His sister Coco, too. She is a cute, perky, kind-hearted teenage girl who likes science but is often shown to be perfectly happy to participate in her brother's goofiness.
Krunk has some hilariously endearing moments, such as his amazement at the yoyo Crash gives him (and his subsequently getting tangled up in it), or his failed attempts to handstand in his Nitro-Fueled podium animation; both of which result in a goofy smile.
Is Cortex the most pathetic failure of the Rogues Gallery for letting his defeats at the hands of Crash weigh down on his bravado, or is he the only villain self-aware enough to achieve Character Development and realise that Failure Is the Only Option?
Audience-Alienating Era: While fans will almost unanimously agree that the franchise has gone through one, when exactly it started is a source of debate, with some saying it started the moment the series continued without Naughty Dog with Crash Bash, others saying it started with the multi-console transition delivering rehashes such as The Wrath of Cortex, and others saying it started with Radical Entertainment's retool, or anytime inbetween. Either way, there is a consensus that the end of Naughty Dog's development run and the franchise being pawned off to multiple other developers was at least a starting pivot for said era occurring and the franchise's relevance to wane, whenever it truly occurred. However, one thing fans do universally agree is that Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy is the exact moment this era ended.
Crunch is a justified example. He makes his entrance in Wrath of Cortex as a gruff, musclebound and defiant Evil Counterpart to Crash who can change into powerful elemental forms. After being broken out of Cortex's mind control and forsaking his powers, Crunch spends the rest of the series attempting to atone for his past villainy by being a positive role model to children. However, his fashion of doing so by way of inserting bits of advice into his own dialogue (e.g. "Eat your greens!" and "Mow the lawn when your parents ask you!") more often than not comes off as awkward and haphazard.
Tiny Tiger. Tiny started out as an angry, roaring monster who talked in Hulk Speak. As time went on, they started showing off his stupidity more for comical moments, such as in Crash Nitro Kart. And then in Crash of the Titans, he somehow transformed into a Bengal Tiger from a Tasmanian Tiger, got his intelligence upped, and began acting like a campy Mike Tyson knock-off who idolizes Crash, and only attacks him because he's hired to do so.
And, of course, Cortex. He goes from creating an army that would destroy the world, to being sacked by Uka Uka and replaced by his own niece. He regained a bit of his reputation in Mind Over Mutant, where he took revenge on them both and claimed the role of Big Bad once again, but still maintains a much more demented disposition throughout it all. Partially reversed in It's About Time, where he starts off on a low, upstaged by the more composed N. Tropy and stuck in a Wile E Coyote-esque revenge plot against Crash, though gradually becomes a credible menace once more, and even after he's forced to team up with Crash to defeat a rebellious N. Tropy, he remains the final boss.
Base-Breaking Character: While Coco's upgraded role was met with general acclaim following the series' revival, some have started to fear she's approaching Creator's Pet territory. While an online favourite in Nitro-Fueled, many fans were annoyed she got the lion's share of legendary skins, with many other fan favourites being lucky to get one. It's About Time punctuates her Spotlight-Stealing Squad status further in story, to the point of making her Crash's Superior Successor and rendering her brother the Designated Monkey, compared to their previous two-way-comedic Brains and Brawn dynamic (not helped by Toys For Bob expressing the change was because they wanted the female cast to be "equal" to Crash, which Coco had long already been).
It is generally accepted that The Wrath of Cortex was better once the loading times were made more manageable in re-releases. Whether or not it was a good Crash game, good in comparison to the later series, or it just plain wasn't a good game at all is up to debate.
In terms of characterisations and storytelling, some fans prefer the more nuanced and earnest storytelling of the original games, while others prefer the more wacky and meta plots and characterisations of the Radical era games. This counts as a bit of Vindicated by History for the Radical era, which was largely slammed for its character liberties and excessive humour in its day, though when It's About Time reversed back a lot of its more unique dynamic changes, and even tried to be more dramatic than the earlier titles, the reaction was divisive.
The character designs, to the point that with the release of each game, a large percentage of debate will be over any retools to the characters, however minor, and whether they work or are an improvement, or have ruined them completely. Coco's especially tend to be the most varied and thus more divisive, though no one is safe.
Common Knowledge: Similar to Spyro, many assume that Naughty Dog sold the Crash Bandicoot rights to Universal in the process of moving to Sony for Jak and Daxter. In reality, Universal always had the rights, and this publisher/developer rights relationship is a practice that's still common today (when Bungie left Microsoft, they had to leave Halo behind).
Contested Sequel: Pretty much every post-Naughty DogCrash game is this at best, for reasons that vary from game to game. Usually, Wrath of Cortex and the GBA entries are criticized for being way too similar to the Naughty Dog games, while the Radical-era titles are bashed for the exact opposite reason. All games have their defenders, though.
Critical Dissonance: Given their poor fan reception, it may be a surprise to hear that Crash of the Titans and Mind Over Mutant were given generally positive reviews from critics, and that the games won industry awards for their writing.
Bats showed up in later levels of the original Crash Bandicoot game in one of those really tricky, walls coming-in-and-out and floor-disappearing at random moments, side-scrolling levels. Fortunately, these enemies were pretty much limited to the game's Scrappy Levels.
Sludges in Crash of the Titans. They are fast, do tons of damage, and do a near-impossible to avoid counterattack nearly every time you hit them, and they usually come in groups.
Battlers are also a pain in the behind, as they constantly block, come in large groups, and have a very powerful special attack which they love to spam.
TKs in Crash: Mind Over Mutant. They have ranged attacks which are impossible to avoid, an annoying melee attack that they are invincible while using and has a large area of effect, and can throw you off your titan.
Designated Monkey: While the Crash universe tends to be indiscriminately comical and error-prone, there are inevitably some titles that pick a "favourite" for cartoon abuse and misery. Cortex is a routine case, with Crash Twinsanity in particular devoted to both story and gameplay subjecting him to Amusing Injuries, even in the rare instances he isn't being a Jerkass villain. It's About Time also dabbles with this, as while the gameplay subjects everyone to The Many Deaths of You as usual, the semi-Cerebus Syndrome of the story generally means Crash and ONLY Crash is stuck playing comic relief while the others are handling things relatively serious and competently.
Diagnosed by the Audience: Crash has an inability to communicate with others except for Aku Aku and his siblings and an aptitude towards athleticism along with puzzle-solving skills. The food he likes to eat the most is Wumpa fruit, showing a seeming pickiness with different foods. He also doesn't fear danger and shows insensitivity towards pain. Rooster Teeth's Death Battle claims that Crash actually shows symptoms of autism, which would explain his certain inabilities as well as his extraordinary skills in puzzle-solving and parkour.
Die for Our Ship: The moment Pasadena made a cutesy comment at Crash in Crash Tag Team Racing, all hellfire was unleashed in the fandom. Tawna finally reappearing the following game after (officially stated to have a fondness for Pinstripe) didn't help.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Back in 1998, before the release of Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped, there was a licensed Crash game for the 99X line of dot-matrix screen handhelds by Tiger Electronics. In it, the main antagonist was not Dr. Neo Cortex, but Mr. Crumb, an evil old miser so greedy, he summoned monsters to guard the treasure in his mansion, and even after he died he continued to guard it as a ghost. While he was obscure for the longest time, he recently gained a surge in popularity (Especially on Reddit) with many fans wanting him to return in Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, due to that game bringing back equally obscure characters Rilla Roo and Yaya Panda, and is so highly requested it's to the point where he beats out the Evil Twins. It also helps that he's a supernatural villain, which makes him stand out in the more science-focused franchise. He ultimately was confirmed to make his return in the modern mobile entry On The Run.
Epileptic Trees: Coco's actions in N. Sane Trilogy. Her deciding to use the Time Twister to help Crash in his prior adventures, alongside Cortex and N. Tropy's messing around, may have caused the minor changes in N. Sane Trilogy to eventually result in the post-Warped timeline being completely changed.
Uka Uka, especially in his first appearance, practically oozed evilness and held a threat level to match. In Crash Bash you are even allowed to play on his side and help him take over the world in a very dark ending. Even when later games downplayed his sinister air, he still proved to be one of the more threatening villains and fit in with the other Laughably Evil villains as an amusing Pointy-Haired Boss to the whole dynamic.
Among the various mutants, Dingodile is arguably the standout example due in part to his unique design/concept and being perhaps the biggest example of an Awesome Aussie in the series (with an added touch of Pyromania.) There's a reason why he was the first of Cortex's minions to be given a playable role in one of the main games.
Fandom-Enraging Misconception: Calling the wumpa fruits "apples" or "peaches" is the bane of any Crash fan's existence. Except Japanese ones, as in Japan they are officially called "apples".
With Sonic the Hedgehog, another 90s platformer series featuring a Mascot with Attitude. Fans often debate over which series has better games and characters.
Though the bulk of the fandoms are still on very good terms, relations with Spyro the Dragon fans have somewhat soured in the 2020's. The Spyro fanbase often accuses Crash of being Adored by the Network with consistent releases, not helped by Spyro's only appearances post-Reignited Trilogy being in cameos on Crash's games. Crash fans have countered that it makes since that Activision is mostly pushing Crash due to that series having seen more success.
Fans often refer to the Fake Crash character as "Trash Bandicoot" due to the developer's anecdote on how Fake Crash was concievednote Naughty Dog employees were given an official Crash plush from one of Universal's executives, but it looked so Off-Model, complete with huge teeth and eyebrows and dubbed it "Trash Bandicoot" but he is often confused for Evil Crash who is a completely different character who debuted in Twinsanity.
One-shot villain Viscount from Crash Boom Bang is often referred to as Viscunt for his jerkass nature.
"Cash Banooca" for the titular character. Started as a Running Gag by Caddicarusnote One of his stepdaughters mispelled Crash's name, and Caddy thought the result was funny enough to mention in one of his videos, who has since given similarly mangled names for the games and the rest of the cast - such as "Cash Banooca 2: Gringotts Steakhouse" and "Cash Banooca 4: In a big tent".
While the mutants introduced in Crash Tag Team Racing (Pasadena, Chick, Stew and Willie Wumpa Cheeks) have no officially-stated origin, the general fan consensus is that Von Clutch, being a Cortex fanboy, somehow managed to obtain plans for Cortex's evolvo-ray and went on to create them to work in his park.
Due to the many similarities between the two's original designs, there have been fans who considered Tawna and Isabella to be twin sisters.
While most of the scientists have known full names, N. Gin's first name is still unknown. Some fans speculate that the N stands for "Nitro", making his full name "Nitro Gin".
First Installment Wins: Regardless of what one thinks of the later games, in the general consciousness, the original Naughty Dog games are the most well known and well loved games in the series. The remakes only contributed to this even further.
Franchise Original Sin: The original games made by Naughty Dog were actually equally fickle with lore and cast (eg. Coco replacing Tawna without explanation, Uka Uka abruptly introduced as The Man Behind the Man, Tiny going from Brio's cohort to Cortex's most faithful subordinate), though many of these trial and error changes were agreed to help build the mainstay elements of the franchise and otherwise the games maintained a very coherent direction, compared to the later Crash titles traded around multiple developers which suffered from inconsistent handling and in some cases made drastic changes for the supposed sake of it, leaving the franchise in something of an identity crisis. Activision fully rebooting the series from N. Sane Trilogy onwards had left fans to wonder if this would finally put it back on track with a more unified vision.
Though not quite as widespread as with Spyro, there is a lot of overlap with Jak and Daxter, Ratchet & Clank and Sly Cooper, which are often regarded as the PlayStation 2's successors to Crash and Spyro as platforming mascots. Besides this, Crash and Jak and Daxter were created by the same company and have nearly identical development teams that rarely overlap with Naughty Dog's later and more realistic work, while both Ratchet and Clank and Sly Cooper have released games dealing with multiple dimensions or time travel like Crash had (Crash and Ratchet even announcing their dimension-themed games in incredibly short time spans of one another).
There's also significant overlap with the Donkey Kong Country series, as both franchises star cartoony animals, feature lavish art design, and have often tough-as-nails platforming. Some Donkey Kong fans even consider Crash Bandicoot a better 3D adaptation of the Country series than Donkey Kong 64.
Naturally, there also exists an overlap with the Super Mario Bros. games, especially as of the Nintendo Switch era, where both series received acclaimedinstallments in their franchises. And like with Sonic before him, many people wish to see Mario and Crash duke it out in Super Smash Bros..
Game-Breaker: N. Gin in Tag Team Racing has the single most overpowered weapon in the game. It wipes out almost everyone in one or two hits, and is pretty much a guaranteed win if you're doing Rolling Thunder, where it's pretty hard not to go way above the requirement. If you're doing multiplayer and someone else picks him, don't expect to do well.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Crash in Japan. It definitely helps that he was "cutened" for Japan, making them feel more at-home with it. Shockingly◊, he's actually got a significant amount of requests from Japanese players to be Super Smash Bros. DLC, despite his status as an American-made, PlayStation-associated character. He's clearly still got fans over there. Several elements of the games themselves were made to appease Japanese fans. You can thank Japan for the Crash dance and Coco following the second game. Japan was absolutely hyped for the release of Crash Bandicoot 4.
Fake Crash is one of the most popular characters in Japan, so much that he was included in the Japanese CTR bonus video and the Japanese version of Crash Bash.
Another surprisingly popular character in Japan is Pinstripe Potoroo. Despite being Out of Focus for a majority of the post-Naughty Dog era, there were very few Japanese Crash fans who had forgotten about Pinstripe for his suaveslimeball personality, on top of the Love Triangle created for the Japanese publications between him, Crash, and Tawna. His continued popularity in Japan was so great, that once Japan got to develop their own Crash game, not only was Pinstripe Promoted to Playable, but he was one of the four default characters.
In "Warped", a Triceratops chases Crash through the prehistoric levels. Recently, a few palaeontologists have speculated that it may have been an occasional omnivore.
The joke Coco makes about blogs being popular at least a few years ago in Mind Before Mutant becomes this as a few years later the popular social media site Tumblr revived blogs.
Iron Woobie: Crash is a cheerful little nut considering all he puts up with throughout the series. Where do we begin? Mutated torturously by Cortex and then branded a failure and kicked out, went through hell to rescue Tawna in the first game (who abiding by official bios, coldly dumped him for Pinstripe, ironically one of Cortex's loyal minions shortly after). Led on a wild goose chase by Cortex in the second game, victim to endless revenge schemes afterwards, often with his beloved baby sister as a pawn, and often put in the middle of any conquests by other evil doers in-between. All with a ton of cruel and unusual cartoon slapstick abuse throughout.
Jerkass Woobie: Nina Cortex and Dr. N. Gin are quite sympathetic characters, especially in Mind Over Mutant.
Fake Crash, of all people, became this in light of Nitro-Fueled's post-launch GP DLC, with him not only getting shipped to Pasadena, but also most members of the Nitro Squad as well. This may be due to his rather doofy personality shining more than ever for that game.
Crash Boom Bang! (2006): The Viscount is a wealthy Tasmanian devil who seeks the Super Big Power Crystal. Upon realizing that he would need help to solve its puzzles, he organizes a tournament to con Crash and his allies into finding it for him. To this end, he disguises the puzzles as mini games, participating in some himself to keep up the charade. Calmly stating his true goals after a botched highjacking from Cortex, he still manages to persuade the gang into helping him, having them search an underwater shipwreck for a key to unlock the crystal's tower. Finally reaching the Tower, Viscount manages to beat the gang to the Crystal, nearly winning in the end and only failing due to Crash's quick intervention.
Memetic Molester: Crash wiggling his eyebrows before mounting other animals in the first two games has been joked to be more thanjust mischief.
Pretty much every video of real-life bandicoots (a type of marsupial) in nature videos on YouTube inevitably have their comment sections filled with Crash Bandicoot references.
Rilla Roo's mere existence is considered a meme in the same vein as Waluigi, with many fans lampshading the absurdity of his sole reason for existence being to act as a Moveset Clone of Dingodile in a spinoff party game, his lack of characterisation otherwise, and his unfortunate design of having his mouth look like an anus. Dozens of ironic fans want him to appear in other games (such as Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled) in the hopes of having him create another meme.
Ever since someone posted a still of Neo Cortex and then started replacing the letter on his forehead with others, chains of people posting a picture with a different letter of that word to complete it became popular. This lead to Cortex gaining a reputation as someone that would drop the N word on others out of pure shock value, because why else would you carry a big damn N on your forehead?
"No Uka Uka, the ancients would not allow it!" Explanation Aku Aku's reason for refusing to directly fight Uka Uka in Crash Bash. It's often made fun of by the fanbase because these "ancients" were never mentioned before or since and because the two did fight at the end of Warped.
Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: Crash Bandicoot has always found itself a dedicated following in Australia thanks to its Aussie setting (at least for the first two games) and its surprisingly large usage of seldom-seen species, but Dingodile, who is practically every single Australian stereotype shoved into one mutated package, has been thoroughly embraced by the Australian fandom for being such a mishmashed badass.
Mis-blamed: It is often thought that the mediocre reception of Mind Over Mutant caused Radical to kill the franchise. However, Radical was already working on not one but two Crash games up to 2010. Not long after Radical was bought out by Activision, Activision laid off the entire team behind the upcoming games, cancelling their production. It didn't help that one of those games had internal staff strife over which direction to take it, making development severely behind schedule.
Tawna Bandicoot was Crash's Satellite Love Interest and Damsel in Distress in the first game in the series, though it quickly touched a nerve with Universal executives due to her over-sexualized appearance. Naughty Dog became disillusioned with the character after the conflict it caused and complied to Sony of Japan's request to make a replacement female sidekick for Crash. Coco Bandicoot, Crash's little sister, remained a mainstay after the second game and became popular enough to be Promoted to Playable in future titles.
Also from the first game, Koala Kong existed as Cortex's Dumb Muscle, though by Crash Bandicoot Warped he is supplanted by Tiny Tiger, who became more iconic a member of the Rogues Gallery due to his more developed childlike personality and dogged loyalty to Cortex in later titles making him somewhat likeable.
Narm: Most of Wrath Of Cortex's cutscenes, especially the ending. Crunch tries his best to be dark and brooding, but it just doesn't work out in a Crash game. Later titles got the point and made him Denser and Wackier.
Newer Than They Think: More recent fans who were introduced to the franchise through the remakes may be surprised to discover the Crash universe wasn't nearly as fleshed out in many regards in the original games. Coco and Tawna in particular had their personalities completely undefined originally, with later titles slowly defining Coco's Genki Girl habits and chemistry with Crash that the remakes retroactively added in, and Tawna only getting her Action Girl persona and even just her first speaking role within the remakes themselves.
Only the Creator Does It Right: The Naughty Dog games are considered the best entries in the series, while the post-Naughty Dog games tend to be loved or hated to various degrees. The three exceptions would be Crash Bash, Twinsanity, and It's About Time, though even those have reasons for being accepted: Crash Bash was the first game not made by Naughty Dog, and is designed to be played by up to four people; Twinsanity was made by a developer who imitated Naughty Dog's games in spirit if not in formula, and It’s About Time which faithfully recreated and expanded upon the ideas in the original trilogy; Even then though, those games still qualify as Contested Sequels to varying degrees based on the game.
Popular with Furries: Thanks to its multiple games and high acclaim, Crash Bandicoot is one of the '90s platformers with the biggest fandoms. Unsurprisingly, its fandom has more than its fair share of furries. The bandicoot characters (especially Coco, Tawna, the Trophy Girls/Nitro Squad, and Crunch), Pinstripe Potoroo, and Pasadena in particular attract furries, while Crunch, Tiny and Dingodile are popular among furry fans of the Bara Genre.
Remade and Improved: The original three games are widely beloved pioneers of the 3D era of gaming. But the N-Sane Trilogy is consider much better. Not only for updated graphics and animation, but smoother controls, the ability to play as Coco through all three games and fixing some frustrating features of the original. Likewise for Crash Team Racing and its remake, Nitro-Fueled. Which gives the adventure mode proper animated cutscenes, adds in tracks from the sequel Nitro Kart and brings in characters from the aforementioned original games and Tag Team Racing. Playing online with others certainly didn't hurt either.
Though Coco wasn't void of fans early on, she tended to get slammed by critics and fans of the games for her playable appearances, due to her weaker gameplay mechanics and the fact she was probably the least cartoony and expressive of the entire cast, making her considerably less fun to play as than Crash. Starting with Mind Over Mutant, Coco was made a full alternate character from Crash and more effort was put into her animations and personality. It says something that not only did Vicarious Visions push hard to make Coco fully playable for N Sane Trilogy, but the fan base went ecstatic over the announcement.
Rilla Roo was rescued once he went the way of Waluigi and Big the Cat and became a meme character the fans liked ironically. This eventually led to his big comeback in Nitro-Fueled.
Rooting for the Empire: While it's easy enough to root for the Bandicoots to win, because he's such a hilarious Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain who gets constantly used as a disposable pawn by the likes of Uka Uka, N. Tropy, or even Nina, his own niece, it's also rather easy to feel empathetic towards Dr. Cortex, and even root for him to win at least once. To alleviate this somewhat, Cortex does sometimes get revenge on the other bad guys, but naturally never wins against Crash (except that one time).
The Scrappy: The In Name Only version of Tiny Tiger in the Radical Entertainment games is probably the best example the series has. Instead of being a hilarious Dumb Muscle with Undying Loyalty to Cortex and a memorable Tasmanian Tiger design, Tiny was subjected to the heaviest redesign of any character; being a Bengal Tigernote In effect, going from a marsupial to a feline; two completely different genera. instead and losing practically all of his old character traits in favor of being a Mike Tyson patische. He was widely derided for not only not even being the same character, but being very unmemorable in general relative to his old self. Not even the biggest Radical fans will ever defend him, and many tend to use him as one of the first examples of that era's characterization problems.
Scrappy Mechanic: While Coco herself is a fairly popular character with fans, her playable appearances (which mostly play as a weaker variant of Crash) tend to be rather underwelming. Fixed somewhat in Mind Over Mutant even if you have to activate (and/or deactivate) the game's co-op mode to play as her, and playing the story makes a lot less sense, and averted entirely in N. Sane Trilogy, where she plays every bit as good as Crash does.
IGN: Coco (is) a less powerful and less enjoyable playable character. Coco pops into specific levels and must be used to pass that area. She's just not fun the way Crash is. Crash is a silly creature to look at. He's almost absurd, which works great with his various animations. Coco isn't really silly at all. The game isn't called Crash and Coco so why must I be forced to play her?
Pinstripe/Tawna has also had a strong following in the fandom due to the fact that the (questionably old canon) reason why Tawna left Crash was because she fell for the potoroo. This led to people latching onto the ship, even though it wasn't canonically sound.
The second the Nitro Squad made their return in Nitro-Fueled, fans immediately latched onto Ami/Crunch and Liz/Megumi.
Ship-to-Ship Combat: Owing to both of Crash's love interests being in Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, Crash/Tawna and Crash/Pasadena shippers have developed a rivalry regarding which one Crash should end up with.
Amusingly enough, it took a much friendlier turn for Nitro-Fueled after Tawna and Pasadena were confirmed to arrive into the game, with some fans going for the Fake Crash/Pasadena option so that Crash can be with Tawna.
On the other end, there also a fandom rivalry between Crash/Tawna and Pinstripe/Tawna shippers who argue who is better for her.
"Sunset Vista" in the original Crash Bandicoot game is so hard that the Japanese versions of the game swapped it and "Slippery Climb" in level order. Ironically, the level was made easier in the final product, as it was even longer in the prototype, bats and moving blocks that crush you moved more quickly, and there were moving candle/torch platforms that could light up at any moment.
The Dummied Out "Stormy Ascent", which was later restored in N. Sane Trilogy, is an even harder version of "Slippery Climb". It's a Marathon Level filled with platforms that move in complicated patterns, retracting steps that cause Crash to slide to his doom if not traversed with perfect timing, and long platforming sections where fast-moving birds must be used as Goomba Springboards.
"The Lab". A Marathon Level with no Aku Aku crates and an annoying gimmick where Crash must hit ! blocks to temporarily unlock doors. It also must be beaten without dying if the player wishes to acquire a gem, but there are traps everywhere, including hidden TNT boxes in clusters of normal crates.
"Fumbling In The Dark", which is basically "Lights Out" if it had the same difficulty as "Sunset Vista." Dozens of pendulums and platforms, various thin platforms you can jump past if you aren't careful, and spiders you have to jump on in order to cross certain gaps. Even "Sunset Vista" was kind enough to give the player no less than five checkpoints; "Fumbling In The Dark" only has three. Even if you know all the traps and tricks to beating the level, chances are you'll die anyway because you jinxed yourself into jumping too soon/too late/too far/not far enough.
"Tomb Wader" in Warped has a gimmick where sections of the stage are periodically flooded, forcing Crash to keep up the pace or lose a life.
Levels where the player has backtrack to break all crates are reviled as a whole, but some of the worst offenders are "Tomb Time" (backtrack through a gem course filled with traps); "Diggin' It" (backtrack through an area with bees that ambush you from off-screen), "Cold Hard Crash" (backtrack through the death course itself), and "Piston It Away" (backtrack through traps that are far trickier to deal with when approached from the "wrong" direction).
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The general opinion of the Crash games after Crash Team Racing, although the newer games are gradually getting better reviews.
Crash Bash and Crash Boom Bang! are considered to be bad Mario Party clones by many.
Crash Nitro Kart and Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex are often seen as watered-down PlayStation 2 versions of Crash Team Racing and Crash Bandicoot: Warped respectively. Ironic for The Wrath Of Cortex, which was originally to be a more innovative free roaming platformer before remaking it in fear of the changes not receiving well.
Crunch Bandicoot seemed all set to be a cool powerhouse for the bandicoots following Wrath Of Cortex. However his appearances in most games after were minor, playable only in racing and party games (and the Atlasphere stages in N Tranced) which play identically for every character. In the Titans games, he exists as little more than a gag character and is pretty easy to forget he even appeared.
The series was notorious for utilising several popular characters that never got used outside one or two usually minor appearances. Even within the first game, Tawna and Koala Kong practically disappeared afterwards, never getting real development.
Quite a few people have called Crash a fox. He's actually a bandicoot, an obscure marsupial.
Despite having big feet and bouncing everywhere, Ripper Roo ("Roo" being short for "kangaroo") is often mistaken for a bipedal dog. The big falling ears and the Maniac Tongue don't help in this regards.
Like N. Gin did in It's About Time, some people apparently mistake Coco for a Cat Girl, despite being a bandicoot like Crash.
While always popular with kids and casual gamers, the hardcore gamer audience wasn't always fond of the series. In the 1990s, many (predominantly teenage and adult) PlayStation fans hated Crash Bandicoot, calling it nothing but a kiddie Mario cash-grab that didn't fit the "mature-geared" console. As the core demographic of Crash displaced the older gamers, the series has become Sacred Cows amongst 3D platformers.
Most of the post Naughty Dog era Crash games were often considered slapdash and inferior to the originals at the time of their release. However the moderated references to them in newer titles has earned them some nostalgia and popularity, to the point that when the first proper sequel, It's About Time announced it would mostly be starting fresh from where Warped left off in its own timeline, the reaction was extremely divisive. Even the highly controversial Radical Entertainment games will get some defence for having genuinely good ideas these days.
Visual Effects of Awesome: The original trilogy had impressive animation considering the relatively low tech.
in the modern mobile entry On The Run.
