Headscratchers / Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped

• Cortex was implied to have lost all allies but N. Gin in the events of the second game, relying on tricking Crash to do his dirty work. By the start of this game, he already has minions, Tiny and Dingodile tending to the mission. Dingodile is a random new introduction Cortex inexplicably created in the short point after Uka Uka's release, while Tiny was originally N. Brio's associate working against Cortex (ironically in this and all later games, Tiny is Cortex's most faithful henchman).
  • Tiny is also a blithering idiot. It wouldn't take much for Cortex to convince him to work for him, to the point where using the word "trick" is probably overkill.
• The whole point of the Time Travel Framing Device is that Uka Uka wants to get the Crystals and Gems from their original locations in time. Ignoring the potential for Temporal Paradoxes this invites, several levels take place in the future. While you could Hand Wave that in these cases you're gathering the future versions of the Crystals, that explanation takes the Timey-Wimey Ball and starts playing kickball with it (for one thing, couldn't there then be 50 Crystals, 25 in the past and 25 in the future?)
  • Fridge Brilliance: Maybe the crystals take a while to form underground, and they weren't fully formed in the current timeline? After all, the intro to 2 shows that they can certainly grow in caves.
• OK, in Warped, Uka Uka states that Cortex lost the gems and crystals (i.e. after his defeat in Cortex Strikes Back, they were left in the warp tower). How then, did they get out for the "future" levels?
  • I recall reading in the instruction manual that the crash of the space-station somehow shot the crystals and gems through time and space. Doesn't really make sense though
    • In the Star Wars Expanded Universe book The Glove of Darth Vader, the explosion of the Death Star II created a wormhole than pulled debris through space/time... I doubt this is what Naughty Dog was going for, but there is a precedent, especially given the Crash franchise's loose grasp on science.
  • For the fun of visiting space themed levels. Honestly, who travels through time and doesn't want to see the future? In any case, isn't there something paradoxical about collecting crystals from their original points in time and bringing them to the present? I mean, how did they appear in Crash 2 if they were removed from the timeline? Unless the Time Twister's malfunction somehow sent them back, I can't see how it'd work.
  • The crystals are there in the future because Crash already recollected and rescattered the crystals by that point in time. Aside from that, it's implied that there are more Power Crystals in the world than the basic twenty-five...Which raises the question of why Cortex and Uka-Uka didn't just go for those...
• What time period are the underwater levels meant to be? Every other level theme has a somewhat obvious time period, even the subtler ones (The jetski levels are during the pirate ages, the motorcycle levels take place in a 60s biker gang theme, and the plane levels are during one of the World Wars), but not these ones. It can't be the Cambrian explosion, because there are animals like pufferfish and sharks here.