Video Game / LittleBigPlanet

Don't be fooled by their cuteness, they have The Power of Creation. And so do you.

"On the LittleBigPlanet, you're a little Sackperson. This one is you. Aw, bless. You're quite the cute one."

— Stephen Fry

LittleBigPlanet is a video game series started by Media Molecule in 2008, originally for the PlayStation 3. At its core, the series is a 2½D Co-Op Multiplayer Platform Game with a robust Level Editor and Player Creation Sharing, all of which informs its tagline: "Play, Create, Share". The series has gone through many installments in its more than 12 years of existence:

Games in the series

• LittleBigPlanet (October-November 2008, PS3) — The original game, developed by Media Molecule, which introduced the world to the titular realm, the four-player co-op, and the Create Mode. Sackboy goes on an adventure to meet the Creator Curators all around the world, solving any conflicts of theirs and eventually taking on the rogue Creator Curator known as the Collector, who's been kidnapping characters from all across the world.
• LittleBigPlanet (November-December 2009, PSP) — A pared-down game compared to the PS3 title, owing to the PSP's weaker hardware, developed by SCE/Guerrilla Cambridge and Media Molecule. This title has less layers and lacks multiplayer, but retains the platforming and Create Mode. Sackboy adventures across the globe once more to get the various Creator Curators to attend a parade, once more solving their problems on the way.
• Sackboy's Prehistoric Moves (December 2010, PS3) — A short PlayStation Move-based combo-platter Mission-Pack Sequel and Tech-Demo Game, developed by XDev and Supermassive Games as a tie-in to LBP2. This game lacks the creation aspect, and is strictly about playing the levels. In it, Sackboy adventures through a prehistoric-themed standalone adventure, eventually taking on the antagonistic Big Rex.
• LittleBigPlanet 2 (January 2011, PS3) — The first straight sequel to the original LittleBigPlanet, developed by Media Molecule. This title is when the series shifted from being a platform game to being, as they so put it, a "platform for games". The tools in Create Mode have increased greatly via the introduction of Logic, with devices in this category ranging from simple logic gates, timers and counters that can cause outputs to activate, to attachments that can move and rotate objects, allowing for much more complex creations and interactions; the Controllinator is one among many things that such Logic can be used in, allowing prospective creators to make their own unique objects and characters to control. In the story, Sackboy is saved from an attack by the Negativitron by a man named Larry Da Vinci, and subsequently joins him in the Alliance, a group made to combat the evil vacuum, helping them prepare an assault on the foe.
• LittleBigPlanet PS Vita (September 2012, PS Vita) — The second handheld game in the series, developed by Double Eleven, Tarsier Studios, and XDev Studios Europe. The better hardware of the Vita allows this title to be more accurate to the contents of LittleBigPlanet 2 than the PSP title was to the original game, to the point of even including a few of its own new things. In the story, a villain named the Puppeteer is turning Sackfolk into the villainous Hollows, who are wreaking havoc across the world. Sackboy narrowly escapes this fate thanks to a timely intervention by Colonel Flounder, who is among the many characters Sackboy adventures alongside as he attempts to put a stop to the Puppeteer's plans.
• LittleBigPlanet Karting (November 2012, PS3) — The second spinoff title, developed by United Front Games (known for their prior kart-racing game with a heavy focus on user-made content, ModNation Racers) and San Diego Studio. This game takes the LittleBigPlanet series in a similar direction to that game. The story centers around the Hoard, a thieving group that uses their speedy vehicles to pilfer objects the world over. Sackboy isn't able to keep up until a Hoard accidentally crashes their car next to him, allowing Sackboy to hijack it and engage them on equal footing — or pedaling, as it were.
• LittleBigPlanet 3 (November 2014, PS3 and PS4) — The third main console title, created by Sumo Digital with assistance by various other companies. This title introduces three new characters; OddSock, a speedy and agile dog-like quadruped; Toggle, a creature that can change their size from strong and heavy to nimble and light; and Swoop, a bird that can fly through the air and dive into quick glides. The story centers around Newton, a well-meaning but bumbling lightbulb who releases the Titans with intent to use them to improve the world of Bunkum — until they possess him, driving Newton into a destructive frenzy. In order to stop him, Sackboy awakens the other three characters, who within the story are the former guardians of Bunkum.
• Run Sackboy! Run! (October 2014 (iOS), December 2014 (Android), March 2015 (PS Vita)) — An Endless Running Game created by Firesprite, starring Sackboy on his attempt to outrun the Negativitron as it chases him down. Create Mode is absent, so the game is all about the running.
• Sackboy: A Big Adventure (November 2020, PS4 and PS5) — A 3D platformer spinoff (with no Create Mode) in the vein of Super Mario 3D World, made by Sumo Sheffield. The plot kicks off with the villainous Vex attacking Sackboy's hometown of Loom, kidnapping the residents and forcing them to work on the Topsy-Turver, a device that he plans on using to cause chaos throughout Craftworld. Vex accidentally drops his plans during his attack, which Sackboy steals as he makes an escape, using them to guide him on his quest to foil Vex's evil goals.
• Ultimate Sackboy (February 2023, iOS and Android) — A free-to-play mobile spinoff by Exient Entertainment. Based off of and using assets from A Big Adventure, it plays somewhat like an Endless Running Game with a competitive twist. Players compete to win runs by scoring more points than their opponent in order to unlock new stages and features.

In addition to all these titles, Sackboy is also among the 20 base roster characters in 2012's PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, with a Sackgirl alternate costume as a Pre-Order Bonus (and later a regular DLC).

See also Dreams, the spiritual sequel also from Media Molecule. Additional entries include Larry Da Vinci's self-demonstrating page.

---

Open a folder, and select a Trope with the ACTION BUTTON:

Whole Series

• 100% Completion: Collecting all of the prize bubbles and acing all of the levels of the story mode or the DLC Level Packs. Specifically, this is the name of the Platinum Trophy in all the games except Vita.
• 2½D: Full 3D graphics with 2D gameplay. A unique twist is that your character can switch between the layer planes on command. In the third game, due to the much larger number of layers, there are now more ways to get around. Slides that let you slide into the foreground, Layer Launchers that throw you to a predetermined landing zone, Velociporters that teleport you between the closest Velociporters of the same color, the list goes on.
• Achievement Mockery: In LBP2, there's a trophy called "1,440 Minutes of Create," which is earned by spending a total of 24 hours in Create Mode. The Vita version changes this to "Get a Life." In both of those games, there's also trophies for dying 20 times in one story level, and pins (in-game achievements) for things like dying a certain number of times, coming in last place in races, drowning, killing multiple Sackbots in the story levels, slapping other players to their deaths, or popping yourself to retry. "It's really not too bad..."
• Advancing Boss of Doom: There's one in many of the games, and almost all of them fit into the "run away until you win" type.
  • LBP1's Skulldozer, piloted by Frida, rampages through the Wedding until you cross a bridge that promptly explodes afterwards, stopping the destruction and bringing her back to her senses.
  • LBP PSP's Dragon from the Orient. Unusually for the series, it's of the "fight and run at the same time" type, and you're in a rickshaw so you don't have to worry about the running.
  • LBP2's Copernicus the Guard Turkey, who guards the Factory of a Better Tomorrow (or used to, anyway). He chases Sackboy, Clive, and the Sackbot army until he falls through the floor... and then comes back while on fire and chases them some more before being done in for good by Clive.
  • LBPV's Coaster Valley is guarded by a trash compactor. When Sackboy and Otis attempt to collect some scrap to build the double-barreled cannon, the compactor goes after them and a chase ensues.
  • LBP3's chain link monster, created by Newton after Sackboy, OddSock, and Toggle confront him in the Ziggurat. This time, however, you're playing as Toggle and have to change size to progress and get prizes.
• Alternative Foreign Theme Song:
  • The Japanese version uses "Phantom Planet" by Beat Crusaders to advertise the first game.
  • "Yarakai Heart" was the commercial theme song for the Japanese version of the second game.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Considering that a part of the game is character customization, this was going to happen. More so in the second, third, and Vita games, where acing the boss levels gets you the creator of that world's costume.
• And Your Reward Is Interior Decorating: You collect Stickers and Decorations from the story levels, which can be used to decorate your Pod and your custom levels. You can also use collected materials and objects in the latter.
• An Interior Designer Is You: In your pod, your levels, and even the main story levels if you want.
• Ascended Glitch: There was a bug in the first LittleBigPlanet game which allowed players to put objects in background and foreground layers farther away than intended. The amount of fat layers that could be used was three, and four thin layers could be used. Players used this glitch to create full 3D games of all kinds. The original glitch to create the glitched object doesn't work in later games, but another glitch could be used to create the glitched objects in LBP2, and LittleBigPlanet PS Vita and the PS Vita Cross-Controller part of the Cross-Controller pack. A similar glitch was found in LBPPSP which allowed a third fat layer to be used in the background, normally impossible as the game restricted layer usage to only two fat and three thin layers. In LBP3, the usable fat layer count increased to 16, characters could now go across 16 fat layers, and there were tools and objects introduced that allow further use of the increased layer count.
  • This broke older levels in parts where the bottom floor border was used as terrain, as the level border now crosses all 16 fat layers, and there were no restrictions when playing older levels to prevent players from reaching these extra layers.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Attack the creature brains to defeat enemies, and the core of the bosses to defeat them.
• Automatic Level: The community has plenty of these, mostly in the form of Rube Goldberg Devices.
• Automatic New Game: Starting these games drops you into the tutorial/opening credits as the default brown knit Sackboy. Unless you're starting with a save from a previous game, in which you are wearing your last costume.
• Boss-Only Level: In every game except the first, the boss will always get his own level, usually denoted by a bigger level seal than the others.
• Breaking Out: One of the minigames in "Set Controls for the Heart of the Negativitron" is a Breakout pastiche. playing it awards you the key to a side level.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: A less observable phenomenon throughout the series and does not apply literally. However, it is worth noting that about the same weeks that notable DLC packs come out (eg Metal Gear Solid, Pirates of the Caribbean, DC Comics etc.), a lot of levels simply containing the new content begin to surface, sucking up all the ratings and fame that they can get before the said content becomes ordinary. Probably the biggest example of this was when the Pirates of the Caribbean DLC came out, resulting in thousands of people spamming levels consisting of nothing but water with the occasional rocket-powered boat.
• Bridge Logic: Any tall object, be it a ruler, a pencil, a sword, or even dead fish, if not heavy or thick or glued, can be kicked down and serve as makeshift bridges for our Sackboy.
• By the Lights of Their Eyes: Can be invoked by wearing glowing eyes in the dark.
• Cardboard Box Home: The Pod, your home base, is made of cardboard.
• Character Customization: Can be done in Create Mode with the Gameplay Tweaker and other tools. The costume menu is also called this, but it's not an example.
• Checkpoint: There are multiple kinds. All of these checkpoints operate on the same rules, meaning they activate if a Sackperson passes by them, or logic can be hooked up to activate them in fancy fashions. Lives are represented by a ring of light around them. It's black when unactivated, white when active, dim light when previously activated, flashing red and white with a siren when empty, and if the lives run out and another checkpoint is activated, the empty checkpoint turns black again and doesn't reactivate unless you reset the level. Listed below are the unique kinds of checkpoints. ("n"=the number of players playing the game)
  • Entrances. They have n+3 lives and Sackboy starts the level from it.
  • Checkpoints. They have n+3 lives, but they don't mark the start of a level.
  • Double-Life Checkpoints. They're like normal checkpoints, but they're upped to 2n+5 lives instead.
  • Infinite Checkpoints. Helpfully marked with the symbol in question, these checkpoints have a never-ending supply of lives for difficult obstacles.
  • Scoreboards. These are actually the end of the level, but they're nice enough to respawn any dead players.
• Checkpoint Starvation: Not in the story levels, but some community levels only contain a few checkpoints, or sometimes just one Infinite Checkpoint at the beginning.
• Clockwork Creature: There's one crafted by Larry Da Vinci as a tutorial boss. As well as Clockwork Spiders in Bunkum Lagoon. You can even build them yourself.
• Collection Sidequest: For the most part, getting all of the prizes is irrelevant to the story. Averted with Sticker Switches, which require collected stickers to activate, but in all but one case they just give you more prizes.
• Console Cameo: Sackboy operates the Pod via the Pod Computer. They all look kinda familiar.
• Cosmetic Award: In all games except the first, every possibly action either earns you or scores towards unlocking Pins. These work similarly to Xbox Achievements and PS3 Trophies, and there are hundreds to collect; the vast majority for trivial things such as logging onto the online network or picking up points bubbles. They serve no real purpose, however the player can choose to display a couple of their choosing on their player profile card. There are also hidden pins, which aren't listed until you get them (though there are very few of these), and all the Trophies are tied into the pins. The pins that also award a Trophy (or conversely are earned upon earning said trophy) are marked with an icon of a trophy.
• Crate Expectations: Depending on how you built your crates in Level Editor, what material it's made and what it's contained, you can play this straight, subvert or avert this trope.
• Creation Sequence: The game has you scripting your own Creation Sequence via Level Editor, be it recording in Create Mode, Popit Powerup in Play Mode, a scripted assembly line, and more.
• Credits Medley: From the second game onwards, as the previous ones only showed the credits if you selected them from the start menu. LBP2 uses "Sleepyhead", then the funk remix of "Also sprach Zarathustra", and finally "Ghosts"; while LBP3 starts with "Energy" (which, strangely, isn't obtainable in Create Mode except through a Good Bad Bug) and then goes through the interactive themes for Manglewood, The Ziggurat, and Bunkum Lagoon. LBP Karting also averts this, and just plays the Gardens remix the whole way through.
• Critical Annoyance: If your party keeps dying repeatedly and runs out the lives in the last Checkpoint, the glowing ring on it turns red and an intermittent klaxon-type alarm sounds every three seconds, and the klaxon fades a bit if you go further from it. Once you activate a new Checkpoint, both the red ring and the klaxon stop.
• Cute Machines: Sackbots have all the cuteness of a Sackperson in mechanical form.
• Deadly Gas: The aptly-named Horrible Gas. If a Sackperson touches it (even with their arms or feet, not just their head), they dissolve. Horrible Gas actually comes in numerous colors, but green is the most common. The others are used mostly to make the player think it's something else, like gray gas for fog, or purple gas for some kind of monster-related thing, as seen in the "Monsters" level pack. Unless it's deliberately attached to something else (done by gluing a material to a Piston or another material before lethalizing it with the Horrible Gas Tool, as shown by the ghosts of the third level of The Gardens), it stays in place and cannot be moved. Anything that isn't a Sackperson can move through the gas, however. A lot of level creators have this as their hazard of choice, though electrified materials and the plasma are just as lethal. Fire, on the other hand, takes two hits to kill a Sackperson. This is used cleverly in "Boom Town" from the first game, where Devante (the guy who tells you to rescue Uncle Jalapeno) has the gas in his mouth. Meaning you can literally die from his breath.
• Deadpan Snarker: The narrator has a tendency to make sassy or humorous remarks throughout the tutorials. Granted, it is Stephen Fry narrating the game.
• Death as Game Mechanic: Some user created levels require Sackboy to trigger a checkpoint, use a mechanism to move the checkpoint past an otherwise impassable obstacle, and die to respawn from the checkpoint at its new position.
• Death Throws: If Sackboy gets crushed or touches spikes, he performs one of these before respawning. In the Karting game, items lethalized without fire, electricity or plasma will cause Sackboy's kart to explode and him to do one of these, and so will spikes again.
• Defunct Online Video Games: Sony disabled the servers for LBP 1, 2, Vita, the PS3 version of 3 in 2021, followed by the main PS4 version in 2024 after a string of security incidents throughout the years, including (among other things) DDoS attacks and hackers gaining access to in-game community management tools. Given Sony's next to non-existent support for the PS3 and Vita by that time, along with Sony's shift to focus on other projects, it's likely the servers would've been shut down sooner or later anyway. But still, ouch.
• Deliberately Monochrome: It's possible to do this in Create Mode via the colour correction setting.
• Developer's Foresight: The game has a unique message for kicking you that you'll only see if you join somebody's online game, disconnect your controller, and refuse to turn it back on:
  You have been removed from the game to make space for players with controllers attached!
• Directionally Solid Platforms: The game tries to simulate these. There are multiple 2D planes you can be on, and jumping up above a platform on an adjacent plane automatically shifts you into that plane so you can land on it. You can also drop down from a platform by moving towards the foreground, but not towards the background.
• Downloadable Content: Numerous level kits, in the themes as following:
  • LittleBigPlanet
    • Metal Gear (primarily based on Guns of the Patriots, but with content from the first 4 MGS games)
    • Monsters
    • Ancient History
    • Pirates of the Caribbean
    • The Incredibles
    • An original world for the PSP version focusing entirely on vehicles.
    • Marvel Comics ^twice!Once as story content for the original game, and again as a minigame pack for the Vita version.
  • LittleBigPlanet 2
    • Toy Story
    • An original world made for use with the Playstation Move.
    • The Muppets
    • An original world made for cross-controller use with the Play Station Vita.
    • The Nightmare Before Christmas
    • DC Comics
  • LittleBigPlanet 3
    • Adventure Time
    • LittleBigPlanet 3: The Journey Home
    • Back to the Future
    • SpongeBob SquarePants
    • An original "Tiki Paradise" theme.
    • Seaside Surprise, which contains elements from the missing LittleBigPlanet HUB. invoked
  • In addition to all of those are more minor packs, ranging from additional music to themed sticker packs based on the season of the year. Costumes with accompanying stickers are also common, and usually coincide with a recent release. Themes have included Mass Effect, Frozen (2013), Doctor Who, Journey (2012), WipEout, Battlestar Galactica, TRON: Legacy and many more besides.
• Dream Land: The game's setting is stated to be made up of people's imagination.
• Drop-In-Drop-Out Multiplayer: If a local player turns on a controller, the game asks them what account they want to log in as, and once they pick, they spawn out of the next checkpoint. Online players asking to join prompts the game to ask if you want them to join, using Triangle for yes and Circle for no. Local players can turn off their controller, and their Sackboy will sit down and leave the game after about 10 seconds. Online players can just leave, or be kicked if you so desire.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The general look of the original game was a much more literal rendition of the arts and crafts aesthetic compared to later entries, especially in the Story levels as they weren't affected by the post-Launch additions of being able to hide bolts, connectors and sensors. This results in many levels "showing their work" by having pistons, winches and bolts clearly visible with no attempt being made to hide how contraptions work, unlike the later games which do and overall feel much less like a puppet show. This was likely intentional for a "use your imagination" approach, and so that Media Molecule could show players how they achieved their contraptions. Not coincidentally LBP1 is also the only entry where you collect Story level contraptions to use in your own levels.
  • Level creators who started with the second game or onwards may be given a shock when coming to the original game and seeing how crude certain level creation techniques are, due the absence of almost all of the familiar cursor and Logic tools that makes seemingly simple tasks more difficult to accomplish. Multi-stage bosses in particular are a much more complex nightmare to get working, especially without Microchips to help compress the logic down and save on Thermometer use. Common gadgets from later titles like the Grappling Hook are also absent; you pretty much only have the Jetpack, Scuba Gear and the Paintinator from the Metal Gear Solid DLC to play with.
    • There were also a few items missing orginally. The most notable was an infinte respawn, which could only be glitched in. They added that later on.
  • The crude aesthetic also applies to NPCs. It's quite jarring to go from fully voiced cutscene characters like Da Vinci and Newton to Magic Mouth contraptions that only appear at the start and end of a level, and are replete with obvious stickers, visible connectors and voices you couldn't even call Simlish!
  • Several objects present in the second game were either DLC exclusive in the first or nowhere to be seen:
    • While Plasma is a standby hazard in most of the games now, in LBP1 it was exclusive to the Metal Gear Solid Pack, and only came in the form of Plasma Balls — no lethalizing a floor with Plasma in this game! Also exclusive to this DLC: true missiles that aren't just cobbled together from other things, such as the homebrewed "missile" used in the main game — that's just an Impact Explosive and some dissolve material attached to a rocket.
    • Swimmable water is open for everyone to use starting from LBP2, but the first game only let you use it if you shelled out for the Pirates of the Caribbean Pack. The first game also didn't have projectile water/water balls. Speaking of that...
    • No projectile hazards (aside from the aforementioned Plasma Balls and missiles) existed in the first game; you'd have to make tiny balls and set them on whatever lethality you wanted them. LBP2 introduced pure, unfiltered projectile fire, electricity, plasma and missiles (these latter two available for everyone to use, not just MGS pack owners), in addition to the aforementioned projectile water.
  • With the third game's introduction of sixteen layers, going back to the older games that use only three can be rather odd, especially since all the previous DLC for the first and second games are (almost) fully compatible with the third game. LittleBigPlanet 3's vast amount of depth does a lot for level immersion, so going back to the first game and seeing it trying to squeeze every inch of depth out of only three layers is a special kind of awkward.
• Edible Theme Naming: Each of the first game's patches was named after a type of cheese. The second game's patches were initially named after types of cake, but eventually this was dropped.
• Emote Animation: The D-Pad is entirely devoted to the player-controlled characters' emotions. Each button has a designated emotion (for example, up is for happy, right for angry, down for sad, and left for fear) and pressing it up to three times will change the intensity of the emotion.
• Endless Game:
  • The user levels have grown beyond the point where a person could ever hope to play them all.
  • The Survival Challenges, a type of stage in which the players compete for a high score by staying alive as long as possible, be it skipping with a tie, balancing on a rolling platform, or shooting moving targets while dodging plasma bullets. They only end when you die.
  • Aside from those from Story Mode, there are also community-made stages such as Bomb Survival and Shark Survival.
• Energy Weapon: The Creatinator can shoot many different elemental beams.
• Everything's Deader with Zombies: There are numerous zombie-themed costumes.
• Evil Twin: Guest players get a subtitle based on their controller number, like Best Friend. Playing as a guest on the number one controller nets you this title. One of the titles is also "Good Twin."
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin:
  • "The Material Changer is Exactly What It Says On The Tin. Or on the cardboard. Or the polystyrene. Or whatever else it is that you want it to say it on."
  • Some of the logic fits this too. The Game Ender ends the game, the Smoke Machine emits smoke, and all of the sensors sense exactly what they say they do. Player Sensors, Water Sensors, Tag Sensors, Impact Sensors, etc.
• Expansion Pack World: The first game made it clear there were only 8 Creators in Craftworld. Not only do LittleBigPlanet 2, LittleBigPlanet PSP and LittleBigPlanet Karting add new areas, but LittleBigPlanet PS Vita and LittleBigPlanet 3 add two new planets out of nowhere.
• Fantasy Counterpart Map: The eight worlds of the campaign are all inspired by real countries- in order, you have England, Africa, South America, Mexico, the United States, Japan, India, and Russia.
• Flipping the Bird: It can be done in LBP2 and LBP3.
  • In the second game, in the level "Pipe Dreams" in the Factory of a Better Tomorrow, there's a moment where you have to pull levers to move fingers on a hand to form the hand that rockers use. However, you can also choose to put up just the middle finger, which will cause a sign that reads "Denied" to cover the offending finger until you put up another finger or take the middle one down.
  • In the "The Journey Home" level kit in the third game, one of the levels is based on the Factory of a Better Tomorrow, and the hand from the above paragraph makes a reappearance in a 2-player section. You have to put the pinky and index fingers in the same position that you had to in the second game, but you can also just put up the middle finger again, causing another "Denied" sign to come down and Clive to say "Nice try. We have policies against that."
• Floating Platforms:
  • Averted and Hand Waved in the first game: All platforms must be attached to something in order to appear like they're floating. Unless it's made of dark matter, which can float with no help.
  • The sequels let you play it straight by attaching an Anti-Gravity Tweaker or simply setting the object's physical properties to static, which allows it to float, making dark matter redundant.
• Follow the Money: Score bubbles can be placed on the ground, strung from the ceiling, or made to float with the Anti-Gravity Tweaker.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: The "20 Years of PlayStation" trailer for the third game has some PS1 games lined up on a shelf. They read Spyro the Dragon, Gran Turismo, Croc, and Oddworld.
• Frying Pan of Doom: One of the costume objects is a frying pan. If you try to do a Sackboy Slap while holding it, you get the expected sound. It's also supposed to knock the target further than a standard slap.
• Game-Breaking Bug: A flaw in the time engine of the game series called the 160 Hour Glitch after how many hours it takes to start taking effect in a level. As the amount of time played in a level increases, the time granularity of the level physics decreases, causing pistons and other physics objects in a level based on a small amount of time to start malfunctioning, for example .1 second pistons start breaking.
• Gameplay Roulette: Head to the community. Have your mind blown at the variety of gameplay that can be found in over 10 MILLION levels. The Controlinator, which didn't appear in the first game, lets players make their own controls for anything in their level, so eventually, people took their favorite genres and applied them to this game. This became self-subverted by the community due to how difficult it was for anyone who wasn't a Sack-someone to get any attention, so it eventually ended up in people flooding the community with the same level(s) in hopes of getting any attention.
• Genre Mashup: Try explaining this to someone who hasn't really played it. The first game is a platformer, but encourages you to build whatever kind of level you want, whether it be an actual level in the vein of Mario or just a music or set-piece showcase. The second game, however, looks to embrace this wholeheartedly, as it was marketed as a platform for games rather than a platform game. The main game showcases some unique gameplay styles, including a side-scrolling shooter that looks like a retro arcade game. The overall effect is a mashup of Gmod for consoles, Mario, winks and nods toward Monty Python-style humor, and sinister weaponized cuteness.
• Goomba Springboard: Jumping on the unprotected Creature Brain bounces Sackboy. Some items hanging above the enemies requires this technique to be obtained. You may also crush the lower part of the brain in Creation Mode but leave the score bubble part intact, it still bounces the Sackboy.
• Gotta Catch 'Em All: All of the games in the franchise have the Prize Bubbles in the story mode. They contain a myriad of items, including clothing items, materials, music and sound objects, and stickers and decorations. Of course, it's all completely optional.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: One of the new items introduced in the second game, and it's appeared in every other game since then.
• Gratuitous Ninja: Wearing the "Ninja" costume allows you to become one yourself.
• He Knows About Timed Hits: While the Narrator tells the player how to move and jump, the in-game characters usually explain everything else.
• High-Voltage Death: If Sackboy touches an electrified material, his seams burst and he has to restart from the previous checkpoint.
• Holiday Mode: Around the time of mainstream American holidays like Halloween or Christmas, the Team Picks page usually gets hit with a batch of more festive levels. Around the aforementioned holidays, plus many others, free DLC is put in the store for festive costumes. These include a turkey to wear on your head for Thanksgiving, a Santa costume for Christmas, Chinese people holding celebratory lamps for Chinese New Year, Star-shaped shades and a firework on Sackboy's back for American New Year, cologne and perfume for April Fool's day, and costumes for other events including World Peace Day and the Perseid's Meteor Shower.
• Human Ladder: From the second game onward, you can pull this off by using Grabinators to stack up Sackbots or other players wearing the gloves. It's also possible to build a Sackbot rope by having them grabbing each other and hanging them on a grabbable ceiling.
• Humongous Mecha
  • The Collector pilots one during the final battle of the first game, which has large fists to slam with and enemies it can summon. When enough damage is dealt, it loses these attacks, but gains the ability to shoot electric projectiles from its sides and make the same projectiles fall from the ceiling.
  • You also fight Metal Gear REX at the end of the Metal Gear Solid expansion pack (with a paintball gun to boot). Like in its home series, it makes liberal use of explosives to attack.
  • In the Muppets Pack, there's the Phantom's Massive Muppet Machine, which has Giant Hands of Doom that can slam and send out fireballs, and a mouth full of plasma that needs to be avoided when attacking its teeth.
  • Lex Luthor has one in the DC Comics pack that shoots lasers, plasma balls and missiles.
• Idle Animation: While waiting for you, Sackboy may yawn, hang his head down in boredom, sit down for a moment, or place his hands on his zipper.
• Jetpack: This is one of the powerups, and there are two versions that people can use in their levels: The Tethered Jetpack, which has a certain range that can be set by the level creator, and the Tetherless Jetpack, which has no restrictions, save for people placing Powerup Removers everywhere.
• Joke Item: The "Hessian Por Homme/Femme" DLC items, cologne and perfume, respectively. They serve no purpose other than to make Sackboy do an animation as he applies the cologne or perfume. But it's justified, considering what holiday happens near the time that the DLC gets put up.
• Jump Physics: Notable for actually conserving momentum when jumping; if you were on a moving platform when you jumped, you would still be moving along with it (though air friction might move you back if the platform was fast enough), and jumping on an upward-moving platform provided a noticeably higher jump, again depending on the speed.
• Kids Prefer Boxes: Your base, The Pod, is a rocket ship made out of cardboard.
• Killer Rabbit: Sackboy himself. He's adorable, perpetually happy and silly, and wants to pal around with his friends. He's also a reality altering super-powered entity who can create whole worlds with pure thought, alter the state of any object, fly, control time, and has a mean right hook.
• Last Lousy Point: There are some prize bubbles that are really hard to get. They may involve multiplayer puzzles, or they may just be really well hidden. Gets worse when they're early in the level, as you still need to complete it in order to receive the "Collected All Prize Bubbles" rewards at the end.
  • Vita has a Prize Bubble in "The Mainframe Heist" that's hidden behind the first checkpoint at the start of the third section.
• Leitmotif:
  • There is a particular theme that is heard in the music for My Moon in the original game, the sequel and the Vita version.
  • The Meanies and Newton have these as well.
  • Each of the different worlds also have their own, unique themes.
• Lemony Narrator: This one is prone to strange similes ("Faster than a pneumatic whippet!") and anecdotes about his cat.
• Level Editor: Said to be better than the tools Media Molecule, Sumo Digital, and the other creators use.
• Loads and Loads of Loading:
  • A general example: loading levels from the community can take a while, depending on how detailed they are. Some levels actually tell you to restart the game or back up your data before trying to load them, due to a risk of crashing your system, Sealed Fate being one example.
  • In the PS Vita game, there are a load of places where the game will freeze for a few frames. Also, undoing and redoing take a long time to load. A really annoying bug in this game is if your PS Vita memory card is worn out, these supposed to be short freezes will bloat up to freezes that last multiple seconds.
  • The third game was originally going to be PS4-only, but then the PS3 also got a release. The result is a game that's good on loading times on the new-gen console, but has load times of 20 seconds and upward on the last-gen console. It gets particularly egregious when you play levels from the two prior games, which can take even longer to load than they did in the game they were made in! For example, one LBP2 level takes about 5 seconds to restart, and that's counting the fade to black after you reset, the black screen after that, and the unfade from black before the level starts. The same level takes 20 seconds to restart in PS3!LBP3.
• Loading Screen:
  • In the first game, after hitting the X button to start loading a level (Story, Create Mode or otherwise), the screen shows information about the level on the "Pod Computer" screen. You can move the left stick to change windows between level information, items collected in the level, and popularity and tags (if an online level), with your Sackperson moving the Pod Computer (which is pretty much a PS3 controller) controls the same way. Also part of the loading is the word "Loading..." slowly rotating around the level icon on the planet or moon, and a running, monochromatic Sackboy with two arrows circling him in the lower left-hand corner. Unlike in most games, the loading can be cancelled mid-load by pressing the Circle button. (Sackboy only touches the buttons to load a level or cancel a load. But he always moves the analog sticks in response to the player's controller.) When the loading is done, the level icon literally "unzips" around the edge and the camera goes into it, with a white light followed by Sackboy popping out of the Entrance in said level. Returning to the Pod from a level doesn't take as long to load, but the camera still does the white-light thing. The "Loading Sackboy" animation sometimes is switched out for a spinning globe inside the arrows when transferring data to or from the online servers. Frequently appears while playing with other players online, even mid-level.
  • In the second game onwards, there will occasionally be a white screen before you get dropped into the level. This screen will have a randomized message and factoid, such as creating tips like "Sackbots are not waterproof!" In Karting, there are three sets of messages: When you're loading a level to play, when you're returning to the Pod, and when you're loading Create Mode. Pressing X will cycle between the messages.
• Lord British Postulate: Normally, there are only a couple of ways to kill NPCs, set by the level's creator. If you use the Overlord Glitch, however, you can drop explosives on anything and everything in the level.
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover: The game can become this by combining DLC, so you can have Batman, Marty McFly, Spider-Man and Jack Skellington in the Muppet Theater, or Buzz Lightyear, Mr. Incredible, Jack Sparrow and SpongeBob in the Land of Ooo.
• Mouse World: The Sackpeople are 8cm tall. This becomes obvious when you compare them to the backgrounds, and some of the real-world objects (e.g. the ruler).
• Named After Somebody Famous: Larry Da Vinci, Marlon Random and Newton.
• Name-Tron: In the second game, there's the Negativitron, Positivitron beams near the end of the game, and a side level called "Gobotron." The third game has the Organizertron.
• No Water Proofing In The Future: In the second and Vita games, Sackbots are immediately electrocuted if you drop them in water. The third game adds the option to waterproof them, but it only works if their behaviour is set to either idle or act.
• Nintendo Hard: In the original LittleBigPlanet most of the bosses one-hit KO you every hit, and usually have 2-3 rounds. Unless you perfected their patterns (Even then flukes can happen) this is brutal if you want to get the Ace level reward. Even worse that every single time you die you have to do the entire level over again.
• No Death Run: The games in this series have the "No Lives Lost" challenge available in all levels, also known as "acing" a level. Get through an entire level without dying once (including use of the Try Again command if you get stuck in a level), and you get some extra goodies at the Scoreboard. Required to get 100% Completion in Story Mode, because completion is measured by how many items you've collected in all levels, and items given by No Lives Lost definitely count. Some levels, like Survival Challenges, are literally impossible to do this, because to finish you MUST die somehow (usually part of the challenge, like collecting Score Bubbles while staying out of the Horrible Gas), but these aren't counted in this; you just have to complete the Survival Challenge levels to add to your completion percentage. Player-made levels have this option, so the creators can give extra gifts to players who are really good at their levels, but these aren't required for 100% completion.
• Not-Actually-Cosmetic Award: The games have collectible stickers, which need to be pasted on cardboard objects in the levels to activate events. Although mostly it's for more cosmetics, the only occasion where it advances the level is the tutorial teaching you how to use stickers.
• Not Quite Flight: In LittleBigPlanet 2 and Vita, the Hero Cape from the DC Comics Pack allows Sackboy to glide around. He can get momentum from flying down, then use it to fly upwards similarly to how gliding works in the Batman: Arkham Series. If the player lowers the gravity settings, the glide physics also change, and allow Sackboy to do a high jump and change mid-jump to a glide. With lower gravity, however, it's impossible to glide downwards and use the momentum to fly back upwards.
• NPC:
  • The early installments in the series use characters created from materials and stickers with Magic Eyes attached, and they're almost entirely incapable of movement.
  • From the second game onward, Sackbots take this role. They can be set to act in many different ways and wear any costumes.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: Sackboy can't really take much damage before exploding or getting thrown off and popping out of the last checkpoint. The only exception is fire, which causes him to get singed and hop away, hopefully toward safer ground. If he touches it twice in succession, he's dead.
• Oxygenated Underwater Bubbles: There's an item that can be used in levels that produces bubbles, and swimming through them refills the Oxygen Meter.
• Oxygen Meter: If a Sackperson stays underwater for 30 seconds without resurfacing or reaching a Bubble Maker, they pop from lack of air.
• Paintball Episode: The Metal Gear Solid DLC pack adds the paintinator, turning the pack itself into one of these as well as allowing you to create your own.
• Parental Bonus: Stephen Fry's narration has a fair amount of this, e.g. referencing '"Casablanca'' in the Global Settings tutorial.
• Pirate: The Pirates of the Caribbean gang of course, and also a costume.
• The Place: The game is named after its Dream Land setting. At times, it can be hard to tell if the narrator is referring to the game itself or just the setting.
• Player Creation Sharing: Players can share levels they create as well as music, films, and costumes.
• Please Subscribe to Our Channel: Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find a genuine comment that's actually about a level, and not begging you to play/heart the commenter's own levels. Note — This is nigh impossible. Even Liquid Ocelot resorts to spamming to garner hearts — see below.
• Power Creep, Power Seep: In the Metal Gear Solid themed expansion pack, Liquid Ocelot's plan is to flood LBP with pointless trophy levels so that he can be loved, and the Metal Gear itself is essentially beaten by Sackboy with a paintball gun.
• The Power of Creation: Every Sackboy has this thanks to Create Mode. This is more like the case of World of The Power Of Creation.
• Power-Up Mount:
  • In LittleBigPlanet 2, Avalon has create several robotic animals you can ride onto. The RoboBun can jump to a great height and land a Ground Pound from above. The MechaPup can use its Sonic Bark to push heavy objects. The HamsterTron 2000 can roll through tunnels and boost toward any direction. And the Bee 2.0 can both pick up object and shoot projectiles.
  • Aside from the robotic animals created by Avalon, you can build your own mount from scratch using the Controllinator in the Level Editor.
• Press X to Die: One of the options in the Popit is "retry." Holding X on it will allow the player to pop themselves and die (without the 5% score loss) and pop out of the next checkpoint that gets activated. Its main use is in case you ever get stuck somewhere and can't get out. In Karting, it's mapped to Select instead.
• Punk Punk:
  • Sackpeople have a Stitchpunk appearence.
  • The second game also has clockpunk, steampunk, and cyberpunk themes.
• Rainbow Speak: In NPC dialogue, important items and game mechanics are highlighted in pink.
• Reality Warper: You yourself. You can do near anything you want in Create Mode, and have total control over the world.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: The Sackboys and Sackgirls even spend much of their time with their mouths open, possibly with their tongues hanging out like little happy puppies.
• Russian Bear: The Ziggurat, a Russian-themed kingdom in the third game, has various bears roaming the various levels. One challenge level, "Bear With Us", features angry bears jumping around the level.
• Sandbox Mode: Create Mode allows players to freely build and design using objects, materials, worlds, sounds, music, and tools that they've collected in the Story Mode. The player can only die if they will it, as well as start, stop, and travel back and forth though time to aid in building. The player can use this mode to create levels that other members of the community can later play for themselves.
• Scavenged Punk: A combination of an arts and crafts aesthetic mixed with a miniature scale meant that many of the contraptions in the first game fall into this, with many more able to be created by the player. This has been de-emphasized in later games as the "show the strings" look gives way to a more approachable sensibility, although it appeared again in the Rise of the Cakeling DLC.
• Score Multiplier: Collecting five Score Bubbles, Prize Bubbles, or creature brains in any combination in a short timeframe gives you a 2x Multiplier. You then have about a second to collect five more of the above to increase the multiplier by one. The multiplier goes up to 100, with any bubbles collected after that added to the points that will be multiplied. In the games with the Score Giver, items tagged with it can be set to follow those rules or be worth +1 on the multiplier anyway.
• Scoring Points: Collecting Score Bubbles throughout the levels, although most of the time they're just for competition with other players and don't actually do anything.
• Selective Gravity: In the first game, gravity affected everything except the floaty materials and the totally static Dark Matter. Later games add the Anti-Gravity Tweaker and "Physical Properties" tweak, letting you set whatever you want to ignore gravity.
• Sequel Number Snarl: The series only counts the console games with numbered sequels. This means that LittleBigPlanet 2 is actually the third game in the series (or fourth, if you count spinoff Sackboy's Prehistoric Moves), because of the release of the PSP LittleBigPlanet in between the original PS3 LittleBigPlanet and LBP2. This also means that LittleBigPlanet 3 can be anywhere from the fifth to the eighth game in the series (LBP1, LBP PSP, (Sackboy's Prehistoric Moves), LBP2, LBP Vita, (LBP Karting), (''Run Sackboy! Run!''), LBP3).
• Sequential Boss: Present in all of the games.
  • LittleBigPlanet 1 ^{The Boss}The battle is against the Collector's mechs. The first mech moves back and forth above the area before slamming down and trying to kill Sackboy with the spikes it has on the bottom. There is a Creature Brain on each side that the player has to hit when the boss slams down. After hitting both of the brains, the boss creates two more, and begins shooting electricity when it's above the battlefield. After destroying those brains, the first mech is killed. The platform Sackboy is on goes up to a second mech. This one tries to squish Sackboy with his fists and spawns enemies that sweep an electric bar above them. After killing those enemies, he will resume punching. There are two Creature Brains on both sides of both fists. After hitting those brains, the fists open to reveal two more Brains. Sackboy must hit those when the fists slam down. After doing that, the fists break apart and the mech loses them. He now moves back and forth and shoots electricity to the sides. After doing this for a moment, he jumps up and slams down, causing electric blocks to fall down from the ceiling. He has 7 Brains. 2 can be hit when the mech is moving back and forth, two can be hit when the mech compresses and stays still, and 3 require a block that falls down after the boss slams down. After hitting all of the brains, the second mech is defeated and the battle is over.
  • LittleBigPlanet 2 ^{The Boss}This battle is against the Negativitron. At first, you are using the Hamstertron 2000 in a half-pipe area, avoiding the Negativitron's lasers and hitting the brains that spawn on top of his head. After hitting 5 brains, the Negativitron retreats through the ceiling and a path opens to the next segment. Upon entering the path, your Hamstertron self-destructs and you fall onto a platform with Bounce Pads and a Grappling Hook. The Negativitron bursts in from the left wall and begins sucking platforms from the right side of the screen into his mouth. The platforms have sponge on the bottom and Bounce Pads on the top, and you have to survive until Higginbotham shoots a missile into the Negativitron's mouth, at which point it closes and a brain on top of his head can be hit. After hitting four brains, the Negativitron retreats through the wall he burst in through, and two paths on the ground (leading to the same area) open. Upon entering the path, your Grappling Hook is replaced with a set of Grabinators, and the Negativitron bursts through the ceiling. He fires lasers in a pattern that increases in speed each time you hit him, before eventually trying to crush you with his face. While he does, either Da Vinci or Victoria will give you a cake to throw at his brain, and after hitting four more brains, you're warped to a place with a single brain on a piece of jelly floating in the air. Upon popping this brain, the Negativitron is defeated.
• Serial Escalation: According to one estimate, there are so many levels (over 10 million now) across the three main titles alone that it'd take more than an entire human lifetime to play all of them.
• Shifting Sand Land:
  • The Mexican-themed Canyons from the first game.
  • The Egypt-themed Golden Sands from the PSP game.
  • La Marionetta from the PS Vita game is circus-themed, but also inexplicably placed in a desert. Downplayed since most of the levels are indoors.
• Shout-Out: Enough for its own page.
• Sidetrack Bonus: Ooh, prize bubbles!
• Side View: A variation. The camera is tilted up slightly so you can see the extra layers, but you can use either the "front view" option (in Create Mode) or a Game Camera (in Play Mode) to remove all depth and make it full side view.
• Sliding Scale of Cooperation vs. Competition: At the end of the level, the scoreboard counts up who got the most points, so people may be inclined to go for the points instead, so let's call it a Free-For-All Competition. Some levels may tip the scales in other directions instead, but mostly in the community.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World:
  • The first stage of The Wilderness in LBP1.
  • One of the stages in the DC Comics Pack in LBP2 and LBPV.
• Socialization Bonus:
  • The only way to get some of the rare items in story mode and some DLC packs is to team up with other players for special challenges.
  • In the third game, there's a trophy called "Don't Go Alone" for beating the main story levels with 2+ players.
• Sound-Coded for Your Convenience: Collecting new Prize Bubbles, as in the ones that still have a prize in them. For example, Music Items have an opera lady singing, Sound Objects have a Horn Honking, and Stickers make a splat sound.
• Speaking Simlish: Magic Mouths have an option that allows them to emit various versions of this, which is used for NPCs in the first five games. LittleBigPlanet 3 averts it in the story mode by having all the character be fully voice-acted, but includes Simlish voices for all the new characters anyway.
• Spikes of Doom: The kind that kill you from the side, too. In the second game, placing enough non-danger tweakers on them removes the lethality.
• Springs, Springs Everywhere: There were bouncy platforms in the first game, but they didn't always work. In the future, the games always stuck to the Bounce Pads, which were much easier to use, and not buggy. LittleBigPlanet 3 reverts back to using spring platforms for levels that involve Toggle, to make use of their ability to change into a big form to weigh down the spring, and then to small to launch off the spring-loaded platform.
• Stealth Pun: Sackboy's default look is stated to be made of hessian material. It's also worth mentioning a few of his outfit sets are themed around various types of soldiers.
• Stuff Blowing Up: The explosives from Create Mode can be used to this effect. The later games add even more methods of achieving explosions. Needless to say, they're used (or abused) in a lot of community levels.
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: The "Scuba Gear" powerup. Made safer by the fact that you can't take it off while you're in water, unless you touch an Enhancement Remover. Of course, it doesn't protect you from other underwater hazards...
• Tech-Demo Game: An internal example, the games' story modes are really just designed to show off the Level Editor.
• Temporary Online Content:
  • There are some rare DLC costumes that players can miss out on, mostly rare shirts and hats. There are special shirts (and occasionally hats) available at each game's launch, the Slurpee Shirt, which you got by redeeming codes that were on the bottom of Slurpee cups, a shirt in the second game that was only possible to get by pre-ordering the Vita game, and 3 shirts with each of the new playable characters from the third game (and one with the 3 from the logo) for pre-ordering the digital version of LittleBigPlanet 3. In Karting, there's the Target Racer for pre-ordering the game from said store.
  • All DLC packs relating to Creator/Disney in any way were removed on December 21st, 2017 and can no longer be bought, although you can still redownload them if you've already bought them.
• The Many Deaths of You: There are a handful of unique ways to die, due to the different hazards. These include being vaporized by plasma, disintegrating from fire damage, or Death Throwing after being crushed or falling onto some spikes.
• Tremor Trampoline: Can be invoked by attaching the structure of an entire level to a piston that moves up and down fast enough to make everything bounce.
• Tube Travel: Starting from the second game, tubes in all shapes, including straight lines, plus-junctions, and t-junctions, became prizes, and they're used in some of the story levels. Sackbots often float around in them.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: More so in the sequel. LBP1 featured unlockable side levels containing various mini-games, but they were completely optional. In LBP2, about halfway through the main storyline (that is, ignoring the side levels), conventional platforming starts taking a backseat to top-down and side-scrolling shmups and other arcade genres.
• Unlimited Wardrobe: The game has many, many costume options for sackboys and girls. Glitches in the second game allow things like lights and Circuit Boards to be attached to Sackboy as well.
• Variable Mix:
  • In all of the games, the Pod Music will change based on what menu you're in or where you are. On the Main Menu, the Create Moon, etc.
  • In all games, there are also Interactive Music Tracks. These songs have anywhere from 2-6 different sliders that will increase or decrease the volume of different vocals, instruments, sound effects, and the like. Here's what the menu for a typical Interactive Music item looks like.◊
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: You can slap other players, or drag them around. Or with the Grabinators pick them up and throw them to their deaths.
• Video Game Perversity Potential:
  • It didn't take long for people to make a level that involved flying a giant penis-shaped rocket.
    • We shan't forget players putting the "Finger" item from the Monster DLC on their crotch.
  • "Should my dong be made of wood, or stone?" "Wood would be the obvious choice."
• When All Else Fails, Go Right: Played straight in most levels, but some actually avert this, and not just in the community. Examples from Story Mode are the first game's "Endurance Dojo" (where you're going left) and the third game's "Tutu Tango" (where you zig-zag as you go down).
• Wide-Open Sandbox: The Moon. A lot of level slots, and so much items (if you're an item bubble collector, or if you were going for the Booty Master trophy).
• The Wonderland: Especially owing to the user-created content and the customizable nature of the game.
• X-Ray Sparks: If Sackboy comes into contact with electricity, his "skin" material changes between his equipped one and a glowing skeleton one, while also doing an electrified dance, before exploding. Interestingly, the "glowing skeleton" material is actually just a glowing version of the first game's "Zombie Boy" material, which can easily be seen if you use a glitch in Create Mode to capture the glowing skeleton skin as a costume and switch between it and the Zombie Boy skin.

LittleBigPlanet 1

• Advancing Wall of Doom: The fireball from The Mines.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Shoot the glowing red spots on Liquid's REX to defeat it.
• Attack Reflector: Sackboy defeats Ze Dude and his bouncers by pulling a platform around that can bounce the fireballs they shoot back at them.
• Automatic Level: The first level of the Metal Gear Solid pack is a gag trailer. You ride in a vehicle while watching cardboard theatrics & reading cheesy dialogue. If you get the bullet hole sticker & come back, you can play this level like a rail shooter by putting the sticker on various targets to get points & prizes.
• Big Boo's Haunt:
  • The third chapter of the Gardens, Skate to Victory, features a castle filled with ghosts and eerie music.
  • The entire Wedding theme. It's being celebrated by skeletons.
• Blackout Basement: The Darkness, as you could guess from its name. The first half of the level is lit by a lantern attatched to Don Lu's Dog, after he's kidnapped you have to make do with the lights throughout the level.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: The Portuguese version contains a lot of these.
  • Zola's Buffalo are spoken about in the singular even though you can see dozens of buffalos in the "Savanna" levels.
  • Sensei's line "Grab my staff" (as in a wooden staff) was translated as "Agarra o meu pessoal" (Grab my personnel).
  • The message that displays when a player leaves the game "(player name) left" was translated as "(player name) restantes" as in "I have two apples left".
  • The tutorial about using crafting materials has the Queen tell you "Place a block of wood and smear it", with "smear it" being translated as "suja-o", which means "make it dirty".
• Bowdlerise: One of the songs, Tapha Niang, originally contained two passages from the Qur'an; to not offend any Muslims who might object to the use of the quotes, Sony delayed the game right before its launch in order to patch the discs in order to replace the song with a version without the lyrics.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Sheriff Zapata, who ends his first speech bubble with "Being evil really rocks!".
• The Collector: The name of the villain. He also demonstrates this trope.
• Comedic Sociopathy: Sackboy's attitude towards that poor rabbit in the "Explosives" and "Danger Tools" tutorials.
• Corridor Cubbyhole Run:
  • In the Serpent Shrine level, there are several sections where you must travel along passages where fiery serpents pass through at intervals. Sometimes this cubbyhole is in the floor, sometimes it's in the ceiling, and sometimes it's in the areas between the snakes' paths.
  • The "combat" in the Metal Gear Solid level pack consists almost entirely of hiding in the stage background, popping out when it's safe to take a quick potshot before returning to your cubbyhole.
• Detonation Moon: The villains in the Marvel Pack want to do this, though rather than detonating the main moon, they instead seek to blow up people's My Moons and destroy all the levels they've created.
• Eternal Engine: The Wilderness, ironically enough.
• Early-Bird Cameo: The Collector, the main antagonist of the game, shows up in all the previous worlds before being introduced in the final boss battle.
• Game-Breaking Bug: Unfortunately plagued with many of these:
  • Least severe was the terrible, horrible server lag that was apparent for the first few months of the game, rendering it nearly unplayable online, despite the online connectivity being one of the main points of the game.
  • Many players encountered a bug that, when making a large grab-able material spin extremely fast in the level editor and grabbing on, they would no longer be able to respawn, stuck on some sort of infinite pseudo-death loop. Returning to the pod (main menu, basically) continued this, and this persisted even upon resetting the game, rendering the game completely unplayable for those affected. The only way to undo this "Wheel of Death" glitch was to delete the entire save data. Fortunately, this was fixed and existing saves affected were repaired in an update.
  • Still prancing around is the bug that makes your file completely unable to save new data (and gives no error indicating this. The game only autosaves), apparently brought on by having too many custom/community objects, and it's supposedly fixable by deleting all of that and avoiding community objects like the plague. Obviously, nobody wants to do this either.
  • In the second level, Get A Grip, items can disappear, with the only known cure being to start a new file and hope your luck hasn't run out. The "Moody Cloud" sticker is one of the more common disappearances.
• Gangplank Galleon: The Pirates of the Caribbean DLC Pack.
• Green Hill Zone: The Gardens, although it's medieval-themed instead of tropical.
• Guide Dang It!: The Sound Objects tutorial has tripped up many a player due to one thing: the game won't accept it if you change the sound to the chimp sound and then place it. You have to place the sound object down, back out to the main Popit menu, pick the Popit Cursor, select the sound object with it, and then change the sound it makes to the chimp sound.
• Incendiary Exponent: The level boss for The Islands, the Terrible Oni, is basically a mass of Basic Wood with a fire log emitter and a sword. What makes him scary? He's on fire. Which also means Collision Damage to any Sackperson stupid enough to jump at him. He really becomes tame if you use the Delethalize Tool on him in Create Mode, or flood the level with water, which puts out flaming objects. Yup, the second-most-scary boss of Story Mode can be made wimpy with a few clicks of the Popit.
• Inconveniently-Placed Conveyor Belt: The game has these in the Bunker, surrounded by electricity. And then there's the wheel, which is similar, in that it's a big rotating wheel and you are inside it. Surrounded by electricity.
• Jungle Jazz: The Savannah Theme, which plays in the African jungle-based area, mixes tribal chants with jazz in its Variable Mix.
• Justified Tutorial: The first area of the game is a Garden where the King and Queen teach you how to play. They're just easy levels with text bubbles popping up telling you how to do X.
• Kaizo Trap: The Terrible Oni's level is notorious for this, as when it explodes, its sword could randomly fly into you, killing you. Or it will leave burning pieces on the path ahead that if you aren't expecting it (Which one likely wouldn't because it's not supposed to be there) run into before you notice it.
• Lyrical Dissonance: The song "Tapha Niang", which plays in the story level "Swinging Safari", used passages from the Qur'an as lyrics, which would result in you swinging around on random safari animals while listening to someone talk about how everyone's going to die. However, the song was replaced with an instrumental version due to concerns that the "lyrics" would be seen as offensive to Muslims, so this is averted for most copies.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: The Battle on the Ice, which is played during the final stage and many a custom level, has ominous Russian chanting. Also would have had hints of ominous Arabic chanting if it wasn't for the aforementioned bowdlerization.
• Random Events Plot: ^{It's pretty long.} The King tells you that a big adventure awaits you, and the rest is randomness. First, Sackboy platforms through the Gardens and eventually goes through a haunted castle. After this, he gets to a submarine and goes to the Savannah, where he accidentally breaks a statue made by Zola, so Zola tells him to find out what's scaring the buffalo. Sackboy finds out that the crocs are scaring them, and the Meerkats accuse King Croc of eating Stripy Tail, so now Sackboy needs to find him to clear King Croc's name. After this, the monkey suggests that Sackboy help his friend Frida's Wedding, so he goes and finds out that the groom, Don Lu, has gone missing. He is found in a Blackout Basement, but now Frida thinks that she's been jilted, so she goes on a rampage with her Skulldozer, and an Advancing Boss of Doom ensues, until it falls into a large gap caused by an exploding bridge. After that, Don Lu asks for your help in freeing Uncle Jalapeno from the evil Sheriff Zapata in the Canyons. Sackboy gets a cart full of bombs to blow up the jail, and the two head through the mines, and then the Serpent Shrine, where Sackboy blows up Zapata with his own bombs. Then Jalapeno and Sackboy go to the Metropolis, and after Sackboy decorates a car, Mags the Mechanic says that it may be cool enough to beat Ze Dude, who stole one of Mags' other cars, in a race. Sackboy challenges him, and the race goes fine until Ze Dude and the car fall off of a bridge. Then Sackboy goes deep into the sewer and finds a crane, which he uses to get the car out of the water. Sackboy leaves the sewer, and Mags tells him that Ze Dude is terrorizing her construction site, so Sackboy climbs the site and uses a panel that can reflect Ze Dude's fireballs to defeat him. Ze Dude deems Sackboy a Worthy Opponent, and lets Sackboy use his private jet to see his trainer on the Islands, the Grandmaster. She tests his platforming, and then asks if he will get her flame-throwing cat from the Terrible Oni in his volcano. Along the way, Sackboy visits the nearby castle and defeats the evil Sumo, and then proceeds to use the Grandmaster's flying machine to enter the volcano, where he uses the flame-throwing cat to defeat the Terrible Oni. Then Sackboy visits the Temples for no real reason then to learn about emitters. Honestly. Then the Magician teleports Sackboy to the Wilderness, where a bear tells him that the Collector's lair is up ahead, so Sackboy heads off to it. Then he finds out that all of the characters have been kidnapped, and he frees them...maybe. Then Sackboy defeats the Collector's Humongous Mechas and corners the Collector, who says that he did it because he had no friends. The characters agree to be his friend, and then the game is over.
• Remilitarized Zone: Most of The Wilderness is set in the Collector's war bunker.
• Rescue Romance: One of the trailers subverts this at the end.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The Wilderness, being set in Siberia, is filled with low-friction ice, although it's actually repurposed glass.
• Stalactite Spite: In the level "The Frozen Tundra", the icicles actually fall before you get to them, thus forming convenient platforms. Of course, they're still capable of smashing you.
• Tron Lines:
  • The "VR Training" level of the "Metal Gear Solid" level pack has them in a grid arrangement on most of the walls and obstacles. The material you get for Create Mode from this level comes in red, green, and blue flavors. Even the glowing of the lines is visually close to the ones from TRON.
  • There's also an unlockable skin and helmet that are clearly evocative of TRON; they even glow in the dark!
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: The second-to-last level has all the characters you've met up to this point locked up. It's possible to not rescue any of them, except for the King and Queen, because they're your ride to the end of the level.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Boom Town introduces the explosive items, which are used to destroy various objects throughout the level. Goodbye patience! The next level, The Mines, also sometimes uses explosives.
• Unexplained Recovery: Happens twice, most likely to avoid a Family-Unfriendly Death:
  • After you completely blow up Ze Dude and his bouncers, you walk into the next room and they're only slightly damaged.
  • The Sumo boss from the Islands appears as one of the characters around the globe in at the end of the game.
• Worthy Opponent: Ze Dude sees the Sackpeople as this.
• Wutai: The Islands is entirely patterned after Imperial Japan in and is situated in Japan on the world map.
• Zigzag Paper Tassel: One of the decorations you can obtain from The Islands.

LittleBigPlanet 2

• Abnormal Ammo: In the boss level of the Cross-Control Pack, you ride on a chicken and shoot eggs at a giant robot.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: From the Muppets Pack, the Phantom has a Massive Muppet Machine that he uses to try and kill you.
• All for Nothing: Huge Spaceship crash lands on The Cosmos one level after Herbert rebuilds it.
• Amazing Technicolour Battlefield: The Negativitron has a vortex background in his third phase. Said vortex came from the screen of an arcade machine's Attract Mode in the background.
• And I Must Scream: Shorty after Avalon is abducted by the Negativiatron, Dr. Herbert Higginbotham outright says this is happening to Avalon while also referencing the Trope Namer.
  Dr. Herbert Higginbotham: He is still part of the mortal coil man, he's spinning, screaming, but he's got not mouth.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: The Negativitron apparently convinced the brainwave machine in Victoria's Lab to fight you by using skill, cunning, and tasty, tasty snacks.
• As Long as There Is Evil: In the story mode, right before you fight the final battle against the Negativitron, he states one of these.
  Negativitron: You can never truly defeat me! I am in all of you... I AM all of you!
• Asteroids Monster
  • The fifth boss, being a virus made up of cells.
  • There is a side level in the story called Attack Of The Mutant Marshmallows in which huge lethal pink marshmallows bounce around, and you get points for zapping them. Zapping them causes them to multiply into smaller duplicates. The amount of times a marshmallow can multiply & the size of the resulting duplicates depend on its original size.
  • A lot of the enemies in the tower defense level in the Move Pack are like this because they're all big balls of black goop. The player has to use the Move Controller to grab these orbs and place them in spots so that they connect via an electric current. Like the aforementioned Mutant Marshmallows, this level lasts as long as you can keep the vacation house safe.
• Astral Finale: The Cosmos is the 6th and final world of the game. After Eve's Asylum had Sackboy seek out Higginbotham so that he could repair Huge Spaceship, which was wrecked at the end of Avalonia, the beginning of this world has the team finally make it to space, while subsequent levels are set on a tiny planetoid.
• Attack Reflector: In the DC Comics Pack, Lex Luthor shoots energy balls at Sackboy, so he needs to get under Green Lantern's umbrella to bounce them back at the mech.
• Bald of Evil: Lex Luthor in the DC Comics Pack. Lampshaded when Lex comes to the heroes claiming they have something he needs, and Flash is worried that he wants everyone's hair.
• Blackout Basement: A part of "Fireflies When You're Having Fun" is lit only by the flaming flies.
• Bowdlerise:
  • "Rock Your Body Rock" was modified to change the intro from "let's fuck" to "let's rock".
  • The version of Royksopp's "Vision One" in this game is entirely instrumental. While the original song isn't profane, it contains dark lyrics about the downfall of humanity being brought on by an overreliance on technology, which were likely too intense for the lighthearted tone of the game.
    Everybody let us gaze upon the world we've created
    Let us rest our eyes upon the great machine as we wave goodbye
    Feel the evening breeze caress us while the cities are dying
    As we watch it fall into a modern state, a modern time
• Brick Joke: In the opening of the DC Comics Pack, Cyborg is sent to activate the force field for the Watchtower. At the end of the pack, a bunch of bad guys surround the Watchtower, and we find out that Cyborg, who ended up locked in a room, never actually got around to activating it.
• The Cameo: Most of the NPCs from LittleBigPlanet 1 show up at Eve's Asylum, apparently having been driven mad by the Negativitron's virus.
• Ceiling Cling: The Attract-O-Gel material and Attract-O-Tweaker from the Muppets DLC pack lets you walk on the ceiling.
• Clark Kenting: Referenced in the description for the powerup tutorial.
  Step 1: Wear glasses. That'll fool 'em!
• Colossus Climb: The giant robot near the end of the game.
• Comedic Sociopathy: A Running Gag in the tutorials against Crash Test Teddy by Sackboy and the Narrator.
• Commie Land: The Factory of a Better Tomorrow is implied to be communistic; propaganda posters can be seen in some places, and the primary decor is a red-painted metal.
• Crapsack World: The Factory of a Better Tomorrow, since the Negativitron destroyed it and made the only inhabitants Clive and the brainwashed Sackbots. Even before that, according to Clive, it wasn't exactly a happy place.
• Darker and Edgier: It's still pretty adorable, but you're fighting an Eldritch Abomination with elements of The Corruption this time around, and the game actually has a plot.
• Department of Redundancy Department: "Invasion of the Body Invaders."
• Developer's Foresight:
  • Attempting to play the Versus levels from the story by yourself will have some extra results. For example, playing Chick Flick by yourself will have Avalon tell you that "competition is no fun when there's no opponent to crush" and playing Rocket Funland by yourself will change the song that plays from the intense "Automaton" to the super chill, elevator music-esque "Elevate This".
  • In "Pipe Dreams", there is a symbol of a fist, where you are supposed to make the index and pinky fingers rise to create the hand that rockers use. If you put up just the middle finger, a "Denied" box appears over the finger before it fully rises.
• Difficulty by Acceleration: The last phase of the final boss involves him shooting lasers at you. Every time you hit one of his brains, the rate at which he fires his lasers increases.
• Down in the Dumps: The second-to-final level of The Factory of a Better Tomorrow is set in an incinerator. The levels of The Cosmos set on the Negativitron have a futuristic dump aesthetic.
• The Eeyore:
  • Clive Handforth is almost always depressed, whether there's reason for it or not.
  • Batman from the DC Comics DLC could also count, since he's Batman (not to mention both of them are almost always in "grumpy frown" mode).
    Superman: Introducing The Justice Leagues' newest member, Sackboy!
    Batman: I was a boy once, an innocent naïve... happy boy...
• Egopolis: One of the worlds that your journey brings you to is Avalonia, an Eternal Engine city created by Avalon Centrifuge. A rare example of a good guy doing this.
• Eternal Engine: The Factory of a Better Tomorrow, and the inner parts of Victoria's factory.
• Everything Is An I Pod In The Future: The basic aesthetic of Avalonia.
• Evil Laugh: Every time negativitron appears, he lets out an evil laugh.
• Faceship: The Huge Spaceship, which has Sackboy's face on it.
• Feathered Fiend: Copernicus the Guard Turkey, which becomes a Clipped-Wing Angel after getting a flame bath.
• Game-Breaking Bug:
  • The second iteration suffered from a trilogy of glitches that made the game's levels unplayable in similar manners to the Wheel of Death glitch from the first game. The first was titled "Spawn-Pop Cancer" which was caused by using another glitch to resize the Sackperson of a player in Create Mode. When this is done, the Sackperson would die every time they spawn, repeatedly. If this happens, you'll need to import an old save. Hope you made a backup! Or not, because the glitch was fixed like the Wheel of Death glitch and bugged saves were also retroactively fixed.
  • Another glitch involved with the Lethal Sackboy Glitch that lethalizes Sackboy and allows him to touch objects of the same lethality without dying. It may cause the Sackperson to instead become lethal to themselves. Meaning that they would die every time they spawn, repeatedly.
  • The final glitch was called "New Era" which was caused by levels with a bugged checkpoint or spawn point. The glitch prevented Sackpeople from affected profiles from spawning in levels in Play Mode, and also glitched out some elements of Create Mode causing them to no longer appear in the Popit GUI. This glitch was actually exploited by a few users in an attempt to wring in the excessive amount of copied and published levels, by attempting to affect saves in a way that causes the New Era glitch to "infect" levels they edit later and then publish, thus infecting other players as well. Fortunately this glitch was also fixed and bugged saves were retroactively fixed in the update that fixed the New Era.
• Genre Mashup: A lot of songs in the soundtrack are mixtures of Classical and Disco/Funk: "A Fifth of Beethoven", "Disco Divertimento", and the remix of "Also sprach Zarathustra".
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: While every boss starting with Kling Klong is some creature either created by the Negativitron, the boss of The Factory of a Better Tomorrow is... Copernicus the Guard Turkey. No one ever mentions that the factory even has a Guard Turkey, but when you beat the fourth level of the world, Clive will show up, horrified, and tell you that Copernicus is on the loose. After a quick chase, Copernicus is dead and the plot resumes as usual.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: "Ready Sack Thing? Unleash heckfire in the name of The Alliance!"
• Glorious Mother Russia: The Factory of a Better Tomorrow contains many Soviet Russian elements, such as the red fists and "comrade!" signs.
• G-Rated Mental Illness: During his meanie infection, Dr. Higginbotham had the habit of eating socks and trying to lick his eye balls. Even after he is cured, he retaains his Cloudcuckoolander personality.
• Hailfire Peaks: All the story themes:
  • Da Vinci's Hideout mixes modern technology with The Renaissance.
  • Victoria's level mixes Level Ate with Eternal Engine.
  • The Factory of a Better Tomorrow includes neon styling alongside Cold War-esque propaganda.
  • Avalonia is a Tomorrowland populated by adorable fluffy creatures.
  • Eve's Asylum is based on "a designed, controlled version of nature".
  • And the Cosmos is an old-school arcade...IN SPACE!
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: One boss fight has you fighting one of the Negativitron's ships while protecting Avalon's ship, and keeping it from taking too much damage. However, once you deal the final blow, the enemy ship shoots a missile and brings down Avalon's ship anyway.
• The Heartless: The Negativitron, or so it claims. Justified in that it's the embodiment of all negative emotions.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In the PlayStation Move level pack, the Cakeling, a sentient cake, attempts to bake the Sackbots and Victoria into a cake, as an act of revenge. In the final battle, he gets knocked into the oven himself, and baked into a non-sentient dessert.
• Hub Level: The Watchtower in the DC Comics Pack. Every level is accessible and replayable without needing to go back to the Pod, and more areas and secrets are unlocked as you complete the levels.
• Incoming Ham: I... AM AVALON CENTRIFUGE!
• Invisible Wall: The DC Comics Pack introduces the self-explanatory Invisible Material, which is solid and, as the name implies, impossible to see in Play Mode. The level pack itself doesn't make particular use of it, though.
• Just One More Level!: Referenced, playing after 9 PM earns you the "Just... One... More... Go..." trophy.
• Kaizo Trap: In the third boss stage, when Copernicus comes back on fire and Clive defeats him for good, if you're standing too close to the area where Copernicus falls, there's a chance you'll fall along with him.
• Konami Code: Twice. Circle is B and Cross is A.
  • In the Avalonia level "Got the Hump," you ride on a camel. Entering the code adds glasses to the camel and causes disco music and lighting for the opening area.
  • In the Cosmos level "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Negativitron (Part 1)," there's a malfunctioning arcade machine that a Sackbot is trying to fix. Entering the controllinator and inputting the code makes it explode and sets the Sackbot on fire, prompting him to run away. Behind the machine on the wall is a message of stickers that, on a phone keyboard, says Free Love.
• Knight of Cerebus: The Negativitron is a much more serious threat than the Collector.
• La Résistance: The Alliance are planning to attack the Negativitron, ending his reign of sucking up creativity.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: The Alliance spend most of the game arguing, running away from threats, or deliberating on a course of action while Sack-thing has to take care of everything. Towards the end, however, they begin to step up and start actually fighting the Negativitron.
• Level Ate: Victoria's Laboratory is partially designed around all types of sweets, like cakes, cookies, chocolate, pies, pastries, and jelly and jam, and you get to utilize a Creatinator which shoots cakes.
• Levels Take Flight:
  • All 4 levels involving the Bee 2.0, a flying robotic bee. The first level is an escort mission where you take Sackbots to pipes to load up Huge Spaceship, while the other three have you take the Bee into attack mode in an Unexpected Shmup Level to fight back Meanies.
  • In the Toy Story Pack, there's a variation. The Evil Dr. Porkchop blows up the space station you're in, and you get treated to a platforming section on the falling debris. So it's more like "Levels Take Falling in Style".
• Literal Metaphor: The description of the Boss-Only Level of the Muppets Pack, "The Final Curtain!", makes a pun on the phrase "bring the house down": while the show may have done so metaphorically, the destruction the Phantom has caused may do so literally:
  Can Sack Thing turn the tables on the Mechanical Monstrosity before it literally brings the house down?
• Locomotive Level: "Runaway Train" is set on one run by Victoria, which eventually gets attacked by the Negativitron. Scenarios involve jumping between train cars, and avoiding signs while on top of them, and at the end you pull a lever to crash it, leading into Victoria's gardens.
• Made of Explodium: Lex Luthor's mech suit explodes after running out of battery power, for some reason.
• Meaningless Meaningful Words: This is usually how Dr. Higginbotham communicates.

Played for Laughs.

"Huge Spaceship is not a spaceship; it is a broken thought on a petal wing."

• "Metaphor" Is My Middle Name: Apparently, Avalon Centrifuge's middle name is "Teamwork."
• Mickey Mousing: The montage of Higginbotham fixing the Ship (through an Imagination-Based Superpower-based Disney Acid Sequence) syncs up with the music.
• Mouth Cam: Literally happens in "The Invasion of the Body Invaders" when you are inside Dr. Higgnbotham's mouth only we could see his uvula visible. And just to remember that the insides of this dude is kinda gross.
• Muppet Cameo: Exaggarated by the Muppets pack, with Sackboy taking the guest star role on what amounts to an episode of The Muppet Show.
• Nightmarish Factory: The Factory of a Better Tomorrow. It's full of bombs, smoke, and a deadly robot turkey that chases you in the final level.
• "Not So Different" Remark: The Negativitron mixes this with Tomato in the Mirror, revealing that he IS the protagonists... or at least their vices, anyway. It has the intended effect of sending them into a Heroic B So D.
• Old Save Bonus: If you played LittleBigPlanet 1 and kept your player save on the PS3, during the startup to this game, the game will stop and put up a picture of your LBP1 profile, and ask if you want to transfer that content to your LBP2 profile. If you agree, everything you collected in the first game, from clothing to Create Mode items from the story and community, will be imported to your profile for the second game. If you go back to the first game and make any changes to your account (like collecting a prize you missed), LBP2 will ask you if you want to import your updated profile as well.
• Play Every Day: Downplayed and literal. There's a trophy that requires you to play the game on every day of the week. However, they only care about the days, so one could play the game on every day of the week except Friday, then play on Friday a month later and still get the trophy.
• Poor Communication Kills: The Phantom in the Muppets Pack just wanted to be a guest star on the show. Rather than asking, though, they trash the entire theater trying to Kill and Replace the current guests (your Sackpeople). Kermit is more than a little upset by this at first, though he later makes a compromise and uses the Phantom's mecha to support the theater in the meantime.
• Precious Puppies: Some of Avalon's machines take this form, although according to the level description they're actually quite vicious.
• Pretty in Mink: The Robots in Avalonia have fur!
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: The Negativitron's "You. Created! ME!!!" line certainly qualifies.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: In this game, Sackboy teams up with a man covered in newspaper clippings who wears 3D glasses, a creepy robot woman chef mechanic, a man made out of office supplies who's almost always depressed, a man who has a huge ego, orange hair and a headset, an apple nurse who's the head of a mental asylum, and an inmate from said asylum whom you cured...allegedly.
• Raygun Gothic: The better parts of the Factory of a Better Tomorrow. On the other end of the scale, it sometimes plunges into Used Future.
• Scatting: Some can be heard during the themes from Victoria's Lab and Eve's Asylum.
• Schmuck Bait: In the Muppets Pack, the plan to capture the Phantom is to lure him out on stage under a giant cage labelled "Not A Trap". It doesn't work.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: In the boss level of the Muppets Pack, once the Phantom, in his giant machine, appears behind Fozzie and Sackboy, the former decides that Sackboy can handle it and runs away, screaming (though he does later help out by bringing a cannon for Sackboy to use).
  Fozzie: Uh, time for you to finish the job and for me to... RUN!!!!
• Screams Likea Little Girl: Done in one level when the second shrubs reveals Clive, whose very mortified only if he emits a squeal of terror when that happens.
• Sixth Ranger: Dr. Higginbotham is the last to join the Alliance.
• The Smart Guy: Victoria von Bathysphere. Everyone in the Alliance is a creator, but her main role is building the Sackbot army.
• Something We Forgot: At the end of the Toy Story DLC, the gang manages to catch the Evil Dr. Porkchop in a cage. They then walk off, and the screen fades to black... and then cuts back on, centered on Hamm (no longer the Evil Dr.) still in the cage.
  Hamm: Alright, I think it's time to let your old pal Hamm out of the cage...
  Hamm: Guys?
  [camera zooms out, revealing everybody else is long-gone]
  Hamm: ...Guys?!
  [level ends]
• Sour Supporter: Clive Handforth.
• Space Station:
  • One level in the Toy Story Pack takes place on one, apparently part of Star Command. The Evil Dr. Porkchop ends up blowing it up and making its remains into a spacebound version of Stepping Stones in the Sky as the platforms reenter orbit.
  • The Hub Level in the DC Comics Pack is the Watchtower, the Justice League's famous orbital base. The last levels are set on the Hall of Doom, Lex Luthor's space station, which has been upgraded from its more humble origins.
  • San Crispin Space Prison from the Cross-Controller Pack is, as the name implies, a prison facility located in space. Sackboy ends up crashing into it while exploring space, kicking off the plot of the Cross-Control DLC.
• Spider Tank: The second boss, although it's not so much a tank as a giant rogue brainwave machine with giant legs.
• Sugar Apocalypse: Victoria's Lab, literally.
• Tactical Suicide Boss: Lex Luthor's mech suit has lasers, missiles, and energy balls. The last one can be reflected back at him by Green Lantern, exposing his weak spot. The only thing you can do with the other two is avoid them.
• Taking You with Me: In the level "Huge peril for huge spaceship", when the enemy ship is destroyed, it shoots out a rocket that hits your spaceship, causing it to crash aswell.
• Tempting Fate: In the Muppets DLC, after the gang leaves Fozzie and Sackboy alone as bait for their trap, the bear says that there's no way that the plan can fail. As he says this, the curtains behind them pull aside, revealing the Phantom now has a Humongous Mecha.
  Fozzie: Well whaddaya know? It failed!
• Tomorrowland: Avalonia seems pretty advanced, especially side-by-side with the previous worlds. And it focuses on a new piece of logic for the second game, the Controllinator.
• Tradesnark™
  Lex Luthor: Prepare to feel the wrath of My Most Evil Laser Yet™!
• Traintop Battle: The level "Runaway Train" (the first level in Victoria's Laboratory) takes place on an out-of-control train which has been hijacked by the Negativitron, alternating from being inside or outside the train. The second half has the player killing meanies on said train.
• Tree Top Town: Eve's Asylum for the Mentally Alternative, although it's more of an insane asylum than a town.
• Unexpected Shmup Level: Three in Avalonia. One on a camel, and two on bees. The bees make a return in the second-to-last level of The Cosmos.
• [Verb] This!: One of the songs in the game is called Elevate This.
• Victory Fakeout: After being chased through the final level of the Factory of a Better Tomorrow by Copernicus the Guard Turkey, the turkey breaks and falls through the floor, and Clive and the Sackbots go over and wait by a Scoreboard... though the screen's X-Ray material and lack of scores being shown should clue you in that it's not what it seems. Once you stand in front of the "Scoreboard" with the group, Copernicus comes out of the ground and resumes chasing everyone.
• Video Game Caring Potential: The Sackbots. You can actively seek them out and personally escort them all to safety Pikmin-style.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • The Sackbots can also just be left to rot in their cages... or led into hazards to take them out.
  • In the level "Bang for Buck," there's a sticker trigger. Using it spawns Creatinators that you can use to shoot bombs. While throwing bombs in the normal level can take your team's lives, these will do so much faster.
  • The "Rocket Funland" minigame also uses a Creatinator that shoots missiles. Unlike the above level, though, killing your friends is the intent, as it's a versus level and you'll get points for doing so.
  • People make levels where all you do is kill your friends, either until you get bored or the other guys get fed up and leave.
  • The "Brain Crane Pain" minigame in the Move pack revolves around using a telekinetic device to kill your opponents.
• Wall Jump: With the DC Comics pack, there's a new Wall Jump Material which has wall jumping off of it as an innate property, and a Wall Jump Tweaker which enables other materials to have the ability. The Tweaker also allows for setting changes, such as the strength of the wall jump or the speed of wall-sliding, which can even be set into the negatives to allow wall-slides to go up instead.
• Waxing Lyrical: The Garfield minikit's description opens with a lyric from the theme song of Garfield and Friends' first two seasons: "Friends are there..."
• Womb Level: One of the levels has you shrunk down and entered into Herbert Higginbotham's body in order to fight a boss inside his brain. You have been warned.
• Word, Schmord!: One of the music tracks is called "Disco Shmisco".
• Wall Crawl: The Attract-O-Gel can let you walk on walls.
• You, Get Me Coffee: Avalon ends his first appearance by ordering Clive to "fetch my tall orange mochaccino. I've got brain thinking to do."

LittleBigPlanet 3

• Abnormal Allergy: In the final level, Newton tells Sackboy that he has allergies to drowning, which make him break out into... death.
• Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable: Zom Zom. He pronounces Bunkum like "Byoon-koom" and button like "boo-tone," for example.
• Action Bomb: the Bomb-Bots from "The Journey Home" are yellow Sackbots that, when grabbed, begin ticking suddenly. Eventually, they begin convulsing whilst crazily laughing before exploding. Clive Handforth says the best part is that he does not have to pay them.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: In the level "Furry Soles, Hot Coals," you don't play as Sackboy, OddSock, Toggle, or Swoop. Instead, you play as Yeti, who doesn't show up anywhere else except as a costume for Big Toggle.
• Ascended Meme: A character in the Ziggurat owns a portal that randomly generates a level link to a Team Pick from the community levels. She is particularly savvy to tired old community trends in the Imagisphere, as to quote: "Let's just hope it's not another bomb survival, eh?"
• Benevolent Architecture:
  • The Blink Ball would be completely useless in "High Stakes Heist" and "Flip-Flopped Folios" if it wasn't for the Blink Panels that Sackboy can teleport to using it.
  • Similarly, the Hook Hat would have no use whatsoever if there weren't Bendy Rails that go exactly where Sackboy needs them to.
• Body Wipe: In the level where you unlock Toggle, after he smashes through the walls, he dashes into the camera and then the camera focuses on his back as he runs away.
• Buffy Speak: At one point, Newton fails at making a simile when he tells the Sackpeople to use Layer Launchers to "bounce in and out like a, like a... a bouncing in-and-out thing".
• The Cameo:
  • The King, The Queen, The Collector, some crocs, and a Robobun all appear during the final two levels, turned into half-Newton abominations.
  • Da Vinci, Victoria, and the Collector all appear in the in introduction level, as part of the crowd behind Sackboy during the acting tutorial. For the former two, it's also an Early-Bird Cameo, as they respectively host the first and second worlds of the Popit Puzzles.
• Camera Abuse: In the Toggle Trailer, Toggle accidentally runs into the camera and cracks the lens.
• Cat-apult: Nana Pud fires exploding cats at you.
• Clumsy Copyright Censorship: In early versions of the game, the song "Battle On The Ice" would be present in the Popit in Create Mode if you imported your data from the first game, but neither its demo nor the song itself would play. The latter was fixed in version 1.05, but the demo is still bugged and doesn't play.
• Continuity Nod:
  • When Newton is telling Sackboy the legend of the 3 Heroes and the Titans, he states that it happened "Long ago, before the Negativitron nearly laid waste to Craftworld." a.k.a. The plot of LBP2. In one Popit Puzzles level, Larry da Vinci attempts to recount the days of the Alliance, but can't recall the name of the Negativitron.
  • In the beginning of the LBP2 tutorial on retrying, Stephen says that he got stuck in a hat once. In the LBP3 tutorial on retrying, Stephen opens by asking if he ever told Sackboy about the time he got stuck in a hat, and Sackboy tells him he did.
• Crazy Cat Lady: Nana Pud, who has pictures of her cats and even attacks you with cat-shaped bombs. When her house is destroyed, the second thing she worries about is her cats:
  Nana Pud: Me house!
  * Beat*
  Nana Pud: Me cats!
• Design-It-Yourself Equipment: You can create your own power-up through the new Powerup Creator in conjunction with dozens of logic gates, microchips, tags and emitters. The Popit Powerup on the other hand is a portable Level Editor which functions in-game.
• Disappeared Dad: Newton's father disappeared at some point before the events of the story. He shows up at the end to give Newton a stern talking to.
• Double Entendre: "The Pumpinator doesn't just blow! It can suck, too. Just hold L1!"
• Double Jump: Of a sort. The Boost Boots allow you to dash, whether in midair or on the ground. You don't necessarily have to go up, however; left, right, up, down, and diagonal are all viable options.
• Dungeon Bypass: In the final stage of the Popit Puzzles' Second Semester, you have to place, edit, and use Sackbots to solve puzzles. However, instead of doing that, you could change a Sackbot to the Swoop frame, use the "Act" option to control Swoop, have him pick up Sackboy, and then fly over the entire level to the end scoreboard.
• Dynamic Loading: The Dynamic Thermometer setting allows the player to set their level so that only things in a certain radius from the player are loaded, and things outside the radius basically don't exist. This also means that there's more logic for things, such as the Permanency Tweaker that causes things to always be loaded, or the Preloader which can be used to load parts of the level earlier than they usually would.
• Early-Bird Cameo: In the introduction level, when you get to the tutorial about acting, there's a large crowd behind Sackboy. Larry Da Vinci and Victoria von Bathysphere appear in the bottom left, before they show up to teach you the Popit Puzzles. Downplayed, since they're both existing characters.
• Easy Levels, Hard Bosses: The game starts off with levels that are simple enough. Then the first boss comes, and it's difficult for people who played a game in the series before. Then the second boss is a marathon with a character you just unlocked.
• Eldritch Abomination: The Titans are described as giant gargoyles that sucked imagination from Bunkum. Their true forms are only ever seen as shadowy blobs that towered above the entire planet.
• Elvis Impersonator: Marlon Random is obviously inspired by The King himself. He has a similar hairstyle and voice and frequently makes exaggerated poses; unlike Elvis, however, he is an actor.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Newton has a plan to release the Titans, thinking they have abandoned their evil ways and will forward creativity. Did they? Hint: No.
• Game-Breaking Bug: The game was infamous for having lots of glitches at launch. Here some of the game breaking ones:
  • The game's launch was plagued with a glitch similar to the server issues with LBP1. It was outright impossible for some players on the PlayStation 4 version to play online with other players for many months.
  • Seemingly innocuous actions — it's not known exactly what causes this — have the possibility of corrupting your profile. Hope you backed up all your levels and put all your costumes, captured and community items inside another backed-up level, because if not, you're never going to see them again!
  • Also known is a bug while in Create Mode where Sackboy will get stuck and start twitching wildly until you delete the glitched object. However, if you quit and restart the game, Sackboy will get stuck in the pipe of the Pod and make the game unplayable until you load a backup or delete the save data.
  • In rare cases, loading the Ziggurat hub level can cause the player to repeatedly fall to their death.
• Gratuitous Spanish: Gustavo peppers his phrases with random bits of Spanish.
  Gustavo: You can't catch me, amigo!
  Gustavo: Oh, you're so fast! Muy bueno!
  Gustavo: Hermano, remember that holding L2 will restart the race!
• Grind Boots: Inverted with the Hook Hat which allows Sackboy to ride on Bendy Rails with a helmet. The Hoverboard item in the Back to the Future level kit also has this property.
• Hailfire Peaks: Follows this in the steps of the second one:
  • Stitchem/Prolouge is a Level Ate combined with Green Hill Zone and presumably the Swiss Alps.
  • Manglewood is a 1950s America B-Movie set in a swampland.
  • The Ziggurat is the Moscow Kremlin with frequent steampunk elements.
  • Bunkum Lagoon is basically a medieval take on Venice, in the sky, with frequent sea-life motifs.
• Hover Board: The Back to the Future DLC has a Hoverboard item. It increases Sackboy's base speed, allows him to scamper up walls, and has the same rail-riding ability as the Hook Hat.
• Hub Level: Each world, aside from the first, has a hub level, where you travel to the levels to collect the missing Marbles.
• Impact Silhouette: Toggle does one of these in one of the cutscenes when he smashed through the wall.
  • Happens again with, this time through the now shattered glass panel.
• Insistent Terminology: The Boost/Dash Boots. Pinky Buflooms and the Sackpocket call them the Boost Boots, but the sticker is called the Dash Boots.
• Involuntary Group Split
  • When the player unlocks OddSock, a rock falls and breaks a bridge between Sackboy on one side and Marlon and OddSock on the other.
  • When unlocking Toggle, a gate that he opened breaks, separating Sackboy and OddSock from Toggle and Papal Mache.
• Item Get!: When Sackboy gets a Marble, it's accompanied by it floating over to him while an ethereal riff plays, followed by a triumphant musical sting as he collects it.
• Large Ham:
  • From story mode, Newton and El Jeff are both very loud at times.
  • The King in The Journey Home:
    The King: HO HO! I'M HELPING! KIINNNNGGGG!!!!!!!!!
• Lighter and Softer: The story is much more comedy-based than LBP2 and Vita. In particular, the villain is a complete bumbler and no lives seem to be at stake.
• Loud Gulp: After being scolded by his dad, Newton does one of these if he just consumed the Titans.
• Meaningful Name: Bunkum means "nonsense." Fits with the random theme of the planet.
• Metroidvania: A lesser example than most, but thanks to the Sackpocket that lets you hold powerups and the unlocking of 3 new characters over the course of the game, there's some of this in the story mode, allowing you to go back through prior levels and hub worlds to get collectibles.
• Mouth Cam: Happens at the very end of the final boss.
• Mythology Gag: In "The Journey Home", in the level "Spring Time in the Gardens", the player starts the stage by going down a ramp on a skateboard, like in the first game. If they were to look closely at the ramp, they may notice that there is a path that goes under it (like in the first game), but it's too high to reach. As they progress a bit into the level, they acquire the Springinator, so they can jump up to under the ramp. Once the player gets up, they can walk to the left under the ramp, and when they get to the end, there's nothing there (unlike the first game) and the player gets a Pin titled "Not This Time!" And just to make it better, there's a sticker on the wall that says "CRAZY", which is the sticker that was in the Prize Bubble under the ramp in the original LBP.
• Nostalgia Level:
  • The entire point of the "The Journey Home" level kit, in which Toggle goes to The Wedding from LBP1, Swoop goes to the Factory of a Better Tomorrow from LBP2, and OddSock goes to The Gardens from LBP1, in that order.
  • Several of the Challenges are based on levels from the previous two games, e.g. "Pixel Pace", which is basically "Fight of the Bumblebee" from the second game minus the Bee 2.0, or "Skipping Class" which is pretty much "Tie Skipping" from the first game plus a Creatinator.
• Old Save Bonus: You can import your profile from the second game to this one, and it will still have the things you collected from the first game if you imported your profile to the second. If you're moving from PlayStation 3 to PlayStation 4, the game gives you all of the items for the first game if you've played it before and uses your pin progress for the second game, giving you the items you would have gotten based on said progress.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: Some occurs during Vitium In Opere in the level with the chain monster.
• Overly Long Scream: Newton does it as he along with Sackboy and his friends fall to their doom.

  Newton: We're DOOMED DEAR FRIENDS!!! (starts screaming non-stop as he and Sackboy along with the heroes fall until they land into his dad's ship and he stopped screaming)

• Plot Coupon: The player must get the Marbles to unlock the new characters to continue the story.
• Premium Currency: Bubbles are the most common form of score items, but this game introduces Collectabells, hidden currency that, with a fixed amount appearing in game, are much more valuable and able to be spent on new cosmetics.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: The "I. AM. INVINCIBLE!" trophy.
• Putting the Band Back Together: This is the premise for the third game. You have to reunite the three legendary heroes, OddSock, Toggle and Swoop. There's even a trophy for doing so, aptly named "Put The Band Back Together."
• Ring Menu: The Sackpocket is Type 2.
• Rubber-Band A.I.: The chain monster in "On The Link Of Disaster."
• Rule of Three: There are 3 heroes and there are 3 Titans. It takes 3 Marbles to unlock OddSock and Toggle (not Swoop, he only needs 2 for some reason).
• Save Scumming: The Popit Powerup allows you to pause and rewind your game progress, each savepoint is created when you close your Popit. Although you cannot save your game this way, it's more than enough to warp reality and undo failures before you take damage.
• Say My Name: Captain Pud does it after Newton told him that...

  Newton: I don't remember being a strict rule...

  Captain Pud: (angrily): Newton!

  (Cue Newton letting out a Loud Gulp)

• Sealed Evil in a Can: Literally. The Titans were sealed in a tea tin.

• Self-Deprecation:
  • The "FIX ME HOOK HAT" shirt. In short, when editing a Sackbot, you can toggle what powerups they can use. The powerups are represented in the menu with pictures, except that the Hook Hat didn't have a picture, just a gray box reading "FIX ME HOOK HAT". This wasn't fixed up to 7 months after release, so when they finally changed it to a proper icon of the Hook Hat, they let the joke live on in the form of a free DLC shirt with those 4 words on it.
    SACKBOY® FOUND A BUG!
    Oops, it looks like you're seeing something you shouldn't!
    
    What does “Fix Me Hook Hat” mean?
    
    Sackboy® has no idea, but he likes it! It’s quite catchy, don't you think?
    
    You better move quick as once the bug blasters get here, it might be gone forever… or maybe it will pop back up someday, who knows?
  • One common criticism of LBP3 is the Loads and Loads of Loading. Level creator Mars-Park3 made a level called "Loading... Rocket" in which you control the rocket from the loading screen and fly through rings to earn points while avoiding the loading messages. That's not the self-deprecating part though; the self-deprecating part is that the level received a Team Pick, the highest honor for a level.
• Self-Plagiarism: Those who played Tarsier Studios's DC Comics level pack were likely underwhelmed by OddSock and Swoop because they reuse abilities introduced in said DLC. Specifically, OddSock's wall jumping ability was already done with the Wall Jump Material and Tweaker, whilst Swoop's move of the same name was introduced via the Hero Cape.
• Shaped Like Itself: Newton pulls one of these when he's teaching Sackboy about Layer Launchers.
  Newton: That's it! Bounce in and out like a... erm, err... a bouncing in and out thing.
• Spelling Song: The SpongeBob SquarePants DLC's song "Let's Be Chums" has a robotic voice spell out "P-L-A-N-K-T-O-N" in its beginning and middle.
• Spring Coil: The Springinator powerup that OddSock gets, which allows him to bounce higher than he can jump.
• Stylistic Suck: In "The Journey Home", "Spring Time in the Gardens" is not just done in the style of the original world, but the style of the first game. That means that there are visible connectors everywhere, even for things that look like they're supposed to be flying, such as birds, ghosts, and stars.
• Stress Vomit: During the final act of Even Bosses Wear Hats Sometimes..., Newton was shown in the boat sea sick and was shown vomiting even if he's nervous.
• Suddenly Voiced: In "The Journey Home", the King and Frida the Bride from LBP1 appear. Unlike LBP1, which had no voice acting and only used simlish stuff, LBP3 has full voice acting, and these characters are no exception.
• Teleport Gun: The Blink Ball allows Sackboy to teleport to a Blink Panel when he fires a Blink Ball at it.
• The Voice: The head guard in "High Stakes Heist" is only ever heard yelling at his guards through an intercom. The guards themselves appear, but the one leading them never shows up in person.
• Third Is 3D: Well, the game itself isn't 3D, just sixteen layers, but the community can finally make 3D Sackboy movement that isn't top-down.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Happens to Newton in this cutscene.
• Third-Person Person: El Jeff.
• Tremor Trampoline: The main mechanic of "Bear With Us". This sidequest is set in a dance academy where Oleg has accidentally turned on music that made the bears angry. The bears' periodic jumps launch Sackboy and various objects on the ground.
• Trial-and-Error Gameplay: This is how the Contraption Challenges work. You are initially given a few low-grade parts to build a contraption to use in the challenge, and by participating, you can earn better parts to build a better contraption, rinse and repeat until you have good enough parts to build a contraption that can win the challenge.
• Triumphant Reprise: Industrial Evolution is this to The Factory of a Better Tomorrow's Interactive Music.
• Unexplained Recovery: The last time we saw the King, Queen, and Collector, they were partially roboticized in Newton's base, which explodes after you defeat the final Titan. The three of them show up in the "The Journey Home" DLC perfectly fine. And even before that, in LBP2 they were in an asylum.
• Uvula Escape Route: Happens to Pinky at the beginning of "Belly of the Beast".
• Wall Run: OddSock can "scamper up walls", which allows them to get some height on a wall by running up a curve, before transitioning into a wall slide which can be jumped out of. A special material in the last few levels allows for OddSock to engage full-on running along the walls and ceilings.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: Zom Zom, pronounced "Zoom Zoom" by him.
• Womb Level:
  • "Belly of the Beast" from Bunkum Lagoon has you going into, well, the belly of a beast. Seemingly a whale-like creature, but it's not given a species.
  • Defeating the final Titan involves throwing a bomb into it, then getting swallowed so you can detonate said bomb.
• Worthy Opponent: Gustavo sees Sackboy as this if he does really well in the race.

LittleBigPlanet PSP

• "Arabian Nights" Days: The Bazaar, whose Creator curator is a genie whose lamp is stolen by the Monkey Thief King.
• Arab Oil Sheikh: Prince Funubis. In one level of the Carnival, you have to help him get oil out of the ground.
• B-Movie: The Director in Tinsel Town makes a living off these kinds of movies.
• Clockworks Area: Alpine Run has frequent clock based elements.
• Game-Breaking Bug: The clunky PSP game is not free from game breaking glitches:
  • A glitch can cause saves to become corrupted in a way that causes the PSP to crash and shut down when playing levels, including community levels, story mode levels, and sometimes even the player's own levels in both Play Mode and Create Mode. Sometimes it can be fixed if a level can be edited in Create Mode and then exited, though the corruption is not guaranteed to be fixed in this way and the game may also crash when entering Create Mode to edit levels.
  • A common glitch can render user-created levels unplayable and impossible to edit. Attempting to play an affected community level will softlock the game. Rumors claim the glitch happens if DLC materials such as the Dirty Metal from The Turbo Pack are used in a level, and the level is saved and reloaded in Create Mode too many times after the material was placed.
• Giant Spider: The Floor Beasts in "Didgeridoo Didgeridon't" are huge trapdoor spiders.
• Land Down Under: The first theme, Down Under.
• Magic Carpet: You ride one in the level known as both "High on Rugs" and "Rugs and Kisses".
• Saint-Bernard Rescue: A Saint Bernard helps you find Clock Hans' children in "Dogged Determination". Since this is an E rated game, there's no brandy.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Alpine Run, being based off of alpines in Switzerland.
• Snowlem: Appears as a mini-boss guarding one of the balloons in, "Peak Performance." It throws snowballs and spawns little snowman grunts.
• Time Abyss: Down Under and the Mystic apparently predate linear time.

LittleBigPlanet PS Vita

• Abandoned Laboratory: Re-animation Station, the second-last level of the Spooky Mansion, is set in the lab where the Puppeteer created the Hollows.
• Amusement Park of Doom: Carnivalia is a planet made entirely of amusement park stuff. The "of Doom" part didn't come in until the Hollows started showing up, however
• Anti Poop-Socking: One of the loading screen messages suggests that the player go and get a cloth to clean their screen of any accumulated smudges.
• Apocalyptic Log: You find The Puppeteer's diary just before the final boss.
• Band Land: La Marionetta is filled with instruments for Sackboy to jump on and bounce off.
• Big Boo's Haunt: The aptly-named Spooky Mansion, being home to the Hollows.
• Blackout Basement: The Spooky Mansion level "Sunshine & Shadows" is suitably dark for a spooky mansion, and it's up to you to light the way.
• Bonus Level: The Arcade, which consists of five optional minigames.
• Bubblegloop Swamp: The Land of Odd is some sort of clockwork swamp.
• By Wall That Is Holey: The side level Wall or Nothing tasks the player with placing their Sackboy in front of the hole before the timer runs out so that they don't get pushed into the pit of spikes below them.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Mrs. Sunshine. She has tons of imaginary friends that she made up to keep her company while she was lost in the Spooky Mansion. These imaginary friends in turn have what she believes to be imaginary friends, who are actually real people.
• Contagious Laughter: At the end, after Sean pins Otis to the ground, Mrs. Sunshine starts laughing. Soon everyone else joins in, including the Puppeteer, whose laughter turns the Hollows back into Sackpeople.
• Darker and Edgier: Even more so than LBP2. The story mode has a definite Circus of Fear vibe, and the Hollows seem straight out of The Nightmare Before Christmas.
• Down in the Dumps: Your goal in Coaster Valley is to get to a scrapyard to obtain parts for a cannon.
• Dug Too Deep: The Land of Odd level "The Odd Rocket", "Mine O'Threat" and "Driller Thriller" are all set in the old mine.
• Easily Detachable Robot Parts: The MegaBrain can have its legs detached. Not by itself, but by the player, who has to rip them off with the Grappling Hook. Also, they can't be reattached, considering they explode after you pull them off.
• Eternal Engine: The Land of Odd appears to run on clockwork, although it's mixed with nature for the most part. It's most noticeable in the old mine.
• "Everybody Laughs" Ending: An actual plot point that helps The Puppeteer find joy again, turning all the Hollows back into their normal selves.
• Eyes Always Closed: Sean Brawn's eyes are never open.
• From Beyond the Fourth Wall: No in-universe justification is given for the Touch Material and how it works.
• Green Hill Zone: The Land of Odd is very green and vaguely tropical, though it's not the tutorial level.
• Lantern Jaw of Justice: Sean Brawn has one, being a parody of a stock hero.
• Lethal Lava Land: "High-Pressure Cellar" in Spooky Mansion is an odd variation, it's set indoors and the heat comes from the mansion's poorly-maintained boiler.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!: The only two people in the group were Colonel Flounder and Sackboy, but this happens in the intro cutscene for The Land Of Odd.
  Colonel Flounder: But the trail of clues is splitting in two! So we must do the same.
• Level Ate: The Spooky Mansion level "A Recipe for Unpleasantness" is set in the mansions's grimy old kitchen and contains a lot of food-themed objects and obstacles.
• The Man Behind the Man: Throughout the game, you are led to believe that The Puppeteer is the main villain, but it turns out that The Hollows are actually behind everything, and have locked The Puppeteer up.
• Minigame Zone: The above-mentioned Arcade. There aren't any in-game prizes to win, but there are Trophies.
• Non-Indicative Name: The side level "Collision Course".
  This 1-player game may be called Collision Course, but the aim of the game is to navigate the highway, collect points and AVOID dangerous collisions! But you should never let the facts get in the way of a good title.
• Perverse Puppet: The Hollows. It turns out that the characters that you meet are a much friendlier version of this.
• Rise to the Challenge: The boss of Jackpot City is this, where you must ascend through an obstacle course to avoid getting vaporized by the rising laser below, while chasing the giant computer brain up the tunnel.
• Rotating Protagonist: Well, it's more like a Rotating Partner. The game begins with Sackboy meeting Colonel Flounder, who teaches Sackboy the basics (read: He helps you through the tutorials). They split up afterwards, and Sackboy meets Marianne Noisette, who is having trouble with the Hollows. After Sackboy defeats their drill train, the two leave the mines and Sackboy is abducted by Sean Brawn, who teaches him how to use the Grappling Hook. The two chase after and defeat the MegaBrain, who was being controlled by the Hollows. The computer tells them that the two need to head to Spooky Mansion, and places them in crates being shipped to the location. As the two ride in the crates on an open conveyor belt, The Unbelievable Otis smashes his head into the crate Sackboy is in, causing him to fall off of the conveyor. After the two land, Otis tells Sackboy that he needs scrap to build a double-barreled cannon, which he will use to launch Sackboy to Spooky Mansion. After acquiring the scrap, they go for a flight. Otis continues flying, but Sackboy crashes through the roof and meets Mrs. Sunshine. The two move through the mansion, and eventually come across the final boss. In the cutscene after the final boss, all 5 characters meet each other.
• Sad Clown: Mrs. Sunshine acts completely dead inside. Her laughing is actually a plot point.
• Swiss-Army Tears: According to the story's penultimate cutscene, where The Puppeteer sheds a Single Tear that splits up and revives the five remaining Creators that aid Sackboy.
• Super Title 64 Advance: One of the rare examples of Vita game titles that include the word "Vita".
• There Was a Door: Mrs. Sunshine's reaction to Sackboy crashing through the Spooky Mansion ceiling.
  Mrs. Sunshine: Most people use the door, but your choice, really.
• Tomorrowland: Jackpot City is very futuristic with plenty of robots such as EyeSpies and the all-powerful MegaBrain. It's also where the Grappling Hook is introduced.
• Villains Out Shopping: The side level "Sorting Panic" shows one of the things the Hollows do on their downtime when not terrorizing Carnivalia: riding colorful inner tubes down a water slide.
• Wall Jump: The above-mentioned DC Comics Pack also shows up in this game, too, so the Wall Jump Material and Tweaker return.
• We Will Use WikiWords in the Future: The EyeSpies and the MegaBrain from the futuristic Jackpot City.

LittleBigPlanet Karting

• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Carrying a Huge Monster Egg gives people Huge Monster Powers, which does this.
• Band Land: The Space Bass is disco-themed, so it's filled with various instruments.
• Big Eater: Vernon the Lab Rat, who's so fat that he never stands up. It probably comes with living in Victoria's Lab.
• Boss-Only Level: Exaggerated with the final world, The Garage at the End of the Craftverse. Its only level is one of these, which makes it a Boss-Only World.
• The Collector: The Hoard are an entire race of this trope. They steal anything that's not nailed down; examples include the Huge Monster's egg and Victoria's cakes.
• Eternal Engine: The Space Bass, in addition to being as perpetual disco party, is also a space station filled with machines.
• Final Boss, New Dimension: Hoard, Sweet Hoard takes place on the Hoard's home planet.
• Gratuitous Disco Sequence: The Space Bass is, to put it straight, a disco-themed space station.
• Heel–Face Turn: The Hoard will realize the errors of their ways upon defeat of the final boss.
• Honest John's Dealership: Don Doubtworthy and his Progress Emporium.
• Interface Screw: The Flash Bang item briefly blinds anyone hit by it, and distorts the visuals for a moment afterwards.
• Last of Her Kind: The Huge Monster from The Monster Islands.
• Macross Missile Massacre: The Flash Bang, an item that shows up more if you're lagging behind, launches several missiles forward, each one gunning for one of the racers ahead. However, these missiles aren't deadly, as they only launch racers a bit into the air and temporarily distort the visuals.
• Monster Town: The Monster Islands,islands filled with monsters (and some turtles, who are apparently related to the monsters somehow).
• Nostalgia Level:
  • The entire first world is based on the Gardens, Wedding, Savannah, and Canyons settings from the first game in the series.
  • There's also a world based on Victoria's Lab, another on Eve's Asylum, and half of a world based on Avalonia (it's The Space Bass). However, due to the lack of Sackbots in this game, the characters from the second game don't appear, instead creating Vernon the Lab Rat, Venus the Flytrap, and Capt. Sirius Oculus, respectively.
• Old Save Bonus: If you have a save from the previous games, you get the Balloon Kart and Unicorn Costume, which are completely unattainable otherwise.
• Palmtree Panic: The Monster Islands. It's a tropical island, but full of monsters!
• Remixed Level: LittleBigPlanet (based on themes from the first game), Victoria's Laboratory, Eve's Asylum, and Avalonia.
• Rocket Punch: One of the power-ups you get for being behind the competition transforms your kart into a speeding boxing glove, which can punch through racers along its path.
• Self-Plagiarism: Karting is often accused of being redundant as it intrudes on a niche already filled by ModNation Racers. As a matter of fact, the developers of ModNation Racers co-developed this game.
• Soundtrack Dissonance:
  • In the racetrack "Mine the Gap", you race through a mine. The music playing in this level? "Inmóvil" by Mexican quintet Kinky. Its lyrics are in Spanish, but the whole song is about lust and loneliness in the digital age. The official music video for this song is definitely NSFW, as it has full frontal female nudity and a man following a beautiful woman to a topless bar as she strips. This is a song that was included in a game that is rated E by the ESRB, and it plays in a Minecart Madness level, no less.
  • Fishbone's contribution to the soundtrack, on the other hand, despite bearing the title "Skankin' to the Beat", is a fairly innocent little song^* save for one mild sexual reference named after a reggae dance move.
• Space Zone: The Space Bass is a disco-themed space station.
• Spiritual Successor: To the point of it playing more like ModNation Racers than LittleBigPlanet itself. Justified as the developers of ModNation Racers did co-develop this game.
• Tomorrowland: The Progress Emporium, a world full of fantastic new inventions. Unfortunately, it's under the umbrella of Honest John Co.
• Totally Radical: The voice-over for the "Recent Activity" option in the hub menu has Stephen briefly attempt to use "yoof" slang in his impeccably twee voice, before declaring it's just not worth it.
• Unexplained Recovery: Sheriff Zapata, who you defeated in the first game, appears alive and well in a crowd of people in The King's Castle.
• Zeerust: The Progress Emporium also, based on half-a-century old ideas of the future. It possesses an aesthetic from The '50s and is full of zeppelins.

Run Sackboy! Run!

• 1-Up: Save-Me Hearts, but like in most endless runners, the more you use in a single run, the more it takes next time.
• Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: Yeti is a costume. He has a large footprint-maker on a stick.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: One can buy Bubbles, the currency of the game, using real money. There are also baskets of boosters that can be bought, in addition to Save-Me Hearts and other bonuses like one free auto-shield per run or double bubbles forever.
• Difficulty by Acceleration: Comes with being an Endless Runner.
• Endless Running Game: The second non-platformer in the series, after Karting.
• Gold-Colored Superiority: When the powerups are upgraded to their max level, they get a golden paint job instead.
• Gotta Catch Them All: There are 80 Stickers, 4 in each of the 20 groups, which randomly show up in Prize Bubbles.
• Jetpack: One of the powerups. It allows you to fly around and collect Bubbles with no fear of dying for a moment.
• Luck-Based Mission
  • Some missions require certain boosters. There's a decently sized pool of boosters, of which 2 are randomly offered to you at the start of a run.
  • There's a mission that requires using some Save-Me Hearts, and unless you feel like Bribing Your Way to Victory, you'll have to save the ones that you randomly find in Prize Bubbles and Lucky Chests.
  • Another mission actually requires you to get Save-Me Hearts from Prize Bubbles. Good luck.
  • Speaking of Prize Bubbles, they are also random when it comes to finding stickers, although they will never repeat any stickers.
  • Getting the 50 Wolf Tokens from Mega Lucky Chests and 500 Aviator Tokens from both kinds of chests.
• Meta Multiplayer: There's no actual multiplayer, but there is a scoreboard that lets you compare your score with your friends.
• Microtransactions: You can buy packs of items, bubbles, Save-Me Hearts, or bonus "Sack-Powers" like Double Bubbles on every run, a free booster on every run, or one Auto-Shield on every run, with real cash, as is the norm for the genre.
• Money Multiplier: One of the starting boosters that can show up is Blue Bubbles, which makes each Bubble worth 2 times as much.
• Play Every Day: To get bonuses. Day 1 is 100 Bubbles, Day 2 is 200, Day 3 is 300, Day 4 is a Lucky Chest, and Day 5 and each day after is a Mega Lucky Chest.
• Power-Up Magnet: A magnet is one of 3 powerups in the game. It attracts bubbles to Sackboy.
• Score Multiplier: Completing enough missions will increase your starting multiplier by one, maxing out at +40. Completing large objectives also increases your multiplier by 5, namely getting 10 costumes, maxing out all of the powerup's upgrades, collecting all of the stickers, and getting to the max rank in missions, the aforementioned 40. Buying costumes will also permanently increase your multiplier, and one of the starting boosters will add 10 to your starting multiplier.
• Set Bonus: Getting all 4 of the stickers in a set gives you a bonus. This can range from a few thousand bubbles to some Save-Me Hearts to costumes that can be worn in the mainstream LBP games.
• Zonk: Occasionally, a Lucky Chest that has bubbles will spit out a puff of purple smoke instead of a burst of light, give you 5 Bubbles instead of a number more akin to Pinball Scoring, and play the Negativitron's laugh instead of a cheering crowd.

Sackboy: A Big Adventure

• Advancing Boss of Doom: The Giant Befuddler from "Just a Phase" is a giant Phase Light — and the floors are made of materials that either appear or disappear when in the radius of such a light. The creature chases Sackboy down until it accidentally slams into a wall that appeared because of its abilities.
• Advancing Wall of Doom:
  • "The Abominable Showman", a giant Yeti seen at the end of "Ready Yeti Go", which chases you down in a similar manner to the boulders from Crash Bandicoot.
  • The level "Escape Velocity" has a few advancing laser grids forcing you to pick up the pace, lest they One-Hit Kill your Sackboy.
  • The co-op stage "Double Down" has both Sackfolk descending down a chasm together while a laser grid comes from above. If it catches either player, it speeds up to make short work of the other.
• All the Worlds Are a Stage:
  • The final world mixes in aspects from several of the worlds preceding it. Several setpieces come back, such as all three powerups; The Soaring Summit's moving platforms with faces (now on cycles instead of player-sensing) and yetis; The Colossal Canopy's tides, sticky Gloop, rotating platforms, and timed fire panels; The Kingdom of Crablantis's Phase Lights and bubbles; and The Interstellar Junction's touchscreens, Velociporters, teleportation panels and lasers. Several levels combine these aspects together in different ways not showcased in the prior worlds.
  • Multitask Force, the last co-op level, borrows from several of the co-op levels before it, using their setpieces in short, trial-like rooms to get Keys for a door. The bottom-left door uses the snow globe, tightropes and player-sensing moving platforms from The Soaring Summit which were a focus of the co-op level "Snowman Left Behind"; the bottom-right door uses the heavy animal and weighted crate platforms from The Colossal Canopy's "Weight For Me!" and the timed dropping platforms from the world in general; the top-right door uses the carryable Phase Light from The Kingdom of Crablantis and the concept of having one player use it to create platforms for another, which was a mechanic of "Squid Goals"; and the top-left door uses the floating bubbles and the electric eels that debuted in The Kingdom of Crablantis, as well as the timed tongue platforms one player can activate for another, which were among the puzzle elements used in The Interstellar Junction's co-op stage "Lead The Weigh".
  • The very last stage of the game incorporates multiple things from prior levels, including (in no particular order) tightropes, Sixaxis-controlled moving platforms, spike rollers, timed tongue platforms, bubbles, the "flytrap" platforms that bite Sackboy if he lingers, batteries, turrets, and Phase Lights.
• Antepiece: Most levels indicate how things will work early on in the stage, but the music levels in particular tend to show off the rhythm-based aspects early to let you get a feel for how to move with the song, as well as how the enemies and stage elements do so as well.
  • "Beat The Heat" contains fire traps that activate with the beat and enemies who pause to dance to the trumpet notes of the song playing, "Jungle Boogie". In the first room, there's a safe path in the middle and fire traps on both sides of the path. You're not required to interact with these panels, but there's a shiny Dreamer Orb that can only be reached by jumping to a high ledge from these panels. The room after this contains enemies on both the left and right of your party, as well as in front, and you land in this room right before the trumpet notes play, showing how all of them stop in place to dance. While both of these aren't mandatory to interact with at the first encounter, later sections mandate platforming on groups of fire traps in a row and knowing when to get out of the way, while the enemies get placed on platforms that rotate, to throw off attempts at Goomba Stomping unless you adjust accordingly.
  • "Flossed in Space" showcases platforms that move in and out of walls to the beat of "Houdini" by Foster the People. The first of these are tucked in nooks between platforms, so you can just jump over them initially. Meanwhile, the background of the room contains floating enemies that slam the ground to the tune, which can be observed safely from the foreground, unless you want to get on their elevated platform to climb up to a Dreamer Orb. Eventually, the wall platforms will begin moving in and out in different ways, while other terrain with Velociporters attached will also begin slamming like the enemies, with this terrain varying between helpful and unhelpful.
  • "One Track Mind" has platforms which electrify to the beat and charging enemies who charge much faster than the normal versions, both shown off in places where you can safely observe them (the square of electric panels has a safe spot in the middle and the charging enemies only move back and forth on a single path), which come before segments where you'll be forced to deal with lengthier shocking floor sequences or shock floors you have to land on, and enemies charging in other patterns that aren't just back and forth.
• Anti-Frustration Features: Unlike most other games (which normally require level completion to keep any items found), completing the level is not necessary for the player to keep any Dreamer Orbs or prizes they have found in that level.
• Ascended Meme: On August 20th of 2021, a familiar face returned to LittleBigPlanet... Sacknana from the PSP game. While a costume returning isn't a meme on its own, the emote that the costume comes with is specifically the dance that Sackboy does in this popular gif where he wears the Sacknana suit.
• Battle Boomerang: The Whirltool is a boomerang that resembles a fan with three blades. Its high speed, beefy range, and homing capabilities let it make short work of enemies.
• Blowing a Raspberry: Sackboy can do this with the "Silly" emote from the Emotions Emote Pack
• Bonus Dungeon: The Wonderplane, a bonus world with 5 stages, unlocked after defeating Vex and saving Craftworld. The Uproar barriers here need many more Dreamer Orbs than the ones for merely progressing through the story, and each of the three powerups comes Back for the Finale, having their own individual stages which each must be beaten to unlock the final level.
• Bonus Stage: Zom Zom occasionally sets up a stage inside a magic lamp when you beat a level. When you hit the lamp, Sackboy is taken inside for a 30 second minigame where Collectabells are summoned throughout the room for your characters to collect.
• Boss Subtitles: A banner displaying a boss' name will show up in their introductory cutscene.
• Breaking Old Trends: This game is notably the first platformer entry to be in 3D, doesn't have any form of level creation and doesn't feature Stephen Fry as the narrator.
• Checkpoint Starvation: The final Knitted Knight Trial, the Ripsnorter, which can't be unlocked until the postgame, puts together all 15 of the other trials, with no checkpoints in between them. If Sackboy dies, then it's all the way back to the beginning to run it again.
• Color-Coded Multiplayer: Each player has their own colors associated with them in gameplay; player 1 has blues, 2 has oranges, 3 has greens, and 4 has pinks, and these are used throughout the game.
  • Most player-specific HUD elements and UI are color-coded accordingly, such as:
    • The players' names.
    • The tabs at the bottom of the screen which show the order of the players.
    • The costume selection bars before entering a level.
    • The interior of each player's Collectabell wallet.
    • The timer for how long a Sackperson has to get back onscreen before being picked up by the Assistance Copter (in normal levels) or dying (in co-op levels).
    • The scores for each player on the Scoreboard and at the end of Zom Zom's bonus stages.
  • Meanwhile, the colors are used in gameplay proper as well, for things like:
    • The Sackperson themselves, who will take on their color if they're damaged, replacing the slight red tinge used in single player.
    • Each players' individual powerup, as well as its functions (such as the Clawstring's tether, or the Plasma Pumps' energy projectiles and landing indicators).
    • The flares used to summon the Assistance Copter, as well as the light emitted by the Copter itself.
• Continuity Nod: Signs in The Interstellar Junction namecheck past games' locations: Craftworld from 2, Carnivalia from Vita, and Bunkum from 3.
• Crate Expectations: Crates are commonly scattered around levels in various forms, containing Score Bubbles and occasionally other things. There's small and large ones which tend to be two-toned in stripes and can be broken with any attack, though larger ones take two hits to break. There's also brown crates with colored stripes which are reinforced and need stronger things to break them, like an explosive or the Plasma Pumps' enhanced offensive powers.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
  • Unlike in other LittleBigPlanet games, letting go of a moving sponge won't fling you with realistic momentum. In this game, you'll want to jump off of such things to get the distance you seek.
  • The Clawstring, unlike the similar Grappling Hook introduced in LittleBigPlanet 2, has no reeling mechanic, and thus functions more like the Grappling Hook as it worked in Karting.
• Disconnected Side Area: Each of the first four worlds has a Flower Cannon that shoots you to a small plateau on a different world, with a sampler of levels to play and no way to reach the mainland that comprises the rest of the world.
• Emote Animation: New to this game are Emotes, which replace the emotions when you aren't in Acting mode. Each d-pad button can have an animation and emotion assigned to it, and pressing that button in gameplay will have your Sackboy do whatever you put on it. These range from simple poses, to dances, to things that require two players to pull off.
• Good Colors, Evil Colors: Vex and things associated with him are all a vibrant red, blue, and green.
• The Goomba: Grunties, small froglike red, blue, and green creatures who waddle around and approach Sackboy when he's in range, attempting to headbutt him. They go down in a single slap or stomp, and moves like the Roll take only one hit to stun them. In later worlds, they gain strength in numbers by stacking on top of each other, but they're still weak individually.
• Goomba Springboard: In addition to Sackboy's increased jump height on his own, bouncing off of enemies now gives a bound that's a bit higher than that height (owing to using the enemy as his platform). If he's equipped with the Plasma Pumps, this will also recharge the fuel for his Hover, allowing for platforming over large chasms without touching the ground.
• Goomba Stomp: Unlike in the mainline LittleBigPlanet games, Sackboy no longer needs to stomp on a Creature Brain to damage his foes. Just jumping on them in general will suffice.
• Guide Dang It!: There's a Prize Bubble in the level "Jumping to Conclusions" which is inside a box that only appears in a particular room sometimes, in place of an onslaught of Grunties. The fact that this is the only puzzle of such a sort in the game, often completed by accident, has spawned multiple guesses as to how to spawn the box; don't break the boxes in the rooms preceeding it, do a Pacifist Run or speedrun invoked of the first half of the level, don't get spotted by the Grunty in the prior room, immediately turn around and reenter the door you just came through in the prior room, and such. The common denominator likely to occur under all of these circumstances, and thus seemingly the cause of whether you get the boxes or the enemies, is whether you killed or spared the Grunty in the room before — let it live for prizes, kill it for mooks.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: The Clawstring behaves similarly to the Grappling Hook of the past games, being a device worn on Sackboy's hand that shoots a grabbing claw when activated. Unlike the Grappling Hook, it can automatically pull grabbable things into Sackboy's hands, though it's lost the ability to extend and retract while swinging.
• Ground Pound: The Nosedive has Sackboy smash into the ground head first, which can activate things on the ground or get his head stuck in cracks, which give things when he breaks free from them. When he's equipped with the Plasma Pumps, it becomes the Smashdown, a Ground Punch with an area of effect, which is also capable of breaking reinforced crates, just like the normal Blast the powerup also grants.
• Healing Checkpoint: Reaching a new Checkpoint in a level after Sackboy has sustained a hit will restore him back to having two health. Other sections that count as checkpoints, such as entering a door or boss area, will also heal him.
• Jump Jet Pack: The Plasma Pumps give you a rocket-propelled double jump and the ability to hover in the air with more mobility, control, and time than just the Flutter can give. It can be activated at any time as long as you haven't run out of boosting power, which refills when you touch down somewhere safely (whether that's landing on the floor, bouncing off the head of an enemy, or grabbing onto a sponge), and the boost can even be canceled and continued later.
• Jump Scare: The post-credits scene shows a dark background. However, a floating disembodied head of Vex pops up shouting "Sweet Nightmares, Sackboy!" at the camera before laughing evilly and later disappears before fading to black. Here's a video. Wanna see?
• Leaning Tower of Mooks: Grunties eventually begin stacking atop each other in later worlds. This makes it hard or even impossible to stomp them, but doesn't render them immune to slaps and other attacks. They'll occasionally throw the top Grunty off of the stack as a projectile, after which they'll get up and fight as normal.
• Level Goal: Scoreboards, as in the rest of the series. These ones are painted blue as opposed to just being a basic material, but serve the same function of finishing the level and counting up the scores of the players.
• Marathon Level: The Ripsnorter, the final Knitted Knight Trial, by virtue of it being all 15 previous trials stitched together back-to-back. Completing a run will take you almost 10 minutes at best.
• Musical Gameplay: Each world except the last has a level where setpieces, platforms, enemies, and other things are synced up to a song, such as "Treble in Paradise" in The Soaring Summit, which syncs with "Uptown Funk". Similarly to in SSX 3, the song will delay parts until you reach certain sections.
• Musical Nod: In the postgame, the music played in the first stage of the bonus world is a remix of The Gardens' theme from LBP1.
• New World Tease: In The Soaring Summit and The Colossal Canopy, you can find Flower Cannons that respectively shoot you to the third and fourth worlds, The Kingdom of Crablantis and The Interstellar Junction. However, you're limited to a Disconnected Side Area in each one and can only play a small amount of levels exclusive to that area. (The cannons in the latter two worlds shoot you back to the first two, for reference.)
• Offscreen Start Bonus: Every world has at least one level where a Dreamer Orb is hidden directly behind the start of the level, just out of view of the camera.
• Ominous Obsidian Ooze: The Uproar barriers on the world maps take the form of dripping black goop that cascades off of the sides of the platforms.
• Parasol of Pain: Whoever finds a cocktail umbrella in a level can use it as an effective melee weapon.
• Parasol Parachute: In certain levels, a cocktail umbrella is hidden. Whoever picks it up can use it to get a very floaty double jump and a glide afterwards by opening it.
• Plot Coupon: Dreamer Orbs, blue spheres which function similarly to how Green Stars work in Super Mario 3D World; they're a major collectible, featured in a limited quantity in each level, and a certain amount have to be collected to dispel barriers that halt your progression on the world maps.
• Precision-Guided Boomerang: The second the Whirltool leaves your hand, it practically becomes a sentient being. It'll home in on Score Bubbles, Collectabells and enemies as long as you send it in their general direction, and of course it has no problem flying back into your hand when all is said and done.
• Projectile Pocketing: The Whirltool can snag Score Bubbles and Collectabells from a distance for you.
• Recurring Riff: There's a six-note riff throughout the game. It's most prominent as the jingle that plays when you collect a Dreamer Orb, but it can be heard in most of the songs specifically composed for this game as well.
• Recurring Traveller: Gerald Strudleguff, first met in The Soaring Summit's level "Have You Herd?". He's going around observing nature and taking notes, and he keeps appearing off to the side in several levels, always with a Dreamer Orb to hand over to Sackboy.
• Remixed Level: Every world has at least one level where you play through a section of one of the world's main levels on a timer, doing a speedrun to get up to three Orbs.invoked
• Rise to the Challenge: "Water Predicament" ends on a section where water rises from below, rather than the Tide Level it's been up to this point, requiring you to use elevators to get up to the ending.
• Rolling Attack: The Roll is a new addition to Sackboy's moveset, done by pressing Circle repeatedly (which can be changed in the Settings menu to holding Circle instead). It's not the strongest of Sackboy's offensive options as it merely stuns enemies, but that opens the possibilities of hitting them afterwards, or lifting them and throwing them off of the level.
• Running Gag: Gerald Strudleguff, a Recurring Traveller who keeps popping up in every world with Dreamer Orbs he gives to Sackboy... but not before misidentifying the collectibles as something else. He finally uses the name everyone else has been using in his last appearance.
• Score Multiplier: There's a collectible 2x Score Bubble which appears in most levels, either as a pickup on its own or from a box or balloon. When grabbed, it temporarily turns bubbles and score numbers from white to pink, and doubles the points received from anything that gives them.
• Second Place Is for Losers: If at the end of a mission Sackboy gets a silver, he will be very angry.
• Shamu Fu: A handful of levels have a fish hidden in them, which Sackboy can pick up. This strengthens his melee blows, allowing him to defeat enemies who would otherwise take two slaps with just one, or deal damage instead of merely stunning enemies with the spin.
• Shoryuken: One of Sackboy's new moves is the Slapjump, done by pressing Square followed by X. When used, Sackboy spins while leaping into the air with one fist out, performing a rising attack that can break higher objects and attack foes.
• Socialization Bonus:
  • There are several co-op levels scattered throughout the worlds, which mandate "a friend or three" before you can even enter them. The setpieces contained within are things that an individual Sackperson couldn't complete by themselves, such as reaching high areas by throwing a friend up to them, or having to coordinate the use of two Whirltools to activate switches in succession or at the same time.
  • Several trophies are tied to playing with multiple players, such as dancing with another player, winning the gold trophy and hitting someone else with it, and completing the aforementioned co-op levels.
  • Some of the Emote Animations, such as the Secret Handshake default emote, only function in multiplayer, where one player has to begin it and another has to approach them and press an emote button so that they can pull it off together.
• Source Music:
  • Implied to be the case in most levels. When you enter any of the secret side areas, the music of the main level vanishes entirely, and when you go near the door to return, you can hear the slightly muffled level's music.
  • The level "Treble in Paradise" is one of few levels that overtly shows this; a radio at the very beginning can be heard playing the opening riff of Uptown Funk, the song that plays throughout the rest of the level.
• Spin Attack: By pressing Circle quickly followed by Square, Sackboy does the Spin, twirling with his arms outstretched to break things, stun enemies, and slow his fall speed if in midair. If Sackboy is carrying one of the handheld items that are present in certain levels, such as the paintbrush or cocktail umbrella, the spin is upgraded from merely stunning enemies to dealing damage in a large radius around him.
• Sticks to the Back: When not in use, the Whirltool clings to Sackboy's back, even if he's in the default outfit and has nowhere it could attach. Other handheld objects like the fish and paintbrush will stick to Sackboy's back if he carries something.
• Suddenly Speaking: Downplayed. Sackboy was completely mute in every other LittleBigPlanet game with two very minor exceptions (a faint whine when drowning, and a held grunt for the duration of the Hold to Retry! animation). In this game, Sackboy doesn't regularly speak, but he's more vocal on the whole, shouting or grunting when executing his moves, or letting out brief lines like "Uh-oh!" when narrowly dodging hazards.
• Super Drowning Skills: Unlike the main LittleBigPlanet games, water is a hazard, dealing one hit of damage and bouncing Sackboy upwards.
• Tide Level: Water in this game moves on intervals, and since Sackboy can't swim, this requires you to get on either platforms that are above the water level or platforms that rise and fall with it. "Water Predicament" is the first instance of such a level, but later ones include more absurd variations like the water tilting diagonally back and forth.
• Time Trial: The Knitted Knight Trials are a set of 15 unlockable levels that reward you with up to three Dreamer Orbs based on your time in comparison to the par times. Each world also has a level where you run through a portion of another level while on a timer, with a possible three Orbs as a reward for these as well.
• Took a Level in Badass: Sackboy has a greatly expanded moveset compared to the other games, where he can typically only run, jump, grab, and slap without the assistance of powerups. His jump goes much higher and he can extend it by fluttering in the air; his slap, which was nominally just a move done to other players as a joke, is now extended into his main attack against enemies, in addition to the possibility of doing it in the air to extend his airtime as well; he can dive and roll into enemies to stun them, as well as also being able to get even more airtime by diving forward in midair; and he still has a few other moves, such as a Ground Pound, a Shoryuken, a Spin Attack, and the ability to lift and throw objects and enemies without a set of Grabinators.
• Use Your Head: The Nosedive move has Sackboy do a Ground Pound, head-first. The Roll also begins with a head-first dive which, like the rest of the move, can be used to stun enemies.
• Winged Soul Flies Off at Death: Similarly to Crash Bandicoot. When a Sackperson dies, they become a translucent blue winged spirit wearing their outfit and flutter away.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: You've defeated Vex for the third time in the final world of the game, Scarlet's ready to congratulate you on a job well done, and... once you hit the world map, Vex's voice comes from nowhere, telling you that getting rid of him won't be that easy, and the giant wall behind the "final" stage disappears to reveal two more level badges; the first is a normal stage, which when completed unlocks the real Final Boss level. The game even lampshades it, as the level after the fake final boss is named "Jumping to Conclusions".

---