Our protagonists. They were initially a Power Trio, but by the third game their ranks had grown to seven.
Sly Cooper
"The Thievius Raccoonus doesn't create great thieves. It takes great thieves to create the Thievius Raccoonus."
An American raccoon, and the last member of an incredibly ancient family of master thieves who preyed upon criminals. His parents were killed by a gang of five criminals when he was young, leaving him to be adopted by the Happy Campers Orphanage, where he meet Bentley and Murray, his lifelong friends and comembers of the Cooper Gang.
Ace Pilot: Supposed to be one of these in the third game.
Amnesiac Lover: Played with. He fakes amnesia in order to finally to get together with Carmelita.
Conveniently an Orphan: Very much averted. He may be one, but it's a major plot point, and his family play a enormous role in the history of the series as a collective Posthumous Character.
Domino Mask: He has never been seen without it outside of some of his disguises, even as a child, while disguised for Rajan's ball and while faking amnesia to get with Carmelita.
Easy Amnesia: Subverted in the ending of the third game. He was only faking amnesia to get with Carmelita.
Enemy Mine: With Carmelita during the final level of each game.
Honor Before Reason: His main motive, along with the Cooper Family's, for centuries.
Nice Hat: In the first game, you can even make it into a bomb!
One-Hit-Point Wonder: He was this in the first game, and could gain up to 2 extra hitpoints with horseshoes. He gains a health meter in later games.
Orphan's Plot Trinket: His cane, the symbol by which the Fiendish Five recognize his identity. It's also the key to the Cooper Vault.
Paper-Thin Disguise: When showing up for Rajan's ball, he wears a tuxedo and ditches his hat and shoes, but keeps his mask. In the third game, the fact that he is far less bulky than the Venetian flashlight guards and the Blood Bath Bay lantern-carrying guards he impersonates may explain the constant password requests from the guards. Strangely, his wedding photographer disguise in the same game's fourth level still works even after General Tsao identifies him.
Rolling Attack: One of his unlockable special moves in the first game.
Shock and Awe: And later he gets an upgrade that allows him to channel electricity while rolling.
Star-Crossed Lovers: Him and Carmelita. It's played with in the first game with Carmelita's Mercy Lead, and he is rescued by his friends just as Carmelita was about to break out a glass of wine for the occasion of his arrest with him. In the third game, he fakes amnesia after being injured by Dr M. and ends up with Carmelita in Paris.
Stealth Hi/Bye: He's a master at this, somehow he's been able to: handcuff Carmelita to a rail after the ten second head start — 9 he used to get to her and one to kiss her on the lips, no less! — escape Rajah's palace and leaving a calling card in her hair, and even escape just as Carmelita wakes up from being possessed by an ancient mask.
Time Master: Downplayed for the most part, but three of the unlockable special moves in the first game were the ability to speed up time (to make long, boring heists and stake-outs go by in a flash), slow down time (in order to more easily dodge traps and security lasers), and stop time (causing all enemies to freeze for a few seconds).
Visible Invisibility: Type 3 while utilizing the invisibility power from his ancient Egyptian ancestor.
Bentley Turtle
An American turtle, and the brains of the Cooper Gang. He appeared solely in radio comms and in a hacking level in the first game, then Took a Level in Badass and played an active role in the second and third games.
Adorkable: A nerdy turtle who stayed in Mission Control and then mustered the courage to go into the front lines to save his friends. Even after being in a wheel chair, he still has the strength to continue on.
Annoying Arrows: The worst you can do with his crossbow in the second game is put mooks to sleep. You can supplant this, however, by either just sneaking past the mook or blowing him up with a timed bomb.
Arbitrary Skepticism: Averted. Despite his scientific outlook, he has apparently found verifiable paranormal activity even before the first game, and does not hesitate to act upon it and utilize it to his advantage. He is slightly skeptical of the Mask of Dark Earth's importance in the second level of the third game, however, but doesn't overlook it as a threat because of all the ghosts and demons they've encountered thus far.
Not so Different: Dr M. points out that they both play the same role in the Cooper Gang, a role for which Dr M. felt marginalized. Bentley, though, gives a Shut Up, Hannibal! in response.
Wham Line: The line that shocked everyone just as Clock-La had been defeated. "Pick me up, I can't walk!"
Murray Hippo
An American hippo, and The Big Guy of the team. He plays a supporting role as a truck racer and key retriever in the first game, and takes about 10 levels in badass into the second and third games.
Achilles in His Tent: The third game, due to his guilt over Bentley's crippling. It stops when Murray sees Octavio kick Bentley out of his wheelchair, and he exclaims that the Murray is back.
Noodle Incident: In the third game, he mentions that his master, The Guru, is not in his hut because of the 'Unspeakable'. All we know is that there's purple smoke and that Murray had to apologize for a whole month before he got forgiven.
One-Hit-Point Wonder: In the first game, he was no more durable than Sly, even cowering from enemies. In the second game onwards, he could take more hits than any other member of the team, and gained huge strength to boot. By the third game, Dr. M even states that Murray was far stronger than the previous Cooper Gang's heavy hitter, Mc Sweeney.
Master of Disguise: He can perfectly blend into the background to avoid the guards.
People Puppets: He can latch himself onto the guards to control their movement.
Psychic Link: He seems to make one with the Panda King, and makes one between him and Sly's mind in the beginning of the fourth level of the third game.
Technical Pacifist: Because hitting people is bad, but mindjacking them and ramming them into machinery to break it is just fine, apparently.
The Unintelligible: To the audience. The characters seem to be able to understand him perfectly.
Penelope Mouse
A Dutch mouse, and an expert RC vehicle operator, mechanic, and pilot. She joins the team after being exposed as the Black Baron in the ACES Dogfighting Championship, an identity she had created due to age restrictions on dogfighting.
Wrench Wench: Has RC skills that equal Bentley's own. She even helps Bentley reconstruct the Cooper Vault for future generations.
The Panda King
A Chinese panda, a former member of the Fiendish Five, and a powerful Chinese crime lord with a thing for fireworks. He returned in the third game to team up with Sly to rescue his daughter and break into the Cooper Vault, facing demons both literal and metaphorical in the process.
Easily Forgiven: Averted. Sly never forgives him for his part in his family's murder, he just decides to move on.
Enemy Mine: With Sly, against General Tsao, in the third game's fourth level.
Enemy Within: In the third game, he is initially trapped in a loop of his greatest loss (with some help from General Tsao) and, during the mission where he destroys the grasshopper crypt, argues with one side of his personality to let Sly Cooper live. He eventually states that Cooper lives, stating to his dark side that if evil and cruelty was needed, then he'd be no less than Taso himself.
Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He has a daughter, Jing King, who is kidnapped by General Tsao to be forced into a wedding ceremony.
Freudian Excuse: As a child, he watched the fireworks the noblemen put on for display and aspired to be a fireworks artist himself. However, his skills were spurned by them, causing him to turn to a life of crime.
Maniac Monkeys: Pretty much all his henchmen in the original game where these.
Odd Friendship: With both Murray and the Guru. He relates with the Guru because, as Sly puts it, 'put it off with the old guy', and Murray — when the hippo states that he'd never abandon the team van again when it was frozen in ice — because it tore his heart due to the fact that if he had that strength, Jing King wouldn't be forced into marriage.
Overprotective Dad: Became this since Jing King begged him to not have another General Tsao incident; he's done a pretty good job, since she hasn't been married yet.
A French iguana, literal lounge lizard, and former Klaww Gang member, French crime boss, and nightclub/restaurant owner who ran a forging and drug dealing operation. He was defeated by Sly and imprisoned by Interpol, only to be broken out a year later in Venice, lead Sly to the flight roster in Holland, and team up with him to retrieve his family's diving gear from Captain LeFwee in Blood Bath Bay.
Harpoon Gun: His standard weapon in the underwater stages.
Heel Face Turn: after Sly bails him out of jail, he disappears for awhile, then reappears in Holland, where he hands the Cooper Gang info in return for a favor. He then asks for their help in retrieving his grandfather's diving gear. Then he joins the team... but none of them had asked in the first place.
Sly: I have NO idea what you're saying. (beat) And your suit sucks.
Dimitri: (gasps) LET'S DANCE!
Jive Turkey: Justified, seeing as he learned his English from hip hop videos.
Meaningful Name: Lousteau sounds like Cousteau as in Jacques Cousteau, who invented scuba gear.
No Name Given: In the second game, he is known only as Dimitri and called Dimitri L. on his arrest card. In the third game, his family name, Lousteau, is revealed.
Took a Level in Badass/Le Parkour: If the E3 2011 trailer for the fourth Sly game is any indication, as he was able to convincingly pose as Sly, though that might just have been the Rule of Funny in effect.
The Fiendish Five
A gang of five criminals who broke into Sly's home and killed his parents, dividing the parts of the Thievius Racoonus among themselves and taking off to the furthest corners of the world. Tropes involving them:
The leader of the Fiendish Five, a mysterious robotic owl of unknown origin who turned himself into a robot in order to hunt down and destroy the Cooper family, his greatest rival. He is at least 3200 years old, showing up even in the earliest parts of the Thievius Racoonus. He possessed an incredibly well fortified hideout in the Krakarov Volcano in Russia, before being defeated by Sly and his parts sent to a museum in Cairo. But then the Klaww Gang stole his body parts and repurposed them for their criminal schemes. The Cooper Gang gathered up each of these parts, which were then taken by Jean Bison after the Winter Games and passed on to Arpeggio as part of an Evil Plan to acquire all the parts for himself to acquire immortality through a complex scheme involving the operations of all the other gang members. However, Neyla betrayed Arpeggio and took the Clockwerk frame for herself, being defeated by the Cooper Gang. Clockwerk was eliminated forever, though at the cost of Murray's morale and Bentley's ability to walk.
Owl Be Damned: Aside from the obvious, he has robotic mini-owls as his minions.
The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Despite being described as a master thief, he's never shown to steal anything but Sly's cane, and that was through a minor minion.
Fridge Brilliance: The point was to kill all his rivals, and THEN be the only one in the business. Clockwerk Monopoly?
The Power of Hate: Firm believer in this. In fact, the second game revealed that what fueled Clockwork was a hate chip.
An alligator of possibly Haitian nationality, the chief mystic of the Fiendish Five, and an accomplished wielder of black magics, whose command of forces beyond this world allow her to break both the laws of man and nature. She is based in the deepest, darkest parts of the Haitian jungle.
Squishy Wizard: She only takes around nine hits before going down for good, but she fills in the boss fight by making you dodge her spells before you reach her.
Muggshot
An American bulldog with a serious inferiority complex who once had total control of Mesa City, Utah, until the Cooper Gang took him down. He returns to threaten the gang again in Holland, but is taken out by a combination of Penelope's RC skills, Bentley's defense systems, Murray's strength, Sly's guile, and Carmelita's shock pistol.
Even Evil Has Standards: Even he is hesitant about attacking Bentley, who is confined to a wheelchair.
Freudian Excuse: He was picked upon by other dogs as a child, leading him to take up gym lessons and adopt a personality like those of the gangsters in the Mafia films he so loved.
Made of Iron: He can't be hurt by Sly's cane or Murray's fists, and can take multiple shots to the "solar plexius" with an engine block without significant damage. Carmelita's shock pistol can put a dent in him, though.
Top Heavy Guy: His lower body is so atrophied he has to walk around on his knuckles.
Who's Laughing Now?: His introduction video depicts him beating the stuffing out of his childhood tormentors.
Sir Raleigh
The Fiendish Five's chief machinist, an aristocratic Briton who, bored with the high life, took up piracy on a whim and found it to his liking, setting up a shipwrecking operation on an island off the coast of Wales using a weather machine.
A group of five powerful crime lords and a powerful Interpol official from across the world, united for mutual profit, particularily through the spice trade. Tropes related to them:
Freudian Excuse: He was born a genius, but was never able to fly or keep up with the other students physically. This is part of the reason he seeks the Clockwerk frame, the other being immortality.
Minor Major Character: His initial appearance is a non-speaking role at the party in Rajan's "ancestral palace", while his second and final appearance is a scene near the end of the game, where he reveals his master plan to hypnotize Paris using hypnotic lights devised by the Contessa and powered by Jean Bison's Northern Lights battery to send a Paris addled by spice sold by Dimitri, delivered by Jean Bison, and produced by Rajan into a hate frenzy, in order to make himself immortal and able to fly using the Clockwerk frame. However, he is betrayed by Neyla, and (apparently) dies soon afterwards.
A Canadian Bison and former prospector and woodsman who was frozen in a freak avalanche for 100 years and unfrozen by global warming, bringing his Saruman-like aspirations of taming the wild north into the modern age.
Canada, Eh?: Averted massively. His own men play it more straight, though.
Fantastic Racism: Bison has a very low opinion of turtles, which he isn't afraid to share with Bentley.
Jean-Bison: "I wouldn't expect one of your kind to understand the finer points of commerce. You turtles are too stew-pid to know a woodcutter from a woodchuck!" Bentley: "That's it! Time I showed you just how "stew-pid" we turtles really are!"
Fish Out of Temporal Water/Values Dissonance: As Sly says, he's just a regular guy from the 19th century. He would have been a hero in his day, but he's now a villain, though partly for his drug operation.
Bison: "Come on in here boys! Let's get this varmint."
Heel Face Turn: In the epilogue, he's shown to be working for the Environmental Protection Agency. Sadly, he ended up frozen again when rescuing baby penguins in the arctic.
Hoist by His Own Petard: Bentley defeats him, thanks to Sly, by giving him commands on using Bison's own wood cutting equipment against him.
A Slavic (likely Czechoslovakian) spider and senior Interpol official who is secretly brainwashing prisoners to tell her the location of their loot so she can take it for herself.
Heel Face Turn: Subverted twice. She does it first as a Wounded Gazelle Gambit with Sly, and is shown to be hypnotizing real estate customers in the epilogue.
Hypnotic Eyes: Made even worse when she has the Clockwork Eyes on her.
The Mole: Has been working for the Klaww Gang the whole time.
Praetorian Guard: Her Shadow Guard, who only show up in the background in the sixth level. "Tough" is described by Bentley as too wimpy a word for them.
The Shrink: Played with. She does seem to genuinely cure criminals, but also makes them give up the location of their loot for her own gain. Bentley states that it was a pretty evil crime for both thieves AND law alike.
An Indian spice lord and tiger who ships his spice to Jean Bison, and purchases an "ancestral palace" to further his pretension of royalty. He is, in actuality, a former street urchin who made it rich through drug smuggling.
"I'll find you, Cooper! I'll be seein' ya soon, ringtail..."
Sly's eternal opponent. An Interpol policewoman and Hispanic fox, his relentless pursuer (in more than one sense) and frequently the one to bust the episode's villain and take the credit.
Fake Ultimate Hero: She is indeed tough, but the Cooper Gang are the main reason for the takedown of many of the villains she busts and takes credit for the capture of.
Family Friendly Firearms: She's actually one of the few characters who uses a weapon not readily identifiable as being a lethal weapon; her Shock Pistol is based on the concept of Taser pistols which are intended to subdue suspects with less-than lethal force.
Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Her voice actress in the second game. In contrast, her third voice actress sounded even more ethnic than her first one.
The Other Darrin: A different voice actress in each of the games so far.
Pet the Dog: Shown in the second game. She captured Murray while he was trying to get a snack and not only goes to keep an eye on him — apologizing for the cramped cell, no less — but Murray even thanks her for the jelly beans that he was given to eat.
Small Girl, Big Gun: Her Shock Pistol might not be very large compared to her, but the thing kicks so hard that she barely holds onto it when she fires it, and it's shown being capable of destroying inanimate objects as big as cars with one shot.
Carmelita's superior. Not much is known about him, other than his terrible taste in fashion and fondness for cigars. He appears a few times in the background, as well as some supplementary comic strips released around the time of Sly 3.
A wily Indian tigress who acquired a scholarship in England after being discovered to have set up a ring of her friends to do her work for her. A powerful opponent, with both strength and guile.
Chronic Backstabbing Disorder Oh. Dear. Cthulhu. She betrays Interpol, Dimitri, Rajan, the Cooper Gang, Carmelita, the Contessa, and finally Arpeggio. In that order. When Arpeggio expresses amazement at Neyla's betrayal, her response is essentially "What the hell did you expect?"
A mandrill of unknown nationality who used to be The Smart Guy of the Cooper Gang, when Sly's father headed it. After Sly's father's death, he tried to claim the Cooper treasure as his own, spending decades trying to open it and building one of the most secure fortresses in the world on Kaine Island, in the South Pacific.
You Have Failed Me: He poisons one of his henchmen, Richards, for forgetting to enter in a new security code for the system of searchlights surrounding the Cooper Vault.
An Italian lion and former opera singer who turned to a life of crime after rock and roll supplanted his career just as it was getting off the ground. He runs a powerful Mafia operation in Venice, virtually controlling entire neighbourhoods.
Samus Is a Girl: Penelope was stated as a repairman for the Baron, until the disguise came off.
General Tsao
A powerful northern Chinese warlord and chicken from an ancient line of warlords, with power over dark magic and an aspiration to merge his bloodline with the Panda King's through marrying.
Kick the Dog: Parodied. Bentley observes he saw him kick a puppy twice while he was under Bentley's surveillance. Played more straight in two other cases, both involving Jing King. These are: locking her in his palace and not letting her come out till wedding night despite her tearful pleas, and for the latter, see Politically Incorrect Villain.
Obfuscating Stupidity: At first, he seems to be an idiot in a high position. It turns out he's much, much smarter than that. He actually saw through Sly's disguise, found the gang's hideout, and stole Bentley's computer. Bentley doesn't even realize until he's watching the slides of photos during the mission briefing, in a case of Fridge Logic.
Politically Incorrect Villain: On Jing King: "She's a woman. She doesn't know up from down." To which Sly replies "She's a person, not property", a heck of a statement for a universe where female police officers' uniforms are practically stripperiffic.
Punny Name: His name is a pun on General Tso's chicken, a Chinese chicken dish.
Smug Snake: A particularly nasty example thereof. He straddles the line between this trope and Complete Monster.
Swiss Army Weapon: His weapon of choice is a combination of a shield and a circular saw.
Wire Fu: A duel between him and Sly features them leaping between bamboo shoots in this manner. Hand waved by Bentley as a manifestation of the "fight energy" from past battles in the area.
Smug Snake: He tries to be a Magnificent Bastard, but despite his smarts, he lacks the charisma and has too much arrogance and smugness to pull it off.
