Board Thread:Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time discussion/@comment-1845428-20130129160801/@comment-3244796-20130131193523

Anyway, time to elaborate on my theory regarding Clockwerk.

Clockwerk is arguably the biggest time paradox out of any character in the entire series. The way he kept himself alive was through jealousy and hatred, the latter of which was constantly being replenished by the Hate Chip, which kept his parts from aging. Such advanced technology could never have been made by anyone in Ancient Egypt or any time before that. If Clockwerk was truly capable of constructing a large metal body for himself, then the only feasible way he could've gotten the tech to do so is through time travel. Heck, the more I think about it, the more connections to time travel I seem to find. His name, Clockwerk, for instance, is one such connection. This creates many more questions than answers. What exactly is Clockwerk? Was he ever a true owl? Because, after all, if Neyla could pilot Clockwerk, then surely someone else could. But who?

The Collector. That's who. His motivation for what he is doing must be out of jealousy. After all, both Clockwerk and the Collector are thieves. But what kind of thief would Clockwerk be? He too huge to steal through conventional means. And also, look at the Collector's henchman. They all wear gas masks. Many people have speculated that the Collector was really a skunk. The green smog he seemingly creates and the aforementioned fact about the Collector's minions seem to support this greatly. His jealousy must be fueled by two things: his smell, as he, being a skunk, would have a hard time sneaking around, as many people would smell him coming, and quite possibly his own family legacy, who may have tried being thieves themselves but were too incompetent to succeed. The Coopers were such good thieves that they must've made the Collector insanely jealous, so jealous, in fact, that he concocted a scheme to get rid of their entire legacy. He had a double agent, Penelope, make contact with the Cooper Gang via the internet, and when she joined the team, Penelope slowly leaked information to the Collector. Read my explanation for Penelope's betrayal for more info on her role in things.

Anyway, after Penelope was finished messing with Bentley and building the time machine, she ditched Bentley and, along with the Collector, who most likely had leaked information about the time machine already, quickly got to work on his Le Paradox Blimp. Now that he had the means of traveling through time, he attempted to erase the Cooper legacy one entry at a time so that, by comparison, his family line would look better than Sly's. Most likely during the final battle, the Collector would've tried to mess with Sly by building a replica of Clockwerk, and during the final battle, he and the replica must be sent back in time to Ancient Egypt, where the Collector becomes the Clockwerk we know of today by aging and replacing his old body with that of the replica.