Adaptation First: The game was released before the movie was out, just like the novel. Players who have played "the game based on the movie based on the game", at least knows half of the movie's plot.
Christmas Rushed: Not counting pre-production time, Insomniac had to develop the entire game in 10 months so it could be released in time to coincide with the 2016 movie. Also a rare positive outcome for this trope, as aside from the substantial amount of content that was dropped from the original game, the production was surprisingly smooth (although not entirely, see Troubled Production below), and the game was critically praised and became the fastest selling title in the series.
Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: A more minor one than most examples, but early after the announcement of the game, it was commonly referred to as either a remake or a reboot, while Insomniac insisted that it wasn't either of those, but rather a "re-imagining".
Dummied Out: A line that was recorded for the E3 Kyzil Plateau demo but cut from the final release revealed that the Blarg of all people had a hand in the near extinction of the Lombaxes. The devs actually thought the line was removed at the time, and it would have caused serious issues for stories that occur later down the line.
Flip-Flop of God: Insomniac has waffled a bit on whether or not the PS4 game is canon to the other games. Back around the game's release the studio insisted that it was simply a reimagining of the first game and not a full-blown reboot (though strangely this did not stop them from having the Plumber say "See you next reboot!" in the game itself), implying it did fit into canon in some capacity whilst also leaving room for it to simply be an Alternate Continuity. Then in the years between it and the release of Rift Apart their stance changed to the more firm "Every game is canon unless explicitly contradicted," with the justification that any continuity errors can be explained away as Qwark being an Unreliable Narrator. However this was then contradicted by Rift Apart's creative director Marcus Smith stating that game to not be in the same continuity as the reimagining but belonging to the canon of the mainline games...which itself was muddied by Rift Apart itself containing several elements that originated from the reimagining whilst remaining vague enough to not directly canonize or decanonize either version of the duo's first adventure. As it currently stands it seems that Ratchet & Clank 2016 has fallen into Broad Strokes / Loose Canon territory, with elements of it having been welded to the mainline games without the title outright replacing the 2002 original.
God Never Said That: As mentioned above, Insomniac had to clarify that the 2016 game is a re-imagining of the original game with the story of the movie told from Qwark's POV, and not a reboot of the franchise.
Orphaned Reference: One of the Holocards in the Agents of Doom set refers to the moderators of the late Insomniac Games forum, who were also known as the Agents of Doom - "late" because the forum was shut down in 2017, rendering the joke lost on anyone who didn't visit before then.
The Other Darrin: Paul Giamatti (Chairman Drek), John Goodman (Grimroth Razz), and Sylvester Stallone (Victor Von Ion) never do any in-game voice acting; interestingly, while Giamatti is replaced with Eric Bauza (like in Turbo) doing a very convincing impression outside of the cutscenes, Mark Silverman dubs over Stallone as Victor Von Ion entirely.
This also applies to a few of the non-celebrity voiced characters introduced in the movie, with Vincent Tong (Brax) being replaced with Mick Wingert, Andrew Cownden (Zed) with Sam Riegel, and Marc Graue reprising his role as Zurkon, taking over from Brian Drummond.
Many of the characters from the original games also return with completely different actors from their initial appearance. Most notably, Patrick Seitz voices Wendel Lumos instead of Jim Ward, despite the latter still voicing Qwark and several bit parts.
Pre-Order Bonus: Pre-ordering the game gets you a code that, when put into the PSN store, will allow you to buy the Bouncer from Going Commando for the low, low price of 100 bolts as soon as you arrive on Novalis.
Troubled Production: Despite the game being announced in 2014 and released in 2016, Ratchet & Clank only had 10 months of development in order to coincide with the film's release, along with having a much smaller budget than usual. This not only led to the developers not having the ability to hire on more hands for the projectnote According to the game's director Shaun McCabe, in the last few months of development the game only had two programmers and one designer, but it also meant that a lot of corners had to be cut, such as levels from the original game being dropped, weapons being recycled from previous games, and Skill Points being omitted entirely. Insomniac even had to use data from the original PlayStation 2 game to save time, which came with its own problems as the studio had lost the source code to the original games. This is all on top of having to work off of a movie the studio had little involvement in with the restriction that they could only use a limited amount of footage from the film itself.
Two Voices, One Character: Chairman Drek retains Paul Giamatti as his voice in any scene taken straight from the movie, whereas Eric Bauza voices all dialogue original to the game. Zed is similar, as one clip from the movie is used where he is voiced by Andrew Cownden, while his game dialogue is provided by Sam Riegel. This is especially noteworthy as they are the only characters with this distinction; characters such as Cora and Elaris retained their film for the entire game while other characters such as Brax, Victor von Ion, and Mr. Zurkon had their film voices completely replaced.
Billing Displacement: All of the celebrity voice actors are billed on the promotional material despite only one voicing a main character.
Blooper: Clank utters a contraction ("I do bring a certain level of zing to the table, don't I?") near the end of the movie, even though it's been well-established that he does not use contractions; the Behind the Scenes video from Going Commando has a scene where David Kaye rerecords a line because he accidentally used one. In fact, "do I not?" would have still fit with the line and Clank's character.
Box Office Bomb: Only made around $12 million on a $20 million dollar budget. It had the unfortunate fate of being released a week after Disney's massively successful live-action Jungle Book remake, as well as a week before Captain America: Civil War (ironic as it was moved to avoid clashing with The Force Awakens). The horrible performance was so harsh that it cost Rainmaker a whopping $7.8 million dollars in damages and all but cancelled the Sly Cooper movie.
Creator Killer: In addition to damaging Rainmaker's business, this movie helped to kill off the newly-resurrected Gramercy Pictures a second time after a string of busts in the 90's led to Universal's original shutdown of the label (Focus Features is still around though). It is not known when, or even if, a new film with the Gramercy label will surface.
Disowned Adaptation: TJ Fixman, writer for the Ratchet & Clank series between 2007's Tools of Destruction and 2013's Into the Nexus, takes no credit for the final script of the film. While he was brought up to write the first draft of the script, he has stated on several occasions that director Kevin Munroe and writer Gerry Swallow ended up rewriting it so heavily that all that was left of his influence were "his fingerprints," and he would end up leaving the project due to creative differences and due to the stress that working with a movie studio put on him.
Dueling Movies: Even with a decent amount of leeway given, Ratchet & Clank still had to directly face Disney Animation's Zootopia at the box office due to the latter's massive success, and the reviews and box office returns for both it and Jon Favreau's adaptation of Walt Disney's Classic The Jungle Book (1967), which opened around the same time, turned both of those movies into "instant classics" while R&C got slammed by critics. Also, Captain America: Civil War came out the week after. This all helped towards the film's implosion, with the middling reviews being the other major reason.
No Export for You: The film was not played in Australian, Argentina and New Zealand theaters and instead went Direct to DVD several months after the US release.
Mr. Zurkon is voiced in the film by Brian Drummond instead of Marc Graue, his voice actor from the games.
The videogame was dubbed in Latin American Spanish in Argentina due to cost reasons, while the film was dubbed in Mexico since it's normally required by law that movies released in Mexican theaters should be dubbed in Mexico with Mexican voice actors.note Albeit this is not always enforced.
Also, the European French dub does not use the video game's voice actors, and even used a local YouTube celebrity for the voice of Ratchet.
The Finnish dub uses the actors from the games, but Nefarious's voice actor is replaced by someone else.
Pop-Culture Urban Legends: A tidbit that consistently makes the rounds in the Ratchet & Clank community (and that was perpetuated multiple times on This Very Wiki) is the 'fact' that Kevin Michael Richardson was brought on to reprise his role as Chairman Drek and recorded all of his dialogue before ultimately being replaced by Paul Giamatti (being a bigger Hollywood name and all). While hypothetically it would make sense that Rainmaker would have gotten him back seeing as they had Ratchet, Clank, Captain Qwark, and Doctor Nefarious' VAs all reprise their roles, there is no source that has ever implied that he was even considered to reprise the role, let alone that he recorded lines for it. The only acknowledgement that Richardson got from the production crew that we know of is a single tweet from the film's official social media account saying that they're a fan of him (which is in no way confirmation he was actually involved in the production). An additional piece of info that tends to get tacked onto this is that the studio accidentally sent Paul Giamatti's paycheck to Kevin Michael Richardson's address which also has no record of having happened despite such a mistake being newsworthy, or at the very least worth mentioning by either actor. The origin of these claims can seemingly be traced back to a singular piece of trivia submitted to the film's IMDb page, and as IMDb is notorious for it's nigh-nonexistent guidelines on trivia submissions it's very likely that this was nothing more than a user submitting blatantly false information to the page.
Production Foreshadowing: An intended example that didn't pan out; one of the images seen by Clank when scanning Ratchet was of Sly Cooper, with the design used being intended for his own feature film before this film's box office failure got that film cancelled.
Production Posse: Writer/Director Kevin Munroe and voice actor James Arnold Taylor previously worked together on TMNT . Kevin was the director/writer while James voiced Leo.
Novelization First: The movie had a novelization released and published before the movie came out, so anyone who read the book is aware of most of the plot before seeing the movie.
Role Reprise: James Arnold Taylor, David Kaye, Jim Ward, and Armin Shimerman return to voicing Ratchet, Clank, Captain Qwark, and Dr. Nefarious, respectively.
What Could Have Been: Initially, Sony was planning to make a live-action adaptation (somehow?) of the original Ratchet & Clank in 2005 but decided to make it animated to make production easier.
in order to coincide with the film's release, along with having a much smaller budget than usual. This not only led to the developers not having the ability to hire on more hands for the projectnote , but it also meant that a lot of corners had to be cut, such as levels from the original game being dropped, weapons being recycled from previous games, and Skill Points being omitted entirely. Insomniac even had to use data from the original PlayStation 2 game to save time, which came with its own problems as the studio had lost the source code to the original games. This is all on top of having to work off of a movie the studio had little involvement in with the restriction that they could only use a limited amount of footage from the film itself.