Characters / Crash Bandicoot Villains: Scientists

Crash Bandicoot Main Character Index
Heroes (Coco Bandicoot) | Villains (Scientists, Evolved Animals) | Other Characters

In General

• Amazing Technicolor Population: All of them (barring Madame Amberly and the Lab Assistants) have odd skin colors: Cortex is yellow, N. Gin has been pink, yellow and grey at different points in the series, N. Tropy is blue and Nina is a greyish-blue. N. Brio seems to have a "normal" skin compared to them, but it's still slightly yellow.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Most of the time, Cortex is the main villain, though Uka Uka will sometimes let another head a scheme, or one of them will betray Uka Uka to branch out on their own. N Tropy has been the Big Bad of two games, while Nina supplanted Cortex as such in Titans.
• Big Ego, Hidden Depths: They're all egomaniacal Mad Scientists and Smug Snakes, though several of the games and supplementary material trace them down as tormented individuals who turned to villainy out of bitterness and insecurity. The two N Tropys stand out as the few scientists who have no sympathetic qualities and are arrogant Jerkasses seemingly just because.
• The Chain of Harm: Uka Uka is a Mean Boss to most of them, and the majority of them are in turn Jerkasses to each other and most of their underlings. Several such as Cortex are also implied to be embittered by a lifetime of bullying and mockery.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: All of them being Morally Ambiguous Doctorate with world domination desires (and given The Chain of Harm, many of them having bones to pick with each other), they frequently betray or sell each other out, when not plotting to overthrow Uka Uka himself. Only N Gin, being The Igor, is sincerely loyal to Cortex, and even then has considered defecting.
• The Comically Serious: In earlier titles, the scientists tended to act like more straight-forward pompous villains, their comedy coming more from their indignance towards being outdone by a goofy bandicoot and other demeaning cartoony situations. As games passed, most of their personalities became more willfully wacky and silly, or in cases like the Tropies, went the other way and begun to be taken more genuinely seriously (though Not So Above It All moments do still seep in every now and again).
• Ditzy Genius: Next to all of them to some level, in spite of being scientific masterminds, their crippling arrogance, lack of foresight or general eccentricity (bordering on insanity) leads them to be constantly outsmarted by a crazy Book Dumb marsupial.
• Evil Is Hammy: While some of them are more hammy than others and it generally depends on the installment, it's easy to see that these guys have a fondness for theatrics.
• Gonk: They tend to be have bizarre proportions with oversized and bizarrely-shaped heads that often have strange bits and pieces slapped onto them. Of all of them, N.Tropy only looks slightly more normal in comparison due to his height.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: They're all humans and they tend to cause the most pain in the games filled with modified animals.
• Insufferable Genius: Pretty much all of them are defined by their huge egos, and they recurrently clash with each other over whose scientific knowledge makes them superior, making it all the more funny when they are outsmarted and infuriated by a kooky marsupial with next to no academic knowledge.
• Karmic Butt-Monkey: To what scale varies, but being a cartoon universe, all of them are cruel, petty meglomaniacs who face humiliating slapstick comeuppances at the hands of the bandicoots. Even the more menacing examples here rarely manage to go down with much dignity.
• Laughably Evil: Again the level of such depends on character and depiction, but none of them are immune to humour, even at their most menacing.
• Mad Scientist: They're a collection of amoral, unstable and megalomaniacal science people who use their genius to create diabolical weapons and concoct plans to take over the world. Each one has a specialty in a certain field; Cortex specializes in neuroscience, N. Brio dabbles in both biology and chemistry, N. Gin's main focus is robotics and engineering, N. Tropy's field of choice is quantum mechanics and the Lab Assistants... are lab assistants.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: They're all doctors (except for Nina and Lab Assistants, but the latter are also smart to some degree) and they're all evil.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Well, more like red and gold, but that's what Cortex, N. Gin and N. Tropy (and Tiny) drive in in Nitro Kart, and they're bad guys. Cortex also drives a red kart in Crash Team Racing.
• Small Name, Big Ego: While they possess legitimate talents in their fields of science, they are still incredibly arrogant and flawed individuals whose vices constantly lead to them being outsmarted by a Book Dumb marsupial who can't even talk.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: Most of them have over-the-top tragic backstories, deformities or other frustrations that moulded their bitter, abusive and megalomaniacal personalities in modern day. Even besides that, being villains in the cartoony Crash Bandicoot universe, you can bet they spend a lot of time as frustrated Butt Monkeys. It is clear by Wrath of Cortex that most of them are jaded from losing to that infernal bandicoot non-stop.
• Shorter Means Smarter: Save for N. Tropy and the lab assistants, all of them are vertically challenged, but exceed in their specialised field of science.
• Theme Naming: All the scientists have Punny Names based on words that sound as if they begin with the letter "N".
• We ARE Struggling Together: While all aligned in their vendetta with the bandicoots and desire to conquer the world, most of them frequently squabble and backstab each other due to hubris, grudges, or simply wanting said global domination to themselves. Cases such as N. Tropy and N. Brio sometimes fragment into their own unit when they decide they've had enough of Cortex, though will still sometimes grudgingly rejoin if it suits their goals.
• Who's Laughing Now?: Most of them are insecure freaks with a tragic background of abuse or mockery. This is often a large motive for their turn to evil. It becomes more complicated if its each other they hold a grudge for mistreatment over.
• Women Are Wiser: Zigzagged for Nina, who is implied to be relatively more devious than Cortex and his cronies, but still a Laughably Evil Big Bad Wannabe. Played more straight with Alternate N. Tropy, who is a more clear cut Knight of Cerebus who outright succeeded in killing the bandicoots of her world. Downplayed by the fact that they still both fail as badly against the main character as the buffoonish male villains.

Dr. Neo Cortex

"Oh, how I hate bandicoots..."

Voiced by: Brendan O'Brien (1996), Clancy Brown (1997-2003), Lex Lang (2004-Present)
Child Cortex voiced by: Clancy Brown (1998), Debi Derryberry (2004), Corey Burton (2017)
First appearance: Crash Bandicoot (1996)

A mad scientist who seeks to achieve world domination as an act of vengeance for the ridicule he has suffered in the past. Hoping to achieve this by modifying the local animals into his soldiers, he eventually creates Crash Bandicoot, the titular character of the series, but soon rejects him as unworthy of being in his army and removes him from his castle (or Crash himself escapes from his castle).

As Cortex's actions endanger the sanctity of the islands the games are set in, Cortex's plans for world domination are often hampered by Crash along with other characters. Crash's constant interference has made eliminating Crash one of Cortex's top priorities along with world domination.

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• Affably Evil: He's a mix of this and Faux Affably Evil. Compared to many of the other villains, Cortex is honestly pretty cordial and almost friendly at times.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: He has yellow skin, though in the earlier games his skin is more subtly yellowish than the simpsonesque hue it would later take.
• Arch-Enemy: He's the main enemy of Crash Bandicoot, and the two have been at each other's throats for decades.
• Archnemesis Dad: At least by intent, he wanted for Crash to be a Cortex, as by his full name Crashworth Cortex. Crash doesn't go by the full name but at least keeps the first part, Cortex is still his maker, and they're still always at odds.
  Cortex: Crash, I've been like a father to you! I created you; nursed you... tried to destroy you.
• Ax-Crazy: Not usually, but when he gets angry at Crash, Cortex really starts to slide into this.
  Cortex: (singing) Kill the bandicoot, crush the bandicoot, smash in its head!
• Bad Boss: He generally doesn't hesitate to scold his subordinates when they do mistakes, and in Cortex Strikes Back, he gets irritated with Crash whenever the latter completely ignores his instructions. He earned the ire of Brio in particular over this trope, who turned on him after years of bad treatment and ingratitude.
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: Disposes of Willie Wumpa Cheeks in Crash Tag Team Racing, without giving the heroes a chance to interrogate him.
• Bald of Evil: He's the "top-balding" version of this, as he still has some hair around his head and a small tuft at the top.
• Badass Normal: He usually fights with simply a laser gun and some explosives, yet is considered tough enough to be almost on par with Crash in some games.
• Beard of Evil: He sports the classic mustache-and-goatee combo of the sort favored by diabolical schemers.
• Berserk Button: One early production source states that anything to do with circuses tend to make him more irritable than usual due to his Hilariously Abusive Childhood. Nitro Kart at the very least seems to support his hatred of clowns.
• Beware the Silly Ones: His hamminess and incompetence might make him more of a nuisance than a threat, but he sometimes comes dangerously close to succeeding in his plans. He overthrows Uka Uka and brainwashes nearly the entire populace with N-Vs in Mind Over Mutant, and he nearly prevents the experiment that created Crash and thus erase him from existence after hijacking Kupuna-Wa's Time Master powers in It's About Time.
• Big Bad:
  • He is typically the main villain of the series. Demoted to Dragon upon Uka Uka's arrival.
  • The Demoted to Dragon part is definite throughout the Playstation games, but becomes arguable in the sixth generation games, where Uka Uka starts doing less and less, leaving Cortex to act more as a Big Bad. Then in Mind Over Mutant, after overthrowing Uka, he was established as that game's Big Bad.
• Big Fancy Castle: His very own Cortex Castle, where he conducts his experiments in the first game. It's also his track in CTR.
• Big "NO!": Screams this as he is defeated in Cortex Strikes Back.
  Cortex: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! You haven't seen the last of me, Crash Bandicoot!
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: Not quite as thick as Crash's, but still pretty impressive.
• Boss's Unfavorite Employee: Uka Uka is all around curt and intimidating towards his servants, but saves the majority of vitriol for Cortex, who annoys him endlessly with his repeated failures. This is given more reasoning in the Radical games, where Cortex is far more impudent and treacherous towards Uka, with both taking turns trying to get rid of the other for a more favourable partnership.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: He specializes in turning animals into his slaves, and has made world domination his goal through said brainwashed slaves. His signature Cortex Vortex is his Mind-Control Device. He even attempts to brainwash the entire planet in the second game, although thankfully he's thwarted. It's also implied that he aims to do the same thing in the third game.
• Brought to You by the Letter "S": He has an N on his forehead. The buildings on Cortex Island in the first game also have some occasional N on them.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: In Twinsanity, he has no idea what the Evil Twins are talking about when they say he ruined their lives, and justifies it by saying he's ruined the lives of so many he can't be expected to remember them all. It takes him until near the end of the game to realize what they meant: they were once his pet parrots, Victor and Moritz, whom Cortex used as test subjects for the prototype Evolvo-Ray, only to send them to the Tenth Dimension instead.
• Camp Straight: He gets more and more campy as of the later games, with some parts even having him saying rather suggestive lines.
• Card-Carrying Villain: The aspect of openly identifying himself as evil slowly becomes more obvious as the series progresses. This gets reversed somewhat in It's About Time, where Cortex seems to distance himself from the idea that he's evil.
• Character Development: As It's About Time exemplifies, Cortex started off an extremely overconfident character whose failures were pivoted by refusing to listen to any of his associates' warnings. Later games make apparent that while Cortex is still very arrogant and can't resist a good opportunity for a scheme, he actually possesses a profound level of self awareness and the ability to reflect on his past mistakes, to the point of even trying to call it quits. This is put on full display when present-day Cortex interacts with his earlier self via time travel (even if there is a fair bit of Character Exaggeration involved to make this more apparent).
• Chaste Toons: Nina is stated to be his niece, although he occasionally slips up and calls her his daughter, implying that he's hiding something. This concept was never explored in later games, though.
• The Chew Toy: Throughout the entire series, what with his repeat failures, injuries, and humiliations. Became really apparent in Crash Twinsanity, particularly in the section where Crash uses Cortex as a sled.
• Circus Brat: According to at least one strategy guide, he was raised to a family of circus performers.
• The Comically Serious: Arguably his role in early games, being a much more straightforward pompous villain who's humour comes mostly from being wound down by all the cartoon misery that befalls him. As later villains like Uka Uka and N Tropy took over this role however, Cortex became increasingly clownish and silly in his own right.
• Create Your Own Hero: He's the one responsible for creating Crash Bandicoot, the one who always foils his evil plans. Brio even warns him that they haven't determined the cause of past failures of Cortex's device, but Cortex was stubborn and went ahead with it. It's About Time reveals that the device failed to brainwash Crash because it was sabotaged... by a future Crash. Apparently not learning from this failure, he later goes on to create Coco and Crunch, both of whom eventually turn against him to become thorns in his side as much as Crash himself.
• Cuteness Proximity: His first instinct upon seeing the Evil Twins isn't to be cowed, but offer Chocky Treats.
• Cyborg: One of his skins in Team Rumble is called "Cybernetic" and makes one half of Cortex's head metallic.
• Deal with the Devil: It's heavily implied that he made some kind of bargain with Uka Uka in order to get his initial plans off the ground, hence why he's under the latter's employment. Of course, he gradually comes to regret this over time, event attempting a Faustian Rebellion at one point.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the Determined Defeatist. Make no mistake, Cortex hates Crash and constantly tries to destroy him at every chance. However as game pass, Cortex becomes jaded and aware he is unlikely to ever win and take over the world, only going on due to Uka Uka forcing him, or an ideal opportunity arising that makes it simply irresistable for him to try and beat his Arch-Enemy again.
• Depending on the Artist: Has a much more conventional human-like white skin tone in the Naughty Dog games, and yellow afterwards.
• Despair Event Horizon: In It's About Time, he's on the verge of this and has gotten weary from his constant defeats at the hands of Crash; when N. Gin and N. Brio ready themselves to conquer dimensions, he dismissively tells them to "enjoy their ray guns or whatever", and he breaks down after Crash defeats him in the 11th Dimension, to the point that he willingly tries to call off his alliance with N. Tropy when the latter mocks him for his latest failure. It is only the discovery that Tropy betrayed him behind his back that fuels Cortex back into his usual vengeful self.
• Ditzy Genius: Increasingly became rather ineffective in spite of his still evident scientific skills due to Flanderization over the course of the series, scaling back his competence to make room for slapstick humor.
• The Dog Bites Back:
  • After being abused and berated by Uka Uka for years, Cortex finally has enough and overthrows his master in Mind Over Mutant. As a bonus, he "tortures" him by force feeding him copious amounts of cake.
  • Downplayed at the beginning of It's About Time. He initially appears concerned when Uka Uka collapses (seemingly dead), but N. Tropy quickly convinces him to leave their Jerkass employer behind.
• Dr. Brainpart: Named after the cerebral cortex, as evidenced by his oversized cranium. Experimenting with the intelligence of animals is also his modus operandi.
• Dragon-in-Chief: Despite technically being one of many servants of Uka Uka, Cortex is by far the most active and important villain in the series.
• Dragon Their Feet: While his master Uka Uka is fought as a boss, he's ultimately the primary threat of On The Run.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After going through his usual defeats and suffering a betrayal in It's About Time, Cortex finally gets to relax on the beach, far away from any bandicoots to disturb his peace. This is then cruelly subverted when Uka Uka returns once again.
• Embarrassing Middle Name: Neo Cortex's middle name is "Periwinkle", as brought up in Tag Team Racing, though he never comments on it.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He genuinely cares for Nina, albeit in his own twisted way.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Implied at the beginning of Twinsanity. When he has to take out Coco in order to disguise himself as her for his plan to trap Crash, Cortex has the opportunity to disintegrate her without her ever seeing it coming, but instead, with a begrudged grumble, chooses to non-lethally stun her. However, it's not because Coco's a girl, as he has no problem trying to kill her when the two of them battle each other on even terms in other games, but simply because she was defenseless and unable to put up a proper fight, and if he wants to win, Cortex still wants to feel he deserves the victory.
• Eviler than Thou: Deconstructed several times. Many more menacing villains have tried to kick Cortex to the curb, only for it to backfire on them when he proves Not So Harmless after all:
  • He's Demoted to Dragon and endlessly kicked around by Uka Uka, who later replaces him with Nina, his niece that is directly stated to be more diabolical than him. He takes revenge on them both in Mind Over Mutant and resumes the role of Big Bad once more.
  • In Nitro Kart, after being captured and forced to race by Velo, he and Tiny overpower him for his power scepter. Things don't work quite as planned afterwards, however.
  • In Twinsanity, the Evil Twins, vengeful about their past with Cortex, spend the entire game tormenting and intimidating him. When he remembers their lowly beginnings as his mistreated pets however, the two sides partake in what is essentially a game of out-bullying each other, which Cortex wins with the assistance of Crash and Nina, sending the Twins retreating terrified.
  • He is similarly left Demoted to Dragon in It's About Time after N Tropy devises the apparitions for their next evil scheme. After N Tropy tries to pull this trope on him and betray him however, an infuriated Cortex forms an Enemy Mine with Crash to defeat him, and then exploits the situation to hijack the scheme himself.
• Evil Is Hammy: He relishes in his role as a supervillain, and thus goes out of his way to presenting himself and communicate in the most bombastic, over-the-top ways possible.
• Evil Gloating: He delights in doing this to N. Tropy after he and the heroes defeat the master of time and his alternate universe counterpart in It's About Time, not least of all as payback for Tropy's earlier mockery and betrayal, but Dingodile punts the two Tropys through a rift before Cortex can finish gloating.
• Evil Laugh: Has an evil laugh in several titles, including Cortex Strikes Back.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Whether it's Clancy Brown or Lex Lang, he has a pretty deep and imposing voice (the imposing part depends on the treatment of Cortex's character).
• Evilutionary Biologist: He's been attempting to create an army of super-animals since he was eight years old.
• Evil vs. Evil: Being the Big Bad (and a petty Jerkass even to allies), Cortex has found himself warring and grappling for conquest with other villains almost as often as the bandicoots, including but not up to, Brio, Tropy, Emperor Velo, the Evil Twins, and even his own niece. Even his boss, Uka Uka sometimes has to fight the role of top dog off of Cortex when he gets sneaky and vengeful enough to betray him.
• Expressive Hair: In It's About Time, the sides of his hair emote just as much as his face.
• Failure Is the Only Option: His general incompetence means that his plans are pretty much destined to fail from the moment he puts them in action.
• Falsely Reformed Villain: In Cortex Strikes Back, he claims to have reformed and be trying to stop the Earth from facing an impending doom, and that he needs Crash's assistance on gathering the crystals to help him. Of course, he's actually duping Crash as those crystals are going to be used to power his planetary Cortex Vortex.
• Fatal Flaw: While his stubborn Pride was a big cause of his burdens in the first place, even after many defeats worn down Cortex's hubris and left him willing to just cut his losses and retire, it's his obsessive Wrath and resentment of Crash keeps tempting him back into villainy.
• Faustian Rebellion: If you consider Uka Uka as the series's equivalent to the Devil, then this is what Cortex does in Mind Over Mutant.
• Final Boss: Alone in the first two games, with Uka Uka in Warped, alone again in The Huge Adventure, alongside Crunch and the Elementals with minor help from Uka Uka in The Wrath of Cortex, mutated in Mind over Mutant, and alone again (but with the kidnapped Quantum Masks) in It's About Time.
• For the Evulz: In Titans, he's keeping up his habit of trying to destroy his foes and bring doom to the islands largely because he finds it fun.
  Coco: Cortex, why do you keep doing stuff like this?
  Cortex: Well, actually, it's pretty fun. You should try it. Y'know, riding around in huge, rumbling machines and whatnot? Very stimulating.
• Freudian Excuse: The original game's production bible and The Crash Bandicoot Files reveal that, as a child, Cortex was part a family of circus clowns that regularly abused and degraded him as part of their act. This led to him developing some deep insecurities that would go on to form his lifelong narcissism, megalomania, and hatred of clowns.
• Frozen Foe Platform: It's About Time: Dr Cortex's Ray Gun doesn't involve any ice, but any enemies hit with it will be temporarily turned into either solid platforms to stand on or jelly platforms to bounce on.
• "Get Back Here!" Boss: In the second game. He's fleeing with his jetpack in space and Crash has to chase him before he gets too far away.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: In some games, he's just racing together with Crash and others, though unlike most examples, all three racing games do justify it in the plot.
• The Heavy: Uka Uka may be the ultimate source of evil in the series and Cortex's boss, but Cortex is the focus and plot driver.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: At the end of It's About Time, he accepts his defeat and seems content to just lay down, relax, and forget about the bandicoots for good… until Uka Uka shows up.
• Hidden Depths: In one Flashback Tape, he confides with Crash whether he treats Brio too harshly. This empathy of course doesn't last, but it shows Cortex does have some self awareness that he isn't as kind to his surbodinates as he should.
• Hijacked by Ganon: Vaporizes the Big Bad of Tag Team Racing so he can take over as the villain, though the rest of his plan fails miserably a minute later. In It's About Time, he ultimately becomes the final antagonist of the game as he attempts to undo Crash's creation.
• Hover Board: In the first and third games he flies around using this. It's also available for him in Skylanders Imaginators.
• I Hate Past Me: The climax of It's About Time sees Cortex travel back to the moment before Crash goes into the Cortex Vortex in an attempt to Ret-Gone him, only for his warnings to his past self to fall on deaf ears.
  Cortex: Why won't I listen to me?
• Implausible Deniability: In Nitro-Fueled, most of his loss quotes insist that his defeat was done on purpose:
  Cortex: This is just an experiment.
  Cortex: This was planned all along!
• Inconsistent Spelling: On rare occasions with the Japanese releases, such as the spine for Crash Bandicoot 2, his name is alternatively spelled "Coltex".
• Indy Ploy: He makes a villainous one in It's About Time. After the N. Tropys are disposed of, Cortex realizes he could hijack Kupana-Wa to travel back to 1996 and undo Crash's existence. However, he fails to convince his past self to give up on the bandicoot, so he elects to hold him captive until Crash's trip through the Cortex Vortex is chronologically impossible — and dispose of the present Crash who followed him back in time, as well.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Despite his ambitions of world domination and constant attempts to kill those blasted bandicoots, Cortex's constant failures, oversights in planning, and abuse at the hands (or rather, face) of Uka Uka make him rather pitiable at the end of the day.
• Inelegant Blubbering: Whenever he loses in Crash Team Racing and Nitro-Fueled.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Beneath his gargantuan ego and rampant megalomania lies a lonely, insecure man obsessed with proving himself to both his employer and the world at large.
• Iron Butt Monkey: Similar to Crash, no matter what horrible situation he is put in, he always bounces back, ready for the bandicoots' blood afterwards.
• Jack of All Stats: He is this alongside Crash in the racing games.
• Jerkass: An evil scientist for one thing, outright admits in Twinsanity he's willing to ruin other people's lives for another. In Nitro Kart, he even outright insults Big Norm after the latter congratulated him on his win, an act that shocks even Tiny and N. Gin.
• Jet Pack: He uses this in the second game to escape from Crash as they're in space. In Crash Bash he (and N. Brio) also uses it as a pogo substitute, as well as a booster for Polar Push games.
• Laughably Evil: By far the goofiest of the evil scientists. His overall ineptitude and awkward, yet hammy personality make him an absolute riot despite his misdeeds.
• Leitmotif: A sinister guitar riff accompanied most of his boss and cutscene appearances in the Naughty Dog games. A few notes are also used in Nitro Kart's cutscenes. After the revival, his battle theme from Warped is occasionally used alongside this, with both themes being incorporated into the tracks for Cortex's playable levels and boss fight in It's About Time.
• Let's See YOU Do Better!: Cortex's failure rate is pretty massive, as fellow villains such as Uka Uka and N. Tropy like to remind him. A key reason he is rarely evicted as Big Bad for very long, however, is because whenever one of them ditches Cortex in favour of using one of their own schemes to stop the bandicoots, they similarly fail, often just as humiliatingly as Cortex. The plot of Wrath of Cortex is chained off by all of the villains being just as worn down as Cortex from defeats.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Despite being a Mad Scientist bent on world domination, Cortex's Affably Evil personality and general incompetence make him come across as less malicious than the abusive Uka Uka, the vindictive Evil Twins, or the smug jerk and Omnicidal Maniac that is Dr. N. Tropy.
• Mad Scientist: One of several throughout the series, each with their own special skills. For Cortex, it's brainwashing.
• Manipulative Bastard:
  • He manages to be this in the second game, tricking Crash into gathering the crystals for him.
  • Exaggerated in Mind Over Mutant where he pretty much scams the entire globe into voluntarily wearing N.Brio's N.V. mind control devices. For an extra touch, he even uses the device's test run to lure Uka Uka into a trap to overthrow him.
• Master of None: He has dabbled in all fields of science the other evil geniuses specialise in, though seldom to the same effectiveness. The Evolve-O-Ray was his concept, but he needed Brio to refine it to work properly. He achieved dimensional travel like N. Tropy, but unlike the Rift Generator, the Psychotron was unstable and exploded after short use. He has also made impressive machinery but never to the same grand scale of artilery as N. Gin. His frequent attempts at mind control with the Cortex Vortex usually fail after a short period, with N. Trance utilising that specialty much more fluently. The nearest to a field Cortex specialises is matter compression, since he has built multiple working shrink rays. Otherwise Cortex withstanding as Big Bad is owed mostly from being an Action Survivor and simply having a more opportunistic and manipulative personality than the other more thin-skinned scientists.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: An evil doctor bent in world domination.
• Multiversal Conqueror: His scheme in It's About Time. Having torn a hole in the space-time continuum and discovered The Multiverse after escaping his temporal prison, Cortex decides to conquer all of it.
• My Brain Is Big: He has a big head, with the top being very oddly flat.
• The Napoleon: Implied to have been bullied for his short stature, even built a planetary minimizer to shrink the Earth so that its civilians could "look up to" him.
  Cortex: Finally, after all these years of abuse, who's the little guy now?
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The reason the Cortex Vortex experiment on Crash failed was because the Crash from the future accidentally tempered with the machinery. And the reason future Crash was there to begin with was because future Cortex went back to the time of the experiment to convince himself to call it off and prevent Crash from becoming his archnemesis, with Crash following Cortex to stop that plan.
• Obviously Evil: Come on, just look at the guy and hear exactly what he says!
• Oh, No... Not Again!: In Nitro Kart, he might flatly say this if he falls off the track.
• Older and Wiser: Of sorts. While he actually becomes more manic as games progress, he is also far more savvy of the repetition of going up against the bandicoots and what role he played in that, compared to the incredibly arrogant meglomaniac he was in the first game who refused to accept he was wrong about anything. This comes to back to bite him in It's About Time, where he tries to talk sense into his past self.
• Older Than He Looks: According to the intro to It's About Time, Cortex and N. Tropy grew up naturally out of their baby selves before escaping the void, making him at least twice as old as he went in while looking the same.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Downplayed. He's an expert in genetics, biology, and neuroscience and does tinker with machines and have some scattered knowledge of other subjects, but he outsources the heavy thinking regarding quantum mechanics, robotics, and chemistry to his colleagues. The original trilogy explicitly shows that he always needs a more competent sidekick (or colleague, in N. Tropy's case) to make his work effective.
• Opportunistic Bastard: Cortex is famed for his failure rate and lack of foresight causing Crash in the first place, with several other more menacing villains attempting to kick him off his spot. He is however one of the most manipulative and spontaneous characters in the franchise, often able to exploit both Crash and the arrogance of his peers in the name of self preservation. In both Mind Over Mutant and It's About Time, he usurps control over the current Big Bad to make himself a Not-So-Harmless Villain.
• Ow, My Body Part!: He tends to make a comment along those lines for his big head, when he gets injured.
• Papa Wolf: Though he's not her father, Cortex is very protective of Nina when the chips are down. When faced with the Evil Twins' mech producing a cannon and machine gun, he shivers in fear before realizing not only does he have a gun too, but that Nina is worn out from all the running and swinging she did in the previous phase and would be a sitting duck if she continued, so he takes on the mech alone.
• Personality Powers: Zigzagged. Cortex doesn't have superpowers, but his desired scientific craft is creating brainwashing devices to make his mutants do his bidding, even if he isn't very successful at it and often relies on others like N Brio to refine his work. As such, Cortex's real talent is the more mundane art of manipulating and conning people to do what he wants.
• The Pig-Pen: Possibly? One of the loading "tips" in Crash Team Rumble states that he has never showered in his life... ever.
• Punny Name: His name is a reference to the external section of the brain, and he's an expert on making subservient subjects by brainwashing them. He also attempted to mind-control everyone on the planet at once before Crash puts a stop to it.
• Ray Gun: It's his most-commonly used weapon. In Crash Bash, he uses it to pick up and fire crates at his opponents, Twinsanity has him use it for rapid-fire and charged attacks, and It's About Time has him turn enemies into platforms using it.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: It's a bit hard to see in some games, but he has red eyes and he is evil.
• Reluctant Psycho: Sometimes Cortex expresses a desire to simply abandon the constant fighting with Crash and retire, but is either Forced into Evil again by Uka Uka or consumed by his own megalomaniacal tendencies.
• Robot Me: Cortex's Robo-Cortex skin in Nitro-Fueled turns him into one, and it returns as one of his alternative dimension selves in On the Run.
• Sad Clown: As his failures have weighed down on his self esteem with each game, he has gotten increasingly more outspoken and awkward in demeanour, often making rueful snark as a coping mechanism.
• Selective Enforcement: Cortex maintains an obsessive hatred for Crash throughout the series, though is fairly indifferent to his other renegade mutants unless they are a current threat, even Coco and Crunch who often aid Crash in ruining his plans, or Catbat who has an actual vendetta with him. It's About Time justifies this by showing Cortex had a closer fatherly bond with Crash, with the other bandicoots essentially being Replacement Goldfish, thus Crash's betrayal stung much worse.
• Self-Made Orphan: It's implied in some versions of his backstory, mainly the one present in the development bible for the first game, that the "freak" explosion that killed Neo's family was caused by him. Then again, his mother is heard screaming in Twinsanity, so it's debatable if this back story is canon anymore.
• Sigil Spam: All the areas he has direct control of are covered by the same N symbols he wears on his head.
• A Sinister Clue: Cortex usually wields his ray-gun with his left hand.
• Sissy Villain:
  • Later games in the series made him much less threatening, giving him a more wistful way of speaking and a lot of Camp Straight tendencies.
  • The PlayStation interns gave the major characters of the Crash Bandicoot series a list of their favorite songs in Spotify. While Crash's playlist is filled with 90's smash hits and Coco's is filled with female popstars, N.Cortex's playlist is filled with sappy love songs such as My Heart Will Go On, Truly Madly Deeply, and I Will Always Love You.
• Skippable Boss: In the first game. If you manage to collect all the gems, it's possible to skip his boss fight altogether by going straight to The Great Hall and flying away with Tawna.
• The Starscream: Spends several years under Uka Uka's abusive command, though following Mind Over Mutant, well, let's just say that Uka Uka will never want to eat cake again.
• Stationary Boss: His boss battle in It's About Time has him seated at a control panel as he activates all sorts of traps to deal with Crash and Coco, which stays in the background of the arena. This is also true for his final battle.
• Strong as They Need to Be: Most games portray Cortex as wimpy and cowardly (Crash does not take his physical threats seriously at all in Mind Over Mutant until he "cheats"). The Rollerbrawl mechanics of Twinsanity, however, had Cortex actually engage in comedic Good Old Fisticuffs with Crash, arguably making him the one villain closest to actually matching him.
• Tactical Suicide Boss:
  • In the first game, he could just use the red and blue shots instead of the green ones that Crash can spin back at him. Even worse, when he's got one hit point left, he's reduced to spamming nothing but the green shots.
  • In the third, the mines that he throws will open the hole in the floor, the real way of hurting him; hitting him normally doesn't actually do damage, although it does knock him over.
  • In Twinsanity, Cortex tosses bombs and fires his ray-gun at Crash, but his charged-up green plasma blast can be spun back at him. A cut line of dialogue actually has him lampshade it.
    Cortex: Now be careful not to let him spin back the green plasma blast. Three full hits and we're done for. If only he knew!
  • It's About Time has two examples. The first fight against him has Cortex spawn a Death Course of energy and tornadoes where he cannot be attacked, but will summon a Punch Bot MKII minion that can be spun back into him for damage. The final fight against him has him eventually summon Lab Assistants for each phase, which can again be spun back at him to hurt him.
• Take Over the World: His ultimate goal is world domination.
• 10-Minute Retirement: In It's About Time after losing to Crash yet again, and hearing Tropy laugh at his defeat via hologram as extra salt in the wound, Cortex sulkily declares he's done and retiring to a tropical island. However, the revelation Tropy has betrayed him anyway infuriates Cortex into an Enemy Mine with the bandicoots, with the ensuing events indirectly sparking his will back into villainy afterwards.
• They Called Me Mad!: The catalyst of his quest for world domination is to get back at everyone who deemed him crazy.
• Took a Level in Badass: After a long tenure as a laughing stock he pulls the rug from under everyone on two separate occasions:
  • In Mind Over Mutant, after being overthrown and mocked by Uka Uka and his own niece, Nina, he allies with Brio to perform a coup against them both and have them humiliatingly punished for their past abuse on him. He also bands Brio's NV devices with his own brand of manipulation, duping the entire populace, the bandicoots including, into willingly putting them on and mutating themselves. When only Crash and Aku Aku remain and arrive to stop him, they laugh at the idea of Cortex being a physical threat....until he pulls out a beaker of Brio's mutagen. Cue Oh, Crap! reactions as a battle with a rampaging buffed up Cortex ensues.
  • In It's About Time, he is probably at his most competent. He manages to give Crash trouble in a chase and by blowing up a ship, then puts up a very good fight where he uses all his attacks at once, then betrays and helps defeat N.Tropy, and then after many obstacles he manages to catch up with the group... and even kidnaps one of the masks? Why? To go to the past and erase his greatest failure, Crash himself. In fact, he only faces trouble because his past self is not as bright as him, and then barely loses the final fight.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Buttered noodles with butter on the side, as heard in It's About Time.
• Tragic Villain: From his abusive upbringing, to being rejected by his colleagues, to becoming an increasingly unwilling pawn in Uka Uka's schemes, Cortex has led a miserable life that continues to get worse the longer he remains a villain. This is best exemplified in the true ending of It's About Time; when he tries to abandon his grudge against the bandicoots and finally relax on the beach with some peace and quiet, Uka Uka returns to drag him right back into his old ways.
  Cortex: Blasted bandicoots! Must we keep going around and around like this? Tell me Crash, is this all there is, forever?
  Crash: (shrugs)
• Trapped in the Past: His fate at the end of Warped. While how he escaped was initially left unexplained, It's About Time reveals he used the extra time to plan a new scheme. At the end of that game, he gets Trapped in the Future instead, as the Masks banish him to the end of the universe.
• Trapped in Villainy: Despite how miserable and painful his life as the Big Bad gets, his feelings of insecure desperation and employment under Uka Uka always manage to pull him right back to his old ways.
• Troubled Abuser: He is constantly berated and threatened by Uka Uka, and abiding by bios and quotes, suffered a lifetime of bullying and insecurities. In turn Cortex is a domineering Jerkass to most of his underlings (be it N Brio, N Gin or even his childhood pet birds) and even those he is more caring towards, such as Nina, he expresses in a very twisted way.
• Ungrateful Bastard:
  • No matter how many times Crash saves him from another evil, Cortex will always go right back to trying to off him.
  • In Titans, N Gin secretly helps Crash find and defeat Nina so Cortex can regain his position. In Mind Over Mutant, dialogue implies one of Cortex's first actions back in power was tossing N Gin aside as his right hand man in favour of working with Brio.
  • Though not without justification, he and Tropy also abandon Uka Uka in the past after he forms a time rift back to the present in It's About Time. Cortex at the very least dithers over this more than Tropy however.
• Unexplained Recovery: Normally averted, as most games explain how Cortex comes back from his last defeat. However, it's never explained how he and N. Tropy returned after they were turned into babies and sent back into the past with Uka Uka at the end of Warped, or how he escaped from Crash's mind after his botched attempt to get rid of Crash at the end of Twinsanity. However, the former example was later averted for It's About Time, where it's explicitly stated that Cortex used the extra time in the past to come up with a new revenge plot.
  • During the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue of It's About Time, Cortex can be seen in Coco's ending card even though he was banished to the end of the universe after the bandicoots saved the day.
• The Vietnam Vet: He's implied to be one in Tag Team Racing, judging by one of his quotes after hitting an opponent with a weapon during a race:
  Cortex: Ha ha ha! Just like back in Da Nang!
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: Downplayed in Naughty Dog games. While he's far from a Knight of Cerebus, he does have a good share of creepy moments. Following titles began toning down his villainy and making him more bumbling, however, even in those he killed a character on-screen, tried to destroy an entire island, threatened children with death and attempted to have Crash Ret-Gone.
• Villain with Good Publicity: When reaching the end of Velo's championship, the audience cheers him up louder than they do with the Bandicoots.
• Villainous Friendship: To an extent. While he chides his subordinates a lot, he seems to enjoy having N. Gin or another to enjoy his conquests with. As shown in Nitro Kart, he also lets Tiny goof around in his lair, if grudgingly (he contributes very little to scheming).
• Vocal Evolution: Lex Lang evolved from a near-perfect replica of Clancy Brown's take of Cortex to sounding more flamboyant and high-pitched. Reversed back in N-Sane Trilogy where Lang replicates his and O'Brien's performances.
• Volcano Lair: Zig-zagged. He lives inside a giant, smoking mountain shaped like a monstrous face. This isn't an active volcano, however, and in It's About Time he briefly muses about getting an actual volcano lair but decides against it once the heat starts singing his nose hair.
• We Will Meet Again:
  • He declares this at the end of Cortex Strikes Back, after Crash defeats him:
    Cortex: You haven't seen the last of me, Crash Bandicoot!
  • He does it again at the end of The Wrath of Cortex, stranded in Antarctica as Uka Uka furiously tries to kill him for his latest failure:
    Cortex: I'll get my revenge, Crash Bandicoot! Just you WAIT!!
  • Quotes the trope directly after being foiled at the end of Tag Team Racing.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue:
  • In the first game, it's mentioned that while he hasn't been heard of after Crash foiled his plans, "scientists are harder to squash than cockroaches".
  • In CTR, he discovered a new chemical element that he patents as "Cortexrulestheworldium" which has endured several lawsuits regarding its name.
• Would Hurt a Child: Both Crash and Coco, who he fights in almost every game, are implied to be still underage, but it gets worse in Mind Over Mutant, where he threatens to execute (4 times!) any student in Evil Public School who even mentions Uka Uka.
• Xanatos Gambit: He pulls off a good one in the third game: If taking the crystals with his own forces doesn't work, then having Crash get them all and then taking them from him will do. Fortunately, Crash is able to beat Cortex, nonetheless.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: No matter how close Cortex comes to victory and no matter how much he desires to give up his life of villainy, both Crash and Uka Uka always intervene to prevent either from happening.

Dr. N. Brio

"But Doctor Cortex, we have not determined the cause of past failures!"

Voiced by: Brendan O'Brien (1996-2000), Maurice LaMarche (2008-2017), Tom Kenny (2019), Roger Craig Smith (2020-present)

First appearance: Crash Bandicoot (1996)

Cortex's assistant in the first game and one of the creators of the Evolvo-Ray that modified Crash and all the other animals. Sometime between the first and second games, he and Cortex had a falling out, and he lost his assistant position to Dr. N. Gin. As Cortex tricks Crash into gathering crystals for his second evil scheme, N. Brio urges Crash to go against Cortex and get the gems for him instead, so he can use their power to focus a laser beam on the Cortex Vortex and get back at his former boss.

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• Affably Evil: Generally speaking, he's cordial at worst to the Bandicoots and polite at best, and typically appears to mean it. In It's About Time, he gets downright affectionate when talking with them, with his villainy being more due to his completely delusional view of reality than outright malice.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: His skin color remains the most "human-like" of all the main scientists, but it depends on the artist: some games give him a yellow-ish skin similar to that of Cortex, while others make him more or less brown-skinned.
• Ambiguously Brown: His skin in Twinsanity.
• And I Must Scream: One for the ages, and boy, it's a TRULY TERRIFYING one! To elaborate, in the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue of It's About Time, N. Brio, still trapped in his pterodactyl form, is mistaken for a flying squirrel and captured by Ripper Roo, where he's literally taxidermied alive and put on display onto a museum, all while fully conscious of everything. Now, time will only tell if N. Brio is able to escape, but that's a truly unpleasant fate.
• Apologetic Attacker: Comically so, for a gag in It's About Time. At one point during his boss fight, he will attempt to downplay one of his attacks with a very non-reassuring "I only want to see if it's lethal".
• Bald of Evil: Unlike Cortex, he's completely bald. Played with in that while he's always evil, he does go against Cortex in the second game and is fine with trying to side with Crash since he's inadvertently working for Cortex.
• The Bartender: The "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue from the first game claims that after Cortex's disappearance, Brio went back to tending a bar. This actually makes sense, considering that he was constantly mixing together chemicals in the first game.
• Big Bad Ensemble: In Cortex Strikes Back, he is out to get revenge on Dr. Cortex, which means he is trying to thwart Cortex's presumably noble plans, albeit for selfish reasons; if you collect all of the gems in that game, Crash even teams up with him to do so. However, since you are unintentionally helping Cortex in that game, he is also trying to stop you, and in fact every single enemy you fight in that game bar Cortex and N. Gin actually works for Brio in his efforts to stop you.
• Big Bad Wannabe: He rejoins Cortex in Mind Over Mutant with a seemingly more calculating and assertive demeanor, insisting on equal partnership this time in return for making the NVs and helping Cortex overthrow Uka Uka. Ultimately however, his own spinelessness leads him to be very easily browbeaten by the heroes for information (without even a fight this time) and him to quit in a huff, leaving Cortex in full control of the scheme from that point onward. As an extra insult, while Cortex doesn't belittle Brio again in their team-up, he does swipe some mutagen behind his back to give himself a fighting chance against Crash.
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: He sports a fairly impressive pair.
• Blasphemous Boast: Brio does a particularly amusing one in Mind Over Mutant during his "Abuse, Misuse, Recycle" video presentation, hamming it up all the way:
  Brio: Over time, the disgusting (rolls eyes) heroes of this world... which I invented! Me, not Cortex, read your Bible, I wrote it!
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: As indicated in Obliviously Evil, in It's About Time, Brio views testing lethal potions on Crash and Coco as them working together on developing his craft further, and even considers the two of them his only friends. He praises them for being "dedicated to science", unlike the Tranquility Falls natives who for some illogical reason didn't want to try dangerous mind and body-altering potions...
• Book Ends: He's The Dragon to Cortex in both the first and last main series Crash game, pre-reboot.
• Cloudcuckoolander: He claims in Mind Over Mutant to have invented everything, including the concept of recycling and Slinkys. But not Lite-Brite. Burt Meyer did that.
• Co-Dragons: The Continuity Reboot as of It's About Time sees both him and N. Gin working together under Doctors Cortex and N. Tropy, although it's clear they don't get along.
• The Dog Bites Back:
  • After years of abuse from Cortex and stealing credit for his work, only to get replaced for N Gin in Cortex Strikes Back, and scorned Brio takes revenge by detonating his space station with a giant laser.
  • In Crash Team Rumble's FMV, Brio, in his mutated form, grabs Cortex and throws him over the horizon, temporarily eliminating him from the game.
• The Dragon: To Cortex in the first game, only to betray him in Cortex Strikes Back and rekindle in Mind Over Mutant. He was also N. Tropy's dragon in Twinsanity.
• Enemy Mine: Was ultimately willing to conspire with Crash to stop Cortex's plans in the second game.
• Evilutionary Biologist: As the creator of the Evolvo-Ray, he's responsible for all of the modified animals.
• For Science!: He says this verbatim while throwing green potions in It's About Time.
• Fragile Speedster: In Nitro-Fueled, he becomes an acceleration based character.
• Forced Transformation: The end of his boss fight in It's About Time has him morph into a pterodactyl-like entity, lay an egg, and fly off in embarrassment. He's still in that form when he is captured in the epilogue.
• Friendly Enemy: Or at least, he perceives himself as such towards Crash and Coco in It's About Time, at one point genuinely referring to them as his only friends. Not that it stops him from hurting them or others for what he perceives as the common good; the former is rationalized as the Bandicoots aiding science with their sacrifice, and the latter has him warp/mutate everyone in Tranquility Falls because it'd help him develop a potion that can defeat Cortex.
• Giggling Villain: He occasionally breaks into small giggles whenever he speaks.
• Green and Mean: He's clad in a green labcoat, and is no doubt a bad guy. Downplayed when he swallows his pride and sides with Crash to take out Cortex's space station at the end of Cortex Strikes Back.
• Hazy-Feel Turn: To the point he's basically got a Heel–Face Revolving Door installed in his lab. He betrays Cortex and assists Crash in the second game, but largely just to spite his former boss. He gains evil ambitions again in time for Crash Bash, Twinsanity, and Mind Over Mutant. He does the same in the Continuity Reboot in regards to It's About Time.
• Hulking Out: He often uses his outages to do this during boss fights.
  • Partway through his boss battle in the original game, Brio will ingest the chemicals he was mixing, and turn into a green Hulk-like monster.
  • He does this again in Twinsanity, but with a different, more Fish Person-like design.
  • In Mind Over Mutant, Brio seems to transform when enraged, and now needs the mutagen to keep from transforming.
  • In It's About Time, he turns into a giant green-skilled hulk again for the second stage of his boss fight. He performs a second transformation into a pterosaur at the end, but before he can resume the fight he's forced to fly off when this transformation turns out not to agree with his digestive processes much.
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: To Cortex, at first. He's the more cautious of the two, and is the one who built the Evolvo-Ray, but his advice usually falls on deaf ears. This role perks up again in Mind Over Mutant, if downplayed due to his now more manic personality.
• The Igor: He was Cortex's assistant before rebelling against him in the second game.
• Mad Scientist: His specialty is modifying animals through the Evolvo-Ray that he developed. He also likes playing with chemicals.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: He's the one who invented the Evolvo-Ray, and he resents Cortex for taking all of the credit, which is what caused him to betray Cortex and help Crash in the second game. He and Cortex worked together again in Mind Over Mutant, although he's still clearly very resentful of Cortex for taking credit for his inventions. This crops up again in It's About Time in a gag, where Brio angrily recalling that Cortex forced Brio to buy and fill out his own birthday cards.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Being voiced by Maurice LaMarche in Mind over Mutant and the N Sane Trilogy, he ends up sounding like The Brain, meaning he sounds like Orson Welles.
• Obliviously Evil: Of a sort, in the Continuity Reboot of It's About Time. It's not so much that he isn't aware what he's doing is wrong, so much as he's so delusional and insane that he doesn't seem to ever make the connection from "terrible things are happening" to "maybe I should stop making them happen". In his mind, him killing Crash and Coco while testing an experimental potion he plans to use against Cortex is the same as them all working together as colleagues — in fact, he seems to perceive himself as the good guy. He laments the plight of Tranquility Falls residents, but is also dismissive of them for not wanting to help him with his experiments; after he went ahead with the experiments anyway, and excuses how they all died/mutated with the old saying about how You Can't Make an Omelette....
• One-Steve Limit: Zigzagged between him and Nitros Oxide; While they're pronounced the same, Brio and Oxide's first names are spelled just a bit differently.
• One-Winged Angel: Towards the end of the boss fight with him in the first game and It's About Time, he drinks some of his potions and turns into a Hulk-like monstrosity.
• Psycho Serum: Which he uses to transform during Crash's battle with him in the first game, and again in Twinsanity and It's About Time.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: "I. Was in. The first. GAME!"
• Punny Name: His abbreviated name is a pun on the word "Embryo", and one of his attacks is to make green living blobs. He even hangs a lampshade on it in Mind Over Mutant.
  N. Brio: Yes, it is I, N. Brio! (Sotto voice) My name sounds like a fetus.
• Ray Gun: He gets his own in Crash Bash (for Crate Crush games as well as Ring Ding) due to him being a functional copy of Cortex, who is already associated with wielding it.
• Skewed Priorities: In It's About Time, he intends to make a potion strong enough to defeat Cortex. While the other scientists are busy planning to conquer the multiverse.
• Sore Loser: His podium loss animation in Nitro-Fueled has him try to keep up a facade of keeping his cool over his defeat, until it breaks and he throws a tantrum, before regaining his composure.
• Speech Impediment: Brio had a pretty bad stutter in the first game and in Cortex Strikes Back, but it is gone by the time of Mind Over Mutant, in fitting with his newly-gained confident personality. N. Sane Trilogy has it back again. As of It's About Time he still has it but it's less prominent.
• The Starscream: Even though he worked for Cortex, he's seen multiple times trying to plot against him. He only wanted to spite his former boss after leaving him in Cortex Strikes Back, and the flashback tapes of It's About Time show him running Crash's trials behind Cortex's back and plotting to overthrow his boss long before the events of the second game. Even after seemingly rejoining Cortex in the main story of It's About Time, his speeches to Crash and Coco indicate that he ultimately plans to defeat Cortex himself once he perfects his potions. It's probably not helped by all the abuse Cortex put him through during his employ.
• Suddenly Voiced: Inverted. He is The Voiceless in Twinsanity. He speaks again in his next appearance.
• Took a Level in Badass: He is a lot more assertive and confident in Mind Over Mutant than in the previous games, where he was very meek and submissive. However, his annoyance over Cortex wrongly taking the credit for the creation of the Evolvo-Ray has led to Brio making claims that he invented pretty much everything that exists.^note Except Lite-Brite. His musclebound monster form was vulnerable in the head, back in the first game. This weakness is removed in It's About Time, and it also gains the ability to cause shockwaves by punching the ground.
• Uncertain Doom: Crash 4 has him stuck in the form of a pteranodon, and then captured by Ripper Roo, who mistook him for a flying squirrel. Ripper then proceeded to prop the transformed professor up in a taxidermy exhibit, with no indication of whether N. Brio was killed and stuffed, just trapped in a glass cage, or still alive, but stuffed and trapped. Crash's "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue endings don't usually stick, so only time will tell if the professor is gone for good...
• Unfortunate Names: A name that sounds like "embryo" is not the most flattering one, to say at least. He even lampshades it when introducing himself in Mind over Mutant.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Brio is technically the one responsible for freeing Uka-Uka, since his laser destroyed Cortex's space station, and the debris from that destroyed Uka-Uka's temple prison.
• Villain Team-Up: Originally his assistant, he forms a more equal alliance with Cortex in Mind Over Mutant.
• Vocal Evolution: In Mind Over Mutant, Maurice LaMarche voiced N. Brio in a completely divergent take from before, more like a modified version of Toucan Sam. In the N-Sane Trilogy cutscenes, he more closely imitates Brendan O'Brien's performance of the character; while he still sounds unmistakably like Sam, N. Brio once again has his stutter and Laughing Mad tendencies.
• The Voiceless: While he usually is pretty vocal, in Twinsanity, N. Tropy does all the talking. The fact he had lines that were cut or not is still a mystery to this day.
• Wave-Motion Gun: He claims to build one in the second game, that he's going to use against Cortex. The true ending has him use it after Crash gets all the gems, with him allowing Crash to "do the honors", to shoot Cortex's space station down.
• X Must Not Win: He hates Cortex and he does whatever possible to get back at him, ignoring Cortex's concern of the planet facing an impending doom and how he's working to prevent it. However, Brio turns out to be right on trying to stop Cortex, as the latter actually is lying the whole time, though his manual bio implies that Brio would have taken the same direction even if otherwise.

Dr. N. Gin

"Soooooo... you want to go a few rounds! When this is over, we'll see who's obsolete!"

Voiced by: Brendan O'Brien (1997-99), Corey Burton (2001, 2017-Present), Quinton Flynn (2003-04), Nolan North (2005-08)

First appearance: Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back (1997)

Doctor Neo Cortex's faithful right-hand man. As a child, N. Gin was a classmate of Neo Cortex and Nitrus Brio in Madame Amberly's Academy of Evil. N. Gin then went on to become a world-renowned physicist in the defense industry. However, due to a budget cut, one of his missile projects ended up faulty and, as a result, went awry, lodging itself into N. Gin's head. With his intellect, N. Gin was able to stabilize the weapon and reconstruct it as a life support system at the cost of his mental stability. Because the missile is still live, it activates whenever N. Gin is stressed or angry, leaving him with a large headache. Shortly after the missile incident, Doctor N. Gin was taken in by Doctor Neo Cortex to replace the double-crossed Doctor Nitrus Brio.

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• Abusive Parents: In-game quotes from Crash Tag Team Racing reveal that his mother told him that he would never accomplish anything and that his father frequently told him to "shut up [...] you freak".
  N-Gin (when KO'ing another racer): Take that, father! ... did I say 'father'?
• Adaptation Dye-Job: He started off with orange hair, which got changed to black hair starting in Tag Team Racing.
• All Drummers Are Animals: Downplayed in It's About Time, where he creates a giant drummer Humongous Mecha to pilot and has his Large Ham personality.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: In the original games, his skin is an odd shade of pink. In Twinsanity, it's changed to a sickly shade of yellow. In the Radical games, he has chalk white skin.
• Bad Boss: In "Crash of the Titans", he subjects his Doom Monkeys to dangerous labor, yet on the intercom refers to them as "disgusting yet beloved" and tries to lead them in sing-a-longs and Bagel Wednesdays.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Taking a page out of N. Trance's book, in It's About Time he hypnotizes the inhabitants of the Hazardous Wastes to do his bidding.
• Butt-Monkey: Perhaps the most prominent after Cortex, though granted he does kind of enjoy most of it.
• Climax Boss: Is this in both Crash 2 and Crash: Warped.
  • In Crash 2, he is supposed to gather the crystals Crash has collected up until the point to keep them safe from N. Brio. Crash, however, thinks N. Gin is another henchman for Brio and battles him.
  • In Warped, he may not have as much story significance, instead that role being given to N. Tropy, but he is still the last boss you face before Cortex.
• Cloudcuckoolander: More and more so with each title it seems. It's been suggested this is a result of the missile in his head. The Flashback levels in It's About Time suggest that he wasn't quite all there even before Cortex Strikes Back, with him mistaking Coco for a kitty and not noticing the missile sticking out of his head when Cortex points it out.
• Co-Dragons:
  • In many titles he often played Terrible Trio with Cortex and another underling, often Tiny or Nina.
  • The Continuity Reboot as of It's About Time sees both him and N. Brio working together under Doctors Cortex and N. Tropy, although it's clear they don't get along.
• Cold Ham: In the Naughty Dog games, despite the Machine Monotone, N. Gin can be surprisingly bombastic.
• Computer Voice: His voice has an electronic reverb to it, though he loses it in some of the post-Naughty Dog games. The N. Sane Trilogy brings it back with a vengeance.
• Cyborg: He's an impromptu one, courtesy of the missile accident. Nearly half his face has been plated with cybernetics, and his voice has a synthesized rasp to it. Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled also reveals that the eye surrounded with metal is fake, likely rendered unusable by the missile accident. It's About Time further emphasizes this, as his right hand is replaced with a robotic hand for unknown reasons,^note though the explosion of his mech in Warped could have been the cause and the "Mammal Manipulation" Flashback Tape reveals that he had long replaced his blood with fossil fuels.
• Ditzy Genius: He might be a loony guy with temper issues who can't even remember the recipe for toast, but there’s little doubt about his intelligence; he’s demonstrated technical know-how that gives Coco a run for her money.
• Doomy Dooms of Doom: "Doom" happens to be one of N. Gin's top favorite words. In fact, one of his karts in Tag Team Racing and Nitro-Fueled is even called the Doom Buggy.
• The Dragon: Replaced Brio as Cortex's right-hand man starting with the second game.
• Evil Counterpart: To Coco; both are sidekicks to Crash and Cortex respectively, each with Ditzy Genius tendencies and a rather short temper, but also a heartfelt loyalty to the respective characters. The kart racing games highlight this by giving them identical stats and in Warped, Coco is the one who gets to fight him instead of Crash.
• Evil Mentor: The "Tech Check" Flashback Tape in It's About Time has N. Gin contemplating the idea of teaching Coco about technology and computers after noticing her fascination with them, making it a possibility that he may have been this to her.
• Evil Redhead: The Radical Entertainment games give him black hair, but otherwise he’s this.
• Evil Virtues: Among the other scientists who are all egomaniacal, backstabbing Jerkasses, N. Gin sticks out as the only one with a sincere sense of loyalty, namely to Cortex.
• Expy: He's an egg-shaped scientist with orange hair who often controls a red coloured giant robot in boss battles, alot like another mad scientist.
• Fat Bastard: He's a mean, mad man of science with a potbelly to go with it.
• Flanderization: N. Gin had a pretty radical shift in character over the course of the series. In the original games, he was rather soft-spoken and unemotional, being very much The Igor to Cortex. Later games made him more mentally unstable and prone to loud outbursts and made the Peter Lorre impression in his voice more obvious. It comes to a boiling point in Titans where he became a massive Cloudcuckoolander with No Indoor Voice and a Split Personality who wants to eat Coco for some reason. Though when you think about it, it's kinda justified due to his faulty missile project being lodged into his head, which he reconstructed as a life support system at the cost of his mental stability.
• Foil: To N. Brio. Both are sycophantic, sometimes pitiful right hand men to Cortex, however while Brio is mild mannered and deeply resents Cortex's poor treatment of him, N Gin is manic and gets bizarre enjoyment from it. Brio eventually had a falling out with Cortex and even actively worked against him in a few instances. N. Gin mostly remains loyal to Cortex, even turning down a seemingly better employer. N. Brio specializes in genetics and has mutated his body from his experiments while N. Gin is excels in robotics and is partially cybernetic.
• Fragile Speedster: Pretty fittingly for a rocket scientist, he is one of the Acceleration based character alongside Coco and Pinstripe.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Unlike Cortex and Brio, who are more into biology, and Tropy, who's a physicist, N. Gin's into engineering, as one can deduct by his name.
• Gonk: Even without the missile stuck in his head, dude is clearly not a looker, what with his short, hunched stature, underbite and misshaped eyes. Even Nitro-Fueled's Crash Test Dummy skin doesn't help! That doesn't stop him from trying to come off as good-looking, as the 100% ending in It's About Time shows him lying seductively in front of a fireplace, with a saxophone in one hand and a confectionery on his right.
• He-Man Woman Hater: At one point in Crash of the Titans he expresses a disgust of women in general. One of his lines in the next game, however, implies he might be a Stalker with a Crush towards Coco (or at the very least, thinks she’d be a tasty meal). Given that N. Gin's characterization at this point is that of a Manchild, it may count as a grown-up version of Girls Have Cooties.
• Hidden Depths: He has a fondness and natural talent for performing various genres of music. Crash of the Titans has him playing a massive pipe organ while It's About Time has him excelling in playing both heavy metal and smooth jazz.
• Humongous Mecha: He's rather fond of creating and piloting these... until his Radical incarnation, anyway.
• I Minored in Tropology: A Flashback Tape in It's About Time reveals that he has a degree in Diabolical Devices.
• I Regret Nothing: This is one of his taunts in Nitro-Fueled.
• Iconic Sequel Character: Debuts in the second game and becomes a prominent character afterwards.
• The Igor: Taking the place of N.Brio in Crash 2 and so on.
• Iron Butt Monkey: He is known to suffer from all matter of misfortunes (getting blown away into outer space twice, merged into Megamix alongside some of the other villains, injured by TNT crate explosions, burnt by Spyro, etc), to the point that one DLC skin in Nitro-Fueled is a robotic form that's specifically designed to rebuild itself every time he gets hit.
• Keet: Nitro-Fueled gives him shades of this in some of his reaction voice bites, particularly when he wins.
  N.Gin: Weheheheheh! That was fun.
• Land, Sea, Sky:
  • Alongside Tiny and Dingodile, he fits the "Sky" part in Warped, challenging Coco in a spaceship battle.
  • He fits this role again in The Huge Adventure, this time in the normal sky.
• Large Ham: Eventually evolved into one. Earlier games had him behave very robotically, only really getting vocal when he was defeated. Later games made him manic and prone to loud outbursts.
• Laughably Evil: He is this in the Radical games thanks to his manic outbursts and habit of going on bizarre tangents.
• Lorre Lookalike: The fact that his voice and design are based on Peter Lorre becomes more obvious as the series goes on. The Radical Entertainment games take it further, adding a healthy dose of Ren Hoek to the mix.
• Machine Monotone: He speaks like that in the Naughty Dog games, only displaying Cold Ham in some dialogues, and even his Skyward Scream sounds hilariously artificial.
• Mad Scientist: His specialty is creating machines. In the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue of Crash Team Racing, he's opened a custom auto parts store in Toledo, Ohio, which closed after his "Clear-the-Road" missile system was recalled when it caused havoc on many freeways. Nitro-Fueled updates it to have him get a job afterwards as a commentator on the Giant Robot Battle Network due to his affinity for carnage.
• Mad Scientist Laboratory: His lab is a race track in CTR.
• Mass Hypnosis: N. Gin's role in the villains' plans in It's About Time was to use his music as Rawk-It Head to brainwash an entire dimension's populace to create a loyal army for Cortex, empowered by N. Brio's mutagens.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: A doctor who's also pretty unhinged.
• Musical Assassin: It has become something of a trend in later games to give him music-themed boss fights. In Crash of the Titans, he plays a massive pipe organ that summons waves of enemies, and in It's About Time, his boss fight is a concert where he pilots a giant drumming robot.
• Mysterious Middle Initial: Or Mysterious First Initial, in this case. None of the games reveal what the "N" stands for.
• No Indoor Voice: N. Gin is prone to very frequent fits of yelling in the Radical Entertainment games.
• No Full Name Given: It has never been revealed what his first name is.
• Oh, No... Not Again!: His line after you beat him in Warped (though he doesn’t say it in the remake):
  N.Gin: ARRRRRRRRGH! Not again!
• Perpetual Frowner: N. Gin never smiled in any of the Naughty Dog games.
• The Power of Rock: In It's About Time, he starts a heavy metal band called Rawk-It Hed (which seems to consist only of himself), befitting the post-apocalyptic world he inhabits. His boss machine is also a giant drum-playing robot known as the Weapon of Mass Percussion, and the fight takes place at a concert.
• Punny Name: His name N. Gin, easily sounds like engine.
• Retcon: N. Gin's initial backstory doesn't seem to play a part in It's About Time, as he only seems to be mildly aware of the rocket in his head since he was confused about Cortex mentioning a rocket in their interview but he named his one-man band Rawk-It Hed, presumably after the rocket in his head.
• Rotten Rock & Roll: Exaggerated in It's About Time; he literally takes over a post-apocalyptic civilization of bandits by creating a giant rock-drummer robot and making himself a one-man band.
• Sanity Slippage: The missile that was lodged into his head could've killed him if he hadn't rebuilt it as a life support system, but in exchange, it damaged his brain quite severely that he gradually turned from the robotic, soft-spoken, and emotionless Igor to Dr. Cortex, to the loud, obnoxious Large Ham of a Mad Scientist that we know today.
• Sissy Villain: Made very apparent in Crash Tag Team Racing, where he laments on not being pretty enough and is overjoyed when Crash gives him a tutu, ballerina slippers and lipstick. This, combined with his overall demeanor, makes him one of, if not the most feminine male characters in the series. This is dialed down considerably for Nitro-Fueled, as while he still keeps the ballerina skin (and does a pirouette for his victory podium animation, unsurprisingly), his personality is more in-line with that of the pre-Radical games.
• Split Personality: Titans indicates he has one in one scene, with one side wanting to support Cortex and the other Nina.
• The Starscream: Despite his Undying Loyalty, he does ditch Cortex and side with Brio and N. Tropy to collect the Evil Twins' treasure in Twinsanity. He briefly goes along with Nina's takeover in Crash of the Titans as well, though in this case his devotion to Cortex prevails and he tips Crash in on where to find her.
• The Stoic: N. Gin's personality and method of speech during the early Naughty Dog games were rather robotic and unemotional in nature, with him only occasionally raising his voice during his confrontations with Crash and Coco.
• Subordinate Excuse: In later games his relationship with Dr. Cortex leans into this, even referring to him as his friend at one point.
• Sycophantic Servant: Usually loyal to Dr. Cortex (though see The Starscream above). Even assisted Crash in thwarting Nina in hope that he would rescue his former master.
• Too Kinky to Torture: N. Gin has been known to outright thank people who inflict physical pain upon him, particularly Doctor Cortex.
• Transforming Mecha: His mech in the third game is able to transform into a big space fighter and then dock with a larger spacecraft.
• Undying Loyalty: Being The Igor and Sycophantic Servant. He left Cortex only once, and even then indirectly to search for treasure. When given a true opportunity to ditch Cortex for his seemingly more competent niece, he fights with his conscience, but ultimately decides he cares about Cortex too much and willingly gives Crash their whereabouts.
• Unexpected Shmup Level: At least in the second and third game, the gameplay turns into a shooting bout as Crash and Coco try to target parts of his mech.

Dr. N. Tropy

"Now you're on my time, you little skunk! Give me the Crystals!"

Voiced by: Michael Ensign (1998-99; 2003-04), Corey Burton (2001, 2017-20), JP Karliak (2020)

First appearance: Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped (1998)

A henchman of Uka-Uka, Dr. Nefarious Tropy is the self-proclaimed master of time. He created the Time Twister Machine that the bandicoots are using in Warped.

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• Accent Slip-Up: His voice fluctuates several times when overexcited in Nitro Fuelled, even making some cockney exclamations when surprised, implying his upper-class demeanor is an act.
  Tropy: Blimey!
• Adaptational Seriousness: In It's About Time, Tropy is treated far more seriously and more menacing than Cortex and the other scientists, with only darker pinches of his comical pomposity and time-pun affinity from the original games.
• Air Guitar: If he kills Crash in his Twinsanity boss fight, his victory dance is mimicking a guitar with his giant tuning fork.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: Blue skin, at that. Apparently, constant exposure to the cold vacuum of space and time while time-travelling will do that to you.
• Artificial Limbs: While the mechanical chest armour and hat are part of his outfit, his left arm appears to have been replaced with an artificial one.
• Bald of Evil: In Nitro-Fueled, his helmet might come off after a big jump, showing that he's bald underneath.
• Beard of Evil: He has two long hairs for an evil beard.
• Big Bad: Arguably in N-Tranced. Uka Uka is behind him, but the former's influence is hardly seen in said game. In addition, he seems to be the dominant force in the alliance of treasure-seeking villains in Twinsanity, though the Evil Twins remained the primary Big Bad.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Is the main antagonist in Crash 4 along with his alternate timeline female counterpart.
• Big Bad Wannabe: A Reconstruction of sorts. On paper, Tropy looks and acts the part of a bigger menace than Cortex, especially by It's About Time where the latter has been extremely worn down from defeats. However Tropy's overconfidence or temper routinely cause his own downfalls prematurely, often while Cortex manipulates a gambit that would make him a Not-So-Harmless Villain. Only in N-Tranced does he serve as the final threat (and largely because he tried to run while Crash fought N Trance). Taken further in that while Cortex at least knows he's stuck as an underling to Uka Uka and begrudgingly treats Tropy as an equal in this miserable allignment, Tropy considers himself well above either of them.
• Boss-Arena Idiocy: He normally stands far away from you, separated by a large pit, where he'll shoot beams at you with impunity. Then he stomps down with his fork and gets tired, as platforms that you can use to jump to him are created.
• The Bus Came Back: He gets his moment in It's About Time, where he gets promoted to the status of Big Bad.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Aside from a small cameo in Boom Bang, he hasn't been seen since Twinsanity, excluding N. Sane Trilogy and Nitro-Fueled. He officially returns as the primary antagonist in It's About Time (naturally).
• Clocks of Control: Tropy is a Time Master villain. His attire is completely time themed, consisting of armour covered in clocks and watches and gears and even his method of time hopping, the Time Twister, utilises a giant clock with his mug on it. Tropy is regularly depicted as even more of a Smug Snake than Dr. Neo Cortex, acting like a complacent and snooty Evil Brit by default but quickly reverting to temper tantrums whenever he starts losing to the bandicoots.
• Clockwork Creature: Rather literally — there are multiple clocks on his body. He even refers to himself as "Master of Time".
• The Comically Serious: He is much more sober and humourless than the other goofier scientists, especially in It's About Time, though his boundless pomposity still makes him the subject of jokes, and often he comes out just as pathetic as his peers when his plans fail. This is a man so narcissistic that he became sexually attracted to an alternate version of himself.
• Cornered Rattlesnake: When his plan is defeated in N Tranced, Tropy attempts to make a run for it. When Crash finally uncovers his whereabouts however, he puts up one resilient final boss fight.
• A Day in the Limelight: He is promoted to Big Bad in Cortex's absence in N-Tranced. Becomes the primary Big Bad in It's About Time, forcing an Enemy Mine between Cortex and the heroes.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the Viler New Villain. N Tropy was introduced just as Cortex was losing his Villain Cred and will to keep fighting Crash anymore, and is established as everything he no longer is, an imposing sophisticated scientist who is feared and revered and has no sympathetic qualities of any kind. Much like Cortex however, his grandeur fizzles as soon as he confronts Crash, and in nearly every appearance he goes out rather quickly and pitifully, either due to his pomposity causing fatal errors that doom his plans from the get-go (compared to Cortex who bumbles and improvises but at least usually only loses at the final hurdle), or being completely incapable of handling the same Butt-Monkey situations Cortex suffers on a regular basis. N Tranced, where he was specifically brought in by Uka Uka to replace Cortex after failing again, is the only instance he manages to hold onto the Big Bad role up to the Final Boss, and only then because he ran away when things gone pear shaped beforehand.
• Depending on the Writer: Much in the same vein as Coco is to the main hero, games dabble in and out whether Tropy is a genuinely more competent and serious threat as a villain than Cortex, or only thinks he is such, and in reality is an equally pompous bumbler with an affinity for time puns.
• Disc-One Final Boss: In It's About Time, N. Tropy is by far the biggest threat in the game, but Cortex is the last boss the Bandicoots fight.
• The Dragon: Depending on how you look at it, in Warped he is a Co-Dragon either to Cortex along with N. Gin or to Uka Uka along with Cortex. He is Uka Uka's full-time Dragon in N-Tranced, though, and later games such as It's About Time make apparent both Tropy and Cortex have zero interest in serving each other.
• Dragon Ascendant: Both instances he had A Day in the Limelight Big Bad were following right after another failed scheme from Cortex. In N Tranced this was specifically because Uka Uka got sick of relying on Cortex and elected Tropy in his place for once, though It's About Time, after Uka is depowered from undoing the effects of his last defeat, Tropy takes the opportunity to ditch him as well and take over leading the whole scheme.
• Dragon Their Feet: Inverted in Warped, as he's fought much earlier than you'd expect him to be.
• Dual Boss: With Brio in Twinsanity, though Tropy's the only one who can be attacked and they take turns. He also later does this again in It's About Time with his other self.
• Evil Brit: The only scientist to speak with an upper-class English accent, and he's certainly evil.
• Evil Counterpart: Tropy mirrors Coco of all people in several regards. His machinations are often a key component for certain evil schemes in the same way Coco's smarts are for missions stopping them (for example, Tropy creates the Time Twister hub in Warped, while Coco mirrors this with the virtual hub in Wrath of Cortex). They also often pose as a more composed and lucid counterpart to the main villain and hero respectively, even sometimes treated as more efficient replacements for them, though sometimes squander it with their much worse temper and hubris, being much more thin skinned to making a fool of themselves than the other characters are. However, while Coco, even at her most impatient, loves Crash and is protective of her brother (and in cases like Titans, rightfully trusts him to do the same), Tropy is distainful towards Cortex, considers him a nuisance to schemes, and recurrently plots against him, causing in-faction feuds.
• Evil Laugh:
  • In N. Sane Trilogy he can occasionally be heard laughing during his boss fight. He does it as well in Nitro-Fueled, when boosting or using items.
  • He gets two impressive ones in It's About Time: first in the opening, where he laughs triumphantly upon escaping from the past along with Cortex; second at the end of his holographic transmission to Cortex and the bandicoots, where he gloats that he and his alternate counterpart will use the Rift Generator to reset time itself and wipe Cortex, the masks, and the bandicoots from existence.
• Evil Gloating: He couldn't resist mocking Cortex after his fourth defeat against the bandicoots in It's About Time, while also gloating at all of them about his plan to erase the timeline and wipe all of them from existance, giving everyone an incentive to band together and stop him.
• Expy: Many have noticed his resemblance to Jafar from Aladdin; his exaggerated features, his Evil Brit accent, his head-piece and pointed shoulders, his use of a staff, etc. It certainly didn't help that the makers of It's About Time deliberatelty used Jafar as an animation model and added a snake motif to his Distaff Counterpart.
• Fantastic Racism: Often refers to the Bandicoots with names like "rats", "vermin" and "skunk". This extends to Twinsanity, where he uses his first line before his boss fight to call Crash a rat.
• Fascinating Eyebrow: He has one in his first message in Warped.
• Fatal Flaw: Tropy's Pride often leads him to overestimate himself, which in turn leads to Wrath when his plans start to go wrong and he increasingly loses his temper at the wrong time. Both Warped and N Tranced's plans go pear shaped when an overconfident Tropy gets outsmarted and throws a tantrum. He keeps his cool better in It's About Time, though he and his counterpart still make the mistake of practically inviting all their enemies (and former allies) to stop them, leading to an unexpectedly quick and humilating defeat one Enemy Mine later.
• Faux Affably Evil: He puts on a sophisticated polite tone of voice when he isn't undergoing a Villainous Breakdown, but it's pretty obvious that it's never genuine.
• Flanderization: A rare opposite case from the other villains. In most games, Tropy was a more composed and smarmy counterpart to Cortex, but still largely fit within the cartoony universe as a hammy bad tempered time pun-spewing Small Name, Big Ego like the other scientists. It's About Time however places him more cleanly on the top of the Rogues Gallery, treating him far more seriously as a threat than any previous villain, and conveying him as much more sinister, eerie and cruel, with only some lingering shades of Black Comedy left of his earlier Laughably Evil character.
• Foil: Becomes increasingly one to Cortex. Both are pompous, grudge-bearing and incredibly hammy breeds of evil scientists, and recurrent Co-Dragons for Uka Uka. However, Cortex is outwardly goofy, pathetic and jaded from constant defeats, though his manipulative, opportunistic nature often ultimately makes him a Not-So-Harmless Villain. Meanwhile Tropy is outwardly cold, uptight and smugly assured of his superiority over Cortex as a threat, though his downfalls are often self-inflicted due to his vices and lack of contingency plans getting the best of him at a vital moment, making him more a Big Bad Wannabe.
• For the Evulz: According to his bio in The Wrath of Cortex, he enjoys causing time paradoxes for laughs. In It's About Time, he seeks to erase not just this universe but the entire multiverse as well, simply so he can recreate existence as he sees fit.
• Fourth-Wall Observer: In Crash Team Racing and its remake, he'll directly address the player as you beat his time records. He acknowledges the existence of a character select screen once you've beaten all of them.
• Glass Cannon: Along with the power of time manipulation, Tropy supplies in a wide melee of energy projectiles and lasers, though regularly exhausts himself if they don't do the job quick enough, giving his enemy an opening to attack. In most games, he still has a servicable health meter (he can take nine hits in N Tranced especially, making for a very enduring battle despite his poor stamina), however in Its' About Time, he and his counterpart place such an elaborate barrage against the bandicoots from the get go that they end up going down with just ONE HIT each, too fatigued to do anything against Cortex and Dingodile's revenge afterwards.
• Graceful Loser: In Crash Team Racing, once you beat all his time trial records, he doesn’t seem too upset about it and congratulates you before telling you you’ve unlocked him as a playable character.
• Hated by All: By It's About Time, he has either backstabbed most of his associates at worst (Cortex and Uka Uka) or at best left them on very rocky terms due to his narcissism and belligerent attitude (N Trance). It has reached a point that the only person he has a genuinely affable partnership with is an alternate universe counterpart of himself.
• The Heavy: Of all the games headed by Uka Uka's forces, Tropy is the first of two to replace Cortex as this for a game; N-Tranced in his case.
• Hurricane of Puns: He's fond of letting out various time-related puns. This quirk is downplayed in It's About Time to emphasise his darker personality, though he still sneaks in a couple.
• Iconic Sequel Character: Downplayed. While he comes out in the third game and is popular, he's rather underplayed compared to the other doctors (other than N. Brio), especially in the Radical titles. N-Tranced is the exception, where he replaces Cortex as the focal antagonist. He gets his time to shine in It's About Time where he is promoted to the status of Big Bad.
• Impossibly Cool Weapon: His giant tuning fork, which can shoot various energy beams.
• Inelegant Blubbering: Whenever he comes second or third in Crash Team Racing or Crash Nitro Kart.
• In Their Own Image: In It's About Time, N. Tropy wants to destroy the multiverse and remake it to his liking.
• Ironic Name: The concept of Entropy is the idea that anything, given time, will decay into chaos. Beating him has Cortex note N. Tropy is the one thing preventing his Time Twister from collapsing into a chaotic, time-distorting mess since he's the only one who knows how its delicate internals work.
• Jerkass: His polite demeanor is paper-thin, and beneath that lies a Smug Snake who constantly belittles Cortex and views others as beneath him.
• Knight of Cerebus: Tropy never quite suffered the same Flanderization the other villains underwent, remaining a more sinister and only moderately-comical baddie. And everyone else knows it, too; he was chosen by Uka Uka to replace Cortex for one game (and he nearly succeeded in the prologue stage) and is implied to be the leader of the villains in the sub-plot of Twinsanity. And his introduction was as a friend of Uka Uka while the mask was a Knight of Cerebus himself. This climaxes in It's About Time, where he betrays both Cortex and Uka Uka and becomes the fourth game's Big Bad, and becomes a far greater threat than any other villain in the Crash Bandicoot series, threatening not only the main heroes but the entire multiverse itself. At least until Cortex usurps Final Boss from him.
• Large Ham: Not quite as hammy as Cortex or N. Gin, but he still has his moments.
• Lean and Mean: Easily the tallest of the scientists, and arguably the meanest.
• Load-Bearing Boss: An interesting delayed version of this trope. His defeat in Warped causes the Time Twister to become unstable (as Cortex points out in the next cutscene), culminating in its self-destruction after Cortex's defeat if you got 100% Completion.
• Mad Scientist: One who specializes in time travel.
• Mickey Mousing: His boss themes are often punctuated by clock sounds, such as ticking and winding.
• Mighty Glacier: In Crash Team Racing, he specializes in speed to ensure his supremacy on time trials.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: A doctor like previous ones, and likes to cause time paradoxes for the hell of it.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: See Punny Name below. Also, someone with the first name of Nefarious isn't someone to be trifled with.
• Narcissist: He's an arrogant, self-absorbed braggart who believes that he is superior to everyone around him. This becomes even more apparent in It's About Time, where he becomes infatuated with a female version of himself and the two decide to completely destroy the universe and rebuild it In Their Own Image.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: After Cortex's first defeat in It's About Time, he is finally at wit's end over his failures to defeat Crash or take over the world and decides to retire to a tropical island. N Tropy however uses this moment to gloat that he has double crossed him anyway and plans to erase the world's timeline (Cortex included) with another accomplice, infuriating Cortex into an Enemy Mine with the bandicoots and ultimately chaining off another scheme that gives Cortex back his will for villainy again.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Burton's interpretation of the character is not too dissimilar from his Captain Hook voice, who was originally voiced by Hans Conried. In It's About Time, JP Karliak ends up channeling another iconic Disney villain role: Jonathan Freeman's Jafar. Given that the deveolpers used Jafar as a base for Tropy's appearance and animations in the game, this may be intentional.
• Not So Above It All: He's established as a more favoured and composed associate of Uka Uka than the deranged and abused Cortex. However he is prone to even greater tantrums than Cortex when his plans start to fail, and when Uka chastises him along with the rest of the Rogues Gallery at the start of The Wrath of Cortex he looks just as meek and deflated as the others. He even sobs hysterically in CTR and CNK if he places 2nd or 3rd overall. In addition, his lines in Nitro-Fueled make it clear that he's just as excited and competitive about racing as anyone else.
• Older Than They Look: The beginning of It's About Time reveals that, just like Cortex, he actually had to grow up in the prehistoric era after being turned into a baby in Warped, meaning that he is actually at least twice as old as he originally was.
• Omnicidal Maniac: His ultimate plan in It's About Time is to destroy the entire universe so he and his female counterpart can rebuild it In Their Own Image.
• Only Sane Man: In a cast that has grown very, very dysfunctional, Tropy has remained relatively sane. With that said, as shown in Warped and N-Tranced his arrogance and temper in the face of not being in control can still match or even surpass that of the wackier villains, leading him to make key mistakes all the same.
• Pungeon Master: In Warped and CTR, he tended to make a lot of references to time.
  N. Tropy: This time, you've done it!
  N. Tropy: Now you're on my time, you little skunk! Give me the crystals!
  N. Tropy: My time is up. But yours... soon will be, too.
• Punny Name: His abbreviated name is a pun on the word "entropy", which is basically the theory that everything turns chaotic given enough time.
• Put on a Bus: While he hasn't shown up since Twinsanity excluding N. Sane Trilogy, it's used as a plot point in the GBA games. He's the only villain from Warped missing in the first one, which is why Tropy was promoted by Uka Uka to main antagonist status for the second.
• Replacement Flat Character: In the original games at least, Tropy debuted much similarly as Cortex did pre-Villain Decay; an arrogant, overconfident genius who responded very badly when his plans were outsmarted. It is clear by Wrath of Cortex that his enthusiasm and Villain Cred are taking a similar downturn as Cortex from losing to Crash as well. Downplayed in It's About Time, where Tropy is retooled into a much more sinister villain than Cortex and has lost none of his hubris from his first defeat in Warped.
• The Rival: Being Co-Dragons, he and Cortex are sometimes shown mocking or competing with each other. Tropy even once seized an opportunity to play The Dragon solo after the latter annoyed Uka Uka with too many failures.
• Sanity Has Advantages: Zigzagged. His less being prone to eccentric tangents helps with keeping complete control of the situation and maintaining some level of fearsomeness compared to the other outwardly bungling scientists, and he organizes more efficient, deadly evil plans on paper when he has the opportunity to do so without Cortex being around. However while Tropy may be relatively saner, he is even more arrogant than his peers, rarely having any form of contingency plan and routinely losing his cool when he is made a fool of. As a result, his more sophisticated schemes are often undermined as much by self-sabotage than the bandicoots thwarting him, making him not much more effective than Cortex in the long run.
• Screw Yourself: Blatantly flirts with his female counterpart in It's About Time. Coco, Cortex, Tawna, and Oxide all react with disgust, Crash is confused, while Dingodile seems amused.
• The Sociopath: He cares about nothing outside of his own plans and gargantuan ego, to the point that he holds zero loyalty to either Uka Uka or even Cortex, and is willing to utterly destroy the multiverse without a second thought.
• Something Else Also Rises: In It's About Time, as his female counterpart is explaining how she killed the Crash and Coco from her and Tawna's dimension, the hands on his clock shoot up to 12 and stop turning.
• Secret Character: In both Crash Team Racing and Crash Nitro Kart, he can only be unlocked by unlocking and defeating all of his time trial ghosts. In the latter's handheld version, he just requires Team Cortex's story to be beaten instead. However, his baby form in Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled averts this by being readily available in the Pit Stop.
• Sinister Schnoz: Tropy's is fairly large and pointy, especially compared to his colleagues.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: He wilfully tries to supplant or replace Cortex more than once and even when they are working together they often banter or show contempt for one another. It's About Time brings it to a head, where he outright betrays Cortex and forces him into an Enemy Mine with Crash, with him and Cortex exchanging snide in nearly scene they have together.
• Smug Snake: Incredibly pompous and snide upon confrontations, and openly considers himself well above Cortex or any of his cronies in terms of competence level (to the point Cortex himself can't stand the "pompous peacock"). Once he starts losing the upper hand however, his tantrums are almost as pronounced as those of Cortex, and he lacks the latter's talent for improvising contingency plans.
• The Starscream: After willing serving Uka Uka in Warped, he and Cortex eagerly leave him behind after the mask exhausts himself from opening an interdimensional rift for the three to escape from their imprisonment in the past. He in turn betrays Cortex after he finds what he views as a far more competent accomplice, an alternate universe version of himself.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Gradually. Initially, he and Cortex are working towards the same goal and they never openly express hostility to each other, but his facial expressions in N. Sane Trilogy make it clear that he does NOT view Cortex with the same respect that he views Uka-Uka. In later games, they start to trade banter, with Tropy eager to supplant Cortex in N Tranced. Played much straighter in It's About Time, where he and Cortex can barely stand each other at all, and the game starts with the both of them bickering. As soon as N. Tropy finds a new partner in the form of his female alternate self, he quickly turns on Cortex and abandons him, with the latter instantly willing to join forces with Crash just to take revenge on him.
• Thin-Skinned Bully: Much like his alternate counterpart, he is far more cruel, sadistic and treacherous in It's About Time and has an imperious attitude to Cortex and his fellow scientists. All it takes is one hit to finish him in his boss fight and he can only curse at you weakly. Downplayed in previous games, though he is arguably still the most petulant of the scientists when things get turned around on him.
• Time Master: He refers to himself as the "Master of Time", and has access to various forms of time travel technology. In CTR he also shows up in the Time Trial runs.
• Too Much Alike: While Tropy is more of a composed snob against Cortex's jaded goofiness, it is apparent in many of their appearances that they don't get along, since their equal pomposity, vindictiveness and megalomania means their egos have trouble co-existing compared to the other more recessive scientists.
• True Final Boss: In N-Tranced, he appears as the last boss Crash encounters. You can only fight him after getting all the colored gems.
• Unexplained Recovery: It's never explained how he and Cortex were able to escape after being turned into babies and sent back in time along with Uka Uka. At least, not until It's About Time, where it's explained they grew up and escaped via a dimensional portal.
• Ungrateful Bastard: After Uka Uka exhausts himself from opening a dimensional portal, N. Tropy ditches him without a shred of remorse, despite the fact he and Dr. Cortex would have continued to be stuck in the past without the mask.
• Viler New Villain: He's introduced in Warped as a more smug and menacing associate of Uka Uka than Cortex, who by this point has become more Affably Evil and jaded from previous defeats. While Tropy himself is downplayed into a fellow hammy Jerkass scientist as other new villains appear, It's About Time (which takes place directly after Warped) punctuates this trope with some Character Exaggeration, making him far more sinister, arrogant and cruel and finally attempting to pull a Make Way For The New Villain, betraying Uka Uka and Cortex and devising upon destroying the multiverse so he can recreate the timeline as he sees fit. He ends up outgambitted by Cortex however.
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: While Tropy always stood out in the series as one of the more "serious" villains, it is not until Crash 4 that we see just how evil he truly is. He hijacks the Big Bad role from Cortex and allies with his equally vile alternate universe counterpart, and their plan to destroy the entire multiverse and remake it in their own image puts them in a class far above any other villain seen in the series before.
• Villain Team-Up: Joins forces with N. Brio and N. Gin in Twinsanity. His association with Cortex in games such as Warped can arguably be considered this too. He does it more formally with Cortex in It's About Time, having N. Gin and N. Brio as their Co-Dragons.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • In Warped, his initial taunts towards the bandicoots convey him as composed and confident. As you slowly collect more crystals from his Warp Room however, his calm facade fades and by the time you have collected them all he is livid (though in the N. Sane Trilogy version, he just sounds more exasperated instead).
  N. Tropy: RAAGGHHHH! You little vermin are way too stupid to understand what you're getting yourselves into! This time you've done it!
  • Shown in similar slow progression as his scheme crumbles apart in N Tranced. After he finds out he failed to brainwash Crash for a doppelganger, he throws a tantrum and argues with N Trance over who's to blame. This worsens when Aku Aku outgambits their secret whereabouts. A mortified Tropy threatens N Trance into dealing with them, and upon his failure, Tropy outright panics and tries to make a break for it.
• Villainous Friendship: He's an old friend of Uka Uka, a fact implied in Warped and shown more conclusively in N-Tranced. By contrast, Uka Uka never regards Cortex as more than an underling. That said, both of them get equal admonishing for failing him, and Tropy shows no qualms about leaving Uka Uka for dead in It's About Time after he exhausts himself from opening an interdimensional rift to escape through after their imprisonment in the past.
• Villainous Cheekbones: N. Tropy's cheekbones are greatly exaggerated to capitalise on his villain status.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: In CTR, he's seen tinkering with time machines again. Nitro-Fueled elaborates on where he goes: far into the future, where he meets a man with a red jacket and "the sweetest kicks you've ever seen". At which point, he decides he should return. Subverted in It's About Time where after being defeated, he and his alternate self were "never heard from again", though it's said in narration that they may return.

Dr. N. Tropy (F)

"Let's see what you mongrels can do as a pack."

Voiced by: Sarah Tancer

First appearance: Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time (2020)

A female counterpart of N. Tropy from the same Alternate Universe as the other Tawna. She was summoned forth by the original Tropy via the Rift Generator to act as Cortex's replacement after his failure to defeat Crash and Coco.

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• A Day in the Limelight: She is the host villain of On The Run's second season, this time solo.
• Arch-Enemy: To the alternate Tawna, as she killed her Crash and Coco and made her watch.
• Badass Cape: Unlike her counterpart, she wears an blue cape over her labcoat. It gets used against her in On The Run where it drags her into a time rift unwillingly as her defeat animation.
• The Baroness: She's just as confident and Faux Affably Evil as her counterpart, if not more so because she actually killed Crash and Coco in her universe.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: She replaces Cortex as the original N. Tropy's ally during the climax of It's About Time (though Cortex usurps Big Bad role back from them after they are defeated for the remainder of the game).
• Black Eyes of Crazy: She has black eyes with yellow pupils.
• The Comically Serious: Not as much as her male counterpart, but even the Knight of Cerebus of the Crash Bandicoot series gets a few gags their way.
• Distaff Counterpart: She's a female version of N. Tropy.
• Early-Bird Cameo: She appeared early on in the promotional artwork after the game was announced far before anyone realized she wasn't the original N. Tropy.
• Evil Brit: Like her counterpart, she speaks in a refined British accent.
• Dual Boss: She serves this role alongside her male counterpart in It's About Time.
• "Get Back Here!" Boss: Both her It's About Time and On The Run boss fights consist largely of pursuing her. Only the final phase of the former is a standstill confrontation.
• Glass Cannon: She managed to kill her universe's Crash and Coco, and subjects her Tawna to a Curbstomp Battle. When faced with the main universe version of the bandicoots, she puts up a similar grandoise offense, only to go down pitifully after ONE HIT. Downplayed greatly in On The Run where she has a smaller but still formidable life meter compared to most of the other season bosses, and is the only one with Regenerating Health powers, making her quite durable. As a playable character in Rumble, she also largely subverts this, having a servicable health stat.
• Hate Sink: Similar to her male counterpart in the same game, Tropy lacks any of the pathos or whimsical qualities the other villains have, and her role in sadistically killing the alternate Tawna's Crash and Coco places her as possibly the most vile and irredeemable character in the franchise.
• Hero Killer: She claims to be the one responsible for the deaths of alternate Tawna's Crash and Coco and takes great pleasure in reminiscing on the sounds of Tawna's screams as she made her watch.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: She is implied to have been a dominant force in her own world, vanquishing her own Crash and Coco, and their replacement, Tawna, unable to fend her off. By migrating to the main Crash's world however, while still a Knight of Cerebus, it's clear she doomed herself to the same cartoony failures as the other villains there.
• Impossibly Cool Weapon: Much like her counterpart, her giant tuning fork is this with the addition of a snake coiling in-between the top half of the weapon.
• Knight of Cerebus: While the main N. Tropy got a Darker and Edgier upgrade in It's About Time, the alternate Tropy is even worse. She originates from a dimension where she successfully killed her Crash and Coco, and forced their Tawna to watch, an element strikingly Played for Drama compared to the usual cartoony tone of the series. Her ominous sadism oozes in nearly every scene she is in compared to the other bombastic scientists, with only a mild tint of Black Comedy and a slapstick defeat to balance it.
• More Deadly Than the Male: Unlike her male counterpart, she actually managed to kill her dimension's version of Crash and Coco long before the events of the game. Though her success rate against the main version of them is no better than her counterpart's. Even besides that she contrasts the Laughably Evil antics of the mostly male Rogues Gallery by actually having her actions and threat level Played for Drama and having far more subtle clownish qualities.
• Not So Above It All: She is a much more deadly and serious threat compared to the other bungling scientists by default. Naturally she gets a couple token comedic moments however, in particular her uneasy "relations" with her counterpart. Her defeat animation is also just as pitiful and frantic as all the other bosses in On The Run, attempting to desperately crawl away from the rift dragging her in by her cape, while in Rumble, being a playable character, she is as much part of the cartoon mayhem as everyone else.
• Regenerating Health: She is the only boss in On The Run capable of regaining health points.
• Smug Snake: Given she is fearsome enough to have actually killed her universe's Crash and Coco, she at least has a bit more to be smug about. She never figured that her counterpart's Crash and Coco might be a bit more persistent however and joins him in preemptive gloating before losing humiliatingly.
• Screw Yourself: Flirts with her male counterpart in It's About Time.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: She has a pretty subdued and relaxed tone of voice, even when describing how much she enjoyed Tawna's screams after murdering Crash and Coco.
• Thin-Skinned Bully: In It's About Time, despite sadistically murdering her world's bandicoots and going to town with the main cast, all it takes is one hit to neutralise her. She can only weakly curse the bandicoots under the breath before Dingodile handily smacks her into a portal.
• Took a Level in Badass: In On The Run she not only fights the bandicoots solo, but subverts her Paper Tiger image by putting up a far more persistent boss fight than in It's About Time and even uses Regenerating Health to circumvent her smaller health meter.
• Underestimating Badassery: Having killed her universe's Crash and Coco, she clearly did not expect the main universe's equivalents to hand her ass to her.
• Viler New Villain: She is introduced during the climax of It's About Time, having formed a Villain Team-Up with the normal universe's N Tropy, who considers her a far more reliable accomplice than Cortex. To match even his Darker and Edgier upgrade in the game, the female N Tropy is even more sadistic and bleak, and is revealed to have killed the Crash and Coco of her and Tawna's universe.
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: Much like her main timeline counterpart, she stands out in this relatively lighthearted series as a truly evil villain. She also forced Tawna to watch as she murdered their universe's Crash and Coco, describing her screams as "exquisite".
• Villain of Another Story: She's the main villain of the Tawnaverse.
• Villainous Cheekbones: Her male counterpart took his to a sunken extreme, but hers are quite refined.
• Walking Spoiler: Her existence spoils the plot of the latter half of It's About Time, namely our N. Tropy’s betrayal of Cortex and their ultimate plan to restart the entire multiverse.
• We Have Become Complacent: A rare villain case. Having beaten and killed her universe's version of Crash and Coco and manhandled her Tawna without much effort, she is established as incredibly haughty and arrogant in the face of the main universe counterparts... only to be defeated rather humiliatingly with one hit and smack by Dingodile. Noticably in On The Run she has amped up her defensive power considerably for her second face off, implying she actually learned from past errors.

Nina Cortex

"Breaking things makes me happy!"

Voiced by: Susan Silo (2004), Amy Gross (2005-08), Debi Derryberry (2007-present)

First appearance: Crash Bandicoot Purple: Ripto's Rampage (2004)

The niece of Doctor Neo Cortex. Once more kindhearted than she is now and had a rather noticeable affinity for small fuzzy animals, she was given bionic hands and sent to Madame Amberly's Academy of Evil to dissuade her from this behavior to make her more like her old man.

She sometimes aids her uncle in his quest for world domination, though they have had a recent falling-out due to a failed plot headed by her and Cortex's boss Uka Uka. She is hinted in one line in Twinsanity to actually be Cortex's daughter, but nothing's come of it since then..

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• Adrenaline Makeover: A unique case, in which she got the radical makeover before the series even started. This makes her Rustland skin in Nitro-Fueled all the more easier to change into, since she's already rude.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: She has white, grayish skin, becoming a bluer tone in the Radical Entertainment titles.
• And Call Him "George": After being given her new hands, she reportedly kept trying to hug animals. Whether it was her not knowing her own strength, or her hands being prone to glitches, it never ended well. Best shown in her On the Run! intro, where she tries to hug a chicken, only for it to go flying after being squeezed too hard.
• Artificial Limbs: Her hands were replaced with mechanical equivalents, and for starters are much, much stronger than her previous ones. Twinsanity is the only entry to show this newly required strength: giving her uncle a hug in this deleted cutscene between the two shows how little effort its required to make Cortex feel really uncomfortable from the pressure alone, and earlier on in a finished cutscene, accidentally snaps his hand when they finally meet up.
• Bastard Understudy: Cortex took her under his wing after she started showing signs of goodness at an early age, "upgrading" her and coaching her in the ways of evil. It worked a little too well, as shown in Crash of The Titans.
• Berserk Button: An in-game quote from Crash Tag Team Racing demonstrates that she hates being referred to as "goth".
• Big Bad: After Cortex's defeat, she takes over as the focus villain of Crash of the Titans and is fought as the Final Boss.
• Big Bad Wannabe: In both versions of Titans (but the DS version especially). She tries to usurp Cortex. Depending on which take, she gets some way there, but proves just as much in over her head against Crash, and ultimately gets Out-Gambitted by her Not So Harmless uncle.
• Boss Remix: Her boss theme in On the Run is an appropriate heavy metal remix of Rooftop Rampage.
• Boyish Short Hair: She has short black hair and is mostly portrayed as an impulsive, snarky Goth girl.
• Bratty Half-Pint: Her Tag Team Racing and her Radical Entertainment incarnations portray her as a rude little brat, the latter especially.
• Brought to You by the Letter "S": She has a lowercase "n" on her forehead in a similar way to her uncle.
• Butt-Monkey: Radical's depiction at least.
• Characterization Marches On: Her original depiction had little to no personality, as she had no dialogues and her face was frozen with a single expression, even when she was kidnapped by a deranged mutant who wanted to eat her alive. Tag Team Racing sets her as a bossy little girl and as a new rival to Coco, but it was only following Radical's tenure that Nina's persona was fully defined, as a conniving brat almost as deranged as her uncle.
• Compressed Hair: Nitro-Fueled seems to suggest this, as both a portrait in Nina's Nightmare and her Ragdoll skin depict her with braids.
• Cuteness Proximity: Had a fondness for small animals, and shown in all of its glory in this model render. Unknown if it still applies to her in Tag Team Racing or the Radical Entertainment titles, likely not the case though. Her character profile for On The Run does confirm that she still has this, and her boss fight intro has her pet a bird before throttling it enough with her grip to send it flying.
• Cyborg: Bit of one with her new and "improved" hands.
• Daddy's Little Villain: Uncle, actually, but still, she proves to be just as villainous.
• Dark Action Girl: She is on Cortex's side and fights Crash sometimes.
• A Day in the Limelight: She takes over as Big Bad in the console version Crash of the Titans and has her own playable arc in the DS version. In Nitro-Fueled, she is the star of the Spooky Grand Prix.
• Does Not Like Spam: She hates Wumpa fruit and by extension anything made from it, like Wumpa Whip.
• The Dragon: She was Co-Dragons with N. Gin to her uncle in Crash Tag Team Racing, and to Uka Uka in Crash of the Titans.
• Dragon Their Feet: In Crash of the Titans, Crash defeats her only after Uka Uka is fought.
• Early-Bird Cameo: First appears in Crash Bandicoot Purple: Ripto's Rampage and was originally going to first appear in Crash Nitro Kart but was cut for unknown reasons.
• Evil Counterpart: Retooled into one for Coco in the Radical Entertainment games. Both exist largely as child sidekicks for Crash and Cortex respectively, both often through tech support. However Coco is largely sweet natured, humble, and looks up to her older brother despite his goofiness, while Nina is malicious, arrogant and treacherous towards her uncle, seeing herself as superior to him.
• Eviler than Thou: In Titans she ends up usurping her Uncle as boss over the Doominator project when Uka grants the first opportunity. Aku treats this with weight, stating that Nina is far smarter and eviler than Cortex himself is. Following her defeat and return-betrayal by her uncle in his own coup afterwards however, it would seem she still has a bit to learn about backstabbery from her Uncle Neo.
• Face–Heel Turn: As of Crash of The Titans, it seems her forced rehabilitation has worked rather well.
• Final Boss: In the Arachnina, she's the last opponent of Crash of the Titans.
• Forgot Flanders Could Do That: A variant; while her personality in Nitro-Fueled is in-line with what the Radical Entertainment titles established, she does actually use her hands for various actions like in Twinsanity again.
• Gone Horribly Right: Nina became the product of Cortex's tutoring to be evil and underhanded. He turns out to be successful in the Radical Entertainment entries, so much that she actually surpassed his backstabbery and overthrown him. He was very proud of her that moment.
• Gonk: The earlier version of her surely didn't go to school to become a model.
• Goth: While she bears a resemblance to the sort, you'd be better off not labeling her as such.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: At least shown in Twinsanity she has long cable-like extensions underneath her grafted hands that allow this to be possible. She later gets to show them off again in Nitro-Fueled, for things like getting into and leaving the title screen, and reaching out to grab the trophy in the sky during her victory podium animation.
• The Heavy: Similar to Tropy in N-Tranced, in Crash of the Titans, Uka Uka decides that Cortex has failed too much and replaces him with Nina.
• Hostile Show Takeover: In the title screen animation for Nitro-Fueled's Spooky Grand Prix. In contrast to Crash showing himself out to let Spyro have the spotlight, Nina outright yanks him away to get all the glory.
• Hot Blooded Sideburns: Her Rustland skin gives her some rather spiky ones.
• Kids Are Cruel: Well, what would you expect from a student of Academy of Evil?
• Large Ham: She certainly has her moments. Her voice lines from Tag Team Racing in particular give her a major flair for the dramatic.
• Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: More like cute, especially with those little Nosferatu-like buckteeth.
• Meaningful Name: Nina means "strong, powerful, kind, and intelligent" in various different cultures, all of which are traits she has shown at least once.
• Mighty Glacier: In Nitro-Fueled, she's one of the few female racers with the Speed-type class, and is more than able to keep up with the grownups that also share it.
• Modesty Shorts: Her Nitro-Fueled redesign gives her a black pair.
• Morality Pet: She is one of few subjects of genuine affection from Cortex, even going against his self-preserving nature to save her. That won't stop him inflicting some gleeful discipline after she betrays him however.
• More Deadly Than the Male: Discussed in Titans, where Uka replaces Cortex with her after getting tired of his failures and impudence. Aku treats this with concern, believing Nina is indeed a more competent threat than her uncle. In action however, Nina is still as Laughably Evil as the male Rogues Gallery, and after her conquest ends the expected way, she gets (literally) booted off to Evil Public School as part of his own Not So Harmless coup.
• Motor Mouth: One quote she uses when speeding past someone has her indulge in this.
  Nina: Quick, write down my license plate! NOT!!
• Mundane Utility: For her official return in Nitro-Fueled, she occasionally makes use of her extendable cyber hands in practical ways, including hanging on to her kart for dear life during a trick jump, and waving to someone in her idle animation.
• Odd Name Out: Notably the only "N"-named human not to have a Punny Name.
• Ow, My Body Part!: In racing games, she occasionally says this when being attacked:
  Nina: Ow, my sinuses...
• Perpetual Smiler: In Twinsanity, she's almost always seen with a grin on her face. Later games give her much more variety in her expressions.
• Pet the Dog: She quite literally adores cuddling little animals.
• Progressively Prettier: Downplayed; while she has maintained her prominent forehead and buck teeth, her Twinsanity/Tag Team Racing◊ look sported a rather stuffy hairstyle and ape-ish face, while her subsequent Titans/Mind over Mutant◊ look gives her a more appealing hair tuft and softer features. Nitro-Fueled applies the latter game's features to her original design.
• Rocket Punch: In On the Run, she gains the ability to fire her fists as a projectile attack, and they're replaced by new ones afterwards.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Like her uncle, she hates Crash and the other Bandicoots starting with Tag Team Racing, though she and Coco seem to loathe each other especially.
• Skip of Innocence: Her walking animation in Twinsanity.
• Spoiled Brat: Implied to be in the Crash of the Titans promotional shorts. Cortex apparently has to bribe her to help him with schemes.
• The Starscream: In Crash of The Titans she takes over Cortex's position after Uka Uka fires him... and he was very proud, though that didn't stop him from punishing her.
• Teen Genius: In the Radical Entertainment titles she's actually smarter (or at least more competent) than her Mad Scientist uncle, according to Aku Aku. She does however retain a lot of his flaws.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Despite her forced rehabilitation, some girly traits occasionally seep through, including her Skip of Innocence in Twinsanity, and checking her "nails" during her Nitro-Fueled idle animation.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Before Cortex made her into a cyborg and sent her to Madame Amberly's that is, although how effective depends on how you view the character herself in her blank slate in Twinsanity alone. More than confirmed to have happened in the Radical Entertainment titles.
• The Voiceless: In Twinsanity only, barring one grunt in the ending.
• Vocal Evolution: Debi Derryberry's first performance as Nina in the DS version of Titans was much more deep and tomboyish, basically a moodier sounding version of her Coco voice. In Nitro Fuelled she replicates Amy Gross' shrill performance more closely.
• Youthful Freckles: Again only present in Twinsanity. That is, until they were brought back for Nitro-Fueled.

Lab Assistants

"Aaaaaaaah!"

Voiced by: Dwight Schultz & Maurice LaMarche (2017), Jess Harnell (2020)^note Uses Crash's voice clips pitched down, Guillermo Badolato (2021)

First appearance: Crash Bandicoot (1996)

Cortex's main cronies outside of his evolved animals. They appear in numerous levels, usually wearing themed costumes.

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• Bewitched Amphibians: In the medieval levels in Warped, some of the Lab Assistants are princes that are transformed into frogs. You'll only know this if one of the frogs gets on Crash and kisses him.
• BFS: Knight Lab Assistants are basically stuck in one spot trying to pull their massive swords out of the ground, only ever managing to spin around with it once before getting it stuck in the ground again. The one that's playable in Nitro-Fueled does manage to lift the sword, but not for very long.
• Butt-Monkey: Even by this series' standards, they are exceptionally prone to misfortune. Unlike most enemies, they don't just get spun away, they also meet their demise in various ways, whether it's falling down a pit, getting incinerated, blown up, and so on.
• Crutch Character: The playable one in Nitro-Fueled is a turn based character.
• Edible Bludgeon: The N. Sane Trilogy version of the two-headed Lab Assistants in the medieval levels carry pairs of roast chickens that they use as clubs.
• Expy: They are essentially a much less threatening version of the T-800, with the assembly line that appears in Warped being a deliberate homage to a trailer for Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
• Gag Nose: They all have long, goofy noses.
• Greaser Delinquents: The ones that appear in the motorcycle levels of Warped look like this, although their N. Sane Trilogy equivalents look more like old-fashioned motorists.
• Inexplicably Identical Individuals: They appear this way in the first game, until it's revealed in the second and third games that they're actually a mass-produced army of Mecha-Mooks.
• Lean and Mean: They're all tall, skinny, and out to get Crash.
• Mecha-Mooks: Revealed to be this throughout the original trilogy. In the first game, the ones that appear in the level "The Lab" inexplicably have electricity coursing throughout their bodies that they use to attack Crash (although in N. Sane Trilogy they wear electric gauntlets). They use the same powers in the jetpack levels of the second game, though this time they appear as half robotic Terminator-like cyborgs. Then, in the third game, the secret warp room has an assembly line of them in the background. Here, their robotic appearance is covered up, they're put into costumes and sent out to the various levels in the game.
• Multiple Head Case: There are Lab Assistants that appear in the level "Double Header" from Warped that are two headed. They're large, fat, and swinging two clubs. After they're knocked out, they can be used as bounce pads.
• One-Gender Race: With them being androids, they all look identical and all appear male. However, this is averted in It's About Time, which features some female Lab Assistants thrown into the mix. They generally look about the same as the males, just with some slight tweaks to their design (shorter noses, smaller chins, and long hair held in ponytails as opposed to buzzcuts).
• Opaque Nerd Glasses: They all wear extremely thick, circular glasses that completely obscure their eyes...if they even have eyes. It's a trait consistent to all of them even if they're wearing various clothes. However, the playable Lab Assistant in Nitro-Fueled has a skin that does give him Black Dot Pupils for the purpose of making him look like Waldo. Their design in It's About Time makes the glasses less opaque and shows them to have tiny eyes.
• Promoted to Playable: One of them finally became playable in Nitro-Fueled.
• Robotic Reveal: The secret room in Warped shows them being made in an assembly line.
• Shock and Awe: One of their means of attacking Crash is to shock him with the electricity coursing through their bodies.
• Sinister Scimitar: Ones appearing in the Arabian levels of Warped carry these.
• The Speechless: They scream and grunt, but never actually speak.
• Stock Scream: Whenever Crash knocks one of them off of a ledge, they let out a pitched-up version of the Howie Scream. Averted in N. Sane Trilogy, Nitro-Fueled and It's About Time, where they're given proper voice actors.
• Underground Monkey: Most of them are created to look the same but they just wear different clothing to suit the theme of the levels.
• Unlimited Wardrobe: From the second game onward, no matter where they are, they're wearing clothing with the appropriate theme. They can be dressed up as lumberjacks, mummies, hunters, pirates, knights, and a whole lot more.

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