Turnabout Storm/Fridge

Fridge Brilliance

• Rainbow Dash gets quite upset after Nick assumes she is an Earth Pony; the reason may seem pretty obvious, but there's another less obvious motive for her to be upset. The previous Rainbow Dash was an Earth Pony, and polar opposite in personality to this Rainbow Dash, who likely would be irritated with her namesake's behavior.
• While it may be a bad thing that Celestia wasn't gonna be a judge for Rainbow Dash's trial, it turns out to be a good thing in the end, as Celestia probably wouldn't allow Phoenix to accuse Fluttershy in order to buy more time.
• Trixie is pretty damn successful holding up her case in the first day of the trial; she manages to end with the upper hand the first day of the trial, something Ace Attorney prosecutors can't brag about. She could be considered a Villain Sue by some but then again, she does have an advantage over the prosecutors in the games.
  Consider this: In the games, all the prosecutors not called Winston Payne come with a pretty open and shut case at first glance, same as Trixie; and usually have a piece of evidence or testimony they pull off from nowhere after Nick finds a contradiction, destroying Wright's line of logic, same as Trixie; and Phoenix manages to break their case just in time by using either "unimportant" evidence he collected or a testimony from someone he spoke to while investigating^[1], making him get the upper hand at the end. But it's different this time.
  Phoenix took this case on very short notice so he didn't get the time to collect said case-breaking evidence and he's very aware of it. Not only that but he's on an alien world and has little knowledge on its workings. Of course Trixie is being so successful; she has an advantage previous prosecutors never had over Nick.
• Phoenix gets increasingly pissed at Trixie calling him Mr. Wrong; kind of strange, as he trends to shrug off insulting nicknames (like Godot calling him Trite). He's got good motives to be pissed by that nickname though, since he's been called like that before, by Mia Fey's killer no less.
• Why is Phoenix so rattled when Pinkie Pie starts calling him Feenie? Because that's what his girlfriend used to call him. You know; the one who tried to frame him for murder, but turned out to have a twin sister that actually liked him, both of which called him by that name. It's understandable that he'd want to limit the number of people... err... ponies calling him that, considering that Dahlia, the one who framed him, is dead, and Iris, the one who liked him, is most likely still serving jail time for helping conspire a murder.
  • This could also explain why Phoenix was rattled about the Wob Niar theory, as it would hit too close to home.
  • This depends on which point in time Phoenix got dragged to Equestria. If this Phoenix is from between Justice For All and Trials & Tribulations the Iris part of the fridge brilliance wouldn't count, as Phoenix still doesn't know about her existence at this point. The Dahlia part on the other hand would still hit him.
• When Phoenix asked if Rainbow Dash had ANYTHING to do with the death of Ace Swift (note the use of "had anything to do") he's remembering back to Case 2-4: Farewell, my Turnabout, where his poor phrasing of his question let Engarde slip through the Magatama's effect of truth detection. He DIDN'T kill the victim, but had a hand in his death.
• That Cupcakes reference, or actually how Phoenix saw it, seems completely out of place, considering that Maya is also prone to those sort of creepy commentaries without Phoenix starting to see red backgrounds with eerie zoom-ins. But after some thinking, it's sort of justified why he got nervous with it.
  Note how Pinkie has been calling Phoenix Feenie the entire time he's been with him, which happens to be the nickname his murderous ex-girlfriend used to call him. He's been having constant reminiscences of Dahlia thanks to this, and Pinkie's creepy comment made him make an immediate connection with her, thus getting him nervous to a extreme.

Fridge Horror

• After Phoenix was knocked out, had his evidence stolen, and then left for dead, he was faced with some timberwolves. Which leads to the revelation: Was whoever knocked him out planning on having the wolves kill him?
  • They might not have planned on him dying; just getting him lost in the forest so he wouldn't be able to get back out easily.

1. ↑ Or the occasional Big Damn Heroes moment