Shout Out / Ratchet & Clank

A list of Shout-Outs from the Ratchet & Clank franchise.

To fellow creators Naughty Dog and Jak and Daxter

• Ratchet & Clank uses at least parts of the game engine from Jak And Daxter, and Insomniac Games and Naughty Dog used to be close and friendly neighbors. As such, both series frequently make shout outs to each other.
  • On planet Damosel in Going Commando, after Ratchet and Clank collect a Hypnomatic part they perform Item Get! animations almost identical to the ones Jak and Daxter did whenever they found a Power Cell in The Precursor Legacy - complete with that game's music cue for it.
  • Numerous posters of the duo are also found throughout Going Commando. In a tit-for-tat shout-out, a poster featuring Ratchet and Clank can be spotted in Haven City's northwest corner in Jak II.
  Advertisement:
  • Another clear one comes in Up Your Arsenal when Al informs Ratchet that he'll need to travel to planet Daxx (which is Daxter's nickname throughout Jak and Daxter) - upon hearing the name, Ratchet pauses and says it to himself.
  • Jak is an unlockable skin in Deadlocked (and Ratchet is an unlockable racer in Jak X: Combat Racing).

Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando

• Two of the unlockable minigames are retro games recreated in this game: "Space-ish Wars" is a pastiche of Space War starring two sheep, while Sheep Blasters is styled similarly to Space Invaders, starring two Synthenoids shooting sheep.

Advertisement:

Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal

• The robots in the opening stage quote a number of lines from the Alien series, including Stay Frosty and "Game over man!" from Aliens.
• During "Qwark Personal Log Entry 101,301", one of the shots is Al trying to teach Qwark a basic math question in a shot-for-shot recreation of the Professor teaching the same thing to Crush in Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!. This also doubles as a Mythology Gag.
• When Nefarious summons Lawrence halfway through the final boss, he's decked out in rocker gear and claims that he was in the middle of practicing a guitar solo that he dubbed "Bass Odyssey".

Advertisement:

Ratchet: Deadlocked

• Green, one of your combat bots, sometimes yells "Wolverines!" while fighting. A literal Shout-Out to the movie Red Dawn (1984).
• There's a combat jeep quite similar to Halo's Warthog called the Puma, which was confirmed to be a reference in the comments on episode 20 of Mike Stout and Tony Garcia's developer commentary of Up Your Arsenal.
• There is one Ace Hardlight as an Exterminator, a reference you might not get unless you're up on your British sci-fi comedies.
• During a 'slander campaign' by Dallas and Juanita, Dallas refers to Ratchet briefly as "The Butcher of Bogon."
• Towards the end of the game, on Maraxus, Ratchet is forcibly separated from Merc and Green, and must rescue them one at a time, with the Lovable Coward of the trio rescued last, before a final clash that finishes the planet. This is partly a homage to the Final Boss in Kingdom Hearts, and also to the fourth chapter in Sly 2: Band Of Thieves, both involving two members of the Power Trio being captured.
  • Kingdom Hearts III would acknowledge this with a tit-for-tat Shout-Out where Sora can imitate Ratchet if he's in Monstropolis and equipped with the Hunny Spout.
  • Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time would also acknowledge the shout-out with Clank appearing as an easter egg.

Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction

• A lot of the (non-punny) skill points. Examples include:
  • "We Don't Need No Stinkin' Bridges!"
  • "What's That, R2?"
  • "Dancin' With the Stars"
  • "Can't Touch This"
  • "Gotta Catch 'Em All"
  • "Everybody Dance Now"
  • "Happy Feat"
  • "Disco Inferno"
  • "Say Hello to My Little Friend"
  • "You Sank My Battleship!"
  • "Promoted to Inspector", which is given for collecting all the gadgets in the game.
  • There's also an internal Shout-Out in the point "No, Up YOUR Arsenal".
  • Another internal Shout-Out is "Wrench Ninja 3", which references the two "Wrench Ninja" Skill Points from Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando.
• After defeating Captain Slag, Rusty Pete offers Ratchet a "gimmicky pirate name" since the code apparently says Ratchet is Captain now:
  Pete: "The Dread Pirate Ratchet", perhaps?
• Qwark, upon being rescued from Tachyon's clutches, snarls that the tyrant is, "...so off my Top Eight!"

Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time

• To another Naughty Dog franchise, when Qwark suggests "A leisurely stroll through this Uncharted jungle."
• Qwark's infiltration plan relies on a conveniently-exposed thermal exhaust port. While trying to pull it off, you're nearly crushed in a smelly, watery trash compactor.
• Mr. Zurkon refers to robotic enemies as "toasters."
  • Interesting, because Mr. Zurkon is voiced by Marc Graue, who played another character who talks about toasters (and how they toast toast).
• Late in the game, The Plumber appears before Clank in a dream sequence, standing in front of a familiar looking green pipe which he encourages Clank to enter. Clank asks if the Plumber is coming too, but the Plumber points out that jumping down every pipe you see would be a ridiculous thing for a plumber to do.
• This quote:
  Cassiopeia: Still alive? Well, let's see how you handle this deadly nerve toxin!
• After you beat the game, Lord Vorselon taunts you by revealing that he is your father... 's accountant.
• Lord Vorselon is an evil alien with green skin, pointed ears, prominent fangs, and a single large eye, and he's always seen with a glass dome encasing his head. In other words, he looks an awful lot like Kang or Kodos.
• There's a trophy called "It Belongs in a Museum" that you get by finding an ancient Zoni artifact in an old temple.
• The trophy you get for beating the game is named "88MPH".
• Before Ratchet enters the Zoni Temple alone, Qwark says "Operation Red Shirt is a go".
• In the Insomniac Moon, there's a room called the Hale Conference Room among other conference rooms named after Ratchet & Clank characters. Also, it says the Tetramites were based on The Swarm from Resistance 2.
• When Captain Qwark first jumps on and straddles the back of the War Grok he says, "High-ho, Snowball, away!"
• The "My Blaster Runs Hot" video game is basically Robotron: 2084 meets Stylistic Suck.
• Occasionally after shooting enemies, Mr. Zurkon will say "Keep the change, filthy aliens."
• Pirate Radio has one song that vaguely resembles "Eye of the Tiger" and another with slightly overwrought emotional guitar work that calls to mind Dire Straits.
• "That's CAPTAIN Qwark. I didn't take a three-week hero correspondence course just so I could be called 'Mister.'"
• There's a location called Krell Canyon.

Comic Series

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

Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One

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

Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault

• The very first line is a rather obvious one to Star Trek.
  Qwark: Captain's log. Stardate... uh, let's call it Wednesday.
• When the Starship Phoenix II gets hacked, what plays over the speakers? The Trololo song.
• The final boss's Groovitron dances are from Gangnam Style.

Ratchet & Clank (2016)

• When Ratchet and Clank enter Big Al's Roboshack, Ratchet geeks out over 4 posters on the wall. In order, they are for "My Blaster Runs Hot" (the film that Captain Qwark starred in prior to A Crack in Time) "Fongoid with a Stick" (a reference to "Girl with a Stick", a game idea that Insomniac Games came up with and then scrapped briefly before creating Ratchet & Clank), "Speero the Space Moose" (a reference to Spyro the Dragon, evidenced by Speero's purple and yellow suit and similar name), and "Intransigence: Fall of Blarg" (a reference to Resistance: Fall of Man).
• The Pixelizer is a shotgun based on retro game technology. Likewise, the names of its Raritanium Mods reference retro game mods; the Health Genie is based on the Game Genie, while the Ammo Shark nods to the GameShark.
• One of the cheats lets you replace bolts with other currencies. These include:
  • "Metal Currency", which is reminiscent of the coins from the Sly Cooper series;
  • "Adorable Toruses", which look like Rings;
  • "Rare Minerals", which turns all the bolts into Rupees; and
  • "Spherical Spheres", which look similar to the pickups from God of War, as well as Eco.
• The holocard for the Rilgar Sewers state that they're a "wretched hive of scum and villainy" and that you should be cautious.
• During the dogfight on Pokitaru, Ratchet, of course, gets told to do a barrel roll!

---