The canon of the Ratchet & Clank universe is the material and information published about it that is accepted as an authoritative account of the universe's events and facts. Canon is determined by the owner of the intellectual property, Sony Interactive Entertainment, and individuals and organizations with recognized authority on the topic (such as past developers or licensed authors).
Some sources of canon are considered more canonical than others—where there is conflict, the more reliable source is used and the less reliable source is abrogated.[a] Also, some sources of canon are irreversible, whereas others are only tentative. This article explains the precedence certain material is assigned over others.
The following consensus-based system is put in place to keep track of material and maintain order within it. However, it does not determine canon. Conflict between sources is rare and mention of it is mostly hypothetical. Conflict and ambiguity is adjudicated on a case-by-case basis and should be covered in a "Behind the scenes" section of the topic's respective article.
This page also establishes what is considered a reliable source for verification purposes throughout the wiki.
Precedence of sources[]
The following precedence is based on community consensus, and also from our discussions with James Stevenson of Insomniac Games, which informs canon policy.
The mainline Ratchet & Clank series material released by Insomniac Games[b] is considered the foremost, immovable object of the canon. Each entry retroactively adds to or changes the canon. Where there is conflict, previous information is abrogated. Any information detailed by an unreliable narrator (e.g. Captain Qwark's stories, the Qwark vid-comics, or Vox News, which are known in-universe to exaggerate the truth) is considered canon if nothing contradicts it, but the information must be attributed to the unreliable narrator. Similarly, in-universe fiction (e.g. the Secret Agent Clank series) should be detailed, but not as canonical occurrences.
The secondmost source of canon is any third-party titles released by external developers and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Because these entries have less precedence than the mainline series, new information is abrogated where there is conflict.
All companion material and external information—developer speech, social media accounts by a Ratchet & Clank writer or director, game manuals, strategy guides, and promotional material—establishes tentative canon; they hold authority where they do not conflict with the material themselves, including later releases. Information is irreversibly established as canon only by being released in a game; however, these sources can help provide tertiary information on an interim basis.
Unused dialogue has a unique role in relation to the canon. While it is not considered canon (as ultimately it was left on the cutting room floor, not intended for public consumption), full access to all unused dialogue has been attained and transcribed in the bulletin board. As such, unused dialogue is usable to bolster tentative canon, or to support conclusions that are presumable but not blatantly confirmed.
Official material with non-canon events[]
In some instances, the events of official releases are not canonical, and their information must be covered appropriately. The following releases, determined by consensus and official Insomniac Games word, describe non-canon information:
- Going Mobile — This mobile phone game was never installed as part of the series. It is considered non-canon, and its information should be abrogated.
- Secret Agent Clank — This game's events are a canon movie[c] within the Ratchet & Clank universe. Therefore, while the locations are considered to exist within the Ratchet & Clank universe, the unique characters, and the events, are not.
- Ratchet & Clank (2016 game) — This game depicts Captain Qwark's retelling of the original Ratchet & Clank. As Qwark is an unreliable narrator, events that contradict the original game are considered non-canon versions of the real events in the original Ratchet & Clank, and its information should be abrogated. However, the holocard information is considered canon when not contradictory, and as confirmed per our discussions with James Stevenson of Insomniac Games, names from this version still carry over to characters from the original, with the exception of names in which characters were combined (e.g. Juanita Alvaro and Darla Gratch).
- Ratchet & Clank (movie) — When movie's events contradict the original game, the original game is considered canon and the movie's information should be abrogated alongside the 2016 game. Otherwise, the movie's events correspond to the original game.
Other adjudication[]
The following instances have been previously adjudicated and are reflected here as consensus.
- PlayStation Move Heroes and PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale are PlayStation games published by Sony Interactive Entertainment that involve Ratchet and Clank to varying extents, as well as give them individual backstory. However, games belonging to separate franchises that merely borrow characters from others, such as the aforementioned titles, are not necessarily installed into the canon of the source material. As such, unless stated otherwise by Sony Interactive, the wiki regards those games as non-canon.
- Content from supplementary material that is patently blithe or nonsensical is considered non-canon.
- Per the wiki's discussion with James Stevenson, subject titles should abide by English capitalization rules rather than in-game capitalization.
Notes[]
- ↑ Abrogation occurs when information is deemed non-canonical or less canonical, but is not entirely ignored. Instead it is covered elsewhere on the wiki, such as in a "Behind the scenes" section or within an annotation. Sometimes, discrepancies are directly referenced in-article, with distinctions made by the citations themselves. The handling of abrogated information should be determined on a case-by-case basis as is most appropriate for the topic and piece of information in question.
- ↑ Mainline Ratchet & Clank material refers to all games, comics, and related materials released either by Insomniac Games or an Insomniac Games writer who has worked on the Ratchet & Clank series that has not otherwise been declared as non-canon.
Examples of authoritative individuals on the Ratchet & Clank universe include:
- Ted Price, founder and CEO of Insomniac Games.
- Brian Allgeier, director of Ratchet & Clank from the Future series onwards.
- TJ Fixman, writer of the Ratchet & Clank series from Tools of Destruction to Into the Nexus.
- James Stevenson, Community Director at Insomniac Games.
- ↑ Secret Agent Clank is a canon movie within the universe according to a Twitter conversation (and a follow-up tweet by the Insomniac Games account. As per precedence of sources, these tweets are authoritative, and its events are part of a movie unless official material contradicts it.