The Gang arrives in Ancient Arabia to find Salim al-Kupar. They discover him living in a boat. Sly takes him back to the safe house and he tells them that he and his crew had planned to rob Ms. Decibel, the time traveling lieutenant for Ancient Arabia, but with her modern technology was easily able to capture his thief brothers and Salim had been planning to rescue them. With the help of the gang and Sly's new Thief Costume, they are able to locate and rescue Salim's crew.
Their plans also lead them to a mysterious door in the town's lamp shop. It is there where they discover an underground docking station housing Cyrille Le Paradox's blimp and the skunk himself! There, Sly engages Ms. Decibel in a fight and is able to defeat her. Unfortunately, Le Paradox is able to escape, with a captured Carmelita in tow...
Tropes:
- "Arabian Nights" Days: There are snakes, genies, genie lamps, flying carpets and bellydancing. The whole thing wreaks of it.
- Arc Hero: Salem is the Guest-Star Party Member of Ancient Arabia, and the final one for the game.
- Arc Villain: Miss Decibel
- Bound and Gagged: When Le Paradox takes Carmelita hostage, he has her tied up.
- Butterfly of Doom: In "Copy Cats", Sly comes across Sinbad's lost treasure and has to fight his instincts to take any of it, as his ancestor Henriette Cooper is mean to discover it in the 17th century. Since touching the gold will alert the guards and have disastrous effects on the timeline, stepping on the hoard leads to an instant Game Over.
- Call-Back:
- Sly uses his Giftedly Bad Italian accent for his delivery man disguise.
- When Bentley sees the hypnotic technology being used on Salim's gang, he compares it to hypnosis techniques he's seen in Prague.
- The Cameo: When Sly gets to the room filled with treasure in "Copy Cats", jump onto the crate and look ahead at the path you should be on. With the Binocucom, you can see Clockwerk in the distance.
- Clothes Make the Superman: Sly's costume is a Thief Costume, a costume with a magic scepter Salim was allegedly given to by a genie that allows Sly to slow down time around him. Bentley thinks it directly inspired Salim's descendant Matthew de la Coopeur to create the perpetual slow-motion technique.
- Crazy Enough to Work: Sly decides to use his new disguise and trademark Italian Accent to fool Ms. Decibel and Paradox. Bentley is completely flabbergasted at how this actually worked.
- Damsel in Distress: Le Paradox takes Carmelita hostage and threatens to throw her off his blimp if Sly tries to save her.
- Darkest Hour: While Ms. Decibel was stopped, all of the ancestors' canes are in Le Paradox's possession, and to make matters worse, he's also taken Carmelita hostage.
- Distracted by the Sexy: Part of Bentley's infiltration plan involves Carmelita disguising herself as a belly-dancer. Murray volunteers to do it when Carmelita objects, but she relents.
- Food as Bribe: When Sly finds Salim, he manages to convince him to come back to the hideout with the promise of food.
- Foreign Queasine:
- The Panther, The Tiger and The Lion have a particular liking for scorpion claws, camel cheese and cobra tails respectively. Salim later remarks that scorpions Tastes Like Chicken.
- Inverted when Bentley tells Salim what jelly is.
- Furry Confusion: Salim's old crew are all anthropomorphic rats, and yet there are regular rats as fauna.
- The Gambling Addict: Salim pawned his magic thieving outfit when he needed the money for his gambling losses.
- Genie in a Bottle: It is mentioned that Salim was allegedly given his time-warping thief costume by a genie and may still be in Salim's possession through a lamp. When Sly is looking for his DNA, they find his fingerprints in a shop full of lamps, trying to find another genie to help him bust his old gang out of imprisonment.
- I Am Not Weasel: Despite all of them being rats, Salim's old gang members all go by The Tiger, The Lion and The Panther. Strange, considering there are anthropomorphic lions and tigers populating this world.
- Noodle Incident: Salim and a carpet salesman named Honest Hassan were involved in a Magic Carpet scam.
- Retirony: Being in his golden years, Salim intended on retiring with one last job to go out on. Since that last job was backed by technology from the future and his old gang members were captured, he has been unable to retire officially before the Cooper Gang find him. Even then, he is reluctant to do anything out in the field do to his old age, constantly complaining whenever he has to do anything.
- Rhythm Game: Carmelita's Belly-Dancing scene plays similar to Murray's geisha scene in "Turning Japanese".
- Seen It All: When the Cooper Gang explain to Salim the situation - that they and Decibel were time-travelers - he seemed to comprehend it rather quickly. We later find out that he has acquired his time-altering suit from a genie, so it is likely that he either has had his own time-traveling adventure in his youth or he simply has encountered enough of the supernatural to simple shrug off any weirdness he comes across.
- Shout-Out: Sly tries saying "open sesame" when he finds a locked door. Salim doesn't get the reference. Ironic, since Salim was a member of the Forty Thieves.
- Signature Move: Salim's Climbing Cobra technique allows him to shoot up or down poles, chains and ropes exceedingly fast.
- Sinking Ship Scenario: In "Copy Cats", Sly has to use his thief costume to scale a wrecked ship on the verge of sinking into The Tiger's cell.
- Time Travel for Fun and Profit: The reason why Le Paradox and Miss Decibel are there is so that they could create forgeries of official documents (using Salim's hypnotized gang as workers) to make it seem like Le Paradox is of royal lineage.
- Tracking Device: Having met three of Sly's previous ancestors, Bentley was able to whip-up a device that allowed Sly to find Salim using their shared DNA. Sly remarks that it's "some real science fiction."
