Trivia / Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex

---

• Acting for Two: Corey Burton voices N. Gin and N. Tropy.
• All-Star Cast: The voices of the Elementals.
  • Rok-Ko: Thomas F. Wilson doing his voice for Biff Tannen
  • Wa-Wa: R. Lee Ermey doing his voice for Gunnery Sergeant Hartman
  • Lo-Lo: Jess Harnell doing a completely original voice
  • Py-Ro: Mark Hamill doing his voice for The Joker
• Christmas Rushed: The game was developed in just a year for 2001's Christmas season.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: The BradyGames strategy guide calls Lo-Lo Crunch's attacks ice in spite of the clear electrical effects.
• Cut Song: The PS2 version had a unique music track for "Medieval Madness". The Xbox and GameCube versions reuse the music from "The Gauntlet".
• Disowned Adaptation: Naughty Dog's Andy Gavin was unimpressed with The Wrath of Cortex, due to its derivative nature and loading times, finding barely anything his team hadn't already done but in lower quality.
• Dummied Out: The game uses a few areas from early development and planted new levels on top of them. Ice Station Bandicoot for example uses a small platforming area as a background under the helicopter racetrack. An unused racing and dogfight level have also been found inside the game, as well as some extra Coco animations suggesting she was meant to be more fully playable. Even more infamously, a minigame that played on the loading screen was taken out in the eleventh hour due to alleged copyright claims by Namco.
• First Appearance: For Crunch Bandicoot.
• Newbie Boom: Being the first Crash game released on multiple non-Sony markets, this was many gamers' first exposure to the series, and obviously sold in impressive numbers.
• Orphaned Reference:
  • The carpet-riding polar bear Crash randomly faces in "Ice Station Bandicoot" is recycled from the prototype version of the level, where it would have been an enemy on the platforming area below.
  • The outside of "Weathering Heights" is shown damaged and on fire. This is a leftover from a beta dogfight level where you would shoot the aircraft's turrets.
  • The final ending in which Crunch is inexplicably knocked out and unbrainwashed next to Crash abides by an earlier scripted ending in which Crash directly fights Crunch and Cortex smashes his control panel in a fit. In the boss of the game itself you spend most of the time hitting Cortex, with Crunch still conscious by the end of the battle, leaving the ending making less sense.
  • The original level entries were circular warp pads on the ground that the player fell into◊. The game's logo is in fact based on their design, while the loading screen is a continuation of them dropping through to the next area.
• The Other Darrin: Debi Derryberry voices Coco from this game onwards until Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time, where she was replaced with Eden Riegel. Corey Burton also voices N. Gin and N. Tropy instead of Brendan O'Brien and Michael Ensign respectively. He only played these characters here for several lines but made a Role Reprise for the remasters, where his voice was generally considered to have improved.
• The Original Darrin: Aku Aku is once again voiced by the late Mel Winkler here after being replaced with Sherman Howard in Crash Bash.
• Recycled Script: As if the game wasn't accused of being a Carbon Copy of Warped enough. Both games start with Uka Uka reprimanding Cortex for his failure. Then they hatch a new evil plot which involves Power Crystals in some way. Some kind of omen which lets Aku Aku understand that his brother is up to no good happens, and soon after the protagonists gain access to the game's hub which is a set of Warp Rooms. After the final boss is defeated, Uka Uka reveals that you need to collect another kind of artifacts to truly win. After it's collected and the boss is fought again, the villains' base starts to collapse, the heroes escape and relax in their house while Cortex and Uka Uka are left trapped in some distant location.
• Similarly Named Works: In Japan, the game was given the Numbered Sequel treatment and called Crash Bandicoot 4. 19 years later, It's About Time would also bear the number 4 in its title.
• Troubled Production: Mark Cerny was pulled out of the project rather quickly in. Universal then put Traveller's Tales in control and pushed for a recreation of the original games for the next generation consoles within only a year of development time.
• What Could Have Been: Has its own page.
• Working Title: Crash Bandicoot Worlds (under Mark Cerny's direction).

---