With the rumors of the Little Lord, the Sole Survivor blood heir who can access their locked funds, comes the feeling that the adopted Youngbloods are just disposable tools for them.
• Notice This: The Testimony Insights option causes cross-examination statements to have specific words highlighted in red to show which part of the statement is being objected to.
• Not the First Victim: Emma states this has to be the case with Heartbreak, since shooting people through the heart with a single shot each takes too much experience (both with guns and with the act of murder) to pull off on your first try. She's even more right than she knows: Morgan has been at it for a long time, refusing to stick to a single M.O. so nobody puts together than there's a serial killer to catch.
• Not the Intended Use: When Morgan purchases a concealed carry firearm in Episode 1, she uses it as a sensor to tell when there's police nearby, due to the intrusive security measures installed in it automatically engaging the safety.
• Oblivious Mockery: An extremely dark example when Emma delivers her analysis of Heartbreak's psychology - including calling them childish, saying they probably don't stand out much, and (accurately) accusing them of throwing a temper tantrum at one of their crime scenes - without being aware that Heartbreak is the person she's talking to.
• Old Cop, Young Cop: London and Reyes, in that order. London is often made fun of for his age, and is cynical, lazy, and happy to admit that the police are often less than ideal in their actions, while Reyes, who has back and forths with Morgan regarding her youth, is overly dutiful, uptight, and has total, unthinking belief in the State. Despite their differences, Reyes unhesitatingly calls London her hero.
• Only One Save File: Highroller Mode enforces this, and prohibits loading during Trial deductions. In exchange, there's a higher ante for credits, and keychains that are exclusive to Highroller Mode.
• Organic Technology: "Warm" androids are made using cloned organic tissue in addition to their mechanical innards. Morgan thinks to herself how this just makes them more fragile than regular androids, and Reyes sardonically derides them, saying "they may as well call them the adult line."
• Organ Theft: The Rust, the low-functioning anarchists among the city's criminal element, make most of their income by repairing Mods and reselling them at prices the needy can actually afford. Sounds nice... until you realize they have to get those re-sellable body parts from somewhere.
• Parting-Words Regret: Carlos' last interaction with Diane was an argument, so he worries that she died hating him. If Morgan investigated properly, she can present the pill organizer Diane was holding and reasons out that she was preparing his pills for the week to ease his concerns.
• The Perfect Crime: The source of the Heartbreak Killer's notoriety is that they've managed to kill six people and not get caught despite the OPTICS system recording everything. The police are even more frustrated with it because there's simply no evidence at the crime scenes, nor a connection between the victims, and consequently no suspects. Even Emma, who has some astonishing insights about the Heartbreak Killer, admits that they would have to keep killing for her to gather more clues about their identity, and she believes that they've stopped - that is, stopped shooting people in the heart, which is an easily identifiable MO, not that they've stopped killing. Episode 1 shows that they're used as an anti-corp symbol because they escaped any punishment for their crimes, and that Emma is still looking for them.
• Perfect Poison: The murder weapon in Episode 1, which is odorless, tasteless, colorless, kills at extremely low doses, has barely any symptoms, and can't be treated because the doctors have no idea what it is. Yumi only identies poisoning as the cause of death because the substance was found in his body and there aren't any other possibilities. It turns out to actually be Synatonin, an artifical neurotransmitter used by Warm androids, and completely non-toxic in isolation - rather, having it in the system massively increases the human body's metabolism of alcohol, to the point where the single cup of whiskey David drank was enough to give him fatal alcohol poisoning. It also isn't naturally colorless; the culprit had to artificially remove its pigment before adding it to the drinks.
• Pet the Dog: After Morgan makes the connection that Creek wanted to contact Mirei to get medicine for his brother and Serra pushes the point, Mirei gives a hidden link that provides financing options for the medicine needed.
• Pillow Silencer: Mentioned off-hand when the Heartbreak Killer complains about how loud old-fashioned gunpowder guns are and complains that their latest victim didn't have any throw pillows to do this with.
• Placebo Eureka Moment: Morgan recalls how David often went to her for advice and explained his problems to her, then thanked her for the advice without her saying a thing.
• Playing Card Motifs: Comes with the territory of Morgan's gambling addiction.
  • At times, Morgan is represented with a king, with both black-eyed and red-eyed Morgan being shown.
  • The evidence is represented as cards with Morgan's opposition stating their theory by laying down the community cards of evidence and their conclusion which Morgan wins against with the evidence she plays to counter it.
  • In Episode 2, Morgan picks up a new animation, represented by declaring check. Unlike Emma's chess-based check, which happens whenever she reveals a piece of strong evidence (with a check in chess representing a threat that needs to be dealt with), Morgan's check comes up when she tries to understate her position and lure Emma into saying something volatile (with a check in poker representing staying in the game but not making any clear claims about one's chances). This is represented by a game of Texas hold 'em with three queens revealed—when Morgan shows that she has a perfect countermeasure to Emma's claim, this is demonstrated by an animation of her revealing the fourth queen.
• Plea Bargain: London suggests that Morgan have Carlos accept a plea deal as an alternative to the State possibly arranging a Death in Custody, due to the Heartbreak Killer making them look bad. Morgan internally refuses that option because Carlos' life would still be a living hell from being declared guilty. And also because the evidence wouldn't line up perfectly, possibly leading to more scrutiny in the case, which could lead to her getting caught.
• Poison and Cure Gambit: Invoked, but ultimately Subverted. Jung poisoned David and intended to intimidate him into stopping his plan to unveil AI to the world by threatening to withhold the cure. Once he started falling asleep however, she couldn't bring herself to yell at her friend and ended up letting him pass away peacefully.
• Police Brutality: Sosuke is brutalized in custody due to Officer Rogers testifying that he killed Officer Chopin which led to many additional "unexplained" wounds on him in his medical record. Morgan has to rope London and Reyes into taking shifts to watch over him at night with Serra to ensure that he isn't killed before the trial ends.
• Pop Quiz: After reading an article, Morgan thinks about the takeaway and choosing the correct answer from the choices earns some extra credits.
• Power Limiter: Collars prevent the use of mods by using an electromagnet to interfere with any signals sent to augments below the neck.
• Pragmatic Villainy:
  • While Morgan is the true killer of Episode 0 and gets paid by the State regardless of how Carlos' defense goes, she chooses to defend him properly as she wants the Heartbreak Killer to fade away into obscurity rather than risk getting exposed from all the media attention looking at the case and supposed killer.
  • Han explains the Bluebloods have no interest in messing with the crime scene since they don't want Sosuke Off on a Technicality when the State already has its eyes set on him. Besides, Cyanus Security has a legitimate reputation to keep in securing the crime scene.
• Private Eye Monologue: Like any good Noir protagonist, Morgan's inner monologue is thoughtful, evocative, and makes regular use of extended metaphor. The trope is a constant throughout the game, but it's also Parodied in Episode 2: when Morgan finds herself literally dealing with a smoky Femme Fatale darkening the door to her office, she can't help herself: the entire world turns black and white, her metaphors get longer, more convoluted, and more based on drink and cigarettes, and start appearing typed across the screen by a typewriter instead of constrained to her dialog box. When Morgan thinks Mirei has shown up at her apartment again, the typing starts up, only for Morgan to cut it off when she realizes it's someone else.
• Production Foreshadowing: Each Episode has one article that covers a major player in the next one.
  • Episode 0 has an article about Noble Electronics' new Warm android line and the company's Lead Programmer, David Ashur. Morgan specifically notes that he's in the news again, evidently showing some personal familiarity; the following episode has him as the victim of a poisoning and delves into their Odd Friendship.
  • Episode 1's article makes mention of the Ikariya family and the contrast between their apparent criminal past and current Nouveau Riche status; Morgan has to defend their Head of Personnel Security, Sosuke Ikariya, from accusations of murder in the next episode.
• Propping Up Their Patsy:
  • Morgan is the killer of Episode 0 and makes an honest effort to defend Carlos because she wants the Heartbreak Killer to fade away into obscurity from lack of evidence rather than risk the media looking deeper if Carlos is declared guilty for it. She also gets paid either way as the defense attorney, and likes having a win over the State, gloating about getting "the best seat in the house".
  • Episode 2 has Morgan being forced to defend Sosuke after framing him for the murder of 4 Bloodbloods due to him also being accused of being a Cop Killer which would increase the scrutiny of the case, and being personally summoned to take the case by House Ikariya, which would be difficult for her to refuse.
• Punctuality Is for Peasants: A recurring theme throughout Episode 1 - Noble's executives and shareholders all believe that speaking first is a sign of weakness, so they always leave Morgan waiting. Morgan can either play along or wait them out each time. In the final meeting with Noble's shareholders, Morgan can completely flip the script on them and cite their lateness in order to question their competence. Doing so causes all of them to immediately "arrive" and earns the player bonus credit for the power play.
• Reassigned to Antarctica:
  • The homicide department, of all places, has become the go-to place for this, as massive advancements in forensic science and the ubiquity of OPTICS have made it so that a majority of murders get solved without any real need for detective work, leaving the department as the only State department with its budget shrinking. When Morgan first goes in Episode 0, she finds that, even for the investigation into the headline-grabbing Heartbreak Killer, there are only two detectives in the entire office: Qasim London, an old cop who's stopped putting effort into his job after years of high-intensity work in Arson and Organized Crime, and Farah Reyes, an extremely uptight rookie who refuses to play department politics.
  • Officers Tariq Chopin and Hughie Rogers, the victim of Episode 2 and his partner, are described as having spent a lot of time doing "community outreach" lecturing at schools and such and kept away from anything important, Chopin because, like Reyes, he refused to "play the game" with the other cops, but was from a family of politicians and thus couldn't just be fired (or killed in a "tragic friendly fire accident"), and Rogers because he barely passed his shooting scores and generally came across as useless.
• Red Riding Hood Replica: Morgan's outfit for the beginning of Episode 2 is dubbed Red Rider Hood in the gallery art. Red Rider Hood is a superstition in the Lower Wards about a little girl in a red rain coat seeking revenge after getting killed in a shootout between cops and robbers and so wearing red or seeing someone else wearing it is an omen of bad luck or death.
  Spot her on a misty night, end up dead by morning light.
• Resolved Noodle Incident: The Virtual Work Release Program, briefly mentioned in Episode 0 with an inmate Driven to Suicide and the lack of detail invoking Nothing Is Scarier, is explained in Episode 2. Prisoners in it are shaved down, chained in the same room, and left with nothing to do until they Go Mad from the Isolation and break, at which point the State asks if they would like something to do.
• Reverse Whodunnit: Zig-Zagged in Episode 2. The episode's opening scene shows an identified killer committing murder, early Ace Attorney case style, setting up one of these. However, in the time between when that culprit leaves and Morgan is brought on to the case, an additional body turns up at the crime scene, and when the scene is investigated, there are several discrepancies between the case the player was shown and the evidence found. In addition, since the known culprit in the case is Morgan herself, the player is actively trying to avoid the majority of the murders being led to a correct solution - and since she's still the protagonist and the game's only around its halfway mark, they can be pretty confident they'll succeed.
• Rewatch Bonus:
  • Going through Episode 0 again after knowing Morgan is the Heartbreak Killer highlights quite a bit of wording.
    • When Morgan is introduced as "Morgan Criminal Lawyer", "criminal" is the last word to fade away.
    • Morgan makes sure to ask and note what the police know about the crime to avoid giving away the details she knows as the killer.
    • When Reyes announces she's got a picture of the Heartbreaker Killer, Morgan is sure it's not that solid because otherwise she wouldn't be standing there.
      Reyes: But your luck just ran out. Because the net scrubbers found a cam active at the exact moment of the shooting. And right now...
      Reyes: [staring directly at Morgan] I'm staring at a photo of the killer.
      Morgan: ...Wanna bet? (A photo of the shooter? If she had that, we wouldn't still be talking.)
      [...]
      Morgan: (Alright, this isn't good, but it's a far cry from the worst-case scenario I envisioned. ...You could even say I got lucky. Which means the stakes are...)
  • Episode 1 has Morgan having a small chuckle when Reyes is praising the police's effectiveness and a burning distaste of Conspiracy Theorists, both of which stem from the police being completely ineffectual in stopping David's Stalker Without a Crush from harassing him, with the stalker being motivated out of convoluted conspiracy nonsense.
• Ridiculously Human Robot: Serra is a Warm android who is occasionally mistaken for human, and she has independent thought and genuine emotions, but make no mistake: her brain is made of metal. Specifically, nanomachines intentionally programmed to imitate human neurons, which her creator believes is enough to qualify her as the setting's first full Artificial Human.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Morgan suspects somebody at Noble helped David build Serra, since he lacked both the knowledge and the tools necessary to build an android as advanced as she in his home laboratory. While David did receive a lot of help to create Serra, it wasn't from anybody at Noble, but from A.I.s he himself had created.
• Running Gag: Nearly every scene featuring Jessica Starling includes at least one instance of her being Late to the Realization about something and going "Oh... Oh!" as she finally puts together why what she just said was insensitive/poorly-timed/actually a case-breaking contradiction.
• Scannable Man: Serra has a barcode stamped on her forehead, but otherwise appears extremely human. At least to sight: a scanner can tell that she's made out of synthetic flesh and advanced polymers, and a scale can tell that she weighs almost four hundred pounds.
• Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: Sosuke was raised an Ikariya and made a family with Mirei and Makoto, so he doesn't care one bit about the Blueblood fortune only he can claim or how the Oldguard would get him out of jail for it because that'd mean throwing away everything he cares about.
• Self-Poisoning Gambit: A two part example to throw off suspicion. Jung poisons the water at David's farewell party with synatonin which is harmless by itself, but fatal when mixed with alcohol. She avoids collateral damage here by ensuring all the workers attending have busy schedules afterwards with no chance to drink until after the effects wear off. She then visits David later with the two always sharing a drink together which leads to David's death while Jung has to induce vomiting to live.
• Serial Killer: The Heartbreak Killer has killed six women of similar appearance by shooting them in the heart, with practically no clues leading to them despite Big Brother Is Watching. Morgan has been at it for quite some time and detests the name the media gave for her most recent MO. She is surprised, though, at her subconscious choice of targets when Emma points out that she looks like the victims too.
• Shoes on Power Lines: Mentioned as a tangent when Han is explaining how the Bluebloods are preserving the crime scene in Episode 2.
  Han: The police couldn't keep this crime scene off-limits without our help and he knows it. Gremlins would be smashing their shiny cameras and popping their expensive tires 'round the clock if we weren't here. Lower wards kids take out drones by tossing shoes at them for fun.
  Morgan: Is that why you see shoes hanging off of wires?
  Han: ...No. I don't know why that happens.
  London: It's just a thing teens have always done for fun.
  Morgan: ...Mystery solved?
• Shoot Out the Lock: Officer Chopin forces his way into the Blueblood den by shooting out the front door lock.
• Shout-Out:
  • Ace Attorney:
    • In Morgan's interview, Serra notes that her birthday is December 26th and states that it's almost Christmas, but almost Christmas means it's not Christmas. Morgan comments on Serra's insights being very... original.
    • Serra notes that the rolling ladder is a type of stepladder, as it folds out, rather than a regular ladder which extends. Morgan bets her life savings the ladder trivia won't come up again, ever.
    • Starting in Episode Two, Morgan and Emma each get their own signature desk slam poses - Defense Attorney Morgan hunched forward with both palms down, Prosecutor Emma with one palm down, just like Phoenix and Edgeworth.
    • In Episode Two, Morgan makes a crack about walking under a ladder, and the person she's talking to asks if she means a stepladder. The response makes Morgan feel a sudden chill, as though she'd just lost a bet.
    • Aidey announces Dr. Sato's return with the possibility of evidence, DNA, or even an updated autopsy report. She does, in fact, eventually produce the latter.
  • Danganronpa:
    • The Steam achievement for successfully objecting the first time is titled "You've Got That Wrong!"
    • Android blood is neon-pink.
  • Death Note:
    • In the final scene of Episode Zero, Emma's profile of Heartbreak ends with a declaration that they are "child-ish" and "someone who hates to lose almost as much as they love to win". When Morgan asks if that's also part of the profile, Emma replies that no, it's just "takes one to know one". In other words, the killer is childish and hates to lose. The detective knows, because they are also childish and hate to lose.
    • The game's premise of a rivalry between a cunning, highly philosophical yet amoral Villain Protagonist and a supergenius Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist with the full backing of the state is highly similar to Death Note, but the comparisons become definite in a scene in Episode One: The two rivals independently monologue about their contrasting yet equally Unfettered belief systems, with the Villain Protagonist highlighted in red and their law enforcement rival in blue, with their lines bleeding into each other as the cuts back and forth between the two become increasingly rapid until the scene climaxes with the two of them showing how similar they are by ending on the same line at the same time ("I am justice!" vs. "Do whatever it takes to win."). And of course, the relationships between Light and L and Morgan and Emma are both powerfully homoerotic.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
    • When Morgan sees David's body in the morgue, she appears collected and tries to light up a smoke only to be told it's not igniting because she's holding the cigarette backwards.
    • Aidey gives a "Hoh? You're approaching me?" in Episode 1. She tries again in Episode 2, but doesn't get to finish before Morgan and Emma have already walked over.
    • In Aidey's interview, she attempts to perform Joseph's "Your next line is..." trick, but says it after Serra already said her line.
    • The Heartbreak Killer's victim asks how many people they've killed which causes HK to ask how many times they've eaten bread. (The answer is zero. They have gluten intolerance.)
  • Umineko: When They Cry:
    • When Morgan notes that it's impossible for The State to prove that Serra is an AI, Serra claims it's a Devil's Proof in red (though Morgan says she's using it wrong), and the accompanying search log for "Devil's Proof" states that users also often frequently search for 'Witches Real'. In Episode 2, when Emma says it's impossible to know whether the soundproofing of a house caused a witness to not hear noises going on inside or if it was just the witness being inattentive, Serra again claims it's a Devil's Proof, again colored in red (this time being told she's correct with its usage by Morgan).
    • Morgan advises Serra to "turn the chessboard around" in Episode 1. Serra recalls the idea in Episode 2, although she misremembers it as "turning the go board around".
    • During an Exposition Break in Episode 2, Diamani splits his time between explaining the origins of the Ikariya and preparing a Lady Maria. When it's finished, a cg is shown of the drink as a photograph with the same filter applied to ''When They Cry''s photographic backgrounds, and Serra's reaction to the drink is to go "U-uuu", Maria's Catchphrase.
    • In Episode 2, the name of the orphanage a character was adopted from is the same as the official translation of the Fukuin House orphanage in Umineko ("Gospel Home").
    • In a bonus scenario, Morgan explains to Serra that unlike in movies, the one-inch punch is at best no stronger than a normal punch and useless for self-defense. When Serra reacts like a child being told that Santa Claus isn't real, Morgan reluctantly adds that as an android, Serra isn't bound by the same physical limitations that a human would be. Both times, Morgan's explanation is written in red text, something that the witch Beatrice uses to signify an unquestionably true statement.
  • The exclusive phone charm given for playing the original demo is Neco-Morg.
  • The Morgan phone charm is named "Morgin' Time".
  • The specific Adjutant who serves as the recurring judge throughout the game is AD_84.
  • Morgan asks Serra "Would you...kindly...slow the hell down!?"
  • The Ikariya Group, the most powerful organization in the city, is a former Yakuza front that made so much money it basically went legit, but refuses to fully divest itself from its criminal side, just like Mitsuhama from Shadowrun.
  • In Episode 1, Morgan and Serra have an exchange that's only slightly modified from the infamous "If I pull that off, will you die?"/"It would be extremely painful" from The Dark Knight Rises.
  • According to her profile in Episode 2, Morgan plays E-card.
  • Serra delivers a "What're you buying, stranger?" with a deeper voice when serving as a bartender.
  • One of the victims of Episode Two is named "Heavens Smiles".
  • Morgan's first response to meeting Makoto Ikariya is to mentally call him a "Sassy... lost child".
  • Morgan, a Serial Killer, is astonished to receive a physical business card because "it even has a watermark".
  • During the end of Episode 2's Day 1 investigation, London asks Morgan if what she's feeling is "Like Deja vu? You been here before?"
  • A flashback sequence in Episode Two establishes that Morgan's(?) childhood nickname was "Cool Kid", just like a certain other (then) kid detective.
  • Sosuke Ikariya, being Yakuza muscle, is naturally a Tattooed Crook. While discussing his ink, Serra suggests he change the design to something else, Like a Dragon (capitalization hers).
  • The achievement for picking Emma's weakest card in her argument is titled "Reading the card explains the card".
  • Aidey Lampshades a bit of Parrot Exposition with a reference to Metal Gear.
    Aidey: Uh, yeah. Did you just repeat what she said but slightly rephrased? A conversational tactic to surpass Metal G-
  • Serra hears "great escape" and immediately says the film's release year and runtime.
  • When Sato says she'll leave Morgan and Emma to interpret the good and the bad (news), Aidey mumbles how that would imply she's the ugly.
  • When Serra has to lick a bloody knife to analyze the blood on it, the game shifts to a nigh-identical framing to a WarioWare microgame.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Morgan herself is one to Reyes, who regards her as arrogant and anti-authority - which is true, but Reyes is the only character in the game uptight enough to be bothered by it. Morgan's constant needling doesn't help.
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: The law of the setting heavily emphasizes the difference between an Ad and AI as, among other things, the difference between using a machine and owning a person, hence the latter's illegality. Jung kills David for making AI and disguising them as Adds, equating it to birthing people into slavery in a way that risks becoming the norm, even though Jung was willing to have Serra killed. This is implied to broadly self-delusional, as the difference between AI and Adds is not capacity for self-awareness or feeling, but simply that an AI doesn't have to follow its Tenets. Indeed, the examples Helen Jung gives (sentient taxi cabs, remorseful targeting systems, being locked to an assembly line,) are all things that are already happening to humans, as well as Adds, reflecting more on capitalism than they do anything else.
• Sleep Deprivation: In Episode 0, Emma mentions not having slept for 40 hours. She asks Morgan for sleeping tips and several of her expressions have her yawning or emphasizing her Exhausted Eye Bags.
• Smart People Play Chess: Brought up a few times by Morgan, in opposition to Emma, where chess is explicitly her favorite game. In Morgan's view, the thing that makes chess intriguing to people is that it's a game where the sole determiner of victory is individual player skill. This is why she doesn't like it, and actually prefers games like poker and blackjack, where the resources and victory chances of the players can vary widely and someone can still win even if they're dealt nothing but crap hands. An exchange in Episode 2 suggests that Morgan doesn't actually know how to play chess very well, if at all, since she needs Serra to explain a pretty basic metaphor to her.
• Snipe Hunt: When Daisuke decides to talk with Morgan privately, he asks Makoto to fetch him some non-existent sake to keep him busy.
• Spy Speak: Helen Jung tells Morgan a surefire way to identify a corporate spy: they tell people they're in consulting. Being a consultant is fine, but the specific phrasing "in consulting" exclusively refers to espionage. If Morgan's been paying attention, she can use this to out Evan Dawes later in the episode.
• Stealing the Credit: The post-Episode 2 scenario shows The Rust taking credit for the Blueblood deaths to boost their infamy since Sosuke and Officer Rogers are legally cleared for it and no one else is stepping up to claim it. In doing so, they plan to start an Enemy Civil War when the Youngbloods notice the Oldguard don't care about attacking them back for Creek's death.
• Stepping Out for a Quick Cup of Coffee: London is considerate enough to leave Morgan to her own devices while making an excuse to step out during Episode 1. Once when prompted to give her privacy when she's retrieving David's gift in his lab, and then during the Day 2 investigation to let her talk with Serra privately.
• The Stinger:
  • Episode 0 ends with David telling Serra that she'll have to stay with someone else for a while who she could learn a lot from, Morgan.
  • Episode 1 ends with Morgan getting an anonymous text from Diamani first asking if she still has the revolver and then informing her of something big in the Lower Wards.
  • Episode 2 ends with the unknown Huntsman asking the Unlisted child from the beginning what they saw and then declaring their intent to get their Noh Mask back from the red-haired woman.
• Sword Drag: Morgan drags the katana across the floor for the terrifying effect as she walks over to finish off Tre. It ends up complicating Morgan's defense because the sword drag gets Miller's blood on it as well, so it's assumed to be the weapon that killed Miller instead of Morgan's missing knife which she can't use to prove the existance of a third party during Day 1.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: Jung poisons David by poisoning everyone present at David' farewell party, herself included, via lacing the water with synatonin which doesn't do anything on its own, but becomes lethal with alcohol. To avoid accidental deaths and remain inconspicuous, Jung arranges for the attending workers to have busy shifts afterwards with no time to drink until after the synatonin wears off.
• Terrible Artist: Morgan's drawing of how Carlos' apartment looked before he left is simplistic and garners some less-than-flattering comments from him and the detectives.
• Theme Naming: "Tesseract" is the most widespread programming language in the world, but David originally learned to code in the less advanced but more rugged and practical "Cube".
• Three Laws-Compliant: All legal programs, so-called "Adds" or "Automated Dependants" are bound by "Tenets" that cannot be disobeyed. 113 Tenets are in use, though not at all once: programmers aim for below 30 to boost responsiveness. Asimov's three laws are mentioned, and credited as the original Tenets, but the first law isn't a constant (not since robots began to be used in the military and security sectors) and the equivalent of the third law is looser (instead of the Add directly prioritizing its own survival, it generally avoids damage to property, which includes itself and other Adds).
• Tomato Surprise:
  • Morgan is a Serial Killer and the murders of the Heartbreak Killer are just her latest MO.
  • For Episode 2, the last of Morgan's dreams reveal that she was the girl who was speaking throughout them after being called "Ev", as in her first name Evangeline, not the person who had red dialogue.
• Trash of the Titans:
  • Detective London's desk is piled high with completely unorganized papers - especially noticable, since using paper at all is out of the ordinary in the always-online world of 2086. At least some of the papers are printed for the sole purpose of having a big stack of papers to intimidate suspects with.
  • The outer hallway of Creek's hideout is full of garbage bags just left sitting there. Tre defensively notes that at least the rooms are clean.
• Troll: Morgan absolutely loves messing with people, and became a defense attorney largely so she could get paid to needle agents of the state, who tend to have the biggest sticks up their ass and thus give her the funniest reactions.
• Trust Password: David has a six-letter password as the final lock to his private room which he trusts Morgan to know. It's "Adonai" which Serra has been calling Morgan.
• Turing Test: Dr. David Ashur's claim to fame is his so-called "Turing Solution", a lingustics-heuristics framework that has yet to fail any known Turing Test. The fact that this should indicate that those programs are indistinguishable from humans (and thus entitled to human rights) appears to have been forgotten.
• Two Scenes, One Dialogue: At one point in Episode 1, most of the core cast find themselves wading through a crowd of Conspiracy Theorists as they leave the crime scene of the week, Morgan and Serra in one group, Emma, London, and Reyes in the other. The presence of the conspiracy theorists gets each group separately talking about justice, humanity, and the relationship between common folk and the law, and the dialogue cuts increasingly rapidly back and forth between their incredibly similar conversations. The scene climaxes with a CG of Morgan and Emma highlighted in red and blue respectively and declaring the exact same line with completely different subtexts ("Do whatever it takes to win!") in an intentional reference to the famous example from Death Note.
• Tyke-Bomb: Sosuke was raised from birth to be a bodyguard for the heir of House Ikariya.
• Undisclosed Funds:
  • Serra's estimated value has a lot of digits as the last custom android of David Ashur. The algorithm used to evaluate her is mentioned to be greatly lowballing the number too.
  • Serra calculates the extent of the Bluebloods' fortune and calls the number quite remarkable.
• The Unfettered: Morgan and Emma both ascribe to doing whatever it takes to win.
  • Morgan considers a single person statistically insignificant in the grand scheme of things and therefore she's free to do her worst.
    Morgan: ...If HK shot someone every day, it would take them one thousand, one hundred thirty-two years and about eleven months.
    Serra: ...In order to have killed four-
    Morgan: Four-hundred-thirteen-thousand, seven hundred and eighty nine people.
    Serra: ...You did that in your head?
    Morgan: I'm good at mental math.
    Serra: You counted the leap years... But what is the significance of that number?
    Morgan: Deaths within eighteen months of the Blakefort Industrial Disaster. Times that number by two for the injuries. Tack on another 183% for the birth defects. Four hundred and thirteen thousand dead- and there wasn't anything evil about it. Just human error, some shoddy welding, and time.
    Serra: So you think that Heartbreak is nothing... by comparison. [...] This moral relativism of yours seems like a strange philosophy for someone in your profession, Adonai.
    Morgan: Breaking out the thesaurus on me? I'm only being realistic. And humble. I'm just one woman, Serra. Whatever I do, right or wrong... It's less than a percent rounding error in the grand scheme of things.
  • Emma is aware of the negative public opinion of the State and and doesn't see a reason to hold back in her job.
    Emma: If power is inherently evil, holding back won't save your soul.
• Unwanted False Faith: The Heartbreak Killer isn't pleased to learn they have a following nor that the followers they run into are conspiracy theorists making up their own reasons for why the killings occurred.
  Heartbreak Killer: That... doesn't make any goddamn sense. Why would that freak have a symbol? Or a following? Or these... whatever these people are?
• Urban Segregation: The City is separated into the poor Lower Wards and the literally elevated above them rich districts blotting out their sun, Midgar style.
• Uriah Gambit: According to Han, Creek was too competent as a Youngblood for the Oldguard's liking, but also made too much money to get rid off, so they kept sending his pod assignments until they would get worn out and make a mistake at some point to be made an example of. This is why Creek's squad was assigned to capture Sosuke and have the Noh Mask, why Creek asked Han for the RedInk documents as insurance against the Oldguard, and all that activity is why the Unlisted child was watching their hideout.
• Use Their Own Weapon Against Them: Morgan begins the Blueblood pod slaughter by taking Tanks' double-barreled gun from his chest holster and unloading the first shot on him and then the second shot on Creek.
• The 'Verse: Shared terminology and mentions reveal that the game takes place in the same universe as the developers' prior work, Model Employee.
• Visible Victimology: All six of Heartbreak's victims are women of similar build with brown hair and brown eyes. Morgan is genuinely surprised when Emma points out that said description also matches her.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Detectives London and Reyes regularly conflict with each other due to their differing approaches to the job, but London's teasing is obviously tinged with parental affection, and in her interview, Reyes outright says that London is her hero.
• Wham Shot: Near the end of Episode 0 is a scene that recontextualizes the entire case: Morgan responds to Carlos thanking her for not asking if he did it by saying "I didn't need to ask"... then internally remarking "After all..." before the game smash cuts to a flashback of Morgan, standing in the doorway of the crime scene holding the smoking gun with no expression on her face whatsoever.
• Whole-Plot Reference: The broad outlines of the first three Episodes match up with the first three chapters of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney:
  • The First Turnabout/and he shall appear: A hapless, Born Unlucky man is accused of killing his girlfriend in her apartment. The real culprit is an established criminal with zero personal connection to the victim, and the case revolves around minutiae related to the murder weapon and an outage that took place at the time of the crime. After the case is over, Morgan can present evidence to reassure the boyfriend that the victim was still thinking of him before her death.
  • Turnabout Sisters/an idle mind: A close associate of the protagonist is murdered, and the protagonist takes charge of said associate's young female relative, who (eventually) becomes a suspect. The protagonist then becomes the new defendant and chooses to self-represent, in part because the circumstances ensure no other attorney would even think of taking on their case. A Ditzy Secretary delivers key testimony, and the true killer is a corporate executive.
  • Turnabout Samurai/his due: In Ace Attorney, the defendant is an actor who plays a character called "The Steel Samurai". In his due, the defendant is a literal cyborg samurai with steel components. Said defendant is unable to account for himself because he was drugged at the time of the murder. Witnesses include a smugly over-educated yet bratty child who adores said steel samurai and overstates his capabilities in his last fight, a mysterious, smoky brunette with deep ties to the mob, and a foul-mouthed old woman prone to going off on Rambling Old Woman Monologues. The steel samurai's signature weapon is also stabbed through the victim postmortem to obscure the true murder weapon and frame them for it.
• World of Bad Cops:
  • It's Noir and Cyberpunk, ya think? It's stated in absolutely no uncertain terms that every single cop on the force is on the take; even London delivers messages for organized crime groups and one of Episode 2's post-game scenes shows him on familiar terms with someone from the Rust. The main victim of Episode 2, Tariq Chopin, is the son of two city councilmen doing a perfunctory year on the force to improve his electablility before running for office, and is described by Reyes as an irritating tightwad (even though he was probably the only policeman in the city who could afford to be generous), and his partner, Hughie Rogers, is The Mole for the Blueblood Mafia, which is why he killed Chopin himself to protect a corrupt land deal - one which would have had the side effect of economically revitalizing the Lower Wards he grew up in.
  • Speaking of Reyes, she's our fair city's Token Good Cop - mostly because she's so personally unpleasant that she got Reassigned to Post-Surveillance State Homicide the day she made detective and was never given a chance to make any corrupt connections.
• Worthy Opponent: Morgan and Emma mutually regard matching wits with each other as the most fun either of them ever have.
• Would Hurt a Child: How the Ikariya took over the criminal underworld: they targeted their chief rivals, the Blueblood Mafia, and murdered all the members under the age of 40 and their children. Aside from killing off all the heirs, this locked the Blueboods out of their fortune due to their bank accounts having blood verification security.
• You Have Failed Me: While Officer Rogers tries to brush off Morgan's closing statement, he has his Villainous Breakdown once Morgan spells out that the Blueblood assassin wasn't there for Sosuke, but rather him for the Prop 492 plot getting exposed.
• Yubitsume: Briefly mentioned when Sosuke elaborates on how even losing a pinky on the non-dominant hand makes one relatively defenseless with Serra making the connection to Yakuza cutting off fingers to recompense for offenses. The end of the case has Mirei mention she'll have to rip out her fingernails and lose some fingers, which Morgan takes literally, due to her disobedience in hiring Morgan to defend Sosuke.