The fun begins immediately at the title screen! Not only do you get the "Crash gets clobbered by the CTR letters", made even funnier with the improved graphics, but if you deliberately wait at said screen, Crash will not appreciate it. He'll get a cramp in his cheeks from smiling, subtly dart his eyes toward the "Press START" text before outright pointing at it, roll his eyes exasperatedly, start sleeping, look at a butterfly flying by...
With the Spooky Grand Prix comes more title screen fun: wait long enough and Nina will pull Crash off the title screen and take his place.
The Neon Circus Grand Prix provides its own twist: shortly after the title screen is set up, King Chicken wanders around the bottom of the screen, causing Crash to be puzzled at this, but then he just shrugs.
The Winter Festival Grand Prix has Crash wear his Reindeer skin, then he sets aside his trophy to fly around in the air... until his magic dust stops working, to his distress, and he falls off the screen. His associated victory podium animation happens similarly.
The Rustland Grand Prix involves Apo-Apo suddenly arriving, and he circles around the title before he leaves. This causes the "C" letter in CTR to tip over, which forces Crash to put it back into place.
The Gasmoxia Grand Prix has Crash getting abducted by a tractor beam (alongside King Chicken) and Oxide appears on the title screen via teleportation. He grabs the trophy he was always longing to have, only to drop it because of its smell.
Remember the glitches accompanying Penta Penguin in the North American version of the original? Especially "Penguin Yay 1" and the fact that he has both Aku Aku AND Uka Uka for the Mask powerup? Well, Beenox did, and instead of just correcting the bugs, they decided to run with them! Penta now actually says "Penguin Yay 1" for real, and he has Ambiguously Evil moments in his victory animations!
Many podium victory animations are just hilarious:
Krunk notices his headdress has fallen slightly off after a handstand and sheepishly readjusts it.
Little Norm does some mime tricks, then smacks his face into the invisible wall right in front of him while attempting to take a bow. He falls onto another invisible wall he apparently created beforehand.
Real Velo plays to the crowd, hamming it up, then puts a hand to his ear, expecting to hear applause. He instead receives booing, but carries on undisturbed.
Komodo Khan (AKA Komodo Joe dressed like Genghis Khan) shows off with a hugemorning star, but it's clearly too heavy for him, and it falls first on his head, then on his foot.
Bulldog Zam... pisses. Nothing explicit is shown, but it's cringingly obvious what he's doing.
Cowboy Fake Crash gets ready to draw out some guns in a stereotypical cowboy pose, and draws them with a goofy laugh... except it turns out that he doesn't have any, much to Fake Crash's panic.
Star Coco calls for a teleport out, only to return a few seconds later with her still normal-sized head on a shrunken body. Something similar happens to Star Oxide, except he first fires his blaster and launches himself offscreen.
Mad Scientist Crash imitates Cortex's victory animation while summoning a storm cloud above him. He then suddenly gets struck by lightning right after.
Dashing Fake Crash, which dresses the bandicoot in a typical nerdy attire and tooth braces, has him act like a high school sweetheart who bashfully pulls off some moves worthy of Napoleon Dynamite.
Baby Crash does his little Crash dance... only to lose his balance and fall on his face at the end.
Gnome Real Velo rapidly swaps between various poses, standing perfectly still, until he leans seductively on his side while a garden suddenly appears underneath him.
Hunter shoots a few arrows off-screen... only to apparently hit someone, drawing a pained cry, at which point he winces and sheepishly shrinks down while rubbing the back of his head.
Dark Coco passively checks her mobile phone, then notices the player and rolls her eyes in an annoyed way about having to do her usual victory hop, which is much more half-hearted than usual.
Komodo Moe juggles his scimitars until one of them doesn't come down. He acts confused for a moment before shrugging and striking a confident pose... only for said scimitar to land right at his feet, momentarily startling him.
Rustic Fake Crash has him putting a corn cob into a power drill, putting them on his mouth and turning the drill on, peeling the kernels off with his teeth. On top of that, this happens while a stereotypical hillbilly banjo tune plays in the background.
Farmer N. Gin, who for starters has a large carrot in place of the engine lodged in his head. If that image isn't funny enough, he notices another carrot in front of him ready to be plucked. So he pulls it out and... pulls out himself.
Wooden Doll N. Trance celebrates until he falls to pieces with cartoony sound effects. He tries and fails to pull himself together until he does it properly.
Clown Cortex looks depressed and deflated as he pulls out a balloon, which proceeds to take him into the air until it deflates itself, causing him to zip around until he falls on his butt, his shoes squeak, and he laughs it off.
Arctic Nash laughs, only to fall over backwards and struggle to get up. He jumps back up, but clearly has trouble walking around in his eskimo suit while looking for the audience.
Megamix constantly swaps between the default victory animations for Tiny, Dingodile, N. Gin, and Neo Cortex, after twitching in an electrified shock before each one. Since Dingodile's flamethrower is absent, his dance is like a prospector's!
Compared to the other Rustland skins, Rustland N. Gin's animation is rather goofy; as he's doing his robot dance, the makeshift engine in place of his head rocket suddenly shuts down. He then cranks the engine so hard he nearly throws himself off.
Raider Megumi fires her blaster... which shoots out a massive laser beam, knocking it off her hands due to recoil, much to her bewilderment. She awkwardly shrugs it off and then poses with one of her hands doing a finger gun pretending it's her blaster that she dropped.
King Space Chicken... just does his default victory animation. But this time, he can't peck on the ground directly as his head is now encased in a glass helmet, bumping it every time he pecks.
N. Brioctopus laughs as he arrives from above, stands still, and tries to lunge at the screen... right before a tractor beam takes him away, complete with an utterly unamused expression.
Astronaut Kong flexes his muscles before activating his anti-gravity belt, in which he continues to flex as he's floating upwards, much to his horror.
Fixed Rilla Roo initially pounds his chest, but then stands still to check on his face, letting out a sigh of relief afterwards as if he's aware of his facial makeover, then continues the rest of his default animation.
Baby Cortex stands still, acting innocently for a brief moment, then fires off his pacifier, which is actually a ray gun. After two shots, the gun malfunctions and explodes on his face.
Knight Lab Assistant signals to the audience with a thumbs up, then strains to successfully lift up his sword with a triumphant pose... until it makes his arm start shaking from the weight, startling him into dropping it.
The defeat animations of the various characters can be funny as well.
Ripper Roo struggles to get out of his straitjacket, only to get tangled up in the sleeves.
Penta pretends to die in a very melodramatic over-the-top manner, after which he sits back up and smiles innocently.
Compared to his victory animation, Gnasty comes off a lot more dignified in his defeat animation.
Pasadena is more concerned about struggling to pop a bottle of Wumpa Whip than she is about losing, giving a brief wave to the audience once she notices them, only to go back to her futile endeavour not even two seconds later.
When he loses, King Chicken does the exact same thing as when he wins: looking around a bit and occasionally pecking in a nearby pile of bird seed, accentuating the fact that King Chicken is nothing more than a regular animal without human intelligence.
Chick and Stew's podium loss animations show how the two handle their loss differently; Chick just stands still, looking around with an indignant expression while occasionally checking on his headphones, while Stew sits down and pants, clearly exhausted from whatever he's doing.
The expression Stew makes in his podium loss animation is also a reference to the face he made in the Back N. Time CTR TV report, but with his tongue sticking out.
The Iron Checkpoint Crate's podium loss animation is just it turned over on its side... and that's it. And this somehow gives an impression that the crate is "upset" over its loss.
The characters also have much more room to show personality while racing thanks to more dialogue and animation, some cases of which can also be pretty funny.
Papu Papu, while idle, will snap his finger twice to his left before pointing to his open mouth, indicating "feed me", possibly to one of his villager minions.
Pinstripe will loudly yell, "Forget about it!" while passing another racer.
N. Trance drives standing up, as he likely can't bend his legs. This game also reveals him to be a Waddling Head inside a mechanical suit, so he has to hold himself in when doing a Trick Jump.
Real Velo constantly plays to the crowd while he's driving. During a Trick Jump in particular he waves seductively to his left.
Liz bats her eyelashes innocently while idle and while racing occasionally shouts that "Your mum's an armadillo!"
One of Fake Crash's victory quotes is an especially long soundbite of goofy chuckling. He pantomimes this occasionally while idle.
Oxide occasionally remarks that "unicycling sounds fun" if he fails to place first, alluding to his accident. He kicks his four legs during his Trick Jump, which is even funnier if he is wearing his Shower Cap costume, which is designed so that his underside is prominent and his feet wear slippers. A promotional image for the game shows him raising a toothbrush with his free hand during this same gesture.
Small Norm reacts to most things by whistling. This includes a rather low-pitched wolf whistle when he wins. His race loss animation has him angrily biting into his beret and accidentally swallowing it. Fortunately, he has a new one to spare.
Chick has an idle animation where he twirls his microphone (which, of course, he has with him at all times). Stew tries to do the same thing in his own idle animation... only to drop it. After a brief awkward moment, he pulls another microphone out from his sleeve.
The new "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue offers loads of moments, expanding on those from the original Crash Team Racing or creating new ones outright:
Ripper Roo becomes a thrill ride engineer... but ends up blacklisted after officials learn that every ride he creates is just a new way for him to test his pain threshold. Yep, our favourite nutcase kangaroo is as crazy as ever!
The omission of Oxide's unicycle accident in his ending is changed to "the ratings boards are watching us", having the effect of rather amusing banter from the developers.
Some of the bosses' cutscenes from Adventure Mode are funny as well.
Ripper Roo is Laughing Mad as he blows up a massive pile of explosives to introduce himself. The sheer insanity he exudes is enough to get some players to chuckle. After his defeat, he literallycoughs the key up to give it to you, though this occurs offscreen.
Papu Papu is as ham-tastic as can be, with a quartet of villagers carrying his kart in with him atop it like a palanquin. As he boasts, he carelessly smacks his villagers one by one, knocking them out cold, and he finishes by tossing his staff, which lands on the last villager he has recently smacked (bonus points for accidentally blaring the horn with his gut as he sits down). Despite this careless display, however, Papu Papu manages a perfect three-point turn to avoid actually running over any of his subjects on the way out. After you beat him, the key he's about to give you has a donut ringed around it, which Papu eats off before handing it over. This is on top of various other things that fall off his person while he digs the key up.
The remastered tracks, battle arenas, and Adventure areas have some amusing touches and plenty of Funny Background Events:
Citadel City and Cortex Castle feature architecture and stained glass glorifying Cortex to an insane degree. In particular, there are images of an exaggerated muscular Cortex, Cortex holding Uka Uka in an Alas, Poor Yorick pose with Crash's angel below, an immaculate window of Uka Uka (in the style of Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy's Game Over screen), and Cortex in drag impersonating Coco. Prominent statues of Cortex pointing also advertise directions. "CTR" at the starting grid is also a neon sign with a Lab Assistant getting electrocuted on it constantly.
In Tiger Temple, tigers are seen all over the place. On the bridges above the track, tigers can be seen chasing chickens, but every so often the chicken can be seen chasing the tiger for a change.
Papu's Pyramid shows a Lab Assistant in hunting gear perched over the starting gate trying to fire a musket at a sleeping lion, but the musket droops. There is also a Lab Assistant trying to row a boat up a waterfall but staying in the absolute same place, and a class of Fly Traps being taught by one with glasses and a chalkboard.
In Polar Pass, the "CTR" sign over the finish line has one of the big polar bears from N. Sane Trilogy stuck on top and afraid to get down, the second iceberg in the criss-cross section has been repurposed into a house marked "FOR SALE", and party lights and music are blasting right next to the jump directly after the seal tunnel.
The Bandifish enemy from Warped can be seen as a mounted game fish above the tunnel in Blizzard Bluff, where penguins are seen riding chairlifts.
Some of Pinstripe's henchmen can be seen celebrating noisily in Sewer Speedway and Hot Air Skyway. Notably, the latter track is given away to gambling, featuring roulettes, casino advertisements, and face cards with Crash, Coco, Cortex, and Pinstripe on them. The former track also features the living blobs from The Lab and N. Brio's boss fight in N. Sane Trilogy; one is slumbering in one of the pipes surrounding its warp pad.
Advertisements can be seen in Tiny Arena and Parking Lot for various energy drinks which contain "Element 117", the one originally named "Cortexrulestheworldium" by Cortex in Crash Team Racing (119 in Nitro-Fueled). Said drinks include Wumpa Whip and "Tiny Bits".
Hearing the karts honk at a player or other computer characters when they bump into one another is a touch that can catch some players not expecting it off guard. Players can also honk manually when there isn't an item on their person. Horns are also unique to each kart body; arguably the looniest are that of Six Pipes, which is a cartoonish old-style horn and Team Oxide, which is a stereotypical clown horn.
The Nitros Oxide digital comic released alongside the game reveals that while each of the other bosses found their key by intercepting a drone, Ripper Roo found his after a drone accidentally dropped it on his head, leaving him to fish it out of the water he was sitting next to.
It's also shown that not only is the intro cutscene's montage seen from the viewpoint of the several drones Oxide has observing the competition, but he's been watching them all from on the toilet. And when he finishes up to scatter his Boss Keys, he has a Toilet Paper Trail.
All the tracks and shortcuts were also created by Oxide... or more specifically his team of mistreated and very disgruntled robots, who curse at him in binary behind his back.
A Once-Green Mars is shown as a barren parking lot, being of course a victim of Oxide's "Survival of the Fastest". This serves as the Crash Bandicoot universe's explanation for alien life coming from anywhere but there.
Pictured above: the CTR TV report for Back N. Time has Stew left in a paralyzed state of shock after he sees the latest karts, and he remains that way for the rest of the video.
The in-game version of the Back N. Time report features a line that was sadly removed from the Youtube version:
Chick:[Pointing at Stew] This is Stew!
Stew: And I'm Stew!
The Back N. Time track, Prehistoric Playground, is equal parts hilarious and weirdly adorable. The thought process behind it is "What if Fake Crash stole N. Tropy's tuning fork scepter and started messing with it?" The result is a track taking place during the age of the dinosaurs... but everything now wears Fake Crash's iconic overbite, dull eyed stare and massive eyebrows, from the cave-bandicoots, to the dinosaurs, to even Baby T., via a Legendary skin for him. Baby T's podium animation even has his dance, and he wiggles his eyebrows and butt.
Hunter's inclusion can be seen as inherently hilarious, since the majority of male anthropomorphic characters in the Crash series wear clothes, fully or halfway. He doesn't.
While speeding through the first hallway of the mansion segment of Nina's Nightmare, one can see appropriately creepy portraits of villains in various guises, including a pigtailed Nina, werewolf Tiny, Frankenstein's monster N. Brio...and then there's ballerina N. Gin doing a pirouette.
The concept of King Chicken is just as gloriously ridiculous as it sounds; an ordinary chicken wearing a crown, with the ability to drive cars.
His appearance in the Grand Prix opening cinematic is great; Chick & Stew are wrapping up their presentation when suddenly they notice the (non-anthropomorphic) chicken sitting on their desk. They just stare in bemusement for a few seconds, and then while Chick keeps rolling with his lines like nothing's happened, Stew grins, pulls out a tiny crown and puts it on the chicken's head.
Reminiscent of his Tag Team Racing incarnation, Von Clutch's driving stance has him standing up on one leg, holding his megaphone with his left hand and the steering wheel with his right. Needless to say, it's an unorthodox way to drive.
The CTR TV report for the Winter Festival Grand Prix has a fair few antics going on in it:
Stew is seen eating the various delicacies of Gingerbread Joyride while Chick does the actual reporting. This was going to include a jelly person, until Chick's offer to join the races perks him up.
Unlike Hasty and Yaya Panda, Rilla Roo doesn't pay attention to the camera and runs away from it.
The CTR TV report for the Rustland Grand Prix starts as normal... only for the announcer to find the studio to be left in the dark with haphazardly put "decoys"note They were just a broom and a lamp stuck with headphones (and a wig resembling Stew's hair for the lamp and a bowtie for the broom) of Chick and Stew in place of them, because they were busy racing. The announcer's aptly confused and ends up bringing the report by himself.
Also a bit of Fridge Humor, Chick's Rustland skin (prior to the Gasmoxia update) lacks his bowtie. That's because he purposefully left it in the studio to stick into his decoy.
Megamix's engine class is "Balanced". Which Megamix most definitely is not, seeing how much trouble it has holding itself together.
The fact that Emperor Velo was purposely held off until the 8th and final Grand Prix...as the 51st racer, for a space theme. That's going through a lot of trouble for a Stealth Pun like this.
When starting a race in Drive-Thru Danger, the voiceover in the intercom can say one of the lines below. What sells it is how deadpan and unamused the guy sounds.
"Welcome to Toxic Burger, can I take your order?" "Would you like Toxic Fries with that?" "Thank you for choosing Toxic Burger. How can we poison you today?" "Thank you for choosing Nuclear Pizza. Would you like to hear about our explosive new deals?" "That'll be 3,000 Wumpa Coins. Please proceed to the airlock." "Unfortunately, I'm not at liberty to disclose the nutritional value of any items on our menu, thanks for understanding." "Toxic Burger is not responsible for any irritation, burning, or any permanent loss of esophageal muscles, blah blah blah." "Three large Nuclear Pizzas, with extra sludge... Go to the next window."
King Chicken, wearing his space skin, can be seen aimlessly drifting around in the title screen animation and end of the report for the Gasmoxia Grand Prix.
YMMV on whether this is canon or not, but the Activision Blog post detailing the final Grand Prix makes a note that Emperor Velo is only a "self-proclaimed" ruler of the galaxy, and states that the true benevolent ruler of the galaxy is...King Chicken.
In the update following the Gasmoxia GP, joining Lab Assistant and the baby scientists is... the checkpoint crate. No, seriously,it is playable. And its victory animation is to sit there inanimately (complete with an Audible Gleam) with even less explanation than King Chicken as to how it not only entered a race but proceeded to beat everyone.
. And its victory animation is to sit there inanimately (complete with an Audible Gleam) with even less explanation than King Chicken as to how it not only entered a race but proceeded to beat everyone.