Darth Wiki / Ratchet And Clank Infinity The Second Coming

"You know, I get a feeling we've seen all this before. You think that was on purpose?"

"Shut up, Qwark."

—Ratchet to Qwark while traveling through space

Ratchet and Clank Infinite: The Second Coming is a hypothetical future title in the Ratchet & Clank series.

Tropes:

• 0% Approval Rating: For understandable reasons, the surviving Blarg race hates Ratchet and see him, and not Drek, as a genocidal maniac for killing their leader and destroying their new planet. Their hatred of him is so deep seated, that they have a law that any Blarg who even entertains the idea of Ratchet being in the right for what he did is to be shot on sight for treason.
• Armor-Piercing Response: When Ratchet is moping about how harsh he was to Jupiter, and wonders if she could ever grow out of her flaws, Clank silently plays a hologram of Ratchet cruelly chewing Clank out on Umbris from years earlier, and Clank replying "I know that you will do the right thing."—from Clank's POV at that. Ratchet immediately gets the point—we all make mistakes and have to grow out of them.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The Geiger Councilman, a 153 1/2 foot tall monster made out of radioactive rocks.
• Awesome McCoolname: Invoked with Jupiter Centauri, who legally changed her (unrevealed) name to sound cooler. Ratchet is not only unimpressed, but concerned that she'd go that far to impress him.
• Big Bad:
  • Ultrivix the Unstoppable at least until the reveal that despite his questionable actions, he's really not a bad guy.
  • General Gorrik, a former blarg foot soldier and the current leader of the Blarg, who is dead set on destroying Ratchet for his actions against the Blarg race in the first game.
• Bittersweet Ending: The galaxy and multiverse are saved, the Blarg are at least trying to reform for their past crimes in light of learning Drek was evil and have buried the hatchet with Ratchet, and Ratchet's reputation is restored for the time being. But Ratchet himself is guilt ridden over the fact that he killed Jupiter in order to stop her from overloading the Great Clock, believing her death somehow could have been avoided.
• Body Horror: The newest morphing weapon, the Chimer-A-Ray, turns the victims of it into what can only be described as a formless mashup of numerous animal parts.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • When Ratchet willingly allows himself to be captured and sentenced to death by the Blarg for his crimes against their race, Clank halts the execution by displaying a hologram of Drek's final words to the duo in the first game, revealing Drek as the monster he really was to the horrified crowd of Blarg (and everyone else watching the execution). Gorrik, being a fanatic of Drek, refuses to accept the truth and screams that its malicious propaganda and even attempts to destroy Clank over it.
  • Jupiter goes through this when Ratchet coldly rebukes her for her half baked plan to destroy the Geiger Councilman nearly getting them and many other innocents killed.
• Bus Crash: Before the events of the story, Scrunch the Monkey flew into a black hole after taking one of Qwark's ships for a joyride, and the heartbroken Qwark assumes he died. Later subverted, as they find out Scrunch was teleported by the hole into a remote part of the galaxy and simply crash landed on another planet, where he is worshipped by its ape-like denizens as a god.
• Call-Back: When Ratchet meets the 2016 reimagining Ratchet, who gushes about how cool the Great Clock is, Ratchet, who is clearly embarrassed, whispers "Nerd." to Clank, and Clank merely quips "I like him.", mirroring a conversation they had at Al's Roboshack in the first game.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Dr. Nefarious, the blarg and the world of apes Scrunch rules over prove instrumental in turning the tides during the battle of the Great Clock.
• Central Theme: Owing up to and learning from your mistakes.
• Continuity Nod:
  • In the bar, Ratchet and Qwark respectively use the Mustachio Furioso disguise and Steve McQwark alias.
  • A handful of Mecha-Tyhhranoids pop up in the bar Ratchet and Qwark visit. Over the radio, its said that thanks to both Ratchet and Nefarious' past actions, their race has been driven to near-extinction.
  • Mr. Zurkon makes a brief cameo as an item Ratchet is selling at a garage sale. The Zodiac can be seen sitting nearby on sale for one measly bolt. While hover biking around Veldin, the crumbling remains of the now derelict Deplantizer can be seen lying in the mountains.
  • Aphelion's radio mentions a story about a minor wearing a hologuise getting arrested for illegal bolt laundering on Hoverboard races, a nod to the famous "Infinite Bolts" glitch from the original game.
  • Qwark's apartment is full of crates containing Stunderwear. After all, they were a huge seller on Umbris, and who else besides Qwark lived on Umbris?
  • When Ratchet is feeling down about how he treated Jupiter and ponders if she could ever learn from her mistakes, Clank replies by showing a hologram of Ratchet yelling at Clank after Qwark betrayed them on Umbris years ago.
  • Later on, after Ratchet turns himself into the Blarg and is about to be executed by them, Clank hacks into the system and plays a hologram of Drek telling Ratchet and Clank about how he was destroying worlds, including Orxon, as the first stage of a planetary real estate scam, revealing his true nature to all the Blarg around them.
• Create Your Own Villain: Ratchet unwittingly does this by angrily shunning Jupiter after her misguided plan nearly costed theirs and many others their lives. She ends up becoming obsessed with uping him at his own game instead.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Early in the story, Ratchet encounters a warrior monk with a laser blade who claims to have been trained in the mystic arts. Ratchet fires off a few shots and gets them deflected, but ends the battle by using the Flash N Fry 9000Q on him, completely bypassing the laser and disintegrating him. Hokey religions are no match for a good blaster indeed.
• Darkest Hour: Ratchet has surrendered himself to the Blarg. Jupiter has coldly rebuked his attempts to make up for shunning her, and she has the Great Clock at the palm of her hands and is unwittingly tearing apart the universe and multiverse with it, and isn't changing her mind about using it. Fortunately, a few events happen that turns the tide.
• Decapitated Army: Its revealed Drek's race became this after the original name. Ultrivix takes full advantage of this and hires them for his end goals.
• Deconstructor Fleet: The story is intended to be one to the entire Ratchet and Clank series.
• Demoted to Extra: Dr. Nefarious and Lawrence are still present, but they have no real role in the story and only pop up for the occasional gag. At least until the climax, where they're forced to band together with Ratchet to stop Jupiter.
• Disaster Dominoes: Parodied. When they infiltrate the Ultrivix warship, they discover that due to it undergoing repairs, the only thing keeping the place from collapsing in on itself is a plank of wood braced between the reactor rooms floor and ceiling. Knocking it out of place is all it takes to make the ship go pear shaped.
• Even Evil Has Standards: While Nefarious is impressed with the scope of Jupiter's scheme, he also calls her out on it being suicidal (and incredibly short sighted and wasteful, on top of that), pointing out that even he's not that crazy.
• Face–Heel Turn: Jupiter ends up becoming the villain of the story after its revealed that Ultrivix is Good All Along.
• Fatal Flaw: Jupiter's Pride and obsessiveness with proving her worth to Ratchet ends up being her greatest weakness.
• From Bad to Worse: Ratchet is already in a bad spot at the start of the game due to his reputation being at stake due to bad PR, and having a new bad guy and the Blarg race out for his hide isn't helping. And then Jupiter, still feeling veangeful, manages to get the coordinates to the Great Clock...
• Good All Along: Ultrivix the Unstoppable.
• Handicapped Badass: General Gorrik, the current leader of the Blarg and a former Blarg Commander. The lower half of his body is robotic due to being paralyzed from the waist down due to an injury administered to him by Ratchet on Kerwan many years ago.
• Happy Ending Override: The game does this for the original games defeat of Drek. The Blarg were completely unaware of Drek using them as part of his galaxy-scale real estate scam, and Ratchet blowing up New Orxon (the franken-planet Drek built) left them homeless and forced to scatter across the galaxy and were shunned galaxy wide due to their actions (even though they were just doing their jobs out of survival and had no way of knowing Drek was evil) and their attempts to terraform Orxon back to its original state were unsuccessful. Thus, when Ultrivix hires them as part of his scheme and learn Ratchet is their enemy, they don't even hesitate to join up.
• Heartbroken Badass: Qwark is an emotional wreck after the apparent death of Scrunch and has all but cut himself off from the rest of the galaxy in his apartment on Kerwan, and it takes Ratchet's help to get him back in one piece.
• Insult to Rocks: When Ratchet is chewing out Jupiter for almost getting them killed, he goes as far as saying even Qwark is more helpful than her.
• Instant Humiliation: Just Add YouTube!: A Holotuber turned a leaked video of Dr. Nefarious freezing and playing Lance and Janice into this and quickly becomes a viral video, and it's implied it was Qwark's doing to get back at Nefarious for legally stopping him from publishing his memoir. Nefarious is not amused when he finds out about it.
• It's Personal: Gorrik has a strong hatred of Ratchet for not only killing Drek and destroying their new planet, but also for paralyzing him with a wrench attack while he was stationed on Kerwan years ago.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • While watching holovids to kill time while traveling through space, Clank shows interest in watching the movie reboot of Speero the Space Moose. Ratchet dismisses it by saying its probably not gonna be as the good as the original. This can be interpreted as either a jab at the post-Insomniac Spyro games, or a jab at the 2016 movie.
  • The N.A.R.F.E.D. acronym (Not Another Really Formulaic Endgame Destroyer) makes fun of the game breaking nature of the series recurring R.Y.N.O. weapons.
• Misaimed Fandom: In-Universe example. The Blarg honestly believe that Drek, the guy who polluted their homeworld and played them for saps in a galaxy scale real estate scam, was truly acting in their best interests and died a hero trying to save them from Ratchet. That Ratchet blew up their new home planet after defeating Drek did not help his case.
• Magical Security Cam: Averted. When Clank shows Ratchet, and later the Blarg, a hologram of events from the first game, the recordings are to be directly from Clank's POV in those events.
• Moral Guardians: The in-universe cause of the fallout of the R.Y.N.O. weapon series, getting it replaced with the much weaker and child friendly N.A.R.F.E.D. series of weapons.
• Moral Myopia: The Blarg's seething desire to get even with Ratchet for killing Drek and destroying their new planet. Even if they're unaware of Drek's real agenda, they apparently had no problem with going along with Drek's plan to destroy numerous other planets, rendering billions upon billions homeless, all so they could build a new planet for themselves, making their veangefulness come off as incredibly petty and self centered.
• Mundane Utility: The Flash 'N Fry 9000Q is basically a heat ray (which on highest settings can disintegrate its target) repurposed as a deep frying cooking tool for restaurants. Ratchet acquires one early on when he's sneaking through the kitchen of a bar he's in.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Qwark holds himself entirely responsible for Scrunch's death for not watching him more carefully (resulting in him flying off in one of his ships into a black hole) and seriously considers retiring for good. Ratchet manages to snap him out of.
  • Even Ratchet realizes that he went way too far when he reamed out Jupiter and is upset about losing his temper at her like that.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: Even after Gorrik discovers the truth about Drek, he is so loyal to him that still wants to keep the Blarg a warlike race to honor his wishes.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: One black market vendor Ratchet encounters is a friendly Blarg who has disavowed himself of his kind and is more than willing to secretly help Ratchet, even if it risks getting him executed for treason.
• Mythology Gag: On planet Wolbitroff, two kids are seen building a snowman in the likeness of late Insomniac Games employee Dan Johnson.
• Nerf: The R.Y.N.O. weapon series is discontinued and replace with the significantly weaker N.A.R.F.E.D. series of weapons.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: It's revealed that in recent years, Ratchet's reputation as a hero has started to fall under scrutiny due to side effects of his past deeds (i.e. blowing up Drek's franken-planet and thus forcing the Blarg, who had no way of knowing Drek was using them, to scatter across the galaxy and trying—and failing—to undo the side effects of Drek's overpollution, while also making it impossible to rebuilt the worlds the planets pieces were strip-mined from), defeating the Tyrranoids (killing their queen along with Nefarious turning them into robots makes it impossible for them to reproduce and thus drives their entire species to near-extinction) and overpopulating the galaxy with transformed animals.
• No Name Given: The ape planet Scrunch crash landed on isn't given a name, although given how primitive its society is, it likely doesn't even have a name.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: When they go to a bar, Ratchet uses the old Mustachio Furioso "disguise" (a fake mustache) while Qwark uses no disguise at all, going by his Steve Mc Qwark alias. Inexplicably, both still work.
• Pet the Dog:
  • When Qwark is a serious emotional state due to blaming himself for Scrunch's death, Ratchet of all people (with Clank's help) manages to snap him out of his funk by telling him that "blaming yourself and accepting responsibility are two different things."
  • When Ratchet is upset about driving away Jupiter with his furious outburst, Clank gives him a pep talk, explaining that everyone makes mistakes, reminding Ratchet of what he was like when they first met and how Ratchet grew out of it by owing up to his mistakes and that by doing that now, he's come a long way as a person, and points out that Jupiter will have to learn the same thing.
• Planet of Hats: Parodied. When Ratchet and Qwark are attending a bar, a Bar Brawl is set off nearby due to a Ballchinian misinterpreting an innocent remark from another patron ("The balls are in your court!") as a racial slur.
• Punny Name:
  • Say Wolbitroff backwards.^note Its a play on "Forty Below"
  • Planet Rockyuhsakyah (rock ya, sock ya).
• Rage Breaking Point: When the battle against the Geiger Councilman nearly gets them and the local townspeople killed due to Jupiter's bush league plan completely backfiring, the normally cool headed Ratchet, who is finally fed up with her unhelpful behavior, blows up and chews her head off, and orders her to leave on no uncertain terms.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Ratchet gives a brutal one to Jupiter after her plan nearly gets them and many innocent people killed.
• Redemption Rejection:
  • Even after Gorrik learns the truth about Drek, he refuses to disavow his former leader and still intends to execute Ratchet and keep the Blarg on the path of a warrior race.
  • When Jupiter is fully prepared to kill Ratchet, he owes up to what a jerk he was and begs her to forgive him. He blows it by telling her what Clank told him—that they all make mistakes and can learn from it—but Jupiter absolutely refuses to accept that she was ever in the wrong and coldly rebukes Ratchet's apology.
• Running Gagged:
  • The series recurring joke about Dr. Nefarious malfunctioning and playing the radio while frozen (prompting someone nearby, usually Lawrence, to slap him to unfreeze him) ends for good when Nefarious finds a video of himself in this state becoming memetic on a holovid, and orders Lawrence to fix it. However, it gets replaced by a new Running Gag; Nefarious' body instead acts out whatever is playing on the radio against his will.
  • The Mr. Zurkon line of weaponry has been discontinued by Grummelnet, due to consumers ultimately finding the weapon to be more style than substance. Its on sale for a few bolts in Ratchet's garage right next to a toaster.
  • The Groovitron is mentioned over the radio to have been discontinued due to numerous lawsuits surrounding it.
  • Qwark once again tries to storyboard his own "brilliant" plan to take down the Geiger Councilman in typical badly drawn crayon fashion. Halfway thru, Ratchet immediately shoots it down by suggesting a much simpler plan—distract it and go for the weakspot on the head—much to Qwark's dissapointment.
  • The R.Y.N.O. gets its named censored into N.A.R.F.E.D. (Not Another Really Formulaic Endgame Destroyer) and turns out to be a useless Joke Weapon, much to Ratchet's chagrin.
  • While the staple Morphing weapon does pop up, its not used by Ratchet (he forgoes buying one due to the bad PR he's getting from overpopulating the galaxy with animals created from his past use of said weapons), but by a villain instead and in a much less comedic context. In this case, its a very vengeful Jupiter Centauri.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: In-Universe, Qwark is forced to abandon plans to publish his memoirs due to a lawsuit threat from Dr. Nefarious' lawyers.
• Series Fauxnale: The story is written in the style of a Grand Finale, but its made clear there will be potential for future installments.
• Shoot the Dog: Ratchet is forced to kill Jupiter, who refuses to back down from fighting, to keep her from completely overloading the Great Clock.
• Shout-Out:
  • When visiting a bar, Ratchet and Qwark are forced to take cover when a bar brawl erupts because someone insulted a ballchinian. In the same event, Ratchet is wearing his Mustachio Furioso disguise, and an obnoxious patron mistakenly refers to him as Mustachio Disguiso, which annoys Ratchet enough to smack him away with his wrench.
  • At Ratchet's garage, a Mr. Zurkon unit is being sold right next to a toaster (the joke being that Mr. Zurkon's actor, Mark Graue, voiced another famous character who has a famous line about toasters).
  • On planet Rockyuhsakyah, Ratchet fights a giant boulder creature called a Geiger Councilman. In a reference to the Cheetahmen episode, they also stop a tornado by shooting an arrow at it.
  • Later one, they visit a planet ruled by flying seahorses.
  • Scrunch crash lands on a planet populated entirely by apes.
• Single-Biome Planet:
  • Played straight by planet Rockyuhsakyah, which is a desolate desert wasteland, but justified as the planet didn't start like this and was turned into it due to a century long war ravaging the planet into nothing.
  • Averted in one case. Wolbitroff does have several continents with other biomes like Earth would, it just so happens that their most popular tourism spot is the frozen continent (which admittedly is the largest part of the planet).
• Terraform: Its revealed that the Blarg tried to do this to reverse the horrible pollution of Orxon, but the environments and wildlife were irreversibly mutated by it and its still victim to daily acid rain storms, making their efforts futile. The least they were able to do was make the atmosphere breathable again.
• The Thing That Would Not Leave: Jupiter Centauri idolizes Ratchet and does everything she can to impress him and prove her mettle, but she's clearly in over her head and ends up causing no shortage of trouble for the heroes.
• This Is Unforgivable!: The Blarg race has not gotten over Ratchet killing their hero and destroying their new homeworld.