Ratchet & Clank/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


These things about Ratchet & Clank are subjective - not everyone will agree with all of them.

  • Complete Monster: Chairman Drek (you may consider this arguable, until you discover that he's the one who poisoned the Blargs' home planet and got them into this situation, and he plans on doing it again)
    • Gleeman Vox from Deadlocked is arguably one the most despicable villain in the whole series. Not content with kidnapping superheroes and forcing them to fight each other to the death, he keeps them safely imprisoned with collars that shock them or explode if they try to escape and demonstrates the collars on sentient robots. He also isn't above putting the entire planet of Stygia in danger by sabotaging the force fields that protect it from meteor storms, or attempt to murder everyone aboard his space station - including thousands of innocent audiences, some of which are children - all for the simple purpose of improving his ratings.
    • And he runs the alien equivalent of the FOX Network. So you know he's a douchebag.
  • Contested Sequel: There is a minority of fans who discount Deadlocked, Going Mobile, Size Matters, Secret Agent Clank, Quest for Booty and All 4 One as being "real" Ratchet & Clank games, which can become confusing when they insist on referring to the game by numbers (e.g. "the fourth game" could variously apply to Deadlocked, Size Matters or Tools of Destruction depending on whether you're talking to someone who accepts all the games, only the platformers, or only the main console games).
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: Hold down the RYNO V's trigger in A Crack In Time and listen closely. Your Mileage May Vary, though, since a lot of people don't like hearing the first few notes of the 1812 overture every time they pull the trigger.
  • Darker and Edgier: The move from the first to the second game. Quite apart from the darker level lighting in several levels, Ratchet becomes a commando, he works for a Mega Corp of dubious moral authority, the thief goes after his friend, there are hired thugs and a psycho hitman out to get him, less cutesy enemies, murderous children's pets that can reproduce within seconds, lots of unfriendly futuristic buildings to explore, and less whimsical musical scores.
  • Demonic Spiders: The heavily armored, quick, and downright nasty Land Lobsters qualify, unless you throw the wrench.
    • The Y.E.T.I.s from Going Commando's Planet Grelbin; they spawn from out of nowhere (and in large numbers, to boot), have no concept of Mook Chivalry (often ambushing you in groups of ten or more), and are card-carrying members of the Lightning Bruiser club. You could try running from them, but they love spawning right in your path and often appear around Arctic Leviathans, which must be killed for Moonstones. That leaves killing them, but there are a few problems with that as well: first, very few of your weapons are effective against them, the ones that are either have low ammo clips or have ammo that must be bought at a vendor, and for the weapons that don't, you're thwarted again by the fact that there are very few ammo crates lying around the massive ice field you must traverse. As a result, you'll find yourself making frequent trips back to the vendor (because this game oh-so-conveniently forgot to include the P.D.A. gadget)... which, of course, means running headlong back into the Y.E.T.I. mobs you just fled from. Simply put, your only real choices are either to gather Moonstones in quick bursts broken up by Y.E.T.I. maulings or to Rage Quit from pure frustration.
  • Ear Worm: "This goes out to all you robots 'cross the galaxy..."
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Dr. Nefarious and Lawrence.
    • Mr. Zurkon.

"Mr. Zurkon does NOT come in peace."

  • Fridge Brilliance: Lombax anatomy makes a whole lot of sense considering that they're desert creatures. Big ears act as heatsinks, big feet make it easier to walk on shifting sand, hair length also helps with heat management, and yellow/gray hair shades... must i explain this? Their only trait not suited for desert are big eyes.
    • It makes sense if they're nocturnal (considering the developer is Insomniac Games) or crepuscular. What doesn't make sense is why those large eyes aren't protected by long eyelashes like a camel. Maybe that's what the caterpillar eyebrows are for?
    • Remember in Going Commando when Angela kept tripping and falling? It makes sense when you consider that female Lombaxes don't have tails and therefore are probably much less balanced...
  • Fridge Logic: If the Lombax alphabet does not contain the letter 'x', how are they supposed to write their own species name? (Unless it's spelt like "Lombaks", "Lombacs" or "Lombacks")
    • There IS an "x". It can be seen in All 4 One. It's the same as a "P" but upside down.
  • Game Breaker: The R.Y.N.O. and its ilk.
    • The Mega Supernova (The Harbinger's upgraded form) V99 from Deadlocked. All minor foes are vaporized in one shot, and the bosses take massive damage from it.
    • A non-Infinity+1 Sword example: The Rift Inducer of Up Your Arsenal, which basically one-shots all small to medium-sized mooks.
      • Level it up enough, and you can just literally sit there while all of the enemies in the area get sucked in and die.
    • Groovitrons in Tools of Destruction. A 100% effective paralysis effect on any enemy in the game bar two or three, and your New Game+ reward gives you an infinite amount of these. Toxic Swarmers also break bosses in seconds if placed strategically.
    • Considering each of these had rather expensive ammo and you couldn't find the ammo for them in crates like the rest, this isn't quite so game breaking.
    • Clank's Time Bombs could be used as these if you knew how to use them the right way. However, if you're playing the hardest parts in hard mode, these become more game fixers than breakers.
    • The Heavy Bouncer in Going Commando does massive damage when it hits an enemy, splits into a bajillion smaller parts on contact, all of which do equally massive damage, and has an absurdly large ammo clip for a weapon that powerful (25) that's replenished by 4 per ammo crate (not to mention that buying the ammo is dirt cheap). It's so bad that the final boss can be downed easily with just a few shots from this gun, and its Brutal Bonus Level, the Impossible Challenge, becomes a cakewalk with it. The ammo issue was nerfed in its return in Up Your Arsenal, but the weapon itself is just as powerful, if not even more so. Watch in awe as one shot clears an entire room of mooks in a matter of seconds!
  • Goddamn Bats: The Screamers, who love alerting land lobsters to your presence.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: After you've seen Azimuth go nuts and kill Ratchet in his quest to rewind time, his unceasing ranting throughout the game suddenly sounds much more unhinged than it did on your first playthrough.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: The following exchange (which is already very funny) becomes even funnier if you have played the Secret Agent Clank game:

Clank: I believe there has been a misunderstanding. Secret Agent Clank is merely a fictional character I play on the holo...
Nefarious: LIES! SQUISHY LIIIIIIIEEEEE...*jams*

    • Also, the vid-comic's narrator's utter disbelief at the concept of "robotic pirate ghosts" takes on a whole new meaning once you encounter some in Quest For Booty.
    • Let's see... Ratchet's a guy from a backwater place who builds stuff, whose melee weapon of choice is a wrench, and who is a proud proponent of "more gun". After looking at it this way, all those Engineers come off as a bunch of posers.
    • In Up Your Arsenal, the president has a daughter named Sasha. Remind you of anyone?
  • Ho Yay: Ratchet and Clank, and to a lesser extent Ratchet and Qwark.

Ratchet: Okay, I have to ask, what's with the nurse's outfit?
Qwark: All part of my ingenious plan to gain Dr. Nefarious' trust as the lovely nurse Shannon.
Ratchet: Well... White's certainly your color.
Qwark: Oh, you think so? I've always fancied myself a winter.

    • All 4 One brings us some spectacular Qwark/Nefarious moments as well.
  • It's the Same, Now It Sucks: The sequels are often accused of not having enough new gameplay elements.
  • Joke Item: Though unintentionally so, most of the recurring Ratchet & Clank weapons in Going Commando certainly qualify, if only for the fact that they're so freaking useless. It seems that Insomniac forgot to scale their power with the new weapons', so what you've basically got is a Visibomb Gun, a weapon that could take out almost any non-boss in a single hit in the first game, that takes at least two shots to down a medium-powered Mook in the second game. As a result, the only returning weapon that has any use at all is the Decoy Glove, since it's the only one that was never intended to be used offensively in the first place. Up Your Arsenal takes it in the opposite direction by making the recurring weapons from Going Commando extremely overpowered and also allowing them to upgrade the same way as the others.
  • Memetic Badass: Mr. Zurkon all the way.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Alister Azimuth kills Ratchet in A Crack in Time. Shortly afterward, he becomes the final boss and nearly destroys the entire universe.
  • Nightmare Fuel:
    • In Size Matters, Ratchet's drugged out sequence. The chainsaws and Ratchet's occasional desperate wailing don't help.
    • Most of the villain's schemes can be seen as Nightmare Fuel if you look past the humorous nature of the games:
      • Ratchet & Clank featured Drek ravaging and tearing apart numerous planets to use their resources to construct his own world - which he then plans on polluting so that he can do this all over again.
      • Going Commando involves the Protopet - a genetically-engineered "perfect pet" for children that is actually incredibly violent and attacks anyone on sight. You visit a city that is literally overwhelmed by them, and see numerous [robot] citizens being destroyed. The fact that they can multiply very quickly does not help...
      • Up Your Arsenal has Dr. Nefarious seeking to turn the entire populace of the galaxy into robots via a doomsday device. But it goes beyond that - Nefarious and his allies essentially see their plot as a genocide of all organic lifeforms.
      • Deadlocked sees heroes abducted and forced to compete in a reality TV show called Dread Zone where they are forced to compete against impossible odds. The producers and hosts of the show want as many contestants to die as possible, and if a hero refuses to compete, or tries to escape, then their permanently-affixed Deadlock collar EXPLODES.
      • Size Matters has the Technomites - a vast, microscopic race that is responsible for the development and operation of almost all technology in the known universe turning against the galaxy. The fact that the enemy is invisible to the naked eye and yet potentially controls every piece of machinery in existence would've allowed the Technomites to be a far more dangerous threat, if that'd been their plan.
      • A Crack in Time has General Azimuth, whose mad determination to undo his past mistakes and risk shattering the fabric of time and space can be quite horrific after seeing him as a hero for most of the game up until that point.
  • Non Sequitur Scene: The space battle at the Wupash Nebula near the beginning of Going Commando fits every criteria a BLAM can have. Completely outta nowhere? Check. Has little to no relevance to the plot? Check (unless you count it as a Justified Tutorial, and even then, it's nothing they don't do again at the Thug Rendezvous). Never spoken of again afterward? Check. Thus we can only ask: why the hell is it even there?
    • Even worse, just before the battle at the Thug Rendezvous, Ratchet says "I hope these weapons work.", implying he's never used the ship in combat before, completely contradicting Wupash Nebula. I'd say the nebula was added at the last minute.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Surprisingly, Ratchet was disliked by many critics in the first game due to his Wangst and Jerkassiness. However, from the second game onward, he Took a Level In Kindness and snarkiness. The switch from Mikey Kelley to James Arnold Taylor certainly helped.
  • Scenery Porn: Each planet from Going Commando onwards begins with the camera positioned to make a striking tableau of the starting area.
    • The very first trailer for Tools of Destruction was nothing more than the camera showing off HD, Play Station 3-era Metropolis before panning to show the Ratchet & Clank logo on a blimp.
  • Sequelitis: Surprisingly few claims of this given that, if spin-offs are counted, there have been 9 games in the past 7 years.
  • That One Boss: The battle against the Thugs 4 Less Leader on Snivelak in Going Commando is this for many people - it's not so much that it's difficult, but it takes forever to go down. Your normal weapons aren't very effective, forcing you to run around the city looking for turrets with which to whittle down his health - all the while shooting down his bombs - before he comes and destroys your turret after a certain amount of time has elapsed. Which is why smart players hide around a corner and kill the Thug Leader with spider/tank bots.
  • That One Level: Gorda City ruins, on Planet Oltanis in the first game. In one path, you have to circumnavigate a path covered in ice (Why is covered in ice, again?) while being blown about by heavy wind. In the other, you have to make it past droves of some pretty annoying enemies, including one grenade-launching ship that's tough to dodge. Oh, did I mention that you can't use your jetpack? Yeah, Clank got randomly struck by lightning. Ratchet makes him sit this one out.
    • The Hoverboard Races, particularly the second one on Kalebo III.
    • We also have Planet Grelbin from Going Commando. When you're hunting for crystals, polar bears will pop out from underground and they are TOUGH. They can survive at least one hit from just about any weapon you use (except the RYNO II), and will take a "bigger than average" percentage of your health if they swipe you. And how about those ice serpents that hide under frozen water, then burst out, take forever to kill, can knock you out quickly and can destroy your Shield Charger in one attack? And if you don't knock out those polar bears, they will chase you as hard as possible-and that is by NO means an exaggeration.
  • That One Sidequest: In Going Commando there were two huge open areas where, for One Hundred Percent Completion and bolts, you had to collect a vast number of crystals scattered across the map. They [initially] don't show up on your in-game map, you're constantly being attacked by infinitely-spawning enemies, and scouring every square inch of the map looking for that last crystal you require is not fun... especially the Grelbin icefield, where you're facing the ridiculously-tough Y.E.T.I.s (see That One Level above).
    • Getting 100% completion in Crack in Time requires you to Score High on a Nintendo Hard mini-game fraught with Stylistic Suck. Not to mention the the downright evil time puzzles required to get the last of the Gold Bolts.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: How some fans and critics felt about Deadlocked.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Almost all of the female characters who could've turned out to be Ratchet's love interest are Put on a Bus in the next game. Although it's probably because the creators don't want a Romantic Plot Tumor.
    • One of the biggest complaints in Deadlocked is that you can't use Clank.
  • The Scrappy / Creator's Pet: Qwark never really did put up a good fight when he was a villain. Having twice teamed up with Ratchet and Clank, he's even more inept than ever, Gameplay and Story Segregation notwithstanding for players assuming control of Qwark in All 4 One. His glory-hound attitude, if it didn't already piss people off, it will now.
  • Villain Decay: Captain Qwark - in the first game he was one of the two main villains, and he returned as the main villain in Going Commando. He showed up as an early boss in Up Your Arsenal, but from that point on Qwark ceased to be a villain so much as a hindrance because he was so inept at trying to help. By the time the Future series starts, no-one can take him seriously.
  • What Do You Mean It's Not for Kids?: The Crotchitizer from Going Commando and Up Your Arsenal. The comments in UYA make it sound like a masturbation device though it's never directly stated as such - not very appropriate for what is, in Europe anyway, marketed as a game for kids 3 years and up.
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