Ratchet & Clank Wiki
Register
Advertisement
Giant Green Bratwurst 1

Lance, in reality his evil twin brother Englebert, and Janice.

Lance and Janice is a holovision series featured in Up Your Arsenal, Deadlocked, A Crack in Time and All 4 One, with mentions in Tools of Destruction, Into the Nexus, Ratchet & Clank (2016 game), and Rift Apart. It is a soap opera starring the titular characters Lance and Janice in a romantic plot, known for its "edgy writing and steamy drama". The show has been running for a long time, as it originally played on ancient holo-vid players, and has aired more than 10,000 episodes. The show reached its tenth season finale during A Crack in Time, which was broadcast exclusively on the Vox Network.

The show focuses on the love between Lance, a humanoid-looking man, and Janice, a green alien with tentacles and a single eye. Many of the plot-threads appear to be outlandish, including one involving Lance having an evil twin brother named Englebert,[1][2] one in which he claims to be cursed by a tribe of gypsy ninjas,[3] and one involving him becoming a "flesh-eating zombie".

The show is most notable for playing during Dr. Nefarious' malfunctions. In a fit of heightened emotion such as rage, Nefarious can malfunction and freeze up, causing him to pick up broadcasts and play portions of Lance and Janice through his head, until whacked by someone to snap him out of it, oftentimes his assistant Lawrence. Aside from Nefarious, several other characters are shown to be fans of the show, including Captain Qwark[1], Flint Vorselon[4], as well as Cronk and Zephyr[5].

History[]

Before Up Your Arsenal[]

Old episodes of Lance and Janice were watched long ago on ancient holo-vid players, resembling classic film projectors, which Cronk and Zephyr have fond memories of.[5]

As documented in the Qwark vid-comic Deja Q All Over Again, Captain Qwark watched the show in his home in Metropolis, Kerwan, shortly before Dr. Nefarious attacked the city with insectoids. In this episode, Janice confessed that the baby she was having did not belong to Lance, but to his evil twin brother Englebert. The man she was speaking to responded by saying that Englebert was, in fact, him, and she was not speaking to Lance.[1]

In the following issue, The Shaming of the Q, Dr. Nefarious began playing snippets of the show after his first time malfunctioning while yelling at Lawrence. Lawrence opted not to fix this.[6]

Ratchet and Clank re-imagined[]

The 2016 re-imagined game is primarily an unreliable retelling of events by Qwark.
The re-imagined game primarily describes Captain Qwark's account of events. As Qwark is an unreliable narrator, and contradictory events are in-universe fiction (though those which correspond still apply). Please see Project:Bulletin board/Canon for the wiki's coverage of canon.

Slim Cognito, the RYNO dealer on planet Rilgar, was a big fan of Lance and Janice, and had written his own fan fiction of it, in the hopes of it being picked up and made into an official episode. After presenting it to the studio, he became highly agitated when they rejected it, reasoning that no unsolicited material was allowed.[7] After building the RYNO for Ratchet, he began brainstorming a new Lance and Janice story, but had his concentration broken by Ratchet talking to him again, and had to start over.[8]

After Ratchet acquired the Trespasser, Qwark suggests in his narration that he had once accidentally locked himself out of his apartment, with Lance and Janice left on at top volume, and wished he had a Trespasser at the time.[7]

After Zed locked himself inside of a shipping crate and became trapped by Clank, he sullenly says to himself that he is missing the current season finale of Lance and Janice.[9]

Up Your Arsenal[]

During Up Your Arsenal, Nefarious had one brief malfunction aboard the Leviathan, after Lawrence informed him that Captain Qwark was responsible for the infiltration on Aquatos following "Find Nefarious' Office". There was little said during this episode. Later, following "Film a Secret Agent Clank Episode" while speaking to Clank with Courtney Gears, an episode aired in which Janice protested that her relationship with Lance was inappropriate as he was a distant relative of hers, being the son of her cousin's uncle.[10] Later, when Nefarious spoke to Ratchet and Qwark after "Find Nefarious", once again on the Leviathan, another episode played, though little was said.

Deadlocked[]

While floating off on an asteroid, Nefarious froze up again, furious that he could not teleport to the destroyed DreadZone Station, and played another episode. In it, Lance and her had apparently agreed she would never leave him for his twin brother Englebert again. After this, Janice confessed that Lance made her feel "like a young boy again", puzzling him.[2]

After Deadlocked[]

Following the cancellation of DreadZone, a continuous loop of episode 10,972 "I Like You, But I Don't Like-You, Like-You", was used to replace the show.[11]

A space pirate had spotted Dr. Nefarious and Lawrence drifting on their asteroid, outside the Corvus Nebula. The pirate had seen Nefarious apparently during one of his malfunctions in which a Lance and Janice episode was playing, and believed Nefarious was the one speaking, referring to Lawrence as "Janice".[12]

A Crack in Time[]

As Ratchet was infiltrating Lord Vorselon's warship to rescue Qwark and the kidnapped fongoids, Vorselon made a ship-wide announcement, angrily demanding to know who taped over last night's episode of Lance and Janice, before telling the Nefarious trooper responsible to immediately eject themselves out the airlock.[4]

While rehearsing for his space opera play, Night of the Living Squishies, Nefarious froze up in rage after Lawrence informed him that Qwark and Ratchet were meddling in his plans once more. While frozen, he played an episode of the show in which Lance admitted he was cursed by a tribe of gypsy ninjas as a child, to which Janice responded that she was a member of the tribe.[3]

Whilst in the Vela Sector, Ratchet heard an advertisement on space radio for the tenth season finale of Lance and Janice, in which it is teased "their romance will be tested unlike ever before", in a storyline that would "shock the universe and change the face of holo-vision forever."[13]

Whilst in the Bernilius Sector, Ratchet heard a space radio newscast about the controversy around the tenth season finale, which ended abruptly on a cliffhanger. Dr. Nefarious called in to angrily complain about the finale's cliffhanger, demanding the show's writers be annihilated.[14]

Later, Nefarious played another episode once he froze up before launching Ratchet and Clank away on an asteroid with his Asteroid Flinger 5000. In it, Janice referred to Lance as a "lonely man boarding a lonely train on its way to Lonely Town", to which Lance agreed.[15]

All 4 One[]

After arriving on planet Magnus, Nefarious had frozen up, and played an episode in which Lance had turned into a flesh-eating zombie, while Janice still sought after his love.

Later in the game after Ratchet, Clank, Qwark, and Nefarious crash on Magnus after an encounter with Ephemeris, a frozen Nefarious will play another episode where its revealed Lance had eaten Janice's entire family causing Janice to wonder how the two can get married.

After All 4 One[]

The GrummelNet vendor boasts that their rate of fire upgrade to a weapon will help fire weapons faster, so you can save the galaxy and be home in time for Lance and Janice.[16]

In the Hall of Villainy, at the Intergalactic Museum of History, the exhibit of Gleeman Vox mentions that following the cancellation of DreadZone, the show was replaced with a continuous loop of Lance and Janice episode 10,972.[11]

As Dr. Nefarious and Emperor Nefarious were pilfering the Interdimensional Archives on planet Savali to steal the Dimensional Map, the Doctor expressed his great interest in scouring the remaining archives for more information stored in it's vast vault of knowledge, particularly on powerful weapons and lost episodes of Lance and Janice. The Emperor however had no interest in anything else and proclaimed that the map was all they needed, while the rest could be left to burn.[17]

Citations[]

Advertisement