[Updated 08/02/2024]

Special thanks to everyone in the Ratatouille community for making all of these things possible. This project was on a long hiatus because I didn’t have a good format for it. In the end, I’ve decided to chop all this up episodically in order to get it out the door. As I go along I will make edits to the original post (no replies) for the sake of continuity. This first edition will go over more than a few notable strats. Basically everything I’ve written up to this point. From there ideally I’d follow intended mission/level order, so edition 2 would be CT, edition 3 would be KD, etc. If strats have overlapping order I'll then do them in order of discovery. Even obsolete and inferior glitches are important for this list, as it is meant to be both archival and educational. I do not boast any confidence in keeping this page updated forever, hence why I put “2024” in the title, but I will certainly attempt to do so. Thank you, and happy running.

Contents

Introduction

Miscellaneous

Somewhere In France

Soupy Assistance

Kitchen Pipe

The City of Lights

Little Chef - Big Kitchen

Introduction

The first glitch I ever learned for this game was the simply named City of Lights skip, by SuperSqank. I find this important because, of all the things in this game that we currently understand, items are definitely not one of them. This is only the tip of the iceberg for what lays dormant in this game and we cannot take any discovery for granted. To help consolidate information regarding documentation of these strategies, I’ve created informational cards that I like to call “doc cards”.

In order this lists off:

• The name of the finder. If the strategy in question is old enough, or ambiguous enough, the name will simply be “Unofficial” meaning no one has or can accurately claim it. It’s possible it does have an original finder, but in the case of this it has been deemed too contested or contestable for this guide to claim any stance. Additionally, many members of the community have been known to change their name and/or disown their discoveries. This guide will simply use the name of the account(s) at the time they were discovered for the sake of consistency.
• The name of the strategy. If there are nicknames I will go over those in text, but Buy n Large these will simply be whatever the finder has deemed it, or what it has been colloquially referred to in the past. I won’t keep nicknames updated.
• The date of the discovery. If the latest known documentation has been taken after the fact, it will simply say >YY (abbrv. Year), or will specify with an asterisk.
• Proportional Timesave. Displayed as a %, this is meant to quantify the importance of the strat. While it’s true that all categories are technically arbitrary, saving 6 minutes in a 1 hour run is a lot different than saving 6 minutes in a 20 minute run. So this will equalize both of those scenarios in a kind of ranking system. If the skip is obsoleted, this will also tell you with a color change.
• Video evidence? Since this is a simple yes or no, I decided to be cute and put it in french. Sometimes there are cases where documentation is made in someone else’s place if they cannot record video, this will also be specified. There are many cases where I didn’t save video evidence and time and it was lost, this will also be specified. If reuploads exist the listing will be updated.
• Region. As I’m sure you’re well aware, Ratatouille has been released in many languages, many platforms, and many iterations. Obviously this only goes over the releases of the game on the 6th generation of consoles, but there are at least 2 discrepancies between them (bug fixes possibly). As we don’t currently have a science for it, this will simply say NTSC, PAL, and/or the language (note that PC does not differ region differences, only language). If Ratatouille is ever re-released with new differences (like a steam port), this will also be specified somehow.
• FPS. Gamecube is locked at an inconsistent 30 FPS, All other consoles are locked at 60, and PC locks at 200ish. If on PC third-party frame limiters were used, this will instead display what it was locked at. If the strat in question directly depends on FPS this will also be specified with an asterisk and I will make note of it in the review.
• Platform. Self-explanatory. Possibly redundant, but a lack of standardization makes such a thing necessary.

Miscellaneous

Some strategies do not fit the intended order of levels/missions at all. These are either things which are applicable in multiple locations, are general rules of thumb, and one is so left field that there simply is no place in the intended order it could go.

The elephant in the room is none other than Xander’s Pipe Clip. This is by far the most ambitious and unpredictable skip this game has seen yet, and at first glance you might not even understand why. Xander discovered that by careful, but consistent movement you can bonk a wall while sliding, and clip above every pipe/slide level in the game. But clearly you wouldn’t merely use this for a faster way to beat the level; oh no, it’s vastly more interesting. You see, when selecting these levels through the EXTRAs menu, you spawn already inside the pipe part of the pipe levels with an invisible wall preventing you from leaving into the rest of the game. This means that theoretically, if one could go around said wall, you could enter any level early, given you could also reach the entrance/exit. Xander finally made this possible with Market Early, changing our understanding of level order forever. This is one for the history books for sure. That said, the game doesn’t allow you to buy levels until a little bit after Kitchen Pipe, so even if we could get the Gusteau Points it’s hard to say this could ever work outside of low%. Additionally, the Kitchen Pipe wall has so far proven impassible.

Somewhere In France

I would like to note this is one of the earliest documented skips we have, uploaded just a month after the speedrun.com page was created. There are multiple known methods of reaching the end of the level early, but without Emile’s trigger active, they are unfortunately rendered, as Nap42 put it, “Useless”. Specifically regarding this iteration of the incomplete skip, it abuses the fact that the roof is a sliding surface. Interestingly we can observe that surfaces which are slidable behave depending on the angle, how it becomes hard to move at all on the much flatter part. In most cases throughout the game, sliding surfaces are at an angle and curved to fit the pipe levels, and as observed earlier, even those have some behaviors we can exploit. You can do the same thing from the other side too. Note that this also shows that after Emile leaves an area, so too does his influence on death barriers (with the exception of what I mentioned earlier).

https://www.twitch.tv/epicnessohyeah/clip/CrypticHardPot4Head

, this “skip” is made even better by the jank that is slide platform edges. The same tech that allows Bomb hovering can just lauch Remy. I don’t know what FPS Epic was at, but as I estimated for the Market OOB later, it’s probably >85.

Originally thought to be inconsistent, but is now firmly the first viable strat in the tutorial level. This is one of my favorites because it’s one of those things that is almost self-explanatory despite no one knowing exactly why this works yet. The game’s collision is weird and lenient, let’s leave it at that.

Soupy Assistance

Much like Firewood Jump, it’s impossible to tell who could have come up with this first because it’s so innate, but this is actually viable. Soupy Assistance is the only minigame which has absolutely no penalty for choosing wrong on the first choice (Later soup levels reshuffle, wasting time), so simply spam while loading into the level. It’s obviously going to be easier to spam jump (with default controls, even on PC where it looks like arrow keys, the Xinput reads off the face buttons, not the D-Pad) since you’d already be doing so for the cutscene. Patterns have been observed in the salad (or in this case, soup) minigames, so expect some kind of update where I talk about that.

Kitchen Pipe

https://discord.com/channels/420334602448797706/420334602910040064/463993944553029632

The big kahuna. What more can be said that hasn’t already? If you’ve been around for any amount of time, you know what this is. [I'll get to it, don't worry.]

My guess is that all the different side paths were in the interest of replay value, but it obviously makes it inconvenient for us trying to complete everything in a single session. This makes hundo a turnoff to many people, but if you’re up to the challenge then continue reading. Remy’s sliding action isn’t easy to interrupt, which will be much more relevant with Underground Fun, but basically if you bonk or even just get stuck on the wall, the game will give you back your normal jump. Luckily the floor here is also non-sliding, so you can run up it backwards for stars 64-83 and then pretty much continue the level normally. My personal advice, if you have anxiety about missing linear stars, is just to make small staggered adjustments. Don’t hold a direction, tap it over and over again so your turn is more gradual (but it’s honestly much more intuitive on an analog stick where you can properly hold a slight direction).

The City of Lights

Technically a small skip, but the implications are staggering to say the least. Assuming this only applies to holdable objects means that the use-case is unfortunately unique, but there’s still much we don’t know about objects, and much we don’t know about missions. So understanding how this actually works is paramount for finding more glitches in the future. In the past we’ve been able to circumvent certain missions (like touching a blocked off level trigger, or cutting a corner) but with this, The mission ends with no cutscene immediately after picking up the bone. It’s completely without precedent that we can manipulate a mission in this way.

Large mission hitboxes, a theme that will appear very commonly, typically prevent you from getting onto the roof without triggering CT Preheist 3 (aka Magpie Madness), but there are two different jumps depending on what build of the game you’re on. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but from my understanding this is not properly documented or fully understood. What we know for certain is that Russian PC and USA GCN both have it, but USA PC does not. Eventually I hope to get into all the different versions and also development history of the game, and when I do or if someone else beats me to it, I’ll link it here. And I think it’s still optimal for hundo categories, cutting out the backtracking for This is a Steakout! because you can’t enter a dream world while in a preheist and there’s also no “cancel mission” button on the pause menu or anything like that.

This version on the other hand works regardless of what version you’re playing and is similar to sink jump and bed jump in that you just can barely technically make it. I don’t believe sliding has anything to do with either of these, but just because it’s possible anyway please refer to Xander’s “Pipe Clip” in Miscellaneous. I also cover some sliding things during Underground Fun’s star route. As the compendium continues to get updated I hope I’ll have more to report, I’m guessing Edition 6 at the earliest.

Little Chef - Big Kitchen

This could very well be the oldest full game skip period. Like many skips in this game, it's not really an abuse of the game's physics or logic, but rather a simple oversight of this checkpoint hitbox extending too far off the side of the platform. You would think it's a little strange to have a checkpoint in the exact same spot as the mission end trigger, but it's very common throughout the game. The level layouts are pretty restricted to movie accuracy, while the missions in the level are mostly linear cross-sections made up of object placements, which is why the lock-on-parkour mechanics are so heavily integrated. My guess is that having linear objectives in giant open levels was one of the major hurdles in design, so for something like a checkpoint the best they can really do is place it on top of preexisting triggers because there's not a guided relationship between level location and mission progression.

But disregarding all of that insight into the game's design, "Sink Jump" simply clears the gap similar to Bed Jump. But I guess on the bright side, there's zero difference between the backup strat and failing the optimal method.

[I'll do Underground Fun routing later, its like 12AM and I need sleep]