Fridge / Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled

Fridge Brilliance

• Ripper Roo drops TNT constantly, and thus reveals himself by blowing up a stockpile of TNT and Dynamite. He also has a high likelihood of running into his own TNT crates on each successive lap.
• Papu Papu drops beakers, and he does exactly that after the race by shaking a few things out from under his belly. In addition, there are narrow areas where he won't drop them behind him, presumably because it'd be unfair.
• Komodo Joe also drops TNT like Ripper Roo, but he not only throws the TNT like his scimitars, but they explode on impact like the smoke bombs he uses to seemingly teleport.
• Pinstripe uses a bowling bomb to kick up dust before driving off to his arena, but like Papu Papu, stops for a brief moment in some areas because it'd create too much clutter to deal with in them. As shown in his second cutscene, he puts up a big show of being a tough guy who hates losing, but ultimately does have a sporting nature about him and knows when he's beat.
• Oxide being an acceleration type character is likely to reference the beginning of his race where he pulls ahead of you before the starting light turns green.
  • Alternately, Oxide is acceleration in this game because if he was playable in the original Crash Team Racing, he'd likely have been an acceleration character due to that being the only class not to have four playable characters.
• The stats for Spyro and friends might actually have had more thought put into them than one might think. Spyro is a speed type because of his frequent supercharge ability and being the fastest in general out of all the characters in Year of the Dragon. Hunter is balanced because of the wide variety of sports and jobs he does has made him a jack of all trades, and Gnasty is turning as his boss fight involved chasing him and his minions through some very twisty paths that proves difficult if you're poor at cutting corners.
  • In addition, why is Gnasty a guest character, and portrayed as Spyro's main villain over Ripto? Their incarnations are based on Spyro Reignited Trilogy, where Gnasty is technically the only villain who is still alive. In the original version of Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!, the epilogue revealed that Ripto was alive and well despite falling into lava. Despite this, the remake has no epilogue, so Ripto, like the Sorceress, has been Killed Off for Real.
• N. Brio being an acceleration type character makes sense when you realize that N. Gin was the primary Acceleration character associated with Cortex. N. Gin didn't just take Brio's spot as second in command, he took over his assigned class as well!
  • Incidentally, this mirrors Coco replacing Tawna as Crash's sidekick, with both of them being Acceleration as well. Additionally, Nina, Cortex's latest close sidekick, is a Speed character like Crunch, Crash's latest close sidekick, completing the Crash-Cortex stat parallels.
• Komodo Moe being a balanced type might seem a little odd for a big fellow like him, but this actually has a reason; he and Joe are brothers, so it's natural for them to share the same class.
• Why does King Chicken share Penta Penguin's trait of receiving both masks? Well, since he is a non-anthropomorphic chicken, he lacks a moral compass! Because of this, he is a True Neutral, and does not align with good or evil.
• Although he has a line of dialogue in the Neon Circus introduction movie, Koala Kong is largely limited to grunts in the actual game. Considering that in the epilogue of the first Crash Bandicoot game he took counselling to "improve his dictation", this makes perfect sense; he's still effectively learning to talk and his overall vocabulary would naturally be limited.
• It may seem weird that Von Clutch and Pasadena came in the Neon Circus together without the third member of their trio, Willie Wumpa Cheeks, but considering Willie tried to kill Von Clutch, it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine they threw him out afterwards and found a replacement member in Koala Kong.
  • Additionally, the fact that Willie was vaporized and his remains were consumed is another reason why Von Clutch and Pasadena came with Koala Kong instead.
• Rilla Roo's biography in the Crash Bash manual described him with the words "Although he prefers to take his time around the arena...". Fittingly enough, he is a turning-type character, which have the lowest speed of all classes.
  • Fixed Rilla Roo on the other hand is a Speed-type. While it seems odd to change it there is a reason for it. Not only has Rilla Roo had his appearance altered to look closer to how he did in Bash, but he was a Moveset Clone of Dingodile in that game, so it makes sense to have him be the same type.
• Why does the Gold Relic paint grant bonus Nitro in the Winter Festival Grand Prix when all the other non-kart, non-special Nitro paints are either red or green? Part of the Urban Legend of Zelda surrounding Fasty/Hasty involved him driving a gold kart!
• Why does Rustland, the Grand Prix for January, have a post-apocalypse theme? It's simple; back when Team Racing was released, there was the fear of Y2K resulting in the destruction of modern civilization.
• Mega-Mix switches between N. Gin's, Tiny's, and Cortex's voices, but never Dingodile's. Why? Because Dingodile's part of Mega-Mix is the only one not directly connected to its neck, where its vocal cords are (presumably) located.
• Having Emperor Velo XVIII be the 51st character makes much more sense considering where his Grand Prix takes place and what species he is.
• The stats for each member of the Nitro Squad are based on those of some of the characters they handed out trophies to in the original game:
  • Ami used to hand out trophies to many of the Speed-type characters, including Tiny Tiger, Dingodile, and Papu Papu.
  • N. Gin, who was one of the characters Megumi would hand out trophies to, is an Acceleration-type racer.
  • Liz handed out trophies to Polar and Pura, who are both Turning-type racers.
  • Isabella gave out trophies to Crash, a Balanced-type racer.