He also appears in an animated movie, Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva, and has featured in manga and novels that have not been released in English.

He was designed by Level-5 CEO Akihiro Hino, who used Sherlock Holmes, Indiana Jones and fellow video game character Phoenix Wright as inspiration for his creation.

[4] For English-language releases in the series, Nintendo selected American voice actor Christopher Robin Miller.

When he was very young, a cultlike organisation named Targent kidnapped both of his parents for their knowledge of the Azran civilization, leaving Theodore and Hershel behind alone in the house.

On the way to Misthallery, Professor Layton is stopped by Emmy Altava, an energetic and headstrong young woman who has just been hired as his assistant at Gressenheller University.

Within the lake, Professor Layton finds the gate to the Golden Garden, the first of the Legacies, which makes him famous across the world.

Eventually, Layton deduces that the Masked Gentleman is Randall Ascot, his best friend from high school, who was presumed to have fallen to his death in the Akbadain ruins eighteen years prior but had actually survived (albeit with amnesia).

Descole states he had planned for Professor Layton to solve the mystery of the Nautilus Chamber (Infinite Vault in the UK) of Akbadain, reviving the lost power source of the Azran Civilization.

Layton then races against a crooked archaeology organization called the Targent, led by his biological father Leon Bronev, in search of the key to the ancient Azran sanctuary.

Also, the human race is put in jeopardy when Bronev's uncompromising attitude unleashes an Azran golem horde that terrorizes Froenberg.

In Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box, Layton and Luke take the Molentary Express in an effort to find out what was responsible for the temporary coma of his teacher, Dr. Andrew Schrader, who was found "dead" in his office with nothing but a train ticket without a destination, and the artifact he was investigating, the Elysian Box, missing.

The two of them, later joined by Flora, go to the towns of Dropstone and Folsense, eventually finding the true purpose of the Elysian Box and reuniting a long-broken family.

Ten years prior, Allen was responsible for the accidental death of Layton's fiancé Claire, who worked as the scientist's lab assistant.

After Layton exposes his presumed evil future self as Dimitri Allen, he deduces that he and his friends never traveled through time but instead were transported to a duplicate of London built beneath the original city.

The future Luke then reveals himself as Clive, a wealthy young man who lost his parents in the same explosion that killed Claire and now wants to use his mechanical fortress to destroy the real London.

Claire explains that despite Allen's best efforts to save her, her trip through time is temporary and that she will shortly return to the moment in which she was killed in the lab explosion.

[8][9] In the latter, Professor Layton teams up with Phoenix Wright from the Ace Attorney series to solve mysteries in Labyrinthia, a medieval town emphasizing "witch trials".

Though the Elixir is proven to be a scheme by Jean Descole to unearth the second of the Azran Legacies, the lost kingdom of Ambrosia, Professor Layton is the one who ultimately unlocks the city by discovering and playing a Song of the Sun, along with two other harmonious melodies.

Kaijin Goddo has Professor Layton investigating a series of art thefts performed by the eponymous "Phantom Deity"; Gen'ei no Mori has him exploring a strange village within the "Forest of Illusion" in search of his assistant, Emmy, who has been kidnapped.

He and Luke are locked up in some coma-like state, inside coffins from what they called the Relics Treasure: a device that serves as a door to the future.