Trivia / Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time

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• Approval of God: Charles Zembillas, Crash's original designer, fully gave his blessings to the new game.
• Awesome, Dear Boy: This interview reveals that Paul Yan (Toys For Bob's co-studio head and chief creative officer) and Josh Nadelburg (an art director at TFB) were excited to work on a game series they've been exposed to since childhood.
• B-Team Sequel:
  • While Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy was developed by Vicarious Visions, It's About Time was developed by Toys For Bob, the developers behind Spyro Reignited Trilogy who assisted with N. Sane Trilogy and ported it to the Nintendo Switch. Vicarious Visions was working on the remakes of the first two Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games at the time, explaining why they weren't able to develop It's About Time.
  • Since the game is marketed as a direct continuation of the original trilogy, it's one for the Naughty Dog developed Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped.
• Content Leak:
  • The game was leaked by Taiwan's age rating boards revealing the game's title, box art, and summary. Images from the reveal trailer leaked soon after, before being properly announced June 22, 2020. Notably, even the development team (or at least the people behind the official Crash Bandicoot Twitter account) poked fun at it, seen in a tweet a day before the official announcement.
  • Kapuna-Wa, one of the Quantum Masks◊ can be seen in a PlayStation 4 trailer, roughly half a year before the game was revealed. Notably, she's gray, unlike the gold used in the official reveal.
  • A little under a year before the game's unveiling, Spyro artist Nicholas Kole had retweeted some production artwork for some of the characters.
  • The pages for Numskull Games' pin sets of Crash, Coco, Cortex and N. Gin mentioned Dingodile and Tawna sometime before they were properly revealed as playable characters, although the descriptions got hastily edited to remove the mention of the latter two.
  • A piece of promotional art for the game that was leaked showed off both Dingodile and Tawna, before the two were confirmed to have any presence; due to this, fans speculated that the two were playable characters, which they ultimately turned out to be. It also showed off N. Tropy's alternate self, who appears near the game's climax.
  • Two pieces of concept art confirmed N. Brio's appearance before the game launched.
• Colbert Bump:
  • The use of "The Rockafeller Skank" by Fatboy Slim in the reveal trailer increased viewership of the song. It even inspired fans to repost the song associating it more with the game, as well as make mashups out of the aforementioned trailer and song with other properties. Case in point.
  • To a lesser extent, the use of "Go" by The Chemical Brothers lead to an increase in viewership of the song, especially as more trailers began to use it.
• Flip-Flop of God: Paul Yan would state several times in interviews for the game that the post-Naughty Dog entries did in fact happen, but that they happened (or may've happened) in an alternate timeline(s) that may have some impact on the adventure (they never did). But then in an overlooked GDC 2021 presentation, he makes a point about the Lani-Loli gag referring to how the post-ND games come after in its chronological timeline, conflicting with the preconceived notion many fans (including this site) still parrot. It's possible he stated that in press release at the time rather than it being a midquel just so fans wouldn't go in with the mindset that the game's story was predetermined to lead into the other instalments.
  Paul Yan: ...like this joke that's kinda acknowledging the fact that it's ignoring some of the other sequels that are coming after this in its chronological timeline.
• In Memoriam: The game is dedicated to Mel Winkler, Aku Aku's original voice actor from Warped all the way up to Crash Twinsanity. Winkler passed away on June 11, 2020, a week before the game's teaser was released.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Debi Derryberry confirmed on her Twitter account that she would not be voicing Coco this time, making it the first game in the series since Crash Bash in 2000 where she does not voice the character. Coco is instead voiced by Eden Riegel.
  • Crash himself also got Darrin'd; rather than Jess Harnell, he's now being played by Scott Whyte, making this the first game in the series since Crash Twinsanity in 2004 where Harnell doesn't voice Crash.
  • Tawna is voiced by Ursula Taherian, who took over the role from Misty Lee (her voice in Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled), and Derryberry (who did some minor sounds for her in the N. Sane Trilogy version of Crash 1). Technically speaking, however, this is an alternate Tawna from another universe, not the one that Lee and Derryberry voiced.
  • Strangely, while Corey Burton still voices N. Gin, N. Tropy is now voiced by JP Karliak instead, making it a case of the Darrin'd actor still being in the game as a different character he previously already played.
  • Roger Craig Smith voices Dr. N. Brio, replacing Tom Kenny from Nitro-Fueled. In fact, his performance is so close to Maurice LaMarche that many fans thought that it was him returning to voice him from the N. Sane Trilogy.
  • In the Japanese dub of the game, Masaaki Itatori voices Cortex instead of his regular voice actor, Shōzō Iizuka.
• Playing Against Type: Richard Steven Horvitz plays the constantly nervous and heroic Lani-Loli, which is very different from the overconfident and very hammy villains he normally voices. Hilariously, one of his first lines in the game has him panicking about encountering the exact character type Horvitz is typically typecast as:
  Lani-Loli: We have to go through, find my siblings, and fix this before some putz with a big evil plan and a bigger ego does something monumentally stupid!
• Pre-Order Bonus: Pre-ordering the game at a GameStop or EB Games store granted a minute glass adorned with the Quantum Masks, as a free gift.
• Recycled Script: In a roundabout way, the game's story is a bit like The Wrath of Cortex, which was the previous fourth game in the series, in both it has the villains focusing on taking out Crash after he disrupts their plans one too many times. In this case though, it's due to having to take The Slow Path after the events of Warped and more about revenge than any pre-emptive measure. Likewise, this game deals with masks as did The Wrath of Cortex, only the masks this time are allies rather then villains. A major difference of the two being there's no Crunch as the main threat this time and it follows on the fallout from the Time Twister being destroyed, which creates cracks through space and time. Oh, and creating time paradoxes is mentioned or involved to some degree, with it being a hobby of N. Tropy in The Wrath of Cortex's manual, and actually putting it into use here.
• Role Reprise:
  • Actors returning from previous entries in the series include Lex Lang as Cortex, Fred Tatasciore as Dingodile, Corey Burton as both N. Gin and Nitros Oxide and Greg Eagles as Aku Aku.
  • Returning from the Japanese dub of the previous games are Haruna Ikezawa as Coco, Masaru Ikeda as N. Tropy, Keisuke Ishida as Dingodile, Shunsuke Sakuya as N. Gin, Mitsuru Ogata as N. Brio, Chafurin as Nitros Oxide and Kenichi Ogata as Aku Aku.
  • In the Latin American Spanish dub, Circe Luna, Raúl Anaya, Leonardo García, Kristoffer Romo, Beto Castillo and Eduardo Ramírez reprise their respective roles as Coco, N. Tropy, Cortex, N. Gin, N. Brio and Nitros Oxide from Nitro-Fueled.
• Sequel Gap: Not counting the prior two remakes, this is the first original Crash game since Mind Over Mutant in 2008,^note 12 years prior the first that uses the classic gameplay style since N-Tranced in 2003,^note 17 years prior the first classic gameplay console game since The Wrath of Cortex in 2001,^note 19 years prior and with it being marketed as a direct sequel to the original trilogy, it is the first entry in the main series since Warped in 1998.^note 22 years prior.
• Similarly Named Works: The subtitle at least. This game shares the punny "It's About Time" subtitle with Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time (before the latter dropped it). Both are highly anticipated sequels to beloved games, and both are about traveling through space-time.
• Teasing Creator:
  • In addition to the post-Naughty Dog games possibly being acknowledged via the multiverse, Canadian Guy Eh's interview with Paul Yan had the latter strongly hint at an appearance by Spyro. He’s a float toy and a parade balloon that can be, respectively, found in the first level and a later level in the game.
  • During a private session for the press demo, CrystalFissure asked Lou Studdert about returning bosses and the possibility of many Easter eggs. To which he summarily responded "Yes. That's all for now." As it turns out, the game has many Easter eggs to previous games and returning bosses include N. Gin, N. Tropy, Neo Cortex, and N. Brio, the last of whom even has the same template as his boss battle from the first game.
• Throw It In!: In a podcast, Lou Studdert revealed that the reason Shnurgle got his name was due to the art director blurting out a noise upon seeing the concept art for him. The staff was immediately endeared, and after some time of being used as an in-joke, the name stuck.
• Two Voices, One Character: Ika-Ika's good and sad halves are voiced by Fred Tatasciore and Zeno Robinson, respectively.
• What Could Have Been:
  • One leaked piece of concept art showed what seemed to be an early design for Lani-Loli, with each half of his face having a different color and expression. This was presumably considered redundant, as Ika-Ika remained the only Quantum Mask with two faces. As it turns out, the art department had a difficult time coming up with a design that would easily convey the nature of Lani-Loli's phase-shifting.
  • There were at least two earlier designs for the alternate Tawna, one being midway between her mainline universe counterpart and her finalized design, with the other having her wear an Australian explorer's outfit, carry a giant boomerang, and sport much longer hair. One of her other concepts would have had her use a super-soaker gun.
  • Paul Yan once considered using the hub room format from the prior two games in the trilogy, but ultimately decided against it in the end, since it would cause Schizophrenic Difficulty issues, and using Crash 1's map setup allowed the staff to show the plot's progress more naturally.
  • One piece of concept art suggests that mine cart sections like in The Wrath of Cortex were initially planned at some point in development.
  • Several unused character designs can be found in the artbook: among them are designs that would have been much more accurate to the Naughty Dog PS1 games.
  • A piece of unused audio meant for the 100% epilogue reveals that there was going to be a scenario of Tiny, Papu Papu, Pinstripe and Koala Kong outraged for not appearing in the game and deciding to picket outside of the developers' studio, only to be arrested after chaining themselves to the wrong building.
  • Ripper Roo was once planned to be the end-of-world boss for Mosquito Marsh's "Run It Bayou"◊, but ultimately relegated to cameo appearances instead. However, in an interview with CanadianGuyEh, Lou Studdert claimed that he wasn't supposed to be a boss and would have merely showed up out of nowhere at certain points to hound the player with TNT crates (later replaced with mines).
  • Among the various alien creatures that Nicholas Kole had a hand in designing, those that didn't make the cut are Gasmoxian aristocrats that would have been in an entertainment room on Oxide's ship, and many of the Bermugulan critters (except the Axolotl squirrel).
  • A datamine revealed that Cortex, Dingodile and the alternate Tawna were all seemingly going to get unlockable skins like Crash and Coco at some point in development, but this ultimately went nowhere. At least some of Tawna's would presumably have been earned in Tranquility Falls.
    • A few of these skins, however, would eventually make their way into Crash Team Rumble.
  • Pictures in the art book revealed that the boss fight with the N Tropies was going to have a third phase taking place in the Rift Generator. It is believed that this phase was cut for time, which would explain the Anti-Climax Boss status that the N Tropies have in the final game.
• Working Title: Quantum.

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