Tear Jerker / Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

• It's pretty hard not to feel for Clank when all he wanted was to surprise his best friend with fixing the Dimensionator to finally find the Lombaxes. If only Alister Azimuth were around to see that…Then Nefarious shows up and pretty much ruins everything.
• Nefarious City as a whole is pretty bleak and depressing. Big Brother Is Watching is in full effect here and most of the civilians that you see throughout are pretty terrified for their lives; be it of Nefarious or of the Resistance.
• Much like Ratchet, Rivet was left to fend for herself in Outpost L51 the same as the former ended up on the Kyzil Plateau. Difference is that Rivet at least had the Morts to help out and keep her company while Ratchet (before he met Clank, anyway) truly was all alone.
• Poor Kit. She's staying with the Dimension Monks to atone for her time as one of the Emperor's warbots, during which she shot a rebel when she was trying to non-lethally stop them. She lives in fear of losing control whenever she goes into warbot mode, keeping her distance in order to protect others from her.
  • And that rebel who Kit shot? It was Rivet, who lost an arm, and gained mild Fantastic Racism in the process. When she finds out Kit was the one who shot her, it drives Kit away until the end of the game.
• The lone Junkbot that occupies the abandoned version of Cordelia's Rubicon Forge. The rest of its kind are nowhere to be seen, and it treats Juice as its only friend despite Juice being focused exclusively on harming the Junkbot whenever it sees it. Ratchet and Kit are the first organisms it has the chance to properly talk to, and its experiences with Juice seem to have traumatized it for life despite trying to convince them that Juice is its friend.
• Surprisingly, Dr. Nefarious. At first he gets everything he wants while he's impersonating the Emperor. But when the Emperor returns home, the doc is immediately shoved into being the Butt-Monkey assistant, slowly realizing that if he did always win, he would have turned into a sociopathic egoist.
• The CraiggerBear collectibles are this as they were designed to honor Craig Goodman, a long-time Insomniac employee who passed away in 2019. The description of them is sure to tug at your heartstrings:
  Mysterious plush bears that seem to show up on every world. They are said to carry the optimism, kindness, and creativity of a fallen hero missed by his comrades.

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