As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
- Dr. Cortex is arguably at his most villainous portrayal in this game; he displays little to no comedic qualities, something which the more recent games in the franchise puts more emphasis on. He is downright serious whenever he is on-screen, and his evil laughter is very frequent and oftentimes unsettling, especially in the holo-conversation he has with Crash after he has found all of the crystals.
- The Game Over screen. It's just Cortex's head behind a weird background, with him saying "Game Over." before giving his aforementioned Evil Laugh. If you choose "No" afterwards, Cortex delivers the following line with an unsettling tone:Cortex: I guess you didn't have what it takes, Crash.
- The Un-Bearable level. Bears Are Bad News indeed. An enormous polar bear with Black Eyes of Evil is chasing Crash and he must run for his life. If he gets him, the bear will shove up his face full screen, triumphantly growling and nodding.
- The ruin levels. It's the night and you can barely see anything from beyond. There are big blue gorillas with black lipsticks muttering something while they throw tree trunks and frilled lizards that sound like a man panting. The first monkey idols in the first ruins level are not as hostile as the other flamethrowing idols but they rather stare at Crash, tracking his movement.
- One of Crash's drowning animations depicts him actually struggling to breathe underwater, a rather macabre sight given the cartoonish nature of his other death animations.
- Tiny is at his most fearsome here. Not only is he lacking his usual dopey persona and Hulk Speak, he is much more resilient and completely invincible to Crash's attacks and is introduced with him tearing straight through a reinforced steel door as if it was made of plywood. His boss fight is him leaping at you claws bared and your only method is to jump and evade like crazy. Even when you win it's kind of a change of pace compared to every other boss up to that point, since it isn't clear if Tiny actually survived the encounter; After he falls for the third time, he's limp and unresponsive when the platform drags him back up... and then it drops him again when his weight shifts a bit too far in one direction.
- The bee levels. Not only the persistent swarm of bees that you can evade by getting underground. The Lab Assistants with giant hammers, the two-faced living idols that block your path (they have one angry and one smiling face), the grenade-spitting plants, and a massive overabundance of Nitro Crates. And this all happens in levels that have possibly the happiest-sounding music in the entire game.
- Again, the Blackout Basement levels. It's a bit less scary than the first game, but still, the fact that you're in a deep jungle at night with spiked floating sentries that emit an UFO-like light and the same frilled lizards from the ruin levels can still send one shivers.
- The final battle with Cortex, who Coco has now frantically revealed to be making a grab for the crystals to power his new world-enslaving Cortex Vortex. It consists of Crash chasing the mad scientist through a space ring path filled with meteors and space mines that block your way and our hero has to hit him before he crosses a portal to safety (with the crystals in hand as the N Sane Trilogy reveals). If Cortex crosses he will triumphantly laugh (and not his usual cartoony laugh, a downright sinister foreboding one) and Crash will lose a life. Yes, if Cortex crosses a simple space portal, you lose. It's shuddering. Because it strongly implies he succeeds at enslaving everyone and you failed to stop him.
- Near the end of the credits of the 100% ending, you'll suddenly hear what sounds like Cortex's Evil Laugh. Of course, with the next game and the small case of Acting for Two, the player realizes that's not Cortex's laugh. That's Uka Uka's laugh.
