Video Game / Crash Bandicoot

Spinning his way through adventure, one obstacle at a time!

"Oh, how I hate bandicoots."

— Doctor Neo Cortex, Crash Twinsanity

Crash Bandicoot is a video game series once seen as Sony Computer Entertainment's unofficial mascot and its answer to Mario and Sonic. Originally began under the auspices of Sony itself, publishing rights changed hands to Vivendi Universal Games,^note Since 2004, Vivendi Universal had no connection with the Hollywood film and television studio of the same name, whose stake was sold to General Electric to form NBCUniversal. then Sierra Entertainment before both were liquidated when Vivendi Universal (which owned Sierra and Blizzard Entertainment) joined hands with Activision to form Activision Blizzard. The games star the eponymous Crash Bandicoot, a genetically enhanced marsupial and failed experiment on behalf of Dr. Neo Cortex, resident Mad Scientist and world conqueror, and more often than not the two wind up butting heads against one another, either for Crash to thwart Cortex's evil plans or just racing go-karts against one another. The games are mostly platform or action/adventure. The games are noted for the main character, who has a flavorsome personality despite being a Silent Protagonist, as well as their goofy humor, colorful visuals, and difficulty level which ranges from challenging to extreme despite being for children.

The original three PlayStation games, developed by Naughty Dog, were purely linear 3D platformers and became massively successful. The series was famed for its humorous cartoony tone (losing a life often forms an amusing slapstick death for Crash, and nearly all levels — and even some of the characters — have ridiculously Punny Names, for example). Naughty Dog followed the trilogy up with a racing spinoff, but then moved on to other franchises. The Crash series was handed to new developers as Sony lost the publishing rights, enabling it to go multi-platform. Unfortunately, no single developer stuck and the series ended up bouncing around for a while, which led to a lack of consistency. At first, the new developers tried to emulate Naughty Dog's style, but those games were ridiculed as lower-quality carbon copies.

Starting with Crash Twinsanity, the fifth main series game, developers attempted to inject new life into the franchise by exaggerating the humor and giving the series a more self-aware vibe. Unfortunately, Twinsanity ended up being overly ambitious and the final product was rushed and received average reviews from critics, though fan reception was much more positive.

The series finally found a consistent set of developers with Radical Entertainment, who made the divisive decision to dramatically redesign the entire cast and rewrite their personalities to feature a much larger amount of pop-culture based Non Sequitur humor spaced throughout gameplay chit-chat (though the older games were still referenced occasionally, so this wasn't technically a Continuity Reboot). After making a racing spinoff game of their own, Radical took a swing at producing the sixth and seventh main entries in the series, Crash of the Titans and Crash: Mind Over Mutant. These games dropped the emphasis on platforming to instead focus on co-op melee combat and a "jacking" mechanic where Crash could control defeated enemies.

However, Radical's gamble failed to pay off, as these games performed below expectations. Radical began work on a full-fledged Continuity Reboot that would bring Crash more in line with his classic design, but then the entire studio got the ax, and the franchise was relegated to mobile phone games. Luckily, though, these games sold remarkably well (with the last of the mobile games quietly reverting the characters back to their classic designs).

After six years with no sign of life from the franchise, and just in time for his 20th year of existence, Crash made his triumphant return to consoles in 2016 with a playable appearance in a game-within-a-game in Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, another game made by Naughty Dog. Shortly afterwards, it was announced that the original three Naughty Dog games would be receiving HD remakes for the PlayStation 4 developed by Vicarious Visions (the GBA games and Crash Nitro Kart's developer) titled the N. Sane Trilogy. Naughty Dog's racing spin-off also ended up getting the remake treatment in the form of Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, this time developed by Canadian company Beenox.

In a news report from IGN, Max Arguile, manager of GB Eye — a merchandising company that works with Activision — hinted at more upcoming Crash Bandicoot games, including one scheduled for a potential 2019 release. While still nothing more than rumors, Arguile also hinted about a 5-year plan and the possibility of other games. The same article also mentioned the Switch and PC release of the N. Sane Trilogy, which were later realized, as was the 2019 game in the form of Nitro-Fueled. Come 2020, Toys for Bob, the company responsible for porting N. Sane Trilogy to the Switch, was commissioned to bring back the traditional Crash experience in Crash's first new platforming game since Mind Over Mutant. Set right after Warped, Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time was released on October 2, 2020. At the same time, a major mobile title called Crash Bandicoot: On the Run! came out on March 25, 2021, instead following from Mind Over Mutant.

The Crash franchise has a long history of crossing over with the Spyro the Dragon games. Their initial developers, Insomniac Games and Naughty Dog have been close allies for years. They worked on Spyro and Crash literally right next to each other, in the same room. Jak and Daxter and Ratchet & Clank have a similar relationship for the same reason.

When a redesigned Spyro appeared in the new, wildly successful Skylanders franchise, it was only a matter of time before Crash followed suit — which he did In Skylanders Imaginators, where Crash and Cortex each have their own playable toys that unlock an extra Crash-themed level. Furthermore, Crash made his Western Animation debut in the Netflix animated series, Skylanders Academy, Suddenly Voiced to boot. The exchange isn't one-sided, either; Spyro himself has appeared as cameos in some Crash games, as well as becoming a playable racer in both the portable versions of Nitro Kart and in Nitro Fueled. As noted above, Toys for Bob, the developer for Skylanders, eventually went on to develop a Crash game, having been also responsible for overseeing a Spyro remake compilation.

Games

Console Games:

• Crash Bandicoot (1996) — In an effort to create a bunch of anthropomorphic, hyper-intelligent animals to serve as an army to lead them to world domination, Dr. Neo Cortex and Dr. Nitrus Brio create the Evolv-O-Ray, a device that can mutate any animal into a super-strong, hyper-intelligent warrior, and the Cortex Vortex, a brain manipulation device that can make anyone and anything a blind follower of Cortex's orders. One of their first experiments with the Evolv-O-Ray is Crash, a bandicoot snatched from the local island wilderness and chosen to serve as the leader of Cortex's army. However, the Cortex Vortex fails on Crash, and he is discarded as a failed specimen while Cortex and Brio prepare to experiment on Crash's love interest, Tawna. The next day, Crash washes up on the shores of N. Sanity Beach and vows to defeat Cortex and rescue Tawna from his fortress, with the help of a native mask spirit named Aku Aku who wants Crash to take down Cortex so he'll stop polluting the islands.
• Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back (1997) — One year after the original game, Cortex turns to Crash for help in an effort to prevent the planet Earth from facing certain doom. All the planets in the solar system will align soon, and, according to Cortex, create enough energy to tear the world apart. His solution to the crisis lies in crystals: In the aftermath of the original game he discovered the Master Crystal, but that alone will not be enough - he needs Crash to collect 25 Slave Crystals so he can contain the energy of the planetary alignment and save Earth. There's more to it than that, however...
• Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped (1998) — In the aftermath of Crash 2, an evil elemental mask named Uka Uka is freed from his underground prison, and is revealed to have been the true mastermind behind Neo Cortex's schemes. Seeing as Crash had already collected all the crystals and gems on Earth at the end of Crash 2 and the planet is left without a proper power source for Cortex to use for his next scheme, Uka Uka decides to recruit a scientist by the name of N. Tropy to create the Time Twister, a time machine which Cortex and Uka Uka can use to retrieve the crystals from past and future eras. With the help of Uka Uka's counterpart, Aku Aku, Crash and Coco Bandicoot race to the Time Twister to collect the crystals again before Cortex and Uka Uka get a chance to do so.
• Crash Team Racing (1999) — The cast of the original trilogy decide to organize a go-karting championship for no apparent reason, until an invading alien named Nitros Oxide arrives, claiming to be the greatest racer in the galaxy and inviting the people of Earth to bring forth their fastest racer to compete against him in a race. Should Oxide win the race, however, he threatens to turn the planet into an intergalactic parking lot and make slaves of all its natives, so the logical thing to do is to organize a championship to see who gets the honour of racing against Oxide and saving Earth once again.
• Crash Bash (2000) — The Great Uka Uka decides that it's time to settle his conflict with Aku Aku once and for all, but Aku Aku informs him that they can't fight directly as it is forbidden by the Ancients, so he instead suggests that they hold a contest to determine the resolution. Uka Uka relents, and they summon Crash and Cortex to choose their partners. However, Cortex chooses too many players (Koala Kong, Dingodile, N. Brio, Tiny Tiger, and newcomer Rilla Roo), while Crash only has Coco by his side. Aku Aku forces Cortex to relinquish Tiny and Dingodile to the good side to make both sides even, and the contest finally starts.
• Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex (2001) — Intending to make up for his past failures, Cortex creates a secret weapon to destroy Crash — a bandicoot named Crunch. To give Crunch the power he needs to accomplish this, Cortex frees the Elementals, a group of masks with destructive powers over earth, water, fire, and air. Meanwhile, Crash and his friends become aware of the natural disasters occurring due to the Elementals, and use Coco's new VR Hub System to once again collect crystals in order to seal away the Elementals again and stop Crunch and Cortex at all costs. This was the first game to make a leap to a next-gen console, developed by Traveler's Tales' Knutsford division and originally released on the PlayStation 2 and later ported to the Xbox and Nintendo GameCube.
• Crash Nitro Kart (2003) — One day, Crash and his friends are going about their day when they are suddenly abducted by a UFO. Around the same time, Cortex is working on yet another plot to destroy Crash when he gets abducted as well, along with a handful of his henchmen. Crash and Cortex find themselves in a galactic racing circuit, where the ruler of the galaxy, Emperor Velo XXVII, forces them to race for his people's entertainment until they can go free, or let the Earth be destroyed. With no other choice, Crash and Cortex agree to participate in the races. The second racing game and the first console Crash game developed by Vicarious Visions, Nitro Kart was to Crash Team Racing what Wrath of Cortex was to Crash 3.
• Crash Twinsanity (2004) — Cortex lures Crash into a trap in yet another attempt to destroy the bandicoot, but they are interrupted by the arrival of strange evil twin parrots from another dimension who want to destroy the world and seem to have some sort of grudge against Cortex. Crash and Cortex have no choice but to team up and stop the twins from wreaking havoc. Developed by Traveller's Tales' Oxford division.
• Crash Tag Team Racing (2005) — A popular autoracing theme park with a high casualty rate has its Power Gems stolen, and its founder, Ebeneezer Von Clutch, recruits Crash and Cortex to help find them and bring them back before the park is shut down, with Von Clutch himself going down with it, as his life depends on one of his gems. Whoever finds all the Power Gems first gets to be the new owner of Von Clutch's MotorWorld. This is the third racing game in the franchise, and the first Crash game to be developed by Radical Entertainment. The game was an attempt at combining everything the Crash games had ever been, including platforming sections and minigames in between the racing. On top of that, several changes went afoot - Crunch suddenly transformed into an Affectionate Parody of Mr. T for no apparent reason, Cortex started showing himself to be even more of a Butt-Monkey than in Twinsanity, and above all, Crash finally gained a voice (albeit talking entirely in gibberish).
• Crash of the Titans (2007) — Cortex has been stealing mojo from the Temple of Zoom to create an army of Titans and is constructing a Humongous Mecha called the Doominator. He even goes as far as to capture Coco. However, Uka Uka decides to fire Cortex and appoint Nina in his place. She immediately takes over her uncle's operations and brainwashes Coco to work on the Doominator. Crash must stop Nina by "jacking" the various Titans they've created and using their powers to progress through the level. The first Crash game developed for seventh-generation consoles (Wii and Xbox 360, as well as the PS2, being the Daddy System it is) and the first main game developed by Radical Entertainment, it was most notable for the introduction of a major character redesign to the entire cast and a horde of Powerup Mounts in the eponymous Titans.
• Crash: Mind Over Mutant (2008) — Cortex and N. Brio reunite to develop a personal digital assistant called the NV in order to control the now-dormant Titans and bandicoots. Crunch and Coco become affected, but Crash does not, once again leaving it up to him to save the day.

• Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy (2017) — A collection of the original PS1 games remade from the ground up with updated graphics by Vicarious Visions. Historically, Vicarious Visions' Crash games have always been the most faithful to Naughty Dog's, so they're a great fit (incidentally, they were also in charge of making sure Crash's appearance in Skylanders was faithful to his roots).
• Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled (2019) — A remake of Crash Team Racing in the same style as the N. Sane Trilogy. In addition to bringing the PS1 classic into the modern age, the game also features a metric ton of additional content, including all of the tracks, characters and vehicles from Nitro Kart. Monthly Grand Prix events expand the roster over time, adding brand new tracks, karts, and characters, culminating in a massive roster of nearly every character who has ever appeared in the series.
• Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time (2020) — The first new Crash Bandicoot platformer in over ten years, released on PS4 and Xbox One, developed by Toys for Bob. It follows directly after Warped rather than continuing on from the games made after the PlayStation trilogy and features a time/dimension-shifting plot that also sees Dr. Neo Cortex, Dingodile, and Tawna join in as a playable character in addition to Crash and Coco.
• Crash Team Rumble (2023) — A team-based 4v4 game in the style of It's About Time where you fight to collect more Wumpa Fruit than the opposing team using your character's special abilities to defend your Wumpa Fruit.

Handheld/Mobile Games:

• Crash Bandicoot 99 X (1998) — A game developed and published by Tiger Electronics for their series of dot-matrix screen handhelds "99X Games", with permission from Naughty Dog for the license. Despite being officially titled "Crash Bandicoot", the game is not a port nor remake of the first game, but a completely original story where Crash and Aku Aku go to the mansion of the now-deceased Mr. Crumb to collect his rumored "forbidden treasure", and have to deal with Mr. Crumb's undead army along the way. Notable for being both the first Crash game not to be developed by Naughty Dog and the first Spin-Off game in the Crash series.
• Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure (XS in PAL regions, 2002) — Cortex develops the Planetary Minimizer and uses it to shrink the earth. Crash learns of this and sets off to retrieve yet more crystals so that Coco can reverse the effects. This is the first game developed by Vicarious Visions. This is also the first Crash game developed for a handheld console (the Game Boy Advance). The selection of videogame settings makes this game a bit of a portable version of Crash 2, with a bit of Crash 3 thrown in.
• Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced (2003) — After the previous game ended with Cortex trapped in his destroyed space station and lost in space, Uka Uka decides to make N. Tropy into his right-hand man in his place. N. Tropy's first act under Uka Uka's employ is to look into the future, and sees a vision of himself surrounded by Crash, Coco, and Crunch. He interprets this as the bandicoots joining their side, so he brings out a new recruit named N. Trance, with the intent on making the bandicoots Brainwashed and Crazy. They proceed to pull the bandicoots into their dimensional hideout, but Aku Aku interferes when they attempt to take Crash, and the villains unknowingly end up taking Fake Crash. Crash must now travel between dimensions, gathering crystals, freeing his friends and Fake Crash from the hypnotism, and stopping N. Tropy and N. Trance from doing any further harm. The second portable game. This one ends with Uka Uka witnessing his failure yet again and deciding to forgo all dragons and take on Crash himself. This plot thread is Left Hanging. Similarly to The Huge Adventure, the selection of videogame settings and gameplay shifts make this feel like a portable version of Crash 3, with a mix of Wrath of Cortex thrown in.
• Crash Bandicoot Purple: Ripto's Rampage (Fusion in PAL regions, 2004) — Cortex and Ripto agree to destroy Crash and Spyro the Dragon together using genetically altered Riptocs to trick them into fighting each other. This plan works for a while, but during their fight, Crash and Spyro realise what's really going on and team up to save their worlds from Cortex and Ripto. This game is a crossover with the Spyro the Dragon franchise by Vicarious Visions. Shares a story with Spyro Orange: The Cortex Conspiracy. (Spyro Fusion in Europe)
• Crash Boom Bang! (2006) — A Tasmanian devil called the Viscount is searching for the fabled Super Big Power Crystal as it has the power to grant wishes, but his quest is ending in failure. He decides to con unsuspecting people into doing the work for him, sending them invitations to the "World Cannonball Race". Of course, Crash and Cortex are among those who are invited. The Viscount sends the contestants to find and give him four stone tablets (so the location of the crystal can be revealed), but Cortex ruins everything by attempting to steal the map and ends up tearing it apart. This makes the Viscount confess the truth of the situation to everyone, so they are willing to help him find the Crystal in turn for a great sum of money. This is the second party game to be released, and is developed by Dimps, being the first game to be developed by a Japanese company.
• Crash Nitro Kart 2 (2008) — A Java-based mobile phone racing game that is a successor to Crash Nitro Kart In Name Only, bringing back some familiar faces and adding a new one (a panda named Yaya). Noticeably reverts back to the original aesthetics of the series, with only a few remnants of Radical's retool (and even changes by previous developers) still apparent.
• Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3 D (2008) — A racing mobile game published by Activision. Cortex teams up with Oxide and they stage a racing tournament to challenge the protagonists, where the losing team is banished from N. Sanity Island. Later got a sequel titled Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 2 which is essentially the original improved in pretty much every area.
• Crash Bandicoot Mutant Island (2009) — In a mashup of Titans' and Mind Over Mutant's plots, Crash must stop Cortex when he creates a giant robot and begins distributing mind-controlling headsets to the inhabitants of the island. The game goes back to the days of old school side-scrolling platformers, with Crash running, climbing, jumping, and swinging throughout his journey. In contrast to the two games mentioned Titans are the game's bosses, where there are only 3 of them and in order to defeat them you must first climb them to tame them (by tickling them, no less), and once you've tamed them, they shrink down to a more affordable size and you can summon them at any time.
• Crash Bandicoot: On the Run! (2021) — An Endless Runner Mobile Phone Game released on iOS and Android on March 25th, 2021, and developed by Candy Crush Saga makers King. Similarly to It's About Time but taking far more from the post-Naughty Dog and Radical eras, it follows a dimension-shifting plot where Cortex summons foes from across the multiverse to deal with Crash and Coco. The game first soft-launched on the Google Play Store in select countries such as Malaysia on April 22nd, 2020. The game closed on February 16, 2023.

Other games featuring Crash:

• Spyro Orange: The Cortex Conspiracy (Spyro Fusion in Europe, 2004) — Basically just Crash Purple from Spyro's perspective, as previously mentioned.
• Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (2016) — Another Naughty Dog game that features an unskippable level of the first Crash Bandicoot game. This is not an emulation, but actually a complete remake of the original game from the ground up, which Naughty Dog seemingly did solely for the sake of a cool easter egg, or possibly to promote the upcoming HD remakes.
• Skylanders: Imaginators (2016) — When a wormhole opens up connecting Skylands with Wumpa Island, Crash decides to join the Skylanders to help fight off Kaos's Doomlanders. The "Crash Edition" of the game comes with playable Crash and Cortex toys and a level set on Wumpa Island. Crash's appearance here is fitting seeing as Skylanders began life as a spinoff of the Spyro franchise, with which the Crash franchise has a long history of crossing over. This marks the first time Crash and Spyro can fight side-by-side in the same game, albeit this is a different Spyro from the one Crash met before. The Wii U version, with its console-exclusive toys, also marks the first time Crash can team-up with characters associated with a certain mustache-man plumber-boy the marsupial once held a grudge with back in 1996.

Unlike many other popular game franchises, Crash hasn't spawned too much in terms of alternate media. Besides the aforementioned Poorly Disguised Pilot in Skylanders Academy, Crash has also received three separate Japanese manga in CoroCoro Comic; Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot: Dansu! De Jump! Na Daibouken and Crash Bandicoot: Kattobi! Spin World. These manga were never officially localized outside of Japan, but a character from ''Dansu! De Jump!'', Penta Penguin, appears as a secret unlockable character in CTR and its remake Nitro-Fueled.

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This game series is the Trope Namer for:

• Academy of Evil: One of the levels in Crash Twinsanity. A creepy school for future evildoers, of which Dr. Cortex is a former alumni and where his niece Nina was once enrolled (she's currently in Evil Public School).
• Citadel City: From Crash Team Racing, the fourth Hub Level, resembling a fortified medieval village.

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This game series provides examples of:

A-M

• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: The sewer levels in the second game has Crash running rather freely inside them. It becomes even more spacious in CTR's Sewer Speedway, a whole race track in a giant sewer pipe.
• Advancing Wall of Doom:
  • A few of the earlier games had levels where you run from a giant boulder (or a giant snowball, or a giant polar bear, or a triceratops...). The worst part being that you're running toward the camera, making obstacle dodging and box collecting very much a process of trial-and-error.
  • Twinsanity has an Advancing Walrus of Doom.
• Action Girl:
  • Coco becomes playable in Warped, though she lacks her brother's offensive moves. Later games, including the remake, upgrade her moveset so she can traverse the levels just as easily as Crash.
  • Tawna eventually followed suit in the Activision era, via Nitro-Fueled and her own parallel-universe counterpart in 4.
• Aerith and Bob: Alongside characters with names like Crash, Dingodile and Nefarious, a lot of its characters have normal names, but with the exception of Coco and Nina, they're part of a pun (Neo Cortex, Victor and Moritz).
• Alien Abduction: Crash Nitro Kart starts with Velo abducting both Team Bandicoot and Team Cortex to force them to participate in the galaxy racing tournament.
• Aliens Speaking English: Crash Team Racing and Crash Nitro Kart have aliens of several different species as villains, and all of them speak perfect English. This is especially bad in Crash Nitro Kart where Velo speaks to his fellow subjects in English. Maybe justified with at least Terra, where it's admitted it was based on Earth.
• All There in the Manual:
  • Tawna's absence in later games was hand waved in Japanese canon in some official bios, stating she had dumped Crash for Pinstripe Potoroo shortly before the second game.
  • The Wrath Of Cortex's manual divulges on a lot of unseen depths and origins about the cast, among them being Coco and Tiny also being mutants created by Cortex. It also explains the games' crystals being utilized to seal away the Elementals once again (their fate never explained in the game).
• Alternate Continuity: As of Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time, there are at least two distinct continuities, both taking place after the original trilogy and Crash Team Racing. One continuity either truly begins with Crash Bash or The Wrath of Cortex and ends with Mind Over Mutant, while the other starts with the aforementioned Crash 4.
• Alternative Foreign Theme Song:
  • The Japanese version of Crash Nitro Kart has a different theme song. It can be found here.
  • Some of the music in the Japanese versions of early Crash Bandicoot games were altered as well. For example, there's this.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: A staple of the series. Cortex has yellow skin, N. Tropy has blue skin, Nina has chalk white skin (later becoming deep blue), as does N. Gin in the Radical games, and Von Clutch from Crash Tag Team Racing has green skin. Just about the only human characters who have normal skin colors are Papu Papu, N. Brio, N. Gin prior to the Radical games and Madame Amberley.
• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: Most of the evolved animals have normal coloured coats/skin, with the exception of Crash, Coco, Tawna and most other bandicoots, who are orange, Ripper Roo, who is blue, and the Evil Twins, who are deep cyan and sea green. More startling with the bandicoots because Crunch is closer to an actual eastern barred bandicoot (Crash's species) in color, having dark brown fur.
• American Kirby Is Hardcore: Crash was "cutened" up for the Japanese release. He even got a funky dance created by the Japanese marketing team that was carried back into the American versions.
• Animesque: All of the Trophy Girls in Crash Team Racing qualify to some extent, especially Megumi.
  • Crash Boom Bang! is the only game in the franchise to have been developed in Japan, and as a result the character design and overall aesthetic of the game has an obvious anime flair to it.
• Anti-Frustration Features: In most games, there is an in-game balacing system called 'Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment' where if you die in a level a certain number of times, the game would start helping you by giving a free Aku Aku mask (an extra hit point) upon respawning. In Crash 2, Crash 3, and the 'N. Sane Trilogy', the game would also (after dying over a dozen times inbetween checkpoints) turn miscellaneous boxes into checkpoints (respawn points for when you die).
  • In Crash 2, Crash 3, and the 'N. Sane Trilogy', repeatively dying in the various chase sequences results in the hazard chasing you getting its speed reduced permanently with each additional death. This is extremely helpful as there are no Aku Aku mask crates in these levels, and checkpoints don't appear in the middle of chase sequences.
  • Many of these games also keep track of the number of times you've died enough to trigger the game's DDA system in between sessions, and will automatically apply the above effects whenever you decide to replay the levels later.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • Crash Bandicoot has Doctor Neo Cortex, the Mad Scientist who made him and now wishes to destroy him.
  • The sentient voodoo mask twin brothers Aku Aku and Uka Uka are the Big Good and the Greater-Scope Villain of the series, respectively.
• The Artifact: After being used as important plot elements in the second and third games (and Wrath of Cortex, to a degree), crystals arbitrarily kept getting used, for the sake of having things to collect. Tellingly, crystals are among the elements that are absent from the Radical games and It's About Time.
• Artificial Animal People: The majority of the cast were once normal animals that were forcibly uplifted by a pair of Mad Scientists to serve as their foot soldiers in taking over the world.
• Artistic License – Geography: The series takes place on a trio of islands near Australia, yet some of the fauna, flora, natives, and ruins don't match the location and resemble a more South American wilderness. A map quickly shown in the intro scenes of Warped represents the islands somewhere between Australia and South America, though seemingly closer to the former.
• Art Shift: Mind Over Mutant enjoys abusing the art shift for its animated FMVs for no apparent reason other than to amplify its wackiness. Across the seventeen such scenes, there are twelve art styles used in total!
• Awesome Aussie: The bandicoots, Ripper Roo, Koala Kong, Pinstripe Potoroo, Dingodile and Tiny Tiger alongside Rilla Roo all qualify as such since all of them are charismatic, mutated animals from Australia. The Komodo Brothers do not count since they hail from Indonesia instead, which is pretty close by the land Down Under.
• Backtracking: While the first game's lack of a crate-counter-save option (included in the checkpoints in the sequels) may hint that said game required this strategy (apart from one level on the final island, it didn't for pretty much the rest of the time; dying usually requires you to start over the level in order to get the 100% Completion), Crash Bandicoot 2 pretty much ran on this. It was actually what may or may not have discouraged many gamers from fully completing the game, especially given that you couldn't rotate the camera (it zooms out if you backtrack, though) and, most infuriatingly, some levels are insanely difficult to backtrack. To wit: Diggin' It. You need to backtrack after getting a few crates in the skull route, in order to get roughly seven more crates or so. It wouldn't be so difficult if there wasn't an un-destroyable Mook Maker, a beehive. And every Bee was defeatable, but you didn't see until it was too late; the only way you could expect it was its buzzing.
• Badass Adorable:
  • Coco is a teenage-looking humanoid bandicoot and is quite cute, yet can also go in her own adventure starting in the third game.
  • Crash himself to a lesser extent, due to his mannerisms. These two bandicoots are able to pilot biplanes, submarines, spaceships, motorcycles, jeeps, and even tigers to get the crystals, and have faced some insane and/or superpowered mutants and scientists (including a reality warper) in order to stop Cortex's plans.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Win Adventure Mode as one of Uka Uka's team in Crash Bash and, in an oddly dramatic scene for the series, Uka will gain all of the crystals "AND ALL OF THE POWER" with Crash and Coco being forced into hiding.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: In Crash's world, wearing a spacesuit is entirely optional:
  • N. Gin has been exposed to the vacuum at least twice — in the second and third games — and showed up again no worse for the wear.
  • During the climax of Cortex Strikes Back, neither Crash nor Neo use a spacesuit to navigate outer space.
  • Nitros Oxide has been shown multiple times to go out in space with no protection whatsoever.
  • Crash doesn't use a a spacesuit when riding a space bike in A Huge Adventure.
  • Averted for Coco in N-Tranced, though, where she traverses space fully equipped.
• Beard of Evil: The three main villains of the third game (Uka Uka, Cortex and N. Tropy) all sport beards to highlight their evil nature.
• Behind the Black:
  • A pathway to a secret portal and few boxes on Crash Bandicoot 2 are hidden offscreen (two mostly and two completely).
  • A few levels in Crash Bandicoot and one in Crash Bandicoot 3 have offscreen start bonuses, where there are boxes behind the start point
• Beam-O-War: During the final boss battle of Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped, Aku Aku and Uka Uka shoot a continuous stream of energy at each other, forming a deadly beam that Crash must jump over.
• Bears Are Bad News: Zigzagged. One of Crash's allies is a cub named Polar, though adult polar bears show up as enemies in the "Un-Bearable" level of the second game and in the snow levels of The Huge Adventure.
• Big Bad:
  • The original: Cortex and N. Brio.
  • Cortex Strikes Back: Throughout the game, Cortex and Brio accuse each other of being the true villain. It's Cortex.
  • Warped: Uka Uka reveals himself as the Greater-Scope Villain of the first two games, but Cortex is still the main threat.
  • Team Racing: Nitros Oxide.
  • Bash: Uka Uka, though you can actually be on his side here.
  • Wrath of Cortex: Uka Uka and Cortex, with Crunch as the Dragon-in-Chief.
  • The Huge Adventure/XS: Uka Uka and Cortex, similarly to the third game.
  • N-Tranced: Uka Uka and N. Tropy, with the latter taking Cortex place from the previous game.
  • Nitro Kart: Emperor Velo XXVII.
  • Twinsanity: The Evil Twins (Victor and Moritz) of the main plot, N. Tropy of the sub-plot.
  • Tag Team Racing: Willie Wumpa Cheeks.
  • Crash of the Titans: Uka Uka is in charge again, but after the first boss, Cortex is replaced by Nina.
  • Mind Over Mutant: Cortex. This time he overpowers Uka Uka.
  • It's About Time: N. Tropy and his Alternate Self. Cortex usurps their position later.
• Big Ball of Violence: Crash Twinsanity has this as a gameplay feature during moments when Cortex just gets too pissed off at Crash and the two end up as this, referred to as a "rollerbrawl". The player then has to roll them like a hamster ball through the upcoming obstacle course. If the ball is left still, an Idle Animation will play of one of the two characters getting the upper hand, including one where Cortex... spanks Crash...
• Big Little Brother: Light example. Coco, depending on the game alternates between being taller or shorter than her "big brother" Crash. She is however consistently more mature and intelligent than him, though to varying levels.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • Von Clutch occasionally throws some German into his otherwise mostly English dialogue. (Also overlaps with Poirot Speak.)
  • In the Japanese dubs of some games, N. Tropy has a habit of occasionally adding English words and phrases into his dialogue.
• Blackout Basement: Common in the series: The first game features the levels "Lights Out" and the hidden level "Fumbling in the Dark", where the player has to pick up an Aku Aku mask for illumination. Get hit once or dilly-dally around too long without picking up a new mask, and you lose your light source. The sequels swapped these out for glowing insects, keeping the time limit but removing the one-hit penalty. The second game includes the levels "Night Flight" and the secret "Totally Fly", while the third only features one such level, named "Bug Lite".
• Body Surf: Crash throughout Crash of the Titans. "Jack" a weaker enemy with Aku Aku, then keep Body Surfing on up the chain of more powerful mutants!
• Bonus Stage: The first Crash Bandicoot had bonus stages that could be accessed by collecting three of certain items. Later games have two kinds of this: one where Crash jumps onto a special platform that will take him to the bonus stage that contains lots of boxes and Wumpas, and another that's usually marked with a skull-and-crossbones and are usually much harder, hence the nickname "Death Route". These Death Routes are only accessible if you reach them without dying, with the platform dissappearing after losing a life.
• Bootstrapped Theme: Crash Bandicoot: Warped's main theme became the theme of the whole series for a while, with new renditions used in Crash Bash, Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex, Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure and Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced.
• Boss-Arena Idiocy:
  • In the first game, Ripper Roo is invincible. The only way to harm him is to jump on TNT that's moving down the river between the two platforms and hope that the explosion hurts Ripper Roo.
  • In the third game:
    • N. Tropy has you at the far end of the arena from him, and thus you can't do a thing, not having a distance attack. Until he switches the platforms to create a direct trail to him... and then takes that moment to catch his breath and stop attacking you.^note If you go back to fight him again after getting the Death Tornado Spin and uses it to get to Tropy earlier than intended, he'll slam his tuning fork into the ground to create a blast that kills you instantly.
    • Dingodile is not invincible on the rematches,^note You can try entering his boss stage again after getting the Double Jump; slide + double jump can let you leap over his barrier and hit him directly. but the first time around, he is protected by spinning barriers of crystals... until he decides to blast you with his flamethrower through it, destroying large chunks of them with each shot.
• Boss-Only Level: Every game before Crash Twinsanity does this with every boss, more noticeable in the original where the boss levels are counted as part of level completion. After Twinsanity, this is largely averted as bosses are typically used to end levels, although the DS version of Crash of the Titans plays it straight and in the console version of the same game, every level with a boss fight is pretty easy and fairly short, discounting the tougher boss battle. This tradition returns in It's About Time.
• Bottomless Pits: A staple of the series, usually accompanied with a whistling sound as Crash falls to his doom.
• Brains and Brawn:
  • Crash Bandicoot and Doctor Neo Cortex in Crash Twinsanity, though Cortex initially considers it a combination of his brilliant intellect and Crash's vacuous stupidity at first. In the end, most of the time Crash just winds up whacking things with Cortex.
  • Crash and Coco are regularly depicted as such. A recurring formula for the series involves Coco creating devices or providing intellectual assistance as Crash collects MacGuffins to power them. Crash is at least intelligent enough to use a lot of Coco's inventions himself however, while Coco also sometimes provides physical support.
  • The Komodo Bros. Komodo Joe is lean yet intelligent, Komodo Moe is brawny yet... not so intelligent. The two make a formidable team.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Dr. Cortex's specialty is turning animals into his loyal slaves (to varying degrees).
  • His signature Cortex Vortex is his Mind-Control Device, and the entire plot of Crash Bandicoot 2 is Cortex building a massive laser gun on his spaceship - the second iteration of the Cortex Vortex - to brainwash the planet.
  • In The Wrath of Cortex, Crunch is brainwashed by Cortex to work with the Elementals and try to kill Crash.
  • In Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced, Crunch, Coco and Fake Crash are brainwashed by N. Trance into trying to kill Crash.
  • In Crash Nitro Kart, N. Trance brainwashes Polar, Pura and Dingodile to form an entire race team to put against the Bandicoot.
  • In Crash of the Titans, Coco is brainwashed to work on the Doominator (thus trying to wipe out Wumpa Island... and kill Crash).
  • In Mind Over Mutant, Crunch, Coco, and a lot of mutants are brainwashed with the NVs to turn evil... and try to kill Crash.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • In Crash Twinsanity, a skunk in one of the opening stages expresses his displeasure at having acted as a common enemy to get stomped on for ten years, and a group of penguins hold Cortex hostage for his power crystal, with him arguing that the reason that he couldn't pay them was because The Wrath of Cortex didn't sell as well as he had hoped.
  • In Crash of The Titans, Tiny Tiger berates Crash for not including him in the previous video game (Crash Tag Team Racing), and Uka Uka prolongs a cutscene so he can enjoy the dramatic music.
  • Mind Over Mutant features Nitrus Brio angrily shouting out how he was in the first game.
  • During some of the Enemy Chatter in Titans, the Voodoo Bunnies are discussing Uka Uka's personality issues, saying that he's feeling self-conscious about not having a body, and mentioning that "He had body briefly in Twinsanity, but that was no fun for nobody".
• Brick Joke: In one cutscene in Mind Over Mutant, Cortex complains about finding a piece of lettuce in the urinal, wondering who would eat a sandwich while using the bathroom. After he's defeated for good and the space station is falling, a random Mook walks out of the bathroom, eating a sandwich.
• Brought to You by the Letter "S": A running theme with the series is abbreviating words starting with the letter "n". Examples include Dr. N(eo) Cortex, Dr. N(itrus) Brio, Dr. N. Gin, Dr. N. Tropy, N. Trance, N. Sanity Beach, and the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy.
• Buffy Speak: In the Radical games, a large amount of random gameplay quotes not devoted to cultural parody humor usually have the characters go blank and irregularly mangle their sentence, outtake style. Even Big Bads like Cortex and Uka Uka drift into this on occasion.
• The Brute: Tiny, a gigantic, overly muscled brute of a thylacine, prefers attempting to stomp Crash flat or smashing him with his muscles.
• Butt-Monkey: Cortex is the main antagonist, though he is also the main recipient of the series' slapstick humour. This is highlighted in Twinsanity, as abusing him becomes a gameplay mechanic.
• Camera Abuse: In Warped, getting smacked by a two-headed scientist ogre-troll-thing would result in Crash getting splattered against the screen.
• Canon Immigrant: Some minor characters and events are based on those from Japanese media such as the manga series. Penta Penguin originated from Crash Bandicoot: Dansu! De Jump! Na Daibouken for example, as did the claim that Tawna dumped Crash for Pinstripe after the first game. Crash's trademark victory dance also originated from Japanese commercials for the first game. Even Fake Crash is this, having been created by the Japanese marketing team for promotional materials for the second game before Naughty Dog had him make occasional appearances in the third game as a joke.
• Casting Gag: Coco, a child genius bandicoot, is voiced by Debi Derryberry, who voiced Jimmy Neutron. Additionally, in Crash Tag Team Racing, one of her quotes upon having her kart destroyed is "Aww, derryberries!".
• Cat-and-Mouse Boss: Crunch with Py-Ro in Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex. Crash must run away from Crunch for a while, and soon finds a FLUDD-like waterpack, reversing the scenario.
• Characterisation Click Moment:
  • In early games, Coco mostly just plays the role of The Smart Girl and is fairly passive and down to earth. Crash Tag Team Racing however establishes a more hot-headed Genki Girl side to her, with it and most games after letting her take part in the cartoon antics more often and demonstrate a similar side towards her brother, with even the later remakes of earlier titles retconning her personality as such.
  • Nina Cortex's first handful of appearances lacked a consistent direction for her, swerving from anything from a Silent Protagonist in Twinsanity to a Kiddie Kid in Ripto's Rampage. Like Coco, Tag Team Racing defines a lot of the quirks that would make her finalised characterisation, making her a moody, conniving Bratty Half-Pint, as well as giving her spoken dialogue for the first time.
  • Tawna, despite appearing in the very first game, was pretty much a voiceless Satellite Love Interest for Crash, Demoted to Extra after the first game and only getting a few sporadic cameos throughout the series afterwards. The Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy remake of Crash 1, however, retools the cutscenes to give her more of an Action Girl personality, with Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled capitalising on that, giving Tawna her first full speaking role and establishing her as the sassy confident leader of the Nitro Squad (themselves evolved from the blank trophy girls in the original game).
• Chased by Angry Natives: This happens to Crash near the end of the "Totem Hokum" level in Crash Twinsanity.
• Chase-Scene Obstacle Course:
  • First game has Crash chased by a rolling ball of death in some levels. During this, you have to run towards the camera while avoiding obstacles coming your way that may either slow you down or outright kill you.
  • In the second game, The Final Boss fight has you trying to chase the boss with a jetpack while he's flying through a space tube with lots of asteroids abound. Crashing into an asteroid will slow you down, so try to avoid them as much as possible.
• Checkpoint: They tend to come in form of crates marked with "C".
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Coco's transpalooper (aka "the purple thingy") in Titans turns out to be the tool required to stop Cortex's Doominator on its tracks. Crash had it on his pocket since the beginning of the game.
  • The gems in the second and third game. While collecting the crystals lets you advance forward and fight the bosses (including the final one), doing so without the gems leads to the Bad Ending.
• Chivalrous Pervert: Pasadena O'Possum of Crash Tag Team Racing may count as a female version, constantly flirting with the title character, the returned gesture varies from having somewhat mutual attractions to feeling physically sick.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome:
  • Tawna, Crash's girlfriend from the first game, was pretty much removed from the series from the second game and onward, after her intended character design was bowdlerized from the original concept. A marketing executive at Universal didn't like her sexualised design and requested Naughty Dog to tone down her outfit, causing Naughty Dog to willfully remove her after the first game was released. The Japanese marketing team came up with a flimsy in-universe excuse for her absence (she dumped Crash for Pinstripe Potoroo of all characters). Her sole return appearances aside from the first game's remake were Crash Boom Bang! and Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, with tiny background cameos in some other games. She returns in It's About Time with a new Action Girl design, but she isn't the original Tawna; rather, she comes from an alternate timeline.
• Co-Dragons:
  • Tiny and N. Gin are often Neo Cortex's most consistent two lackeys throughout the games (being his only sincerely loyal henchmen), and often utilised whenever he is put in a Terrible Trio dynamic. In some cases, Tiny is replaced with N. Brio or Nina, Cortex's niece.
  • Cortex himself is often paired with N Tropy as Uka Uka's Co-Dragons. Though the power chain isn't clear in Warped, in most later games they are equals and rivalistic towards each other. In the GBA games Uka Uka interchanges between using Cortex or Tropy as his main schemer, while in It's About Time, after they both betray Uka, they form a Big Bad Duumvirate, though with Tropy clearly spearheading and eventually betraying Cortex as well in favour of a more efficient accomplice. A livid Cortex makes a point of ruining Tropy's plan and taking the Big Bad role back for himself as payback for treating him like an inferior pawn, keeping the power rank still dubious.
• Collision Damage: Colliding with just about any enemy will send Crash flying to that Australian outback in the sky. Same goes with Coco and, in N-Tranced, Crunch.
• Comedic Underwear Exposure: In addition to the Defeat by Modesty entry below, in Warped, hitting a Wizard enemy with the Fruit Bazooka (in the North American version) or any attack (in the PAL version) will strip him to his underwear.
• Continuity Nod: In a cutscene from Skylanders Imaginators, Cortex ackknowledges the franchise's 20th anniversary.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: In Mind Over Mutant, Cortex starts milking Uka Uka for Bad Mojo to use to control mutants. Cortex has Grimlies feed Uka Uka cake while he's strapped to the machine so that he's horribly traumatized by the experience and unable to even touch cake again. And for good measure, they feed him a dirty piece.
• Crate Expectations: Crash Bandicoot not only sees levels filled with crates, but destroying all of them in all levels are required to reach the full 100% Completion. In fact, crashing through crates is one of the series' defining gameplay elements, as well as the origin of the protagonist's name.
• Create Your Own Hero: The titular bandicoot and his sister Coco were ordinary bandicoots until they were mutated by the evil scientist Dr. Neo Cortex as part of his plan for world domination. The two bandicoots escaped Cortex's clutches and have frequently opposed him ever since.
• Creative Closing Credits: In the Radical Entertainment era, the ending credits feature commentaries from assorted characters, often saying something amusing about the games' staff members. In CTTR, this was omitted from the PAL release of the game, for some reason, but the PAL versions of both Titans and Mind Over Mutant feature it. In CTTR, the commentary is provided entirely by Cortex and N. Gin, but later games feature some of the other characters, too (although less prominently).
• Creepy Twins: Crash Twinsanity has the Evil Twins, a pair of alien bird-thingies, as the Big Bad. They're revealed to be the two parrots that young Cortex had experimented his prototype Evolvo-Ray on and got accidentally warped into the 10th dimension.
• Cutting Off the Branches: The Golden Ending from the first game is not what preludes the second installment. Except, strangely, for Ripper Roo's doctorate.
• Daddy's Little Villain: Nina Cortex is actually Dr. Neo Cortex's niece, but she once proves that she's actually more effective than him.
• Deadly Dingos: Dingodile, a genetically-engineered hybrid of a dingo and a crocodile, usually plays the role of an antagonist in the games and uses a flamethrower as a weapon. His Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time counterpart is more of an Anti-Hero, having given up villainy to open a restaurant with plenty of health code violations and having traded his flamethrower for a vacuum.
• Death as Game Mechanic: The "death-warping" exploit in the first three games make collecting stage Plot Coupons easier. To elaborate, you won't lose any of the stage collectables when you die, and you'll be put on the last Checkpoint you opened. This allows for tricks that allows you to get more than 1 collectables in a single stage run. One example: In the Spaced Out stage in the second game, there's a special platform that leads you to another path of the stage, and the end of that path is the stage's second "gem"... and another exit. Players will usually open a checkpoint in the stage's main path, then go to the side path to get the second gem, then die (by falling into a pit) and then respawn to the main path to collect the other collectables (the "crystal" and the "box gem"). This saves more time than if you exit through the stage's second exit or if you backtrack to the start of the fork.
• Death Course: The Crash Bandicoot games are mostly a combination of the various types of Death Courses, with most of the pitfalls included.
• Death Trap: Loads, over the series. Cortex lampshades their general ineffectiveness.
  Dr. Cortex (while lecturing the Grimlies on killing Crash quickly): And no death traps that take ten flipping hours.
• Deck of Wild Cards: Most villains serving under Uka Uka have posed as this throughout the series. Doctors Neo Cortex, Nitrus Brio, N Tropy, and N Trance have all betrayed him at some point (being a Mean Boss to them certainly helps). If not suffering this directly, then often by extension through one of his associates. Nearly all of Cortex's mutants have turned their back on him in the past as well, either out of ambition or to turn a new leaf (or both in cases like Dingodile), while Nitrus Brio has as much a bone to pick with him as he does Uka Uka. Even Cortex's own niece Nina was trained a little too well to be a devious evil-doer. Only N Gin and Tiny have remained loyal followers to Cortex, and even they have turned sides when their hands were forced before (N Gin's loyalty to Cortex also backfired on Uka when the latter tried to replace him with Nina, leading N Gin to help Crash overthrow her).
• Defeat by Modesty: Getting hit by a scimitar in Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped will cut Crash's pants off, causing him to shamefully slink away while attempting to cover his pink boxers with red hearts.
• Denser and Wackier: Sort of. The series was already rather comical and zany, but it had a bit of story and was more Looney Tunes in style. The later games became much more Ren and Stimpy-ish in tone (not helped by being written by Spumco refugees), amping the slapstick and stupidity to five hundred.
• Dissimile: From Crash Twinsanity:
  Cortex: Three years I spent alone in the frozen Antarctic wastes! And I missed you! And so, I've organised a little gathering; like a birthday party, except... the exact opposite.
• Divine Chessboard: Aku Aku versus Uka Uka in Crash Bash, with the heroes and villains used as champions.
• Doomy Dooms of Doom: Doctor N. Gin loves this trope. Also, the Doominator robot.
• Double Jump: A recurring power in the series, starting from the third game.
• Double Unlock: 100% Completion in Crash Team Racing requires all 18 relics, which merely requires a solid time trial time in all 18 races. Oh, but one of those races is only unlocked by getting all 5 gems. Gems can be earned in cup races, which themselves are locked until you get 4 CTR tokens for each, plus you need two out of four Boss Keys to even access the room with the portals to the cup races and the first cup race cannot be opened until you have at least three keys.
• Down the Drain: The level 'Tomb Wader' in Warped is set in a nilometer where the water level constantly shifts.
• The Dragon: Nitrus Brio in Crash Bandicoot, Doctor Neo Cortex in Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped, Py-Ro the Fire Elemental in Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex, Doctor Nefarious Tropy in Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced. Tiny and N Gin also often act as Co-Dragons to Cortex through the series.
• Dumb Muscle:
  • Koala Kong in the original game.
  • Tiny Tiger, with the exception of his Crash of the Titans incarnation.
  • Also, Komodo Moe (his brother Joe is the "smart" one).
• Dynamic Difficulty: Added checkpoints and bonus hits in the form of a free Aku Aku mask if you die enough times.
• Early-Bird Cameo: In the first game at the end of the level Jaws of Darkness, You can see a carving on the wall that looks to be an ancient statue of Uka Uka. After all, it is the same temple that gets destroyed at the beginning of Warped, Leading to his freedom.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Keys and random colored gems in the first game, and arbitrarily awarded gems and secret portals in the second. The first game also has the annoying issue of only being able to save in bonus rounds (which cannot be reattempted), and there are no crystals. Instead, you have to fight your way through the islands in order to defeat Cortex. Cortex also has a noticably different voice in the first game, provided by Brendan O'Brien, that sounds nothing like the deep toned Clancy Brown and Lex Lang performances that followed.
• Enemy Chatter: The Xbox 360 version of Crash of the Titans has an achievement for listening to enemy chatter.
• Embarrassing Middle Name: Cortex's full name is Neo Periwinkle Cortex.
• Escort Mission: Crash Twinsanity includes two Doc Amock sequences, wherein Dr. Cortex is forced to run down a preset path (while being harassed by bees, their nest and a honey-hungry bear the first time around, and by Crash's evil duplicate in the second), while Crash must take another path whilst disabling the hazards on Cortex's route. The sequences were generally well received, thanks to its exhibition of the game's excellent Cortex-abuse-centric humor.
• Eternal Engine:
  • The third quarter of the original Crash Bandicoot consists mostly of this (levels such as Heavy Machinery, Cortex Power and Generator Room), with Crash roaming through Cortex's enormous power plant which, on the surface, doesn't seem to serve much of a purpose other than to dump tons and tons of radioactive sludge into the nearby oceans.
  • The late game stages of the second and third Crash Bandicoot games also indulged quite a bit on this.
• Everything Fades: The PS1 games just showed enemies flying into the distance after being spun by the titular character. Unless you jumped on them, in which case they disappeared in a cloud of smoke, occasionally being flattened first.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: From the crabs near the beach to the futuristic lasers, they're all barring Crash's way in his adventure.
• Evil Brit: Doctor Nefarious Tropy speaks in a British accent.
• The Evil Genius: Dr. Neo Cortex, mad scientist, wannabe world dominator, and general dickhead to animals - which causes Crash's adventure in the first place. Also all of the other doctors.
• Exploding Barrels: TNT and Nitro crates, as well as actual barrels in a few levels.
• Exposed Animal Bellybutton: Crash originally had one, but it stopped appearing starting in The Wrath of Cortex. It returned in the remake trilogy, briefly vanished for It's About Time, and came back again in On the Run!.
• Expressive Mask: Aku Aku and Uka Uka, literally.
• Extended Gameplay:
  • The second game and the third have extra levels that you can only access after beating the final boss. Crash Team Racing also plays similarly in that the Adventure Mode doesn't stop after you beat Oxide - you have to collect all the relics and then beat him again.
  • Crash Bash also has extra minigames that can only be accessed after you beat the final boss.
  • Both of the GBA games have this. If you beat the final boss with all the gems in The Huge Adventure, all the bosses in the game fuse together, and you're subjected to a race to the end of an extra level before the boss hits you. In N-Tranced, collecting all the gems allows you to avert Doctor Nefarious Tropy's Villain: Exit, Stage Left and give you a batch of new levels, climaxing with a battle with Doctor N. Tropy himself.
• Expy:
  • The large majority of the cast evolved into expies or parodies of celebrities or pop culture figures during Radical's redesign of the franchise (eg. Crunch is an expy of Mr. T, N. Gin is one of Peter Lorre, Tiny of Mike Tyson). One of the larger criticisms of the Radical titles is how unique characterization has been replaced with stock characters and parodies.
  • It is perhaps worth noting that half of these Expies in fact have closer connection to previous Expies of said celebrities. For example, Tiny and the Ratnicians probably closer resemble Dederick Tatum (Mike Tyson) and Prof. Frink (Jerry Lewis) from The Simpsons respectively than the actual figures they are based on.
• Fanservice: Crunch and Tiny are easily the most identifiable characters when it comes to being muscular and strong. Then somewhere along the line, THIS happened to Crash.
  • Arguably the entire purpose of the Trophy Girls in the original Crash Team Racing - they didn't code in jiggle physics for nothing.
• Fan Disservice: A picture of Cortex in a skimpy bikini is briefly shown during the "N Faux Mercial" cutscene of Mind Over Mutant.
• Fantastic Fruits and Vegetables: Wumpa fruits, Crash's Trademark Favourite Food. They appear to be a cross between apples, peaches, and mangoes, but their insides contain purple juice, as revealed when Crash gets splattered by one. In Japan, they're even called "apples". Collecting 100 of these grants Crash an extra life, and in certain games they refill his health bar. Even more bizarrely, Wumpa fruits can also be used as pretty painful Edible Ammunition.
• Fate Worse than Death: Dr. Cortex is trapped in Crash's brain with thousands of miniature Crashes at the end of Twinsanity.
• Felony Misdemeanor: In Mind Over Mutant, Aku Aku calls Uka Uka a "jerk". Not for his many crimes, such as trying to take over/destroy the world... but for sending their mother socks for her birthday.
  "Honestly! Who sends socks to a magic mask with no feet?"
• Fetish: Played for laughs in Mind Over Mutant: Walk up to the Architect in the Raticicle Kingdom while jacking a TK. As he speaks nonsense, he has a translator with him all the time. Anyways, the Translator says "The Architect is not impressed by a telekinetic chicken. I disagree! I think that thing is hot!"
• Final Boss:
  • The original: Dr. Neo Cortex
  • Cortex Strikes Back: Cortex again.
  • Warped: Crash vs Cortex, Aku Aku vs Uka Uka... is what the four of them intended. Due to the masks' power and Cortex's equipment, it ends up being Crash vs everyone else.
  • Team Racing: Nitros Oxide.
  • Bash: Oxide again.
  • Wrath of Cortex: Crunch and Cortex, with aid from Uka Uka and the Elementals.
  • The Huge Adventure/XS: Cortex, with a monster called Mega-Mix made of all the game's bosses as the True Final Boss.
  • N-Tranced: N. Trance, with Dr. Nefarious Tropy as the True Final Boss.
  • Nitro Kart: Emperor Velo XXVII
  • Twinsanity: The Evil Twins
  • Crash of the Titans: A giant robot spider piloted by Nina
    • The DS version has a crab mech piloted by Dr. Neo Cortex
    • The GBA iteration, meanwhile, has Cortex as well, albeit fighting Crash on foot
  • Mind Over Mutant: Cortex after having some of Brio's mutagen
    • For the DS port, there is the Chimera, an unusually terrifying, lion-headed amalgamation of titan enemies encountered earlier in the game and displaying each of their abilities as part of its moveset
  • It's About Time: The N. Tropys seem to be the final boss, that is until Cortex goes back to old habits and betrays the gang.
• Flame Spewer Obstacle: Occasional element in video games. Examples present would be flame plates in Native Fortress in the first game.
• Fluffy the Terrible: Tiny until Radical's character redesigns.
• Flawless Token:
  • Coco early on acts as the token female, super intelligent, closer to Earth and near equally skilled physically as her brother (even if outdoing Crash intelligence-wise isn't exactly much of a challenge). However, as more female characters were inserted, Coco started to gain her own idiotic and obnoxious tendencies.
  • Nina Cortex, despite being younger than the other villains, actually goes on top for once and become a serious threat despite her odd traits. In Crash of the Titans, Aku Aku himself points out that Nina is far more competent than Cortex could ever hope to be. Played with since Nina still proves as clownish as the other villains, and is ultimately punished by her uncle as a demonstration of his own menacing side.
• Flunky Boss: Papu Papu in Crash Bash summons mini-Crashes to attack you. They all die in one hit, though. Bearminator in the same game deploys one, then two, then three robotic bears at you.
• Follow the Money: Wumpa Fruit, especially when it seems to be hovering over a bottomless pit.
• For the Lulz: Doctor Neo Cortex: "Well, actually it's pretty fun. You should try it. Y'know, riding around in huge, rumbling machines and whatnot? Very stimulating."
• Furry Confusion: Justified; Most animals are portrayed as average animals. Those who act more humanoid are typically those hit with N. Brio's Evolvo-Ray, or some equivalent.
• Gas Mask Mooks: The Park Drones in Crash Tag Team Racing.
• "Get Back Here!" Boss: The fight against Cortex in Cortex Strikes Back has him flying away and you have to chase him with your jetpack.
  • All bosses in On the Run! are like this to accommodate the Endless Runner gameplay.
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Mega-Mix in The Huge Adventure. Turns up after Cortex for basically no reason if you have the Relics. Go figure.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: Judging by the way the original developers handled the franchise, Crash Bandicoot seemed to have a bit of this going on with Doctor Neo Cortex, specifically in Crash Team Racing where the good guys and bad guys are all just go-karting along before the plot happens... and then they all go-kart around some more.
• Goofy Print Underwear:
  • Several of Crash's death sequences in his second and third PlayStation games reveal he wears pink boxers with red hearts.
  • As an odd consequence of animation re-use^note specifically, the death animation for underwater mines, when Crash completes an underwater level in Warped, his boxers drift away along with his scuba gear.
  • The Wizard enemies in the third game have white boxers with pink dots.
  • In the Gag Reel of Tag Team Racing, Crash is wearing white boxers with red hearts instead.
  • At the end of Mind Over Mutant, Cortex fights Crash in his red polka-dot briefs after he hulks out of his clothes.
• Goomba Stomp: Only if spinning doesn't work.
  • Goomba Springboard: Some certain enemies exist only to be stepped on to reach certain places or to get a crate high up.
• Go Through Me: When Nash threatens Cortex for his championship key in Nitro Kart, he beckons a very angry Tiny in front of him.
  Cortex: *laughs* And sharks make such silly demands too...
• Green Hill Zone: N. Sanity Beach and the surrounding tropical forests in many of the Crash Bandicoot games.
• Grievous Harm with a Body:
  • In the platformer games, spinning an enemy towards another will give you bonus wumpa fruit; you can also spin an enemy towards crates to break them from a distance.
  • In Twinsanity, there are sections where Crash is carrying Cortex around. He can use Cortex to smash crates and enemies, or throw him towards a specific place for puzzle solving. One boss fight even relies on you throwing Cortex towards the boss' mouth.
• Groin Attack: Happens to Cortex (via Coco's well-placed kick) in Twinsanity ("My crystals!"), and Crash also does this to a Grimly in the opening demo movie of Mind Over Mutant.
• Ground Pound: Crash Bandicoot gains a Ground Poundcake attack in the second game, with which he can belly-flop onto unsuspecting enemies or bust open metal-enforced crates that would otherwise seem impenetrable. The third game upgrades it.
• Group Reacts Individually: A common trait in games with multiple playable characters to showcase their wacky personalities. Often Played for Laughs due to the intense use of slapstick:
  • In Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped, all five bosses have confrontations with you after you collect the crystals of their warp room. Tiny is indignant and roars payback, Dingodile displays Tranquil Fury, Tropy throws an angry snit fit, N Gin just seems eager to take you down, while Cortex, after spending the whole game worn down from defeats... just laughs it off, as now he can just take all the crystals from you.
  • In Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, Coco Bandicoot is added as a playable character. In comparison to her brother Crash, who is fairly consistently goofy and curious and only semi-aware of his surroundings, even when elements of the game are killing him, Coco is generally more confident, alert and dignified... though takes failing and being made a fool of much worse. Crash just gives confused looks in many non-lethal death scenes and is only at the level of being slightly fed-up if you failed to get a gem, while Coco is prone to Death Glares at the player, and should you fail to get a gem as her, she outright throws a tantrum at you.
  • Used to its most extreme in Crash Team Racing and its successor games, where each character has podium animations. First place has a triumphant winning animation, while second to third have losing animations. Each character totally varies how they celebrate, or how well they take defeat (eg. Crash just falls asleep, Cortex breaks down sobbing, Coco sulks, Megumi shrugs and claps at the winner).
  • Downplayed in Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time despite having five fully playable characters, though does still naturally perk up in areas. Particularly in the Continue/Retry screen. Should you pick to retry a level rather than advance, Crash has a slightly deflated smile, Cortex sighs annoyed, Coco (in odd comparison to previous games) remains chipper no matter what you pick, while Dingodile actually seems more eager to go back and trash the level again.
• Guest Fighter: Spyro is in the GBA and N-Gage versions of Crash Nitro Kart. He returns as a racer in Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, along with Hunter and Gnasty Gnorc.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • The secret level side areas, starting off in the original, where you had to guess which levels gave which colored Gems, allowing you to get the normal Gems. The third game had 2 secret levels that almost certainly needed to be performed either by accident, or with a guide. One had you crash into a specific sign in a motorcycle level (even though it looks different to the rest of them), and another had a trigger where you had to get to a bonus gem level, and then die on a certain enemy, which - instead of killing you, would take you to a secret stage.
  • Not to mention the second game's secrets. In that game, you had to fall down a hole that normally would kill you (with no indication that you should jump down there), body slam on a specific plant, go back after being thrown off Polar once finishing a level, go through a seemingly solid wall, and jump on boxes which under normal circumstances will kill you.
  • The blue gem in the first level of Crash Bandicoot 2? Go to the end of the level without breaking a single box. In a series where breaking every box you see becomes a compulsion, it may be difficult to find out. After completing the level once, it will give a clue in the form of "XX/0" in the warp going back to the main warp room.
• Hair-Trigger Explosive:
  • The game has Nitro boxes that go off like this. They also bounce randomly.
  • TNT is less sensitive than nitro, as in you can touch the side without dying. Hitting the top triggers the timer, but you can still kill yourself like it's nitro.
• Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Crash has shoes, gloves and pants! However, he is lacking a shirt. Several other characters are half-dressed as well. Most mutated characters follow the pants-wearing rule, with the main exception being Ripper Roo, who is more animalistic than the other mutants.
• Heroic Mime: Crash alternates between this and The Unintelligible, for a very good reason.
• Hollywood Natives: The tribesmen of N. Sanity Island, who worship various monoliths and attempt to capture and/or eat anything that enters their territory. They are led by Papu Papu, an obese chieftain who wears a grass skirt and has his hair tied up in an elaborate tribal headdress.
• Hub Level: Most of the hubs from Crash 2 onwards are small rooms with a bunch of doors, but Crash Team Racing has a bigger hub akin to Diddy Kong Racing. Twinsanity, Nitro Kart and Tag Team Racing have one hub per world.
• Hulk Speak: Tiny Tiger outside the Radical Entertainment games.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: More than half of the major villains in the Crash games are evil human scientists who pollute the environment, conduct cruel animal experimentation, and try to take over the world. A majority of the remaining villains are said animal experiments.
• 100% Completion: Several Crash Bandicoot games have taken it all the way up to 120% and above. Crash Bash features up to 200%, but good luck getting there.
• Hurricane of Puns: N. Tropy is rather fond of throwing out time-related puns. His associate N. Trance follows suit with his constant egg-related wordplay.
• Iconic Sequel Character: The series mainstay hero Coco and villains Tiny Tiger and N. Gin are introduced in the second game, while the other ones Dingodile and N. Tropy in the third one, and Nina in the fifth.
• Idiot Hero: Crash is either easily duped or a victim of circumstances. Nevertheless, his determination always moves him forward.
• Idle Animation: Crash usually either plays with a yo-yo or the Wumpa fruit. In the GBA games, he picks up said system and plays it himself.
• The Igor: For Cortex, there's Doctor N. Gin in most games, and N. Brio in the first game.
• Immune to Mind Control: Given Brainwashed and Crazy above, it's lucky that Crash is this. It's even noted in the first game that Crash has been subjected to the Cortex Vortex - which is what Cortex used to brainwash all his other mutants - multiple times.
  Cortex: Failure again! Capture him!
• Improbable Infant Survival : Used with Polar in the second game. While Crash can kill himself in numerous ways in the snow levels, the little bear cub is shown making his way out of each obstacle completely unscathed (in one Crash's angel is even shown ascending upward carrying the still alive and unharmed Polar in his arms). Used near identically with Pura in Warped (at least two instances subvert this however, with Coco jumping out of harm's way just before the baby tiger runs smack into a pile of barrels, and both falling out of sight when falling off the side of the wall).
• Incredible Shrinking Man: Used a large amount oddly:
  • The second game has a Shrink Ray in the final levels. Getting hit by it however causes instant death by shrinking into nothing.
  • A handicap inflicting power-up in some mini-games of Bash will temporarily shrink the player, leaving them with a speed and power disadvantage.
  • Cortex's entire plan in The Huge Adventure. However it has little effect on gameplay itself since he does it global scale, shrinking the entire world from his space station, leaving Crash having to collect crystals in a still-to-him normal sized planet so Coco can reverse the effects with her device.
  • Two of Coco's podium animations Nitro Fueled involve her being shrunk in some comical way (though in one it doesn't quite work right and her head is still left normal sized on her tiny body; her expression says it all).
• Indy Escape: Every platformer game in the series has at least one of these.
• Infinite 1-Ups:
  • The original Crash Bandicoot has an extremely blatant Sampo about four or five levels before the endgame: To the right of your spawn point, a gap. Beyond that gap, the exit to the level. Normally, players would have to drop down the gap and walk through the rest of the level to reach the exit, unless they happen to have a Green gem, in which case a green platform appears next to your spawn that allows you to ride your way straight to the exit and grab twenty five extra lives on the way.
  • In Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, in the second hub (ice theme) the player can jump on Polar in front of one of the level warps, flattening him. Doing so repeatedly will give you several lives.
  • Also in the second game was the secret passage in a certain level where you would drop down from the broken bridge after a giant polar bear smashes through it, and about midway in would be two hidden crates right after a checkpoint containing two one-ups in which you could die and continue to break the crates and receive the reward.
• Iron Butt Monkey: Though Cortex may be the top butt monkey, Crash seemingly goes through the largest amount of horrific Amusing Injuries throughout the series' run, depending on how many lost lives (and thus brutal cartoon deaths) you suffered during gameplay.
• Ironic Name: "Tiny" is large, muscular and towers over most of the other characters.
• Is This Thing On?: Neo Cortex's first line in Crash of the Titans.
• Jiggle Physics: The only reason Naughty Dog's character designers thought it was a good idea to include Papu Papu as a boss in the original Crash Bandicoot was because the animators loved to animate jiggling fat. The trophy girls in Crash Team Racing also jiggle.
• Jive Turkey: Cortex attempts this during the credits of Crash Tag Team Racing.
  Cortex: Oh, Jeff. What is up, big dawg? How's it hanging in the 'hood?
• Joke Character: Coco was often this in the earlier games, either being a weaker skin of Crash with less abilities, or even just a limited vehicle rider that can only walk and jump otherwise. Most of her levels it would be more productive to just play as Crash. Mind Over Mutant subverts this by making her a co op character who matches all of Crash's abilities, thus still redundant but at least useful; Coco has remained a Crash reskin ability-wise in most games since.
• Jungle Japes: The first levels/world in practically every Crash game.
• Just a Stupid Accent: Von Clutch's extremely stereotypical German accent in Crash Tag Team Racing, although this is probably intentional.
• Kamehame Hadoken: Parodied in Mind Over Mutant, when Brio randomly yells "Hadoken!" in one of the early cutscenes.
• Knight of Cerebus: Warped introduced two: Uka Uka and Doctor Nefarious Tropy. They both lost this status by the time of Wrath of Cortex, though they regain shades of it again Depending on the Writer.
• Lame Comeback: Coco to Nina in Crash of the Titans:
  Coco: Your... hair is dumb!
• Lampshade Hanging:
  • Cortex in the third game gets awfully calm and observant regarding Crash's journey of getting the crystals and beating his henchmen. Even before his boss fight, he notes that he's supposed to be angry (for Crash getting all the crystals) when he instead laughed.
  • The fact that Crash and the other bandicoots do not resemble the real life creatures on which they are based is randomly mentioned by N. Gin in Titans, during one of his lunatic tirades: "YOU DON'T EVEN LOOK LIKE A BANDICOOT!"
  • In Titans, N. Gin openly wonders why he doesn't just send all of his minions to fight Crash at the same time.
  • The absence of Crash and Coco's parents is lampshaded in the Radical Entertainment games. If Crash spin attacks Coco in Tag Team Racing, one of the things she says is "I'm telling Mom... if we had one." If the same action is performed in Mind Over Mutant, she says "I'm telling Mom! Who is she, anyway?".
• Land Down Under: Most games take place in the Wumpa Archipelago, a group of islands near Australia that house many aggressive animals and dangerous aborigines. One of the characters is also a dingo-crocodile hybrid who speaks with a raspy Australian accent.
• Large Ham: In the Radical Entertainment games, Doctor Neo Cortex and Doctor Nitrus Brio have bombastic personalities and love to shout.
  Cortex: I promise. From now on, I'll be more rancid! More villainous! More horrible! HORRIBLE!!
  Brio: I... was in... the first... GAAAAAAAME!!
• Laser-Guided Tyke-Bomb: Crunch Bandicoot in Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex was created specifically to kill Crash.
• Last Lousy Point: Crash Team Racing has a Last Lousy Relic. You need all the relics for a rematch against Big Bad Nitros Oxide, but to get the last relic you needed to unlock a secret race, which required five gems. Each gem in turn requires four CTR tokens and then a win in a four race tournament. The tokens and gems do count toward completion percentage, though.
• Laughably Evil: Every villain in the series has their moments; even the worst villains (N. Tropy) will make you laugh once in a while.
• Laughing Mad: Ripper Roo, after being exposed to different experiments from Doctor Cortex, became a raving, laughing lunatic. In fact, all of his dialogue consists of insane laughter with subtitles to translate. He did almost talk in CTR. Here's the cut audio.
  • In the Japanese version of Crash Team Racing, Ripper Roo speaks full sentences - still punctuated by bouts of giggling, anyway.
• Law of 100: Collect 100 Wumpa Fruit to earn a new life.
• Lean and Mean: N. Tropy, Komodo Joe.
• Leap of Faith: The secret routes on the bridge levels in the first game require you jump into seeming nothingness, until planks of wood appear at your feet from nowhere.
• Leitmotif:
  • In the earlier titles, the majority of boss characters had an individual theme that was remixed throughout each of their appearances. Cortex in particular has an eerie guitar riff used in his faceoffs in all three of the original games.
  • Even some of the NPC had themes in the original series. Coco and N Brio had their own Leitmotifs in the second game, despite hearing them for all of ten seconds quietly playing in their dialogue scenes.
  • The theme music of Warped became the theme of the series for a while, and can be briefly heard in Mind Over Mutant.
  • The theme of Twinsanity appears several times across the game in remixed form - for example, the music for the "twisted" version of N. Sanity Island contains the same melody, albeit slower and with a slightly darker mood.
  • Twinsanity also features a theme for the Academy of Evil, which is also used in moments prior to getting to the academy (such as during the introduction of the Evil Twins).
• Life Meter: Crash Of The Titans and Mind Over Mutant have conventional health meters.
• Loads and Loads of Loading: The early PlayStation 2 version of The Wrath of Cortex is infamous for this. Thankfully, the Platinum/Greatest Hits rerelease toned this down, while the Gamecube and Xbox ports had rather nominal load times.
  • Present in the PSP version of Tag Team Racing. However, they attempt to alleviate it by making it so all face buttons cause a fart noise.
• Lonely at the Top: At the end of Team Bandicoot's story in Crash Nitro Kart, a deflated Velo hands Crash his empire after the bandicoots defeat him. Crash for a moment thinks eagerly of the potential, but the Imagine Spot devolves into him just sitting on his throne with him and his followers bored out of their skull. He quickly hands it back to Velo, who in contrast is quite happy to get his power back.
• Lovecraft Lite: Warped, Wrath of Cortex, and Crash Bash follow the abominable possessed mask Uka Uka's intent to harness the powers of the crystals and become a cosmic-level threat. And Wrath throws in four more sadistic masks embodying the classical elements, whose mere presence triggered massive eruptions and the Ice Age. Naturally, though, Crash and his allies put a stop to these diabolical schemes. Save for the ending of Bash that sees Uka Uka succeed.
• MacGuffin Delivery Service: More or less the main plot of Cortex Strikes Back. In addition in Warped after N. Gin is defeated, Cortex gives up on trying to beat Crash to the crystals and falls back on this trope. Uka Uka even refers to Crash as a "little orange delivery boy" before the final battle.
• Mad Scientist:
  • Every single villain in the Crash Bandicoot franchise is either a mad scientist or a mutated anthropomorphic animal created by said mad scientists.
  • Notably, one of the few where the Mad Scientists are actually scientists to a degree: N. Cortex and N. Brio in the original were doing experimentation with forced evolution and monitoring responses to the Cortex Vortex. Brio even warned Cortex about their brainwashing machine still being imperfect and not having determined the cause of its past failures.
• Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: Nina Cortex is introduced as Neo Cortex's niece, but a cutscene in Twinsanity heavily implies that she is really his daughter.
• Magitek: Technology and magic seem to get along rather nicely in Crash's world. Magical gems and crystals can power lasers and machinery, the resident evil spirit regularly relies on scientists for help with his schemes, in Crash of the Titans, Mojo can be extracted and used to mutate animals much like the Evolvo-Ray, which can even affect Uka Uka himself. Aku Aku and Uka Uka also regularly consult and confront eachother at a temple suspended in deep space by electronic devices.
• The Many Deaths of You: The series features lots of humorous death animations, intended to prevent players from snapping their controllers in frustration from dying over and over again. Notable examples include 'death' animations where Crash never actually dies like, for example, being mounted and kissed by a huge toad who turns into a handsome prince. Crash Tag Team Racing even featured a set of collectible Die-O-Rama FMVs, which demonstrated the various, comedic ways in which Crash could off himself.
• Matrix Raining Code: Appears at the beginning and end of the 4th cutscene of Crash: Mind Over Mutant due to the fact that Crunch and Coco have just put their NVs on.
• Meaningful Name: Several characters, mostly the villains (some of whom have punny names, as mentioned below).
• Mercy Invincibility: Whenever you lose an Aku Aku mask due to getting hit, you'll be invincible for a few seconds. In the racing games, if you fall into a pit, Aku Aku or Uka Uka will momentarily cover you as you're being put back on track.
• Mercy Mode: Dying too many times in a given level will cause you to start re-spawning with mask power ups, which let you survive an extra hit. Even more deaths, even with the masks, leads random boxes to turn into checkpoint boxes.
• Minecart Madness: "Compactor Reactor" and "Ghost Town" in Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex.
• Mini-Dungeon: Aside from the Bonus Stages, the first three games in the series have special mini-stages that is accessed through special means: Collecting N. Brio or Neo Cortex icons or stepping onto a colored platform (first game) and stepping on a colored platform or skull-patterned platform, aside from other things (second and third game). These stages - often called "Gem Routes" or "Death Routes" - are much harder than the actual levels and rarely have a checkpoint. In the case of Death Routes, you also have to reach the place without dying beforehand. Completing succesfully the Neo Cortex stages will net you keys that open secret levels; completing the Death Routes will net you gems (in some rare cases colored ones, which are the ones that give access to the Gem Routes). The Gem Routes themselves only have regular gems as rewards.
• Minion with an F in Evil: Tiny and N. Gin are for the large part just idiots loyally following Cortex's orders. This trait is more prominant in the Radical incarnations, though as early as Nitro Kart the two are noticeably less malicious and calculating than their master.
• Mirror Match: The boss fight against Fake Crash in N-Tranced. Fake Crash will perfectly mirror your movements... but the obstacles on the stage won't.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Dingodile, being a mix of a dingo and a crocodile. Likewise Rilla Roo (a gorilla and a kangaroo) and Scorporilla (a scorpion and a gorilla).
• Mook Maker: Would you believe a beehive (see Backtracking above)? *shudders*
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Doctor Neo Cortex, evil. Other doctors are similarly unhinged.
• Motive Decay: From the beginning of the series, Doctor Cortex was motivated to Take Over the World by a combination of They Called Me Mad! and abuse related to his short stature. From Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped onward, his schemes are mostly carried out as a service to his boss Uka Uka. At other times, he either specifically attempts to get rid of Crash (lampshaded in Crash Nitro Kart when Cortex ponders how he can defeat the Bandicoots before recalling his original world domination goal) or does what he does For the Evulz.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: In Crash of the Titans, Coco is dismayed at Nina's plans to crush Wumpa Island with the Doominator robot: "Our house is there, and all our stuff! Oh, and maybe Crunch."

N-Z

• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Crash Bandicoot, Crunch Bandicoot, and Doctor Nefarious Tropy.
• The Napoleon: While the majority of scientists in the series are vertically challenged, Cortex is suggested to have suffered the most psychological trauma from this, even going so far as to create a "Planetary Minimizer" to shrink the entire earth to the size of a wumpa fruit.
  Dr Cortex: Finally after all these years of abuse, who's the little guy now?
• Nice Mean And In Between: Of the bandicoot trio, originally at least, Coco was Nice, Crunch was Mean, and Crash was In Between. Following Radical's reimagined characters, however, Crunch was Nice, Coco was Mean, and Crash was still In Between.
• Nintendo Hard: The original trilogy (including its HD remakes), Wrath of Cortex and It's About Time, only.
  • Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time is widely considered to be the hardest game in the franchise yet, surpassing the already hard difficulty of the original trilogy. Thankfully, this game also does away with the old lives system of the original games by default (although you still have the option to turn it back on), so you can die an infinite amount of times and never get a game over.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Peter Lorre as Doctor N. Gin, Mike Tyson as Tiny Tiger, Mr. T as Crunch Bandicoot, Jerry Lewis as the Ratnicians, Orson Welles as Doctor N. Brio (during the Radical Entertainment era).
• No-Damage Run: Getting gems in the first Crash Bandicoot required you finish the level without dying in addition to breaking all of the crates. In the second and third game, getting the Death Routes require you to not die before getting to it; if you do, you can't access it.
• No Ending: Crash: Mind Over Mutant fails to provide any kind of closure. Cortex escapes the ruin of his space station, while the Bandicoots have to deal with the wreckage (again). Given that the villains survived everything the heroes threw at them for TWELVE STRAIGHT YEARS, and always manage to come back in the next game unharmed, and with another fortress fully stocked with doomsday weapons and armies, it's a given that Cortex is still out there, plotting his next evil scheme.
• Non-Lethal Bottomless Pits: Crash of the Titans and Crash: Mind over Mutant where falling into a pit only does damage to your health bar. Also in the racing games, where Aku Aku or Uka Uka will lift the kart back on track if the racer falls into a pit.
• No OSHA Compliance:
  • N. Gin's Weapons Factory in Crash of the Titans.
  • Cortex's power station is even worse. Huge pits of bubbling toxic green waste are scattered about, there are exposed electric machines and red hot pipes and steam all over, the generator room is pitch black and has exhaust flowing around indoors, and metal platforms without rails are suspended over toxic goo or bottomless pits. At least Pinstripe gives a clear warning to be careful in the lowest part of the power station; which is where vast amounts of radioactive slime are dumped straight into the ocean.
• Nostalgia Level: Crash Twinsanity opens with a jungle level, which very much evokes the mood of the (usually early-found) jungle levels of the first two games in the franchise.
• Not in the Face!:
  N. Gin: Not my throat! I need that for swallowing!
• Not So Above It All: The series has increasingly made more jabs at Coco, originally Crash's much more down to earth and intellectual sister, as having her own buffoonish side. By the time of N. Sane Trilogy, despite still having and demonstrating the same genius IQ, she practically revels in being almost as goofy and playful as her brother.
• Not the Intended Use: One of the nice features of the original trilogy is that you will keep any crystal/gem you get even if Crash dies. This, however, leads to many kinds of tricks, among which allowing you to get more than one collectible in a single run or making backtracking easier. Commonly called "death-warping".
• Offer Void in Nebraska: Doctor Neo Cortex's and Doctor Nitrus Brio's commercial for the NV in Crash: Mind over Mutant ends with the announcer quickly saying "Soon to be available in everywhere but Arkansas."
• Oh God, with the Verbing!: Used with the Ratnicians. Said enemies are a parody of Jerry Lewis' "Nutty Professor" character.
• 1-Dimensional Thinking: Crash constantly finds himself running directly away from, or directly toward, obstacles that a normal hero would just sidestep, because the games are basically 2-dimensional platformers with only the narrowest 3rd dimension.
• 1-Up: They take form of Crash's iconic face.
• One-Winged Angel: Doctor Nitrus Brio in the first Crash Bandicoot game, who drinks his own Psycho Serum to mutate into the penultimate boss. Cortex drinks this same serum in Crash: Mind over Mutant as the final boss.
• Orcus on His Throne: Uka Uka spends a lot of titles barely contributing anything towards the villains' plots, leaving Cortex or another head minion to create the scheme and act as the de facto Big Bad. This was excused in the first two games, where he was still in his prison temple that Aku Aku had banished him to eons ago.
• Party Game: Crash Bash and Crash Boom Bang! consists of multiple gameplay modes as 4 characters at a time battle each other or battle in a team of two.
• Pass Through the Rings: Rings of Power in Warped is a special biplane level where Crash has to pass through sets of rings while racing other planes to the finish. Doing a barrel roll while passing through the rings will boost his speed.
• People Puppets: Crash "jacking" the Titans in Crash of the Titans.
• Pickup Hierarchy:
  • Primary: Crystals, from 2 onward.
  • Secondary: Gems, Sapphire Relics, 1-Ups, Tawna/N. Brio Tokens (first game only).
  • Tertiary: Wumpa Fruit.
  • Extra: Keys (first game only). Gold/Platinum Relics.
• Planet Terra: Played with. Earth and Terra are separate planets, and one of the inhabitants of Terra believes Earth to be a copy of it.
• Platforming Pocket Pal: Technically, while Aku Aku has been around in the first game as Crash's Single-Use Shield, only in Warped does he get fleshed out and become more of a "pal".
• Playing Tennis with the Boss: Koala Kong and Doctor Neo Cortex in Crash Bandicoot, Cortex again in Crash Twinsanity, Coco Bandicoot in Crash: Mind over Mutant
• Plot Coupon: The Power Crystals are often required to progress to the next levels and face the bosses. The gems (and later relics) are of less importance, but you'll still need them if you want to complete the story. In the racing games and Crash Bash, you instead need trophies and keys, as well as the tokens (in the racing games) and relics.
• Power Trio: Crash, Coco and Crunch or Crash, Coco and Aku Aku depending on how you look at it.
• Power-Up Mount: Each of the Naughty Dog games had one such animal per game, with two levels in each game dedicated entirely to riding them through their respective obstacle courses (an unnamed wild boar in Crash Bandicoot, Polar the polar bear in Crash 2, and Pura the tiger, along with Baby T the T-Rex in Warped. Shnurgle the baby alien continues the tradition in It's About Time).
• Pre Ass Kicking One Liner: Dingodile's "Break out the butter; we're gonna make TOAST!", N. Tropy's "Now you're on my time, you little skunk! GIVE ME THE CRYSTALS!" and N. Gin's "Prepare to be pulverized, bandicoot!"
• Protagonist Title: All of them simply feature Crash, the hero of the whole story.
• Puzzle Boss: Ripper Roo. In the first game, Crash must jump on the TNT boxes coming down the waterfall with precise timing so they explode just as Ripper Roo jumps next to them. In the sequel, Ripper Roo is still invulnerable to Crash's attacks, at least until he knocks himself dizzy with his own explosives, giving Crash a small window of opportunity to hurt him.
• Pyromaniac: Dingodile really likes torching things with that monstrous flamethrower of his.
• Raiders of the Lost Parody: The first game has a few levels where Crash has to outrun rolling boulders and others where the main enemies are natives.
• Recurring Boss: Crunch Bandicoot is the only boss in Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex and must be fought a total of 5 times, each one with him wielding a different elemental mask (or all 4 of them, in the case of the final battle).
• Recycled IN SPACE!: The Island of Dr. Moreau SET IN AN AUSTRALIAN ARCHIPELAGO, DOING LOONEY TUNES!
• Reduced to Dust: Flame obstacles and attacks will burn Crash and turn him into a pile of ash.
• Regional Bonus: Several Japanese releases of the series had extra bells and whistles added to them:
  • Warped adds Pocketstation support, a few unlockable FMVs, and some gameplay hints provided by Aku Aku.
  • The GBA version of Nitro Kart has extended versions of nearly all of the (admittedly short) music tracks for the levels.
  • Tag Team Racing has a completely new model for Crash to fit his regional design (the new model is available as an Easter Egg skin in the Western release however).
• Remember the New Guy?: While most of the Funny Animal cast are implied to have been created by Cortex or his fellow Mad Scientist cronies, a good few, such as Farmer Ernest and Pasadena O'Possum, seem to randomly appear out of nowhere, with no implication of Cortex's hand in their existance.
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent:
  • The Komodo Bros. are a pair of mutated Komodo dragons who are bosses in the second game.
  • Warped introduces pterosaurs and triceratopses as enemies in the prehistoric levels, along with the boss Dingodile, who is 50% crocodile and 50% dingo. The adorably cute Baby T is the only exception.
• Running Gag: The "pancakes" gag throughout Titans, and the "eating sandwiches whilst going to the bathroom" gag in Mind Over Mutant.
• Sadist Show: The newer Radical interpretations lean into a video game example somewhat, with a lot of the cast, good or bad, tending to both envoke and suffer a heafty amount of abuse.
• Save-Game Limits: In the original Crash Bandicoot, the only way to save your game (or collect a password) was to go from the overworld map into a level, collect a series of hidden bonus tokens and beat the ensuing bonus level, or collecting a gem by beating a level without dying while breaking all the crates in the area. And when you restored the game, you snapped back to just three lives. Fortunately, the sequels made it easy to save your progress in-between levels and keep your lives, and the N. Sane Trilogy remake of the first game replaces this with a regular modern saving system.
• Scenery as You Go: the temple levels in the first game have wumpa fruit overhanging from the main path, until you walk into them.
• Schmuck Bait: Most games include a pile of boxes with TNT/Nitro Crate hidden in the stash. You know what happens to any unsuspecting bandicoot trying foolishly to spin into it.
• Sdrawkcab Name: Uka Uka for Aku Aku.
• Sequel Hook:
  • The very first game has the canonical (despite being right in the middle of a non-canon ending that makes Cortex The Unfought) "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue that, about Cortex, gives "but the future refused to change" a run for its money in terms of creepy ways to write a sentence:
  "But evil geniuses are harder to squash than cockroaches."
  • Also in the second game, the final boss' Evil Laugh is heard in between the ending credits.
• Shameless Self-Promotion:
  • One of the text hints in Tag Team Racing is this for Radical Entertainment, though not spelling the promoted product outright so as to avoid getting sued by FOX, it being a Licensed Game:
  "Have you played Hit & Run? Man, that was a great game."
  • The scrapped animated intro to the first game ends on the line "Play our game and tell your friends so we'll make lots of loot!"
• Shark Tunnel: The Racing Game spinoffs Crash Team Racing and Crash Nitro Kart each include a Shark Tunnel as an underwater track, "Roo's Tubes" and "Deep Sea Driving", respectively.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: Pinstripe Potoroo, Ripper Roo (in his second appearance) as Doctor Roo and the Viscount Devil from Crash Boom Bang! are three male marsupials who have been seen wearing fancy, stylish clothing.
• Shorter Means Smarter: Played or subverted, Depending on the Artist, Crash and Coco interchange between being the shortest of the team. The not-too-bright Crunch is consistently taller than either of them however. Played more consistently straight with the villains, with the vertically challenged Cortex being much smarter than large henchmen like Tiny.
• Sibling Yin-Yang:
  • Crash and Coco. The former is more simple-minded, gullible, and unable to speak, but is more action-oriented. The latter is a whiz with tech and can speak properly, but is geared more towards tech support (not to say she can't go into action sometimes).
  • Aku Aku the good Witch Doctor mask and his twin Uka Uka, the evil one.
• Single-Use Shield:
  • The witch Doctor's mask Aku-Aku protects him (and Coco, etc) from one hit. Picking up another will give you two hits of protection, while grabbing a third will then give you temporary invincibility, which then resets back to two shields.
  • Crash Team Racing however changes it. The Aku-Aku mask is full invincibility (no longer an example of this trope), while the actual bubble shield item gives temporary protection from a single attack/hazard. Having ten Wumpa fruit turns the shield blue, meaning it lasts forever, so long as you don't take a hit.
• Sissy Fight: Dr Cortex vs Real Velo in the Team Cortex ending of Crash Nitro Kart. Tiny breaks it up.
• Slide Attack: Crash gains this starting in the second game. It's good for sliding under obstacles quickly and attacking certain enemies that are immune to being spun or stomped.
• Sliding Scale of Linearity vs. Openness: The original trilogy distinguished itself from contemporary 3D platformers with its linear level design, with a greater emphasis on skillful play over exploration. This was one of the consequences of the limited technology the developers had to work with on the PlayStation.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World:
  • The Iceberg Lab in Crash Twinsanity, the Ratcicle Kingdom in Crash: Mind over Mutant.
  • Crash 2 seems to take place during winter, as snow is a common feature on the islands. Notably, quite a few snow levels have a gorgeous sunset coloration.
• Smelly Skunk: The Stenches. An aversion of this is the skunks in the first game and Twinsanity.
• The Smurfette Principle:
  • Played straight throughout most of the early games, played with as the series went forward. In the Naughty Dog games, there is only one female character per game: Tawna in the original game, Coco throughout the latter games. Coco continues to be the only female until Ripto's Rampage, when Nina joins the roster. However, Nina is an evil character; she only fights on the side of good if the world is threatened by a greater evil than Uka Uka. Crash Tag Team Racing is the only game that has more than two female characters; Pasadena joins the roster for that particular game. In Crash Boom Bang!, the series enters Two Girls to a Team territory, when Tawna makes an unexpected return, and is playable alongside Coco. Later on, the series returns to Smurfette territory with Coco being the only female on the side of good, and Nina remaining firmly on the side of evil.
  • Crash Tag Team Racing is particularly good in this regard; the characters' good/evil alignment is utterly thrown out the window as it's pretty much a free-for-all as far as gameplay is concerned (except when it isn't). All three female characters are playable; in multiplayer, it is entirely possible (if unlikely) for Coco, Nina, and Pasadena to all be in use at once.
  • By virtue of including (almost) every notable character as playable, Nitro-Fueled averts this by having a total of 9 playable female characters.
  • It's About Time squashes this trope by introducing several new female characters, including Alternate Tawna and Kupuna-Wa on the good side and N. Tropy (F) on the evil side.
• Snap Back: Crash Nitro Kart 2 undid most changes during Radical's tenure and utilised the designs and aesthetics of the earlier games.
• Spectacular Spinning: Crash's main form of offense.
• Speech Impediment: Doctor Nitrus Brio has a strong stutter in most appearances.
• Speed, Smarts and Strength: Out of the main bandicoot trio, Crash is generally depicted as the most dexterous and agile, while Coco is the tech genius, and Crunch is the powerhouse.
• Spin Attack: Crash's basic and signature enemy slaying move.
• Spiritual Antithesis:
  • The original game is this to Super Mario 64. Whereas the latter pioneered the capabilities of the N64 and made open environments out of its levels, the former pushed the boundaries of what the PSX was able to do, and opted for more linear level designs. The results are two successful games that showcase the strengths and limitations of their respective consoles, with a distinct approach in development to each one.
  • The series is also an antithetical sister series to Spyro the Dragon, also because of the Sliding Scale of Linearity vs. Openness. In fact, the latter could be considered a true PSX counterpart to Super Mario 64.
• Squashed Flat: Several of Crash's death animations.
• Sssssnake Talk: Komodo Joe.
• The Starscream: Nina in both versions of Crash Of The Titans. Cortex deals with her and betrays Uka Uka in Mind Over Mutant. Half of Cortex and Uka Uka's minions also turn on them to collect the Evil Twin's treasure in Twinsanity.
• Stealth-Based Mission: In "Crash Twinsanity", there are a few brief sections where you have to periodically hide from a watchman down the path until you get close enough to spin attack them.
• Stock Scream: The Howie Scream is used for the Lab Assistants in the first two games.
  • The infamous Wilhelm Scream is also used for the Lab Assistants in On the Run!.
• Straight Man and Wise Guy:
  • Announcers Chick and Stew play this trope to a hilarious tee, with Chick incredibly deadpan and no-nonsense in delivering any sort of input, and Stew being snarky and high-energy to the same level.
  • Crash and Coco themselves often play a varient, with Coco being the intellectual and relatively more serious character strategising how to deal with evil plots, and Crash being a silent jokester who bungles his way through the rest. In the Radical developed games, they underwent a Morecambe and Wise-esque Deconstruction, with Coco being more of a buffoonish know-it-all and Crash being a goofy Silent Snarker.
• Suddenly Voiced: At the end of Titans, Crash utters his first proper word: "Pancakes!". Crash appears to be just as stunned as Coco and Crunch at this development.
• Super Drowning Skills: Crash will choke and then go lifeless the moment he enters deep water.
  • Perhaps the most baffling example is Dingodile in Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time as Dingodile is half-crocodile and crocodiles are supposed to be excellent swimmers.
• Tactical Suicide Boss:
  • Oh, Cortex... Why do you bother shooting at Crash with green lasers that can be spun back at you, when you could simply have continued with the red and blue ones that couldn't? Also, lowering your energy shield at the same time you blow open a hole in the floor with mines is just asking for it, really...
  • It gets worse in Twinsanity when he straight up tells Crash when he's about to fire the laser that Crash can knock back at him.
  • Many other bosses play the same way, like Ripper Roo in the second game (deliberately detonating Nitro panels with his own body for one), Tiny Tiger in the same game (you can lead him to jump into a pit), or Dingodile in the third (he shoots through and destroys the crystal barriers that protected him, making bigger openings). Justified in all 3 cases in that Ripper Roo is completely insane, Tiny is a single-minded buffoon, and, according to Aku Aku in the N. Sane Trilogy, Dingodile is too caught up on trying to set things on fire to notice the damage he's causing to his barrier.
• Take Me Instead: Cortex does this in Crash Twinsanity to save Nina from Crash's evil doppelganger.
• Take That!: Ads for Crash Bandicoot on the original PlayStation had a guy dressed as Crash show up at Nintendo headquarters with a megaphone to taunt "Plumber-Boy". "You're hurting my elbow!"
• Temple of Doom: A large number of levels in the franchise is set in a temple with loads of traps.
• Temporary Platform: Especially the first game.
• Teen Genius: Coco Bandicoot is a young girl and yet she's good with technology, being capable of hacking into Cortex's holographic projector and then into his computer to uncover his plans. In The Wrath of Cortex she even makes her own teleporter hub similar to the Time Twister Machine.
  • Also applicable to Nina Cortex - in Twinsanity, her mad scientist uncle was unable to repair the Psychetron without her helping hand, and she even overthrew him as Big Bad in Titans.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: The relationships among the Rogues Gallery were always less than amiable, though by the time of the Radical Entertainment games, Uka Uka's entire group are warring as much with themselves as with the heroes. Cortex had become more impudent and treacherous towards Uka, with both taking turns conspiring to get rid of the other, Nina herself made attempts to usurp Cortex, Brio was rehired but still openly resented his previous mistreatment. N Gin remained loyal to Cortex, but mostly ignored in his power plays. By the end of Mind Over Mutant, all the villains have evacuated, with Uka vowing to brutally destroy Cortex upon sight for his past betrayal and humiliation.
• Terrifying Tiki: Uka Uka, the Elementals from Wrath of Cortex, and Tikimon from Twinsanity.
• That Poor Cat: Used in Mind Over Mutant - apparently cats don't like having empty bottles that once contained mutagen thrown at them.
• Thematic Rogues Gallery: Crash's recurring foes all have something to do with Cortex or Uka Uka, with many of them being mutant hybrids modified by either of them or N. Brio, or the various Mad Scientists. The only ones outside this gallery are N. Oxide and Velo, both aliens.
• Theme Naming: Many villains in the games have Punny Names containing the letter "N", such as Neo Cortex (referring to a part of the brain), N. Gin ("engine") and Nitros Oxide (N₂O, a gas compound used in vehicle booster systems). This also extends to place names, like N. Sanity ("insanity") beach.
  • All of the bandicoots (aside from Tawna) have names beginning with "C".
  • Most of the evolved animals in the series have alliterative names (Tiny Tiger, Ripper Roo, Pinstripe Potoroo, etc.). The only real exceptions are the Komodo Bros who instead opt for rhyming names (Komodo Joe and Komodo Moe).
• This Cannot Be!: Aku Aku does this in the intro of Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped, bookended by Uka Uka doing it in the real ending.
• Threatening Shark:
  • Sharks are recurring enemies in water levels.
  • Somewhat averted with Nash from Crash Nitro Kart - he may be a shark, but he's actually quite adorable (if obnoxious). Coco refers to him as a "poor shark-thingy".
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: The second Boss Battle in Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back sees you facing the Komodo Brothers, Joe and Moe. They are shown to have been training by throwing swords towards one another, before they see that Crash has arrived. Once the fight is started, Joe is spun at Crash, while Moe tosses his magically respawning blades at him.
  • One type of mook in the third game's Arabian levels can throw his scimitar at you.
• Toilet Humour: Cortex's unfortunate little "stuck in a pipe" incident in Twinsanity, and, of course, the Stenches' little... "gas problem".
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • Coco's physical skills develop more as the series progresses, evolving from a minor vehicle-dependent character in Warped to fully playable and as capable as Crash in Mind Over Mutant.
  • N. Brio in Mind Over Mutant is a lot more confident and assertive than he was in the first two games.
• Took a Level in Dumbass: Just about every character that wasn't already dimwitted. Tiny and Crash may count as subversions actually.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Coco compared to her more innocent persona in earlier games is a much more snarky and apathetic brat in the Radical titles. Crash also became a sadistic prankster in Crash Tag Team Racing though this was toned down in later titles.
• Tomorrowland: The future levels in Crash Bandicoot: Warped.
• Town Girls: A neither for Coco, and Tawna (a femme in the main dimension, and a butch in the alternate dimension).
• Trailers Always Spoil: The trailer for Crash of the Titans reveals that Cortex is replaced by Nina.
• Translation Nod: Crash's iconic dance was introduced in a Japanese commercial for the first game before becoming a regular detail in later games.
• Trick Boss: N. Gin in Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped starts in a robot not too different from the one he used in the game before (he even tells the player he'd "made a few modifications" to the old robot he used in Crash 2), which uses similar attacks to the old one. Needless to say, it goes down after you shoot the same areas, only for it to flee, and dock with a much larger spacecraft, complete with tougher weaponry and a new life bar.
• Tropical Island Adventure: The main setting of the series is N. Sanity Island, a tropical island off the coast of Australia. The first game in particular has Crash go through a series of three islands known as the Tasmanian Islands to free them from Cortex's control.
• True Final Boss: N. Tropy in N-Tranced.
• Under the Sea: Warped has its underwater levels which are fun but become very annoying under Time Trial mode. Wrath of Cortex brought back the underwater stages from Warped, but due to somewhat poor level design and the horrible controls of the submarine, tended to be annoying even outside of Time Trial.
• Undying Loyalty:
  • Tiny and N Gin are usually presented as such to Cortex. They serve Nina in Titans, albeit forcibly, with N Gin ultimately giving Crash info just so he could bail Cortex out. Pinstripe is also stated as such in the manual of the first game.
  • Pasadena is about the only employee of Von Clutch that seems to think highly of him. While most of the park drones are banking on better paying work or odd jobs on the side, she is devotedly looking for his missing power gem.
• Unexpected Shmup Level: The battle against Doctor N. Gin in Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped was basically a rail shooter.
  • Speaking of rail shooters, "Oxide Ride" in Crash Bash has two phases. The first is a chase sequence with laser-shooting ships. This mechanic isn't used in any of the minigames, and never comes up again.
• The Unfought:
  • In Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped, Uka Uka is introduced as The Man Behind the Man, an extremely powerful mask that was sealed away for thousands of years. You never really fight him, all he does is act as an obstacle during the final boss battle. This isn't so bad (a mask is kind of hard to make into a full boss), but it gets really annoying in Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex where there was a perfect opportunity to fight him. In that game, every boss is Crunch absorbing the powers of an elemental mask. There are four elemental masks, five bosses, you'd expect the final boss to be the recurring boss using Uka Uka's power, right? Nope. Instead, he just uses the other four masks at once, and Uka Uka does absolutely nothing during the fight except pull Cortex back to safety after you attack him.
  • Uka Uka does have boss fights in Crash Twinsanity and Crash of the Titans, though he is not the final boss in either of these games.
• The Unintelligible:
  • Crash, of course, varies between this and Heroic Mime, but another example would be the Architect from the Ratcicle Kingdom in Mind Over Mutant. He has a female translator to relay what he's really saying to Crash, however, it is possible to make out random words thrown into his unintelligible dialogue.
  • Averted in Japanese localizations (considerably the first, where he says "LET'S GO!" (in Japanese, obviously) should only you start the level) and, for the first time ever in non-Japanese continuity, Crash of the Titans. In Crash Tag Team Racing though the pivot of Crash using this trope, it is possible to make out coherent words and even whole sentences out of his incoherent babble at times.
  • In the intro video of the very first game, when Crash falls out the window he clearly says "Uh-oh!"
• Victory Pose: The Crash Dance.
• Villain Decay:
  • Dr. Neo Cortex in today's games is nowhere near as malicious and sinister as his Naughty Dog depictions were. He and most of the other Doctors (notably N.Gin) are also a lot less intelligent and a lot more comical for a bunch of mad scientists now.
    • Played with in Mind Over Mutant. He's just as campy and deranged as ever, if not more so, but in terms of role, he takes revenge on his treacherous niece, overthrows and humiliates his abusive boss and pulls an effective Not-So-Harmless Villain moment one-on-one fight with Crash, not to mention, lack of pants aside, makes a clean escape, avoiding his usual end of game Humiliation Conga.
  • Reversed for Nina who went from an adolescent assistant of Cortex in her first appearances to a devious usurper as Uka Uka's Dragon and the final boss in Titans. She ended up dealt with accordingly at the start of Mind Over Mutant however, reducing her to a minor role.
  • Uka-Uka went from being a Manipulative Bastard to being a Pointy-Haired Boss between Warped and Wrath of Cortex. He regained some credibility in Titans, only to fall victim to a humiliating overthrow from Cortex in Mind Over Mutant.
  • Played with for N. Tropy who constantly switched from being a time-pun spewing minor nuisance to a more sinister potential replacement for Cortex Depending on the Writer. Completely subverted with It's About Time, which upgrades Tropy into a far more sinister menace who successfully backstabs Cortex and Uka and plans to wipe the entire timeframe clean and recreate in his image.
• Viler New Villain: As Cortex and his cronies became more pitiful, other meaner members of the Rogues Gallery stepped in, starting with Uka Uka and N Tropy in Warped, we also get Nitros Oxide, Emperor Velo, the Evil Twins and Nina Cortex. Being a comedic series, these villains still tend to have some level of clownish qualities, though still fit the bill of being more menacing and petty Jerkasses than the original scientists were.
• Villainous Valor: Most games depict Cortex and his lackeys rather sympathetically, noting that trying to defeat Crash (despite being you, the player) is a losing battle. Still, despite his neuroses, Cortex's determination to win only increases with each face off.
• Vocal Evolution:
  • Debi Derryberry's take on Coco was initially rather high-pitched and feminine. Throughout the titles her voice eventually became deeper pitched and more obnoxious sounding, a tone much akin to one of Derryberry's other roles.
  • Lex Lang also used a near perfect replicate of Clancy Brown's soft spoken deep voice for Dr. Cortex in Crash Twinsanity. In the Radical titles Lang exaggerated Cortex's tone to be louder, higher pitched and upped his campiness to eleven. Radical liked the take and actually evolved the character itself accordingly.
• The Voiceless:
  • Coco in Warped, despite being a half-time playable protagonist, plays this straight, no matter if she had Vicki Winters voicing her in the second installment or not. The Japanese version, as well as the N Sane Trilogy remake add a couple of grunts to her.
  • Crash, while rarely engaging in conversation, usually had the odd grunt in every game. In Crash Twinsanity, however, he is completely mute.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The first game, as well as the racing spin-off Crash Team Racing did these, with humorous intent. Interestingly though, one of the bosses, Ripper Roo, is stated as studying and becoming an academic, and in the next game you find him in a gigantic library, and you disrupt his studies. (Un)fortunately Doctor Nitrus Brio didn't stick to his bartending.
• Winged Soul Flies Off at Death: From the second game onward this is the default death animation.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: The villains in N-Tranced actually manage to try this twice. N. Tropy's main plan for the game is to hire hypnotist N. Trance to brainwash the bandicoots over to the side of the villains. When that fails by pure chance and Aku Aku preventing Crash from being taken, Crunch is the first boss Crash faces and is armed with a gun.
• Women Are Wiser: Depending on the Writer at least, the series tends to maintain the female cast as more sensible and less clownish foils for the wacky and cartoonish male cast:
  • Coco, who starts off as a genius hacker who plays the rational, sensible girl to Crash's antics. This...fluctuates in later games, where Coco is given more foibles and comical qualities, though games like It's About Time still imply her to be a far more competent mirror of her air headed brother.
  • Nina Cortex is stated in-story to be far more competent and evil than her uncle is, and ends up usurping him in Crash of the Titans. Her bratty arrogance (and Neo proving Not So Harmless) leads to her ending up a Big Bad Wannabe however.
  • Tawna was already established as being as intelligent as she is beautiful, though her Alternate Universe counterpart has the Action Girl competence to back it up and spends most of It's About Time saving Crash instead of vice versa. One moment of desperate recklessness aside, she is by far the least flawed and clownish ally Crash has ever had, with very few jokes made at her expense.
  • The gender swapped N Tropy from Alt!Tawna's universe is treated as the most menacing villain in the series so far, having killed her universe's Crash and Coco. She stands out as among very few villains in the series who lacks many bungling or pathetic qualities, with her threat level played in a deadly serious light usually uncharacteristic of the franchise.
• X-Ray Sparks: Happens to Crash starting in the second game when he gets electrocuted. His boxer shorts also become visible.
• Your Size May Vary: Several characters changed sizes throughout the series, especially due to the constant redesigns. Cortex in particular ranged from being a midget even compared to the other dwarfish scientists or roughly the same height as Crash. Coco also ranged from a Big Little Sister to the smallest character of the cast. Boss characters such as Tiny and Dingodile could also range from towering over Crash to being only a head or so taller than him. Crunch was massive in his debut in Wrath of Cortex, but was shrunk down to being a little taller than Crash in later appearances.

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