Shout Out / Ratchet & Clank

As Ratchet & Clank is a franchise steeped in pop culture and science fiction tropes, there are a large number of Shout Outs, Easter eggs, and references that can be found in all corners of it.

For examples that reference other Insomniac Games or PlayStation titles please see the franchise's dedicated Company Cross References page.

Ratchet & Clank (2002)

• Ratchet is a mechanic who lives on a desert planet, meets a robot that holds military secrets, and ends up taking out a planet destroying laser weapon. Sound familiar?
  • Upon buying the Persuader in the HD remaster, you will unlock the trophy "These are not the droids you're looking for..."

Going Commando

• From this entry onward Clank gained a speaking quirk where he (almost) never uses contractions, a characteristic lifted directly from Commander Data of Star Trek: The Next Generation fame. In an amusing coincidence this means Clank even mirrors Data's Early-Installment Weirdness as both characters routinely used contractions before the writers decided to throw in the speaking quirk.
• Two of the unlockable minigames are retro games recreated in this game: "Space-ish Wars" is a pastiche of Space War starring two sheep, while Sheep Blasters is styled similarly to Space Invaders, starring two Synthenoids shooting sheep.

Up Your Arsenal

• The Galactic Rangers in the opening stage quote a number of lines from the Alien series, including Stay Frosty and "Game over man!" from Aliens.
• When Nefarious summons Lawrence halfway through the final boss, he's decked out in rocker gear and claims that he was in the middle of practicing a guitar solo that he dubbed "Bass Odyssey".
• The Biobliterator's design resembles the Death Star, and Nefarious even built a more powerful second model in secret.

Deadlocked

• Green (one of your combat bots) sometimes yells "Wolverines!" while fighting, a literal Shout-Out to the movie Red Dawn (1984).
• There's a combat jeep quite similar to Halo's Warthog called the Puma, which was confirmed to be a reference in the comments on episode 20 of Mike Stout and Tony Garcia's developer commentary of Up Your Arsenal.
• There is one Ace Hardlight as an Exterminator, a reference you might not get unless you're up on your British sci-fi comedies.
• During a 'slander campaign' by Dallas and Juanita, Dallas refers to Ratchet briefly as "The Butcher of Bogon."
• At one point, Ace asks Vox what other shows the people could be watching instead of Dread Zone at the moment. One of the suggestions is Queer Eye for the Tyrranoid.
• Towards the end of the game, on Maraxus, Ratchet is forcibly separated from Merc and Green, and must rescue them one at a time, with the Lovable Coward of the trio rescued last, before a final clash that finishes the planet. This is partly a homage to the Final Boss in Kingdom Hearts, and also to the fourth chapter in Sly 2: Band of Thieves, both involving two members of the Power Trio being captured.
  • Kingdom Hearts III would acknowledge this with a tit-for-tat Shout-Out where Sora can imitate Ratchet if he's in Monstropolis and equipped with the Hunny Spout.
  • Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time would also acknowledge the shout-out with Clank appearing as an easter egg.
• Some of the skill points include:
  • "Can't Touch This"
  • "Gone In 30 Seconds"
  • "I'm Melting"
  • "The Great Escape"
• Upgrading a weapon to level 10 in the HD remaster unlocks the trophy "Dodge This..."
• A secret skin only available in the Japanese version is "Saurus Ratchet," which dresses up the lombax in a costume very reminiscent of Godzilla.

Size Matters

• The Godzilla costume from Deadlocked makes a return, this time being available for all regions as well as being renamed to the much more obvious name of "Ratchetzilla."
• Getting 8 skill points unlocks a cheat where killing the cows that the Mootator creates will play the sound of a cowbell. The cheat's name, of course, is "More Cowbell."

Future: Tools of Destruction

• A lot of the (non-punny) skill points. Examples include:
  • "We Don't Need No Stinkin' Bridges!"
  • "What's That, R2?"
  • "Dancin' With the Stars"
  • "Can't Touch This" (again)
  • "Gotta Catch 'Em All"
  • "Everybody Dance Now"
  • "Happy Feat"
  • "Disco Inferno"
  • "Say Hello to My Little Friend"
  • "You Sank My Battleship!"
  • "Promoted to Inspector", which is given for collecting all the gadgets in the game.
• After defeating Captain Slag, Rusty Pete offers Ratchet a "gimmicky pirate name" since the code apparently says Ratchet is Captain now:
  Pete: "The Dread Pirate Ratchet", perhaps?
• Qwark, upon being rescued from Tachyon's clutches, snarls that the tyrant is, "...so off my Top Eight!"
• One of the songs that plays on the pirate-inhabited planet of Ardolis has a section that sounds an awful lot like the famous bridge of Jack Sparrow's theme.

Secret Agent Clank

• Klunk depiction in this game turns him into an Expy of Lore to match Clank's parallels to Data: Both characters have narcissistic and malicious personalities, schemed to replace their good counterpart, hold a disdain for their creators, and frequently use contractions in their speech to contrast their counterparts' nonuse of them.
  • And in a Star Trek homage unrelated to Lore, Klunk now sports a Beard of Evil just like Mirror Universe Spock.
• The back of the game's box in PAL territories reads "The name's Clank. Secret Agent Clank."
• An official wallpaper for the game included the text "Harder...Faster...Stronger...Better!"
• The Ratchetzilla skin returns yet again, and a new skin added to the game is "Kung-Fu Ratchet" which is obviously modeled after Bruce Lee's attire in Game of Death.
• Some of the skill points you can acquire are:
  • "Ramming Speed!"
  • "Androids in Disguise"
  • "Whip It Good"

Future: A Crack in Time

• Qwark's infiltration plan relies on a conveniently-exposed thermal exhaust port. While trying to pull it off, you're nearly crushed in a smelly, watery trash compactor.
• Mr. Zurkon refers to robotic enemies as "toasters."
  • Interesting, because Mr. Zurkon is voiced by Marc Graue, who played another character who talks about toasters (and how they toast toast).
• Late in the game, The Plumber appears before Clank in a dream sequence, standing in front of a familiar looking green pipe which he encourages Clank to enter. Clank asks if the Plumber is coming too, but the Plumber points out that jumping down every pipe you see would be a ridiculous thing for a plumber to do.
• This quote:
  Cassiopeia: Still alive? Well, let's see how you handle this deadly nerve toxin!
• After you beat the game, Lord Vorselon taunts you by revealing that he is your father... 's accountant.
• Lord Vorselon is an evil alien with green skin, pointed ears, prominent fangs, and a single large eye, and he's always seen with a glass dome encasing his head. In other words, he looks an awful lot like Kang or Kodos.
• There's a trophy called "It Belongs in a Museum" that you get by finding an ancient Zoni artifact in an old temple.
  • The trophy you get for beating the game is named "88MPH".
• Before Ratchet enters the Zoni Temple alone, Qwark says "Operation Red Shirt is a go".
• When Captain Qwark first jumps on and straddles the back of the War Grok he says, "High-ho, Snowball, away!"
• The "My Blaster Runs Hot" video game is basically Robotron: 2084 meets Stylistic Suck.
• Occasionally after shooting enemies, Mr. Zurkon will say "Keep the change, filthy aliens."
• Pirate Radio has one song that vaguely resembles "Eye of the Tiger" and another with slightly overwrought emotional guitar work that calls to mind Dire Straits.
• You can acquire the skill point "Negative, Ghostrider!" for destroying 5 dropships before they can drop off enemies.
• "That's CAPTAIN Qwark. I didn't take a three-week hero correspondence course just so I could be called 'Mister.'"
• There's a location called Krell Canyon.
• The Insomniac Moon shows off the original design of the Hypersonic Brainwave Scrambler, which looks like an Imperial interrogation droid. And as if to squash any assumptions of it being a coincidence, the design's accompanying infobox explicitly calls out that it was "more reminiscent of a certain pesky droid from another galaxy far, far way."

Comic Miniseries

• The name of the comics' first issue is "Ears of War", with the third being named "Lost and Spaced."
• Perhaps unintentional, but there's also this from the comic series:
  Zogg: Have you any more good news? Perhaps you'll tell me next that my parents were eaten by wild Carnivines?
• "Clank, I don't think we're in the Solana Galaxy anymore."

All 4 One

• One of the first levels you play through is a training ground monitored by an AI. If you listen to her for more than five minutes, she'll start to remind you of another passive-agressive AI. Once she realizes that the players aren't trainees, but "interlopers", she even tries to deter them by damning them with faint praise and making mostly-useless threats. ("You remember those gold stars I gave you? They're gone now. Try hanging that on the fridge.") On a similar note, more than one villain asks if/how the heroes are "Still Alive"— sometimes several times in a row.
  • Also a different AI, at one point, lies about cake.
• The Skill Point for beating the game in Grief Mode? "Good Grief".
  • Additionally, there's a skill point named "Judgement day" which you get by launching either Clank or Nefarious into an incinerator.
• Getting through the laser wall near the end of the game in 45 seconds will get you the "Mission Improbable" trophy.

Full Frontal Assault

• The very first line is a rather obvious one to Star Trek.
  Qwark: Captain's log. Stardate... uh, let's call it Wednesday.
• When the Starship Phoenix II gets hacked, what plays over the speakers? The Trololo song.
• The final boss's Groovitron dances are from Gangnam Style.
• Purchasing a Groovitron mine for the first time unlocks the skill point "Bring in the Funk...and then Shoot It."
• A couple of the trophies' names reference other things:
  • "Fear Does Not Exist..."
  • "A Night at the Mansion", which you get for getting a group of bunnies to dance at once.

Into the Nexus

• The trophy for defeating Mr. Eye is named "Cross the Streams."

Ratchet & Clank (2016)

• The Pixelizer is a shotgun based on retro game technology. Likewise, the names of its Raritanium Mods reference retro game mods; the Health Genie is based on the Game Genie, while the Ammo Shark nods to the GameShark.
• One of the cheats lets you replace bolts with other currencies. Two of the available replacements are "Adorable Toruses" which look like Rings, and "Rare Minerals" which turns all the bolts into Rupees.
• The holocard for the Rilgar Sewers state that they're a "wretched hive of scum and villainy" and that you should be cautious.
• During the dogfight on Pokitaru, Ratchet, of course, gets told to do a barrel roll!
• As you'd expect, some of the trophies are references:
  • "These Go To Eleven"
  • "Abby Normal", which you get for collecting all of the Telepathopus brains.
  • "Go Speed Ratchet, Go!"
  • "The Little Robot That Could"
  • "I Shot Down Your Battleship"
  • "Zurkon Family Values"
  • "Faster than a Speeding Ameboid"
  • "I Hate Lamp"

The Life of Pie Short

• The title of the short is a pun that references Life of Pi.

Rift Apart

• After collecting a certain number of Gold Bolts you are rewarded a set of wrench/hammer replacements (12 for Ratchet's wrench, 13 for Rivet's hammer), one of which being "Key" which is very obviously modeled after a Keyblade.
• The Pirate Trials of Ardolis is one big Affectionate Parody of Pirates of the Caribbean, down to a group of imprisoned pirates using a bone to try to tempt the Robomutt holding the key to their jail cell◊.
• Several of the trophies reference other works:
  • "It's Loose!", which is unlocked for setting Juice free.
  • "I'm The Warden Now"
  • "2 Fuzz 2 Nefarious"
  • "Glitch, Uh, Finds a Way"
  • "Lombax and Chill"
  • "It's So Fluffy!"
  • "Aim to Misbehave"
  • "Sweet, Sweet Victory"
• Zurkon Jr.'s Battleplex has challenges named "Awesome Bugtrax Done Quick," "A Grunthor Named Sue," "Boomstick Blast," and "Ka-Boomstick Blast."

Other

• The cancelled sequel to Ratchet & Clank: Going Mobile! was to be titled Clone Home, a reference to the famous "phone home" line from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (which in turn was an allusion to it being a cell phone game).

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