Trivia / Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time

• Approval of God: Sucker Punch on Twitter expressed praise for the game, stating that they had no issue with "handing over the Sly reigns to Sanzaru". Likewise, this GameInformer video had Brian Flemming, the head of Sucker Punch, refer to Sanzaru's work as "spectacular."
• B-Team Sequel: Thieves in Time was developed by Sanzaru Games, an up-and-coming studio whose only notable work prior was The Sly Collection.
• Franchise Killer: The financial failure of Thieves in Time, along with its very polarising reception from fans and gamers, would go on to throw the series right back into a state of dormancy. A planned DLC episode set in Egypt, which would have very likely resolved or at least continued from the situation Sly found himself by the game's end, was promptly cancelled. A movie would be announced not long afterwards, but following years of silence and fellow Sony franchise Ratchet & Clank having its movie turn out to be a critical and financial disaster, it too was silently cancelled. The last anyone has heard regarding any sort of new project was a TV series announced in the movie's place, but even that seems to be undergoing some serious Troubled Production. And if all that wasn't enough, any hopes of Sanzaru continuing where they left off were quashed after they were bought out by Facebook in 2020 to work as an Oculus first-party studio. While it's unlikely the Cooper Gang will never ride again, it is likely that it'll be a while before that happens.
• The Other Darrin: Carmelita yet again got recasted for this game, being played by Grey DeLisle-Griffin as opposed to Ruth Liver.
• Promoted Fanboy: Sanzaru Games, going from porting the original trilogy to the PS3 to actually making a sequel to the series they love with the creators' blessing.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Thieves in Time's original release date was penned for September 29th, 2012 to coincide with the franchise's 10th anniversary, but was pushed back by Sony to February the following year as they felt it would be overshadowed by bigger releases from around that period.
  • The game was originally going to be aimed at an older audience with a T rating in mind, but this was scrapped to keep the game family-friendly like its predecessors.
  • Carmelita's earlier concept designs ranged from softer and lady-like to more mature and grown-up. One of these changed her personality to be more outwardly flirty and slightly ditzy (such as losing her gun in her tail fur).
    • She was also going to use a more realistic firearm (to fit with the T rating) but this was quickly scrapped. Funnily enough, she does use a real gun in the promotional short "Timing is Everything."
  • Biz Markie was once cast as the Grizz during pre-production readings but was replaced by Fred Tatasciore for unknown reasons.
  • Dimitri was intended to be playable at some point, as evidenced by concepts of him wielding his own silver-topped cane, as well as his physical appearance in both some early promotional material (with David Scully even reprising the role in the game's announcement trailer) and the Bentley's Hackpack side-game. In the game proper, Dimitri only appears in the 2D-animated cutscenes, and his voice is not heard once. Despite all this, David Scully is still credited as Dimitri's voice actor in the game.
  • A New Game Plus mode for Thieves in Time, called Horseshoe Mode, was planned. It would have removed the Thief Meter in favor of making the player a One-Hit-Point Wonder that could collect up to two horseshoes to prevent death after getting hurt, just like in the first game. This was scrapped due to both time constraints as well as some negative reactions from QA testers.
  • Early concepts for Thieves in Time had a mole as the Big Bad of "Of Mice and Mechs," with Penelope remaining a Face.
    • Penelope went through several designs throughout the development phase. One was simply an older-looking version of her Sly 3 design, indicating that her Face–Heel Turn may not have always been planned. Another had her with a crazy-looking Clock Punk inspired-look and was axed for being too spoilery.
    • From the Outside looking in, it appeared to be Dimitri who was going to initially be the traitor, considering the first teaser for Sly 4 was him disguising himself as Sly to frame him for theft.
  • Concept art for the Feudal Japan level shows that there was going to be a mission that took place in a bathhouse/spa.
  • Sir Galleth Cooper was originally named Sir Robin Cooper and was a Robin Hood-based Cooper instead of a knight. This was possibly changed to keep in-continuity with the Cooper ancestors mentioned in previous entries, although some fans believe that a Robin Hood-inspired Cooper would have still made sense historically and theme-wise. Some concept art for Sir Robin can be seen in the circus mission as advertising posters.
  • Thieves in Time was originally going to start with an Ancient Egypt-themed level, where Sly would meet one of the original Slytunkamens. While a full script was written for this episode, it was shelved due to a combination of both time constraints and the space limitations of the Play Station Vita. Ancient Egypt would eventually find its way into the game via the secret ending.
    • As such, Sanzaru intended to release this Egypt level as post-game DLC later on, but was unable to.
  • Carmelita was supposed to have her own Job Complete screen, but it was cut for unknown reasons.
• Working Title: "Cane of Destiny."

---