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  • Arc Fatigue: The arc of Ratchet angsting about reuniting with the Lombaxes. Especially since it could have been perfectly resolved in an "And the Adventure Continues..." sense in Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time and in a mature sense faithful to Ratchet's Character Development in Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus.
  • Base Breaker: Captain Copernicus Leslie Qwark. He's a Small Name, Big Ego Nominal Hero sort who often needs to be bailed out of the trouble he got himself into. Either this makes him absolutely hilarious or absolutely annoying, leaving one wondering why Ratchet and Clank didn't cut ties with him years ago. It also doesn't help that he started off as a borderline Complete Monster in the first two games.
  • Broken Base:
    • The PS2 era vs. the PS3 era onwards. Fans of the PS2 games appreciate the more episodic tone of the original games and how they parody/subvert classic sci-fi tropes which the PS3 era played dead straight, becoming the very thing that the earlier games were parodying. Fans of the PS3 era onwards appreciate the more lore heavy games, opining that they allowed the series to carve out a more consistent identity and that the PS2 era wasn't nearly as subversive as people like to say it was.
    • Reusing old weapons. Given that an early appeal was having new and wackier weapons each time, some feel that it's lazy to reuse them. Others are happy to see old favourties return (most notably Mr. Zurkon) and argue that it's largely a non-issue when so many weapons are functionally the same (what is the real difference between the Warmonger and the Negotiator?).
    • Dr. Nefarious becoming the franchise's go-to Big Bad following A Crack in Time. Some enjoy that he's such a regular presence, helped by how hilarious he is in spite of being a dangerous threat, while others wish the franchise would branch out a bit more in terms of villains, lest Nefarious become stale.
    • The increased Bowdlerisation. Some think it makes the franchise too cute-y while others think it nicely fits with the franchise's mocking of corporate evil to continue being monstrous while having a friendlier name.
  • 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).
  • Continuity Lock Out: Since Tools of Destruction the games have been following a loose story arc focused on the Lombaxes and the Dimensionator. New players don't have to know absolutely everything that happened since but things will make a lot more sense if they do.
  • 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.
    • From the same game, Pirate Radio. You'll never turn it off once you realize you can change radio stations.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse:
    • Lawrence!.
    • Mr. Zurkon.
Cquote1

"Mr. Zurkon does NOT come in peace."

Cquote2
  • Fanon Discontinuity: Since it proved such a Tough Act to Follow, some fans do regard A Crack in Time as the end of the saga. Helps that it was originally developed as the Grand Finale and the Arc Fatigue feelings that followed regarding the Lombaxes.
  • 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.
  • Friendly Fandoms: With its PS2 siblings, Jak and Daxter and Sly Cooper.
  • Game Breaker: The R.Y.N.O. and its ilk.
    • 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.
  • Ho Yay: Ratchet and Clank, and to a lesser extent Ratchet and Qwark.
Cquote1

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.

Cquote2
    • 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.
  • Memetic Badass: Mr. Zurkon all the way.
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • 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)
  • 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.
  • 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.
    • Qwark's scrappy status was debatable but the 2016 film and reimagining, along with his Adaptational Heroism was very fell received by most of the fanbase, making him much more likeable to most.
  • 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:
    • Luna from Size Matters. She takes a long time to go down and her attacks are tough to avoid. And if you die, you have to go through the running-through-the-field sequence and cutscene again.
    • The Bonus Boss fight with Lord Vorselon in A Crack In Time. His attacks require downright insane jumping skills to avoid, and take of large amounts of health even with the game's strongest armour. Oh, and then he turns invisible, rendering hitting him a boarderline Luck-Based Mission, (he's even immune to the Groovitron while in this state) while he can re-appear out of nowhere and melee you off the edge of the platform. Oh, and even a full clip of the RYNO V will only take down about 1/4 of his health. Smashing his head after the battle feels SOOO satisfying.
  • That One Level:
    • 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.
  • Unfortunate Implications: 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. Though the creators have said that this is because they don't want a Romantic Plot Tumor, even then, there are a lack of returning female characters and they don't tend to receive anywhere near the level of Character Development as their male counterparts (i,e: Talwyn featured less than Cronk and Zephyr despite them being her sidekicks).
  • 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 games have a lot of innuendos and adult jokes, particularly all the references to the Crotchitizer from Going Commando and Up Your Arsenal. It's very clearly a masturbation device, at least in the way Qwark uses it, - not very appropriate for what is, in Europe anyway, marketed as a game for kids 3 years and up.
    • Starting in Tools of Destruction, the games very much up their death count with much darker stakes. Yet it still looks like a Saturday morning cartoon.

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