Video Game / Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled

The original game^* (With Crash Nitro Kart and a dash of Crash Tag Team Racing for good measure.)... revved up to the max.

Crash is back in the driver's seat!

Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled is a remake of Naughty Dog's PlayStation racing game Crash Team Racing developed by Beenox. The game features the same updated graphics as the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, as well as a number of additional features, including characters and tracks from beyond the original game, kart customization, character skins, and online multiplayer; some of those features are taken from the two post-Naughty Dog era Crash Bandicoot racing games, Crash Nitro Kart and Crash Tag Team Racing.

It was released on June 21, 2019 for the PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and Xbox One.

This game's confirmed playable characters include:

• From Crash Team Racing:
  • Starting Roster: Crash Bandicoot, Dr. Neo Cortex, Tiny Tiger, Coco Bandicoot, Dr. N. Gin, Dingodile, Polar and Pura.
  • Bosses: Ripper Roo, Papu Papu, Komodo Joe, Pinstripe Potoroo and Nitros Oxide.
  • Other Secret Characters: Penta Penguin, Fake Crash and Dr. N. Tropy.
• From Crash Nitro Kart:
  • Home Console Version: Crunch Bandicoot, N. Trance, Real Velo, Zem and Zam.
  • Handheld Console Version: Krunk, Nash, Small Norm, Big Norm and Geary.
• DLC Characters:
  • Nitro Tour Grand Prix: Tawna, Ami, Megumi, Liz and Isabella.
  • Back N. Time Grand Prix: Baby T, Baby Crash and Baby Coco.
  • Spyro & Friends Grand Prix: Spyro the Dragon, Hunter and Gnasty Gnorc.
  • Spooky Grand Prix: Nina Cortex, Komodo Moe and Dr. N. Brio.
  • Neon Circus Grand Prix: Koala Kong, Pasadena O'Possum, Ebenezer Von Clutch and King Chicken.
  • Winter Festival Grand Prix: Hasty, Rilla Roo, Yaya Panda, Chick and Stew.
  • Rustland Grand Prix: Megamix.
  • Gasmoxia Grand Prix: Emperor Velo XXVII.
  • Beenox Pack: Lab Assistant, Baby Cortex, Baby N. Tropy, Fixed Rilla Roo and Iron Checkpoint Crate.

See Cast Herd below for their character classes.

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This game provides examples of:

A

• Actor Allusion: In the Nina's Nightmare track, there's a portrait of Nina herself dressed up as Wednesday Addams. Debi Derryberry had done Wednesday's voice for the second animated Addams Family series.
• Adaptational Attractiveness:
  • Well, "attractive" is certainly a stretch, but Zem, while still a gross Gasshole who looks like a troll, has been made slightly less grotesque looking, having been given a more vibrant color palette, more human looking eyes and a confident facial expression.
  • Coco's brainwashed/mutant/N-V form from Crash: Mind Over Mutant has been redesigned to be less nightmare inducing and twisted for its appearance as a DLC skin; her fangs, claws and talons are smaller, and her hair is much neater and less spiky.
  • Nina Cortex appears to have underwent a redesign; most notably, her mouth and buck teeth are far less prominent than they were in Crash Twinsanity.
  • A slight case with Pasadena O'Possum, who is given pink lipstick for her reappearance here, when she used to not have any in her Crash Tag Team Racing debut. Her racing jumpsuit is also tighter, emphasising her curvaceous figure.
  • Done out of necessity with Yaya Panda, who didn't have much to work with in Nitro Kart 2; her body's build is fairly close to Coco and Nina, her hair's longer, and she wears a new outfit with an arm-bearing qipao, knee-length puffy pants and sandal-like slippers instead of her old full-length cheongsam.
  • Fixed Rilla Roo is a deliberate example of this, as he looks much closer to how he appeared in Crash Bash than the Rilla Roo introduced as a playable character in the Winter Festival GP.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • Tawna and the Trophy Girls, having limited appearances in previous games, team up as the Nitro Squad in this game and are all highly formidable racers in their own right.
  • Chick and Stew had only commentated on the action in Tag Team Racing, but they thankfully get the honor of hitting the track themselves after doing the same thing for the first few Grand Prixes.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: The characters from Nitro Kart, as well as Pasadena, Von Clutch, Chick and Stew from Tag Team Racing and Yaya Panda from Nitro Kart 2, appear in this remake of a Naughty Dog-era game, despite debuting in games that were made after Naughty Dog had left the franchise. Portraits of Nina Cortex from Twinsanity and Rilla Roo from Bash also appear in Cortex Castle and Koala Carnival, respectively, and they became playable characters in the fourth and sixth Grand Prix, respectively.
• Adaptation Amalgamation: The game borrows primarily from the original Crash Team Racing, Crash Nitro Kart and Crash Tag Team Racing, along with more minor elements taken from several other titles spread across the series. Aesthetically, the game thus serves to make nearly everything in the Crash franchise seem like one cohesive universe.
• Adaptation Distillation: The Nitro Kart tracks have been reworked to remove their anti-gravity mechanic, so they fit in with the rest of Team Racing tracks. Contrary to popular belief, however, they weren't all redesigned to become shorter. The majority are the same length; a few are indeed shorter (Hyper Spaceway loses one of its warp rooms), but others are actually longer (Electron Avenue, already a Marathon Level in the original, has a couple of new sections added to compensate for the removed anti-gravity parts). The reason why the tracks seem shorter in the remake is because Nitro Kart in general plays a lot slower than Team Racing.
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • The game now features elements taken from Nitro Kart, including the ability to select the karts and wheels from that game, all thirteen tracks (adapted to fit the original CTR's lack of Gravity Screw mechanic), as well as the battle arenas and modes it introduced. There's also, of course, the addition of online multiplayer.
  • The game has an extensive customization system, something that flat out doesn't exist in the original. Players can individually change the kart's body, wheels, and paint jobs and add stickers on it. Characters also have customizable skins, some of them homages to other Crash Bandicoot games.
  • The single-player Adventure has two modes: "Classic", which makes you choose your character at the beginning, and stick with it to the very end (like in the original game); and "Nitro-Fueled", which allows you to change your character at will, change their skin, and customize your kart.
  • As of March 2020, there are 41 extra playable characters in addition to the 15 in the original game, bringing the total up to 56.
    • Nitros Oxide is Promoted to Playable as he was in Nitro Kart.
    • Everyone from Nitro Kart is returning as playable. This includes some bosses playable only in the handheld versions of CNK, with Spyro and Emperor Velo (both were also only playable in the Game Boy Advance version) joining them in the Spyro & Friends and Gasmoxia GPs, respectively. Also counts as an Adaptational Early Appearance due to them appearing in a remake of a Naughty Dog-era game when they originally debuted after Naughty Dog left the franchise after CTR.
    • The "Trophy Girls" — Ami, Isabella, Liz and Megumi — have been made playable. Tawna also appears alongside them. Together, they are now called the "Nitro Squad".
    • There are also new characters who did not appear in CTR or CNK even as cameos. These include characters from other games in the series (e.g. Baby T and N. Brio), brand new ones (e.g. Baby Crash and King Chicken), some guest characters (i.e. Hunter and Gnasty Gnorc), and even a literal metal box (i.e. Iron Checkpoint Crate).
  • Other than those from the original game and CNK, the game also adds 8 all-new tracks through the Grand Prix updates, bringing the total number of tracks to 39.
  • The cutscenes in Adventure Mode are expanded a lot:
    • The intro is a tiny bit longer thanks to it showing Crash, Coco and Cortex racing up close, and Nitros Oxide addressing them via Huge Holographic Head. In the original, the cutscene shows the racers in Coco Park very briefly before immediately cutting to outer space.
    • Pre-boss cutscenes no longer show the bosses addressing you while sitting in their karts. Everyone has their own unique entrances.
    • Like the prologue, the epilogue is extended a bit after Oxide returns home. Crash and Coco perform the former's iconic dance. At the end, Crash spits out the butterfly he ate in the prologue.
  • Battle Mode is now playable against AI opponents, and has been expanded to allow eight player matches from the original four player limit.
  • CTR Challenges and Relic Races can now be played on every track from the arcade menu. This also means that Turbo Track, Slide Colosseum, and Hyper Spaceway have had CTR Challenges created for the first time.
  • There is now a new track that's actually set on Gasmoxia called Drive-Thru Danger. This marks the first time in the series that Gasmoxia has been fully explored aside from the final boss of Bash.
• Adaptation Personality Change: Compared to the original CTR, Tiny's personality is more childlike here like he was in CNK, most prominently in his victory podium animation that has him jump around in a giddy manner.
• Adaptational Ugliness: Megamix manages to look even more disturbing than it did back in The Huge Adventure; it has pores and boils on the right side of its head, bulging veins on the metallic left side, visible canines, spikes from one of Tiny's shoulderpads having grown on its left shoulder, a glowing green "M" melted and bolts grafted onto its back, messier hair and a bushier beard.
• Adapted Out: The anti-gravity sections in tracks from CNK have been entirely removed, replaced with standard track variations. Hyper Spaceway has also been truncated in several areas.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: Just like with the original CTR and CNK, the majority of the new tracks' names start with the same letter in both words that comprise them, or ones pronounced similarly (i.e. Spyro Circuit, Koala Carnival and Gingerbread Joyride).
• Advanced Movement Technique: Ordinarily, hitting the brakes to make the tightest possible turn will cost the racer all their Nitro Boost. U-turning, by holding the down and brake buttons and letting go of the acceleration button while hopping repeatedly and turning allows the tightest turns to be made even by the engine class with the worst handling without slowing down from the Nitro Boost at all.
• After the End: The main theme of the Rustland Grand Prix and its signature track, Megamix Mania.
• Alice Allusion: The post-GP update gives Coco a skin that outright dresses her up as Alice from Alice in Wonderland.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: Some of the selectable skins (dubbed Exotic skins, unlocked through winning races) change the colors of characters fur or skin to wildly bright colors. For example, Crash has a skin that turns him bright blue like Ripper Roo, Cortex has one that turns his skin pale blue and makes his hair white, Papu Papu has one that makes him bright green with red hair, Ripper Roo has one that turns his fur red, and Coco has a skin that makes her fur yellow and her hair blue. Later on, several Legendary skins would get Palette Swap variants in this style as well.
• Amazon Brigade: Tawna leads a racing team featuring the Trophy Girls, called the Nitro Squad.
• Ambiguously Evil:
  • Penta Penguin looks like an innocent little penguin at first, but he has a habit of making sinister faces and Hand Rubbing when nobody is looking. This is a nod to a glitch in the North American release of Crash Team Racing where Penta would pick up a mask item and the icon would show Uka Uka, but using it would cause Aku Aku to appear. He also has the ability to get either Aku Aku or Uka Uka as an invincibility mask, a nod to the Ascended Glitch mentioned further on.
  • King Chicken as well. While he comes across as your ordinary chicken with a crown, boggly eyes and the ability to drive a kart (somehow), some of his voicelines has him chuckle in a taunting manner^note Then again, schadenfreude isn't really anything new to the non-evolved animals, as Polar, Pura, Penta, Zam and Baby T can attest to. Also, he has the ability to get all of the invincibility masks available, good or evil, as his masks^note this point may also be due to the fact he is the ruler of the galaxy no, really.
  • Iron Checkpoint Crate takes it even further by having the ability to use all of the invincibility masks available by default,^note The aforementioned King Chicken didn't do so until the Gasmoxia GP ended making it impossible to tell if it even takes a side at all since it's a motionless object.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different:
  • Following the Winter GP (where Chick and Stew had become Promoted to Playable), the final two GP intros are presented by other characters.
  • The CTR TV report for the Rustland GP is brought by the announcer himself, because Chick and Stew had left the studio to race.
  • Then, the CTR TV report for the Gasmoxia GP is hacked by Nitros Oxide and he's the one who gives out the rundown of the event.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: In addition to the customizable karts, there are now multiple outfits characters can wear, some of which come from previous installments. The various Grand Prix events add numerous additional outfits for the cast to wear. In a more traditional sense, some costumes are unlocked through completing the Silver and Gold tiers of the Grand Prix.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • You can now view a character's stats at the select screen, whereas the original game didn't display the racer's stats outside of selecting the character in Adventure Mode (and you couldn't even see the stats of unlockable characters at all, due to them not being available for said mode). Also new is the ability to sort the racers by their ease of use, with high handling racers being beginner, balanced and high acceleration racers being intermediate, and high speed racers being expert.
  • The Adventure's "Nitro Fueled" mode allows you to change your character at will, contrarily to the "Classic" mode and the original game, which forces you to stick with one character for the entire campaign. This way, if you're blocked at a circuit, you can try it with a character with different stats, who would be more adapted to it.
  • Adventure Mode now has selectable difficulty settings similar to Arcade Mode.
  • The CTR boss racers are now unlocked immediately upon their defeat, rather than through the gem cups that require getting the CTR tokens.^note This does not apply to Fake Crash and N. Tropy however, as both still require clearing the Purple Gem cup and beating all the N. Tropy ghosts in Time Trial, respectively, to unlock.
  • The Spooky Grand Prix introduced Engine Swapping, which changes the stats of characters. However, in Adventure Mode and offline races, this isn't applied to the AI, so as to not make the game extremely unpredictable (e.g. having a Crash or Polar with the speed of Dingodile.)
• Anti Poop-Socking: The game has rather pitiful payouts for Wumpa Coins by default, but it applies a daily 5x bonus to Coins earned in online races for the first half-hour spent on the track, as well as doubling all Coins earned in any mode on the weekend. This means that the most optimal and rewarding way to play the game is to only clock in a handful of hours per day, and especially on weekends rather than weekdays.
• The Apunkalypse: The skins in the Rustland Grand Prix all have a punk theme befitting the track taking place After the End.
• "Arabian Nights" Days: The Twilight Tour track mixes aesthetics from the Arab and Ancient Egyptian-themed levels from Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped.
• Art Evolution: Has its own page.
• Art Shift: Megamix's sticker is drawn in a completely different style than those of the other racers, matching the graffiti art for the Rustland skins instead.
• The Artifact:
  • The giant green save screens from the original version of the Adventure mode are still present. Players can save at them as they could in the original, but since the game auto-saves it's a moot point.
  • In the original game, Slide Colosseum was the final track of the Crash Cup due to technical limitations preventing Oxide Station from being multiplayer-compatible. Despite the shift to more powerful hardware and Oxide Station now being fully playable in multiplayer, Slide Colosseum remains in the Crash Cup to be authentic to the original game. Oxide Station would eventually be added into a new cup called the "Lost Cup" in the Spooky Grand Prix alongside Clockwork Wumpa, which inexplicably was cut from the CNK cups in favor of Hyper Spaceway.
  • Despite being part of the base roster, the CNK characters don't appear among the character epilogues, nor do the DLC characters (with the Nitro Squad's epilogues removed as a result of their DLC status). Only the original CTR characters appear, and their epilogues are largely unchanged aside from some minor edits to certain characters.
  • Despite Komodo Moe being added as a playable character during the Spooky GP, Komodo Joe's boss battle doesn't incorporate his brother in any way solely because that was the case in the original game, once again due to technical limitations.
  • Turbo Track has inexplicably not been included in any cups, even after Megamix Mania and Drive-Thru Danger received cups themed after them.
  • The Team Trance kart's name is left intact to remain accurate to its CNK origins. This has the effect of making N. Trance look like he's the only member of the team, since the characters that he brainwashed (Polar, Pura, Dingodile and, in CNK's Game Boy Advance version, Spyro) have no affiliation to him anymore.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Baby Crash was an alternate skin consisting of Crash in a diaper back in Crash Tag Team Racing. Here, he's a proper character and an actual infant.
  • The Trophy Girls went from being background characters introducing the winner's circle to full-fledged racers, rechristened as the Nitro Squad. On top of that, Slide Colosseum has become their home track.
  • Dr. N. Brio is a particularly significant case, as he went from only having his name on one of the power-ups and making a cameo in the Scrapbook to finally becoming playable.
  • Koala Kong went from only making a cameo in the Scrapbook to becoming fully playable.
  • Chick and Stew both become racers after commenting for the first six months since the game's launch, making Turbo Track their home track in the process.
  • One of the Lab Assistants became playable, after being background characters in the tracks for nine months.
  • The Neon Hawk airplane went from being a background element in Koala Carnival to an actual kart to drive, after the conclusion of the Grand Prix events.
• Ascended Glitch: Penta Penguin is unlocked the same way as in the original (through a cheat code in the main menu), has the "Penguin Yay 1" line voiced instead of it being a monotone placeholder sound, and can get both Aku Aku and Uka Uka chosen at random as an invincibility powerup.
• Ascended Meme: The Iron Checkpoint Crate being a playable character was initially a joke based on the amount of playable characters the game has at the time. Here, it is actually playable as a Secret Character.
• Astral Finale: Paralleling the base game, the final Grand Prix is the Gasmoxia Grand Prix, with its track, Drive-Thru Danger, taking place in orbit above the planet Gasmoxia.
• Autobots, Rock Out!: The victory podium theme for Megamix and the Rustland skins is a heavy metal rendition of the bandicoots' and other good guys' theme.

B

• Badass Biker: Both Crash and Tiny get biker costumes in the Nitro Tour GP, although the lack of bikes in the game does render it somewhat moot^note the closest being the Team Cortex and Velo Chopper karts, and even then the former had its handlebars replaced with a steering wheel to accommodate for animations.
• Bad Future: Megamix Mania, of course, but it's specifically this for Roo's Tubes and N. Gin's battleship, which have seen better days.
• Balloonacy: Played for laughs with Clown Cortex's victory podium animation, which has him getting lifted up by his balloon, until the air leaks out of it and it forces him to zip around everywhere before he falls down.
• Bamboo Technology:
  • The Mammoth kart is basically this, being a prehistoric kart made out of bones, stone, wood and animal hide powered by an engine filled with strange glowing-green stuff.
  • N. Tropy's Stone Age costume is him wearing a primitive version of his usual suit, complete with a sun dial and a scepter made out of bones. Justified a bit in that he uses voodoo magic to compensate for any shortcomings.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: Implied with Nina's Nightmare, according to its description.
• Battle in the Rain: Well, more like "Race in the Rain", but Cortex Castle, Tiger Temple and Thunder Struck all have racers going through stormy weather (with the latter two even getting lightning strikes!) as they race each other on the tracks.
• Becoming the Costume: Legendary skins generally change the characters' victory podium animations almost completely to reflect them, with some going even further by changing them into other forms (e.g. robots, spellcasters, monsters).
• Big Boo's Haunt: Nina's Nightmare, which comes with the typical Haunted House trappings (pumpkins, graveyards, spiders and cobwebs...).
• Big Eater: In her Elf skin, Coco hungrily eats a cupcake in her podium animation. Thanks to the loop, she will happily eat them indefinitely.
  • Coco practically shows restraint in comparison to Stew, who spends most of the Winter Festival GP intro devouring the giant foodstuffs found in Gingerbread Joyride.
• Book Ends: Both the very first Grand Prix and the very last feature the Nitro Squad prominently.
  • Similarly, the highlight newcomers for those same Grand Prixes (Tawna and Emperor Velo, respectively) are Acceleration characters by default.
  • The first and final Grand Prixes that Chick and Stew do CTR TV reports for have five racers, including themselves in the latter case.
• Bottle Episode: Downplayed with the Back N. Time Grand Prix; while it still has plenty of content otherwise, there are only 3 new racers to get compared to Nitro Tour's 5 Nitro Squad members, and only one of them comes with a legendary skin. Furthermore, the racers use recycled voice clips but pitched up higher, yet the only one to use new voice clips is Baby T, and even then he's unevolved. On top of that, Baby T. used a few voice clips from Crunch until Spyro & Friends. Most of the other Grand Prix after Back N. Time also only have 3 new racers each, but they have more work put into them.
  • The Rustland Grand Prix is more intentional in this regard, since the main reason why Megamix is the only new racer is to celebrate breaking the milestone of 50 racers. Also, part of Megamix Mania uses heavily-altered assets from Roo's Tubes, and all the skins are labelled "Rustland" for convenience's sake.
  • Downplayed further with the Gasmoxia Grand Prix, as while everything else is otherwise done with great effort despite Emperor Velo coming alone, the CTR TV report reuses assets from the Adventure mode's Oxide cutscenes.
  • Aside from the fact that the post-GP update no longer adds any new tracks, it features no new racers with new voice clips (with the Lab Assistant using pitched-down voice clips from Crash, Baby Cortex and N. Tropy being pitched up higher like Baby Crash and Coco, Fixed Rilla Roo reusing the other Rilla Roo's voice clips verbatim, and Iron Checkpoint Crate outright being The Voiceless).
• Bowdlerise:
  • Oxide no longer uses the word "slaves" during the intro, and he instead uses the word "minions".
  • The Trophy Girls have been redesigned to be less sexually provocative, with Ami and Liz having their skirts lengthened and pants put on beneath them, and the group as a whole no longer have large breasts.
  • A patch changed the names of certain character skins that might have been interpreted as having racial implications, like "Watermelon Tawna" becoming "Summertime Tawna" due to the skin giving her a watermelon colored shirt and slightly darker fur. This was also generally done to skins with names that line up with actual racial descriptions, such as "White Tawna" becoming "White Tiger Tawna", "White N. Tropy" becoming "Quartz N. Tropy" and "Black Zem" becoming "Solar Flare Zem".
  • Coco's epilogue in the original version was her starting a dating service. Since the implications of that were risky (especially considering her age), this was changed into running a game streaming service website instead, something that's a little more in-character.
  • The Bone Machine from Tag Team Racing was renamed the Skull Rider due to the original name likely being sexual in nature. Similarly, the Organ Grinder was renamed the Phantom.
  • The Dark Coco skin is based on the unused Evil Coco from Twinsanity, albeit with some changes to make her less sexual in nature. She doesn't wear skimpy leather short-shorts, but instead a skirt, and her fishnet stockings are no longer see-through. Her personality has also been changed from The Vamp to being a Goth.
• Bragging Rights Reward:
  • N. Tropy, for those that managed to both unlock and beat all his ghosts in Time Trials. There's also his Digital skin, which requires beating all the Oxide ghosts in the same mode, which is nothing short of head-slammingly difficult.
  • Three of the paint jobs that can be unlocked for use include three colors modeled after the three ranks of Relics- Sapphire, Gold, and Platinum. To unlock each one, you must get every Relic of that rank in the Crash Team Racing tracks, making the Gold and Platinum Relics' associated colors into these.
  • Similarly, there's the trophy paint jobs introduced in the post-GP update modeled after bronze, silver and gold. Unlocking them requires beating all the cups on easy, medium and hard respectively, making the Gold one this.
  • Oxide's Hot Rod skin, which can only be obtained by getting 101% in Adventure mode^note this requires doing everything in Adventure mode as well as ensuring that you get at least a gold relic in every relic race before challenging Oxide again.
  • Starting from the Nitro Tour Grand Prix, there's now the aptly-named Champion kart, which can only be obtained by reaching the top 5% on the leaderboards. You may now cry tears of bitter rage here.^note That said, there are two ways to get within the top 5%: either play lots of races online, or grind up Nitro points via challenges, with the latter in particular being a good option for those who are multiplayer-phobic, though try telling that to the 95% who failed to get the kart and its components. The Gasmoxia GP also added in another method of getting the kart: beat all of Oxide's ghosts on all the tracks (bonus ones included) in Time Trial mode.
    • In addition to the Champion kart itself, Gasmoxia GP adds two exclusive decals that can be obtained if all of Oxide and Emperor Velo's Time Trial records are beaten on all tracks. Including the GP ones.
  • The Master wheels, a glowing set of wheels that emit out colorful silhouettes when driven, are unlocked by beating all of Beenox's developers' Time Trial records. Take note that even the Emperor Velo records are designed to be remotely beatable; the devs themselves do not fuck around in this manner.
• Braids of Action: The Nitro Squad's motorsports outfits also have them tie their hair back into braids and ponytails.
• Brain in a Jar: Cortex's robot skin has glass at the top of his cranium exposing his brain.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: In the CTR TV report for the Neon Circus Grand Prix, Stew waxes a lyrical about the smell of stale circus peanuts, gasoline and childhood trauma.
• Brick Joke: A new detail in this game's version of the intro is that Crash unknowingly inhales a butterfly while he's sleeping. During the 100% Completion Ending, Crash coughs up the same butterfly while he and Coco are celebrating.
• Brutal Bonus Level: The Beenox developer times are treated as these, since they require the player to use their absolute best skill to defeat them, and those that are cleared are marked with a special stamp instead of a regular star that's awarded for defeating N. Tropy, Oxide and Velo.
• Bubble Gum Popping: A skin called "Dark Coco" will blow and pop gum while browsing her phone on the victory screen.
• Burger Fool: At the beginning of a race in Drive-Thru Danger, the voice of a disinterested employee will pipe in on the drive-thru speakers. What he says and which fast food company he works for changes each race.
• Burning Rubber: Not quite rubber, but the Lava Rock wheels still have this effect regardless. In a variant, other wheels can also create colorful, glowing trails.
• The Bus Came Back: This game adds many characters from post-Naughty Dog era Crash Bandicoot to the "Naughty Dog game remake" series, some of whom had appeared only once in the whole series and haven't been seen in more than a decade:
  • Most of the Nitro Kart cast, including Zem, Zam, N. Trance, Krunk, Nash, Norm, Geary, and Real and Fake Velos are back, and none of them have been seen since 2003.^note Although N. Trance was meant to appear in Crash Twinsanity but was cut.
  • Chick and Stew from Crash Tag Team Racing appear as the announcers for each of the Grand Prix events after being absent since 2005. They also appear on an advertisement in Turbo Track and were Promoted to Playable in the Winter Festival Grand Prix. Pasadena and Von Clutch from the same game also join them as of the Neon Circus GP.
  • Tawna Bandicoot is also getting in on the action, making her playable for the first time ever in a kart racer, and making her playable for the first time since Crash Boom Bang in 2006, which was also her last appearance as a character aside from the N. Sane Trilogy.
  • Baby T. is playable, and he hasn't been seen since Warped unless you count the N. Sane Trilogy.
  • Technically speaking, Baby Crash appears for the first time since the Golden Ending of the Nintendo DS version of Titans in 2007.
  • Nina Cortex is coming along for the ride, and she hasn't been in a game since Mind Over Mutant in 2008. Same goes for N. Brio (unless, again, you count the remake trilogy).
  • Koala Kong is back again, and wasn't seen since Twinsanity in 2004, if you ignore the N. Sane Trilogy.
  • Rilla Roo and (if you ignore the N. Sane Trilogy) Komodo Moe appear for the first time since Bash all the way back in 2000.
  • Yaya Panda makes her first appearance since Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 2 in 2010.
  • Megamix appears for the first time since it was playable in the multiplayer mode of N-Tranced in 2003 (not counting that, its first appearance was in The Huge Adventure in 2002).
  • Disregarding their appearance in N. Sane Trilogy, Baby Cortex and Baby N. Tropy appear for the first time since Warped.

C

• Camera Abuse:
  • Dingodile's winning animation in his Summer outfit has him spraying water on the camera with his water gun and drinking it as well.
  • During the CTR TV report's interview with the Spyro & Friends GP racers, Gnasty Gnorc forcefully grabs the camera when it gets to him, and it ends up being hastily shut off.
  • Spyro's Winter Guardian victory animation has him shoot his ice breath on everything in front of him and freeze it, including the camera, which thaws off after a few seconds.
• Canon Welding: The promotional launch day comic book firmly establishes Zem and Zam as Oxide's henchmen.
  • In Drive-Thru Danger, Velo's colosseum can be seen within the orbit of Gasmoxia.
• Carnivore Confusion: Chick and Stew fully delve into this during the Back N. Time GP intro; Stew expresses how glad he and Chick aren't in prehistoric times, since they must look extra-delicious to the dinosaurs (though at least he thinks he looks tasty), and Chick warns viewers not to cook an egg on their engine at the end.
• Casino Park: Hot Air Skyway has been given this treatment, being retooled into an airborne casino managed by Pinstripe and his goons, complete with Playing Card Motifs.
• Cast Herd: At the character select screen, there is now^note or rather, was, until the Spooky GP introduced Engine Swapping an option to sort the characters by their ease of use:
  • Beginner characters have max turn but also have low speed: Polar, Pura, Ripper Roo, Zam, Krunk, Real Velo, Liz, Baby Crash, Gnasty Gnorc, Rilla Roo and the Lab Assistant.
  • Intermediate characters come as either all-rounder or high acceleration racers:
    • The all-rounder characters have the same middling stats across speed, acceleration, and turn: Crash, Cortex, Komodo Joe, Fake Crash, Small Norm, Geary, Isabella, Hunter, Komodo Moe, Von Clutch, Chick, Megamix and Baby Cortex.
    • The acceleration characters have max acceleration with modest speed and handling: Coco, N. Gin, Pinstripe, Nitros Oxide, N.Trance, Nash, Tawna, Megumi, Baby Coco, N. Brio, Stew, Emperor Velo XXVII and Baby N. Tropy.
  • Expert characters come as either speed or drift types:
    • Speed characters have max speed but poor acceleration and turn: Tiny, Dingodile, Penta Penguin, Papu Papu, N. Tropy, Crunch, Zem, Big Norm, Ami, Baby T, Spyro, Nina, Pasadena, Koala Kong, Yaya and Fixed Rilla Roo.
    • Drift characters, added in the Spooky GP, come with high speed, low acceleration and middling handling: King Chicken, Hasty and the Iron Checkpoint Crate.
  • As of the Spooky GP, the characters can now be sorted into three different categories: Crash Team Racing^note characters appearing from that game, consists of Crash, Cortex, Tiny, Coco, N. Gin, Dingodile, Polar, Pura, Ripper Roo, Papu Papu, Komodo Joe, Pinstripe, Oxide, N. Tropy, Fake Crash and Penta, Crash Nitro Kart^note characters debuting in that game, featuring Crunch, N. Trance, Zem, Zam, Real Velo, Krunk, Nash, Small Norm, Big Norm and Geary and Bonus^note characters who are added in the various updates, consisting of Tawna, Ami, Megumi, Liz, Isabella, Baby Crash, Baby Coco, Baby T, Spyro, Hunter, Gnasty Gnorc, Komodo Moe, N. Brio, Nina, Koala Kong, Pasadena, Von Clutch, King Chicken, Hasty, Rilla Roo, Yaya, Chick, Stew, Megamix, Emperor Velo, Lab Assistant, Baby Cortex, Baby N. Tropy, Fixed Rilla Roo and the Iron Checkpoint Crate.
• Challenge Run: The Grand Prix includes tasks such as winning on certain tracks either without using the boost pads lying on the track, or without using any power-ups. One more unique challenge requires the player to win a race while driving backwards for the entire last lap, which slows the kart to a crawl, forces the player to avoid any source of boost, and has "Wrong Way!" flashing on screen the entire time.
• Character Customization: Players now have the option to customize their character and kart. Characters come with multiple skins, and karts can be outfitted with different body shapes, paint jobs, tires, decal patterns and stickers.
• Characterisation Click Moment: Much in tone with the original Team Racing, Nitro Fueled capitalises on its huge roster to develop some of the under-developed characters within the series:
  • Tawna, while showing semblances of her Action Girl persona in N Sane Trilogy, gains her first proper full speaking role here, and is established as the sassy, confident leader of the Nitro Squad (themselves developed from the completely uncharacterised trophy girls of the original game).
  • Komodo Moe also is given full speaking lines for the first time, setting him up as a more jovial and boisterous counterpart to his more cunning and skeptical brother, Joe (if just as cocksure and hammy).
  • Reconstructed humorously with Rilla Roo, who in Bash had little personality displays besides his gameplay animations of him acting like an ape. In Nitro Fueled his characterisation pretty much just rolls with that, acting like a standard playful unintelligent ape with sporadic signs of sapience.
  • Yaya Panda goes from being a standard expository character in Nitro Kart 2 to the most assertive and battle-ready heroine for this game, with a chipper, adorable side to her.
• Character Select Forcing: During a Grand Prix, specific characters and vehicles would grant a bonus to any Nitro obtained if they are used, increasing the bonus further if the character is using a themed Legendary skin (or in the case of newly-introduced racers, their highest-rewarding Exotic skin) and if they used specific kart parts and cosmetics. Doing all this would result in a maximum bonus of 50%.
  • As of the Spooky Grand Prix, the maximum was increased to 60%, as Nina's Ragdoll outfit adds a 25% increase to the Nitro Gauge by itself rather than the regular 15% from the previous Legendary costumes. However, considering that this is acquired from finishing the Gold (the last) tier in the Nitro Gauge, it doesn't hold much use outside of either cosmetics or trying to get the Champion kart.
  • With the advent of the Neon Circus Grand Prix the max total has risen to 70%. The wheels purchased with Wumpa Coins (Some Electron and the Neon) were boosted to 10% as opposed to 5%, and the Legendary decors for applicable karts rose to 10% as well. Some Stickers were also supposed to come with a 5% boost but, at the time of this writing, it appears to be bugged.
  • Come the Winter Festival Grand Prix, it seems that the sticker bug has since been fixed because the maximum Nitro bonus is now 75%
  • Largely averted with the post-GP Wumpa Coin challenges; while certain objectives still require the use of specific characters and vehicles, it's otherwise possible to use any loadout with any character now, since the Nitro bonus system has been omitted entirely.
• Chekhov's Gag: Dingodile ironically becoming a firefighter in his epilogue seemed to be a funny enough possibility to a lot of people. As it turns out, this later was seen for real once he got a firefighter skin in the Spooky GP.
  • In The Lost Ruins hub world, there is a mural of a chicken with five eggs around it, which can be dismissed as background flavor and yet another chicken gag. Eventually, this turned out to be the key to unlocking King Chicken, a new character.
  • In the CTR TV report for the Nitro Tour Grand Prix, Stew casually mentions during the kart showoff how he would like to "take these beauties for a spin". Six months later, he got his wish as he and Chick became playable. This leads to the studio being empty in the following month's report.
  • In the Gem Valley hub world, one can see a Knight Lab Assistant trying to pull a sword, near the winner's circle. Once a Lab Assistant became playable, he also came with a Knight skin, still having problems with the sword.
• Christmas Elves: The Winter Festival GP provides a skin that dresses Coco up as one, with a cupcake motif.
• Circus Episode: The Neon Circus Grand Prix DLC pack is this, complete with circus-like skins, stickers, karts, and a race track: Koala Carnival, which takes place mostly inside a huge carnival tent complete with cannons that fire chickens and glowing hoops.
• Collection Sidequest: Neon Circus GP introduces King Chicken, a new character that has to be unlocked this way. Specifically, by going to Adventure Mode and finding 5 golden eggs, one in each map, and then going to a stone mural in The Lost Ruins (in front of Tiger Temple's warp pad). All of the eggs are positioned in tricky places.
  • The post-GP update adds in crates baring Beenox' logo hidden on every track. Breaking them all will unlock the Iron Checkpoint Crate as a playable character.
• Color-Coded Characters: Just like with the original game, each character has their own distinct kart color, but now those colors are called "legacy kart" colors to set them apart from the many kart customization options.
  • Oxide also gets a color of his own to go with his Star skin in the Nitros Oxide edition.
  • The Nitro Squad in particular runs with it, as both their default karts and their Motorsport outfits sport the girls' respective color schemes.^note For those curious, they are pink for Tawna, green for Ami, white for Megumi, violet for Liz and blue for Isabella
• Comeback Mechanic: Like in the original CTR, you'll be more likely to get these weapons from item crates the closer you are from the 8th place: the Warp Orb (chases the 1st place and hits all racers unfortunate to be on its lane), the N. Tropy Clock (slows down all racers other than the user) and the masks (acting as both a speed boost and Invincibility Powerup).
• Comical Overreacting: The intro has Tiny drop a screw, causing him to smash his kart to bits with a hammer out of frustration.
• Company Cameo: Developers Beenox are referenced multiple times ingame.
  • Their logo can be seen on the entrance of the second tunnel with sharp turns in Android Alley.
  • One of the various livery packs you can buy is the Beenox Pack◊, which includes their name, logo, and color scheme among four characters, a vehicle sticker, a vehicle paint job, and a set of wheels. Beenox Robot Geary in particular is based on their former mascot.
  • The last update to the game added Beenox Crates, which have the company's logo on the sides, to every racetrack in the game. There's a secret reward for breaking all of them.
• Composite Character:
  • Some of the characters' voicelines are taken from previous racing titles such as Nitro Kart and Tag Team Racing, with the most notable ones being N. Gin's.
  • Apo-Apo takes cues from both Aku Aku and Uka Uka's Radical Entertainment designs.
  • The Iron Checkpoint Crate uses the other types of crates as skins.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
  • The computer controlled characters, even on Easy mode, have rubber-banding AI that gets worse the further up the Rankings a player is and is compounded by the difficulty. In Hard mode there are instances where the generally slower Handling characters can outstrip a Speed character on straightaways without boosts. They also appear to have a stacked item system, to allow them to gain missiles and bowling bombs to shoot just as a player would pass them even if the roulette should give them a Bottle or TNT crate. They also tend to fire them the moment a player would get even a bit ahead at point blank range and accuracy. Not helped is that the player can be given Bottles and TNT constantly even if they are in low-to-last place.
  • The bosses themselves are all about this, having unlimited amounts of items they pelt you with if you're unlucky enough to lag behind them. Oxide, however, takes this to another level, having not only the ability to drop multiple Beakers at once, but also getting a head start in the race.
• The Computer Is a Lying Bastard: The in-game stats actively lie to you again, as was the case in the original game: Balanced characters still aren't faster than Acceleration characters. As the original game's datamined stats indicated (as noted on the original game's wiki page), Acceleration characters actually had a higher speed value than Balanced characters, and thus had higher stats than the latter in all but turning.
• Cool Bike: The kart used by the CNK bosses returns, now called the "Velo Chopper".
• Cool Car: A good few of the karts count such as the Team Oxide and Team Cortex karts and a few of the CTTR ones, but special mention should go to the Champion kart, which is basically a downscaled Lamborghini Huracan Performante Spyder.
• Corporate Warfare: Played for Laughs. As drivers race through the Drive-Thru Danger track, in the background, two fleets belonging to the two restaurant chains Nuclear Pizza and Toxic Burger arrive, and start battling against each other for the sponsorship of CTR TV.
• Crapsack World: The Drive-Thru Danger track really gives off the impression that Gasmoxia is one; there is smog everywhere, the fast food joints serve disgusting and unhealthy-looking food, and a war is currently being waged by said fast food joints over TV sponsorship.
• Creepy Cemetery: Nina's Nightmare contains a part where you go through a cemetery surrounding a mansion.
• Creepy Crossdresser: N. Gin's ballerina outfit from Tag Team Racing is back.
• Crossover: The Spyro & Friends GP, which gives Spyro a full-blown event with content from his series, after previously only coming by himself in CNK.
• Cyberpunk: Though the theme is present in the original, Electron Avenue really shows its futuristic sci-fi setting here, with the night setting, holograms, and bright, mostly purple color scheme, looking like it came straight out of Blade Runner. There are also what appear to skyscrapers with hip-and-gable roofs in the background, possibly a nod to the Japanese-focused futuristic concept from the '80s.
• Cyborg: In addition to N. Gin and Crunch, Megamix's Rustland skin turns it into one, and also Emperor Velo's Captain skin in which his right arm is replaced with a bionic one that can transform into an Arm Cannon.

D-E

• A Day in the Limelight:
  • Each Grand Prix usually is themed after one or more of the newly-added racers. Spyro & Friends, Spooky and Gasmoxia take it further by having the title screen completely changed, briefly removing Crash in the animation.
  • The CTR TV reports give Chick and Stew more screen time than they ever got back in Tag Team Racing. In addition, their eventual promotion into racers allows Stew to have his own intro in the Winter Festival GP.
  • Downplayed in the Neon Circus GP with Circus Ami's ringmaster costume, essentially making her the Nitro Squad's substitute leader when Tawna isn't around.
  • In the Gasmoxia GP, Nitros Oxide actually broadcasts the CTR TV report for it himself.
• Darker and Edgier: The Rustland GP, which introduces a post-apocalypse theme track, a racer that's pure distilled Body Horror, a sinister mask that seemingly doesn't care whom it sides with, and a skin loadout with hardcore punk makeovers. Polar and Pura's aren't even played for cuteness or comedy. The kicker is that it comes immediately after the saccharine and cutesy Winter Festival GP.
• Deep South: Rustic Fake Crash, complete with a rather... unorthodox way of eating corn^note For those curious, he sticks it on a power drill, puts it to his mouth and lets it spin. Needless to say, Don't Try This at Home. Farmer N. Gin may also count.
• Defeat Means Playable: Instead of unlocking the bosses through the Gem Cups^note Instead, beating them rewards the player a skin for one of the bosses. For instance, clearing the Red Gem cup will unlock Ripper Roo's pink skin., players will now unlock them after beating their boss races for the first time. They also unlock their respective vehicle colors and a sticker of said boss.
• Demonic Dummy: Ragdoll Nina's blue exotic skin variant adds lines on the sides of her mouth, to invoke this.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • Beenox's staff invokes this as much as humanly possible with each update. In particular, some of the character skins actually have animation even when the characters' eyes are covered, when one hacks the game to apply the animations on the characters' default models; for instance, Biker Crash visibly winces in reaction to his accident, while Evil Coco sports thin, catlike irises.
  • Each character's Legendary skins have their own unique jigglebones separate or modified from their base model, such as hair and loose clothing. Some skins even add or replace props fitted for their victory podium animations, such as Pirate Papu Papu having a lantern pole replacing his usual tribal staff.
  • Two of Crash's alternate costumes modify his podium losing animation, which only occurs should you get second or third during a cup or get lucky enough to have the AI-controlled Crash come second or third in Adventure Mode or a cup while wearing said costumes:
    • Scuba Crash's loss animation is modified to show his oxygen tanks beside him as he sleeps rather than have him still wear them, as they would otherwise cause clipping issues.
    • In a similar vein to above with his antlers, Reindeer Crash is given a unique podium loss animation where he sleeps chest down instead of lying on his back.
  • Due to their exceptionally small size, all of the babies (except Baby T) have been given booster seats, so that they can actually reach the steering wheel.
  • Nina and Coco's princess outfit now have shorts under their skirts, to avoid any panty shot incidents during their trick jumps.
  • Megamix's podium loss animation is tweaked a bit for its Rustland skin; instead of slapping its false eye out and picking it back up, it shakes its head and looks at its palm with confusion, as its eyes are now replaced by a visor.
    • For its legendary exotic skin variant, Apo-Apo doesn't appear during its victory podium animation.
  • Lab Assistant's podium loss animation is appropriately altered for his Legendary skins, as the knight and lumberjack ones have their objects set right next to him to prevent clipping.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • "Ultra Sacred Fire", or an alternative name in the remake: "Blue Fire". In the original game, some speed pads are hard coded to provide a bigger speed boost than all of the others, usually due to a jump or gap that follows afterwards; in this game, those speed pads will give blue exhaust fire instead of the usual orange. The "reserve" time of boosts that you build up by stacking powerslide turbos or pad boosts one after the other is inherited the moment you touch the pads that provide USF, causing the usually brief extra speed to have an increased duration. Nitro-Fueled made one critical change to this effect: getting a new turbo does not overwrite USF and instead extends the duration. This adds a whole new dimension to all the tracks of the game where you find these enhanced pads, and attempt to keep this duration indefinitely extended while your kart flies around the track at difficult to control, extremely high speeds. Brand new tracks and the reworked Crash Nitro Kart tracks seem to be designed deliberately in service of this mechanic, and great control of it can outright trivialize some time trial ghosts.^note For those curious, the tracks that utilize USF as of the Gasmoxia Grand Prix are Polar Pass, Cortex Castle, N. Gin Labs, Hot Air Skyway, Oxide Station, Turbo Track, Tiny Temple, Deep Sea Driving, Out of Time, Clockwork Wumpa, Thunder Struck, Electron Avenue, Hyper Spaceway, Twilight Tour, Prehistoric Playground, Nina's Nightmare, Koala Carnival, Gingerbread Joyride, Megamix Mania and Drive-Thru Danger.
  • The "air brake-turning" technique. It's like brake-sliding (hold brake button while turning for sharp turns)... but in midair. This allows you to make sharp turns in the air without losing speed, which are useful for speeding through certain tracks' tricky parts; but the catch is that you have to stop braking before you land, else you'll lose the speed you currently have (especially if you're holding onto USF above).
  • The Drift class, unlike other stat alignments, has complete control over the arc in which you drift on, meaning you can turn as tight as the Turn class or stay as straight as the Speed class. However, this build has even worse acceleration than the Speed class, making it critical that you don't mess up.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Nitros Oxide is this for the Time Trials, as he got supplanted by Emperor Velo later on.
• Don't Try This at Home: Parodied by Chick at the end of the CTR TV report for Back N. Time, who warns viewers not to cook an egg on their engine.
• Dressed to Plunder: Papu Papu has a skin that dresses him up like a pirate in the Spooky GP, complete with a peg leg. Emperor Velo also gets a Space Pirate-themed one too.
• Drive-Thru Antics: Drive-Thru Danger is a racetrack that passes through the drive-thru lanes of two Gasmoxian fast food chains: Toxic Burger and Nuclear Pizza.
• Dug Too Deep: The excavation going on in Deep Sea Driving seems to have incurred the wrath of some kind of Eldritch Abomination Sea Monster, whose many eyes peer at the racers all around the track and whose mouth acts as a stage hazard.
• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • The Nitro Squad's members are among the holographic projections seen in Slide Colosseum, even without the DLC for them installed.
  • Some hard-to-spot lookalikes of Baby T can be seen in the background of Mystery Caves.
  • Komodo Moe is offhandedly mentioned in Komodo Joe's epilogue, while N. Brio and Nina Cortex are seen on banners in Cortex Castle, and Baby Cortex is on one of the stained glass windows.
  • Rilla Roo appears on a banner in Koala Carnival during the Neon Circus GP. Guess who shows up as a playable character in the next one?
  • Emperor Velo's big mug is seen in some tracks, including the moon in Inferno Island and the hologram and Velo-shaped colosseum in Hyper Spaceway, far before he arrived via the Gasmoxia GP.
  • Variations of the Lab Assistant have been omnipresent in various tracks before one became playable.
  • Young Cortex having a beard on the Academy of Evil portrait is a subtle one for Baby Cortex, as it could easily be misinterpreted as a mistake.
• Easy Level Trick:
  • Like before, quite a number of tracks have shortcuts. Many of them requires having built up speed and/or precise jump timing. However, many of the "unintentional" shortcuts (most infamously in Oxide Station) have been fixed by Beenox.
  • A few Grand Prix challenges can be cheesed through if the player has a second controller and thus is able to disable AI racers. Battle-related challenges? Just face against an idle racer and do whatever to him/her depending on the challenge type needed! Hit an opponent (unless the objective requires the target to be an AI) with a specific weapon a certain number of times? Let that same racer be the player's punching bag and hope the RNG can spew out the needed weapon (or just do so in Battle mode, which allows the player to customize power-up roulette)! Certain non-Online Pro Challenges too tricky to do with AI around, like Reverse Speeding? Just attempt such while Player 2 just watches the scenery!
• Egopolis:
  • Some of the home tracks have been redesigned to reflect the characters related to them, such as Tiny Arena having a guitar-wielding Tiny hologram and a giant statue of Tiny holding the whole place, and Cortex Castle having likenesses of Cortex everywhere. The silliest case must be for the good-aligned Coco Park, which has many statues of the bandicoot herself, hearts littered over the race track, and is generally a teenage girl's art deco fantasy.
  • Prehistoric Playground acts as one for Fake Crash, where his screwing with time travel has somehow created a race of Fake Crash cavemen and all of the dinosaurs now have his trademark eyebrows and overbite.
  • Nina's Nightmare is clearly one for Nina Cortex, as the haunted house segment features some portraits of her, up to and including a group picture of the Academy of Evil alumni with a photo of her crudely tacked on it. Possibly justified, since the description for the track implies that it takes place inside her mind.
  • Koala Carnival is one for Koala Kong, having several mugshots of him on the stands, as well as two banners. Justified, as this is a circus in which he is one of the star attractions.
  • Downplayed with Megamix Mania. While the oil refinery within does belong to Megamix, there's only a few images of it. Because most of the objects and walls have had the faces of characters with Rustland skins (among others) painted on them, making their opinion of it running the place quite clear.
• Enmity with an Object: Downplayed with Iron Checkpoint Crate. Due to the way that podium loss animations work outside of online multiplayer, it makes most of the racers that come in second and third place look like they're disappointed or outraged that they've lost to an ordinary crate.
• Everything Is An I Pod In The Future: N. Tropy's Digital skin has him decked out in a sleek white outfit complete with a digital clock and blue Tron Lines on his chest.
• Evil Chef: One of N. Gin's outfits dresses him up in a chef's outfit, with a chef's hat over the rocket in his head. If his victory animation's any indication, he's also not very good at cooking.
• Evil Laugh: Entering the mansion near the end of Nina's Nightmare triggers a laugh sound effect.
• Excuse Plot: Paralleling the base game, the premise for the Gasmoxia Grand Prix is Oxide challenging Earth's racers to a grudge match set on his eponymous home planet.
• Expy: Baby Crash and Baby Coco being racers mirrors Baby Mario and Baby Luigi (among other babies such as Baby Peach) being playable in the Mario Kart series, especially Mario Kart 8 and its five baby racers. They're also introduced alongside Baby T, who is himself an expy of Yoshi, another green dinosaur with a connection to the baby version of the main hero. Likewise, the Lab Assistant also mirrors the various mook characters being playable in the Mario Kart series.
• Eye Scream: N. Gin's podium animation when he doesn't place first has him stare forlornly at the ground before his apparently false eye falls out of its socket, which is also apparently sentient as it tries to squirm away. He quickly picks it up, dusts it off and shoves it back in. It also happens to Megamix in its podium loss animation where it accidentally knocks its false eye out while slapping itself, leading it to pick it up and pop it back in again.

F-G

• Fighter, Mage, Thief: The roster for the Spyro & Friends GP is set up this way; the fire-breathing Spyro is the Mage, the archer Hunter is the Thief, and the imposing, mace-wielding Gnasty Gnorc is the Fighter.
• Food Porn: Absolutely everything in Gingerbread Joyride is made with sweets to the point that describing it all makes it this alone, and that's without getting into the Candy Cone kart and Pit Stop items!
• Foregone Victory: Due to the randomly-generated Daily Challenges, it is entirely possible for at least one track and achievement combination to be almost impossible not to pull off. Sure enough, it happened during the Neon Circus GP and the Rustland GP, with a No Boosts Needed challenge for Slide Coliseum, a track that has no boost pads at all and relies solely on power sliding.
• Form-Fitting Wardrobe: In general, clothing tends to cling to the racers' bodies (with the buffer male characters being among the more obvious cases). The female cast in particular has their silhouettes showcased to various degrees, especially Ami, who's so developed that she easily fills all of her outfits.
• Funny Background Event: The courses are full of them, including:
  • On the final lap through Mystery Caves, a chicken will clumsily jump off the first waterfall.
  • Papu's Pyramid has a lion spanking a Lab Assistant on a bridge, a tribesman trying to row a boat up a waterfall, a lab assistant trying to fire a sagging musket, and what appears to be a Piranha Plant class, being taught by a plant wearing glasses.
  • Dragon Mines has a hammer-wielding Lab Assistant playing whack-a-mole, a pair of rats trying to pull another rat out of a hole, and a miner Lab Assistant nervously climbing up a pole trying to get rid of a bat.
• Game-Breaking Bug:
  • The initial release of the game (or at least version 1.02) has a nasty tendency to corrupt the save file, caused by overflow bug affecting Time Trial ghost data. This was also apparently unique to the PlayStation 4 version of the game due to the exclusive track.
  • It is currently unknown what caused it, but all three platforms may run a risk of the game being unplayable (most notable on Xbox One, as this console is the most often brought up), regardless of whether it is offline or online (both forcibly crashing to the respective console's home screen). The worst case scenario is the return of possible "corrupted" save that resets everything back to zero. In some cases, certain modes are still playable, but still likely to crash after finishing a race. Discussed here.
  • The Sky is the Limit (jump for a total of 1 meter) Weekly Challenge is apparently bugged, as no matter what kind of jump the player does, the completion will not register. Various Epileptic Trees have formed from this, as some people have reported having cleared the challenge, yet it is not fully clear what the requirements are (the suggested ones tend to not work when tested, for one thing).
  • Two separate See You Later challenges from the Spyro N. Friends Grand Prix take place at Hot Air Skyway and Roo's Tubes. But no matter which shortcut the player uses in those courses, the completion will never register.
  • The Spooky Grand Prix update, while adding a few QoL updates, caused a glaring error once the titular Grand Prix began. Regardless of platform, some players were unable to earn Nitro Points from completing the given Challenges. This also seems to be pure chance, as sometimes the completed Challenge(s) may register and some Challenges appear to not be affected by this bug. This notably only occured on the first day of the Grand Prix.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Played entirely for laughs with Chick and Stew's promotion into racers after the Winter Festival GP, as they need to be playable at all times, so no one is around to host the CTR TV report for the Rustland GP except the announcer. The one for the Gasmoxia GP skirts the issue entirely by having Oxide take it over.
• Girl's Night Out Episode: The Twilight Tour Grand Prix is this, since all of the newly-added racers are women.
• Graceful Loser: Megumi excitedly claps and gives a thumbs up to the winner if she loses.
  • Pinstripe of all people shows this when defeated in Adventure mode; at first, he makes a show of being a tough guy who hates losing before handing the key over, showing that he does have a sporting side and knows when he's beat. Outside of that mode, his second defeat quote also has him show this.
  • N. Tropy also congratulates the player when they defeat all of his time trial ghosts and his 2nd-3rd place podium animation has been changed from him sobbing hysterically to merely kneeling on one leg and catching his breath, a reference to his open-to-attack animation from Warped.
  • Zig-zagged with Geary; when in his serious mode, he screams in rage before switching to his cleaning mode and applauding the winner.
  • Hasty looks genuinely discouraged if he loses, but he shrugs to express that he can't expect to win every time and takes his loss with dignity.
  • In online multiplayer, every character on the podium effectively becomes this, as the losing animations do not play for players who reach second and third place. Instead, all three racers who reach the podium will display their winning animations, implicitly averting Second Place Is for Losers.
• Gratuitous Ninja: Cortex's ninja costume from Tag Team Racing returns in this game. Penta also gets one of his own.
• Greaser Delinquents: Oxide has a costume that dresses him like one, complete with pompadour, sunglasses, mustache, leather jacket, spiked gauntlets and jeans, and his victory animation has him motioning like he's revving up a motorcycle, causing the exhaust pipes on the back of his head to shoot fire and smoke.
• Groin Attack: Biker Crash's victory podium animation has him accidentally doing this to himself with his yo-yo.
• Guest Fighter: Spyro the Dragon returns as a guest racer here as part of a Spyro the Dragon-themed Grand Prix called "Spyro and Friends", with Hunter and Gnasty Gnorc joining him.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Some of the CTR challenge letters are in plain sight, but others can be extremely hard to find. Not helped is the fact that even if a player knows where they are in the original game, the slightly modified graphics and some jump physics have been tweaked to make them harder to get (Hot Air Skyway's T) or even to see (Mystery Cave's C).
  • The Careful Driver challenge requires the player to win a race while not breaking a single crate. What the game does not tell the player is that the Wumpa Fruit collectibles (like the ones on Coco Park) also count as crates, somehow. This was rectified in a recent patch, as Wumpa Fruits now does not count as crates.
  • The Reverse Speeding challenge managed to garner questions from many players. The challenge sounds simple enough: Win the last lap while driving the whole said lap in reverse. However, letting go of the reverse controls (justified), running into any boost pad (forces the player to dash forward, failing the objective), jumping, getting hit by any hazard, hitting any crates, hitting any walls, or going off-road will void the challenge regardless of if the player is reversing or not. Of course, an average player will not find this out until one flawless reverse run later, unless they managed to do it flawlessly within the first attempt. Not to mention that the challenge will also only count if the reverse has been started before crossing the finish line prior to the last lap. Once again, another challenge type whose additional requirements are hidden away from the player.
  • Unlocking the Iron Checkpoint Crate requires the player to find special crates with the Beenox logo, which are cleverly hidden in places on all the tracks.

H-M

• Hailfire Peaks: The surface of the planet Barin, as shown in Meteor Gorge and Barin Ruins, has both fiery and icy elements combined, as well as industrial technology fused with ancient ruins.
• Hammerspace: The racers' idle and podium animations have them outright abuse this.
• Harder Than Hard: Following the release of the Gasmoxia Grand Prix and the return of Emperor Velo XXVII, a new set of Time Trial records to beat were added that are even harder than the Oxide times; the Velo times. However, making things even harder are the Beenox developer times, released after the end of the Gasmoxia Grand Prix.
• Hazmat Suit: One of Dingodile's outfits is an orange hazmat suit with acid on the soles of his feet.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: The Nitro Tour Grand Prix DLC provides Crash's biker outfit from Warped as a skin, as well as a brand-new biker outfit for Tiny including a leather jacket, leather pants, boots and fingerless gloves. There's also the aforementioned Hot Rod Oxide costume mentioned above as well as Punk Zem.
• Hell Is That Noise: Rustland Megamix's voice. If you thought its regular voice was bad, just wait until you hear it with a metallic filter applied.
• High-Class Glass: Ripper Roo's Gentleman skin includes one of these. Likewise, Penta eventually got to sport one for his Gentleman skin.
• High-Five Left Hanging: In the final ending, after Oxide finally gives up antagonising Earth and retreats, an ecstatic Coco gestures for a high five from Crash, though she has to prod for his attention first. Hunter also has this as one of his idle animations.
• Hijacked by Ganon: The final Grand Prix's CTR TV report gets forcibly taken over by Oxide, so that he can (re)introduce the fellow chief racing villain Emperor Velo as its star racer. It's effectively two hijackings in one! Also justified, since Drive-Thru Danger, the final track, takes place on Gasmoxia.
• Homemade Sweater from Hell: Clearing the silver tier in the Winter Festival GP will unlock a costume for Polar (appropriately called "Ugly Sweater Polar") that stuffs him into a blue, itchy-looking sweater. Unlike other examples of this trope, he doesn't seem to mind too much.
• Horny Vikings: Polar can get one as a costume in the Spyro and Friends Grand Prix. In addition, Polar Pass, Glacier Park and the North Bowl all have viking-themed imagery strewn around their courses.
• Hostile Show Takeover: Fittingly, the final Grand Prix takes place on Gasmoxia, with Oxide taking over the CTR TV report to announce it himself.
• Hot Witch: Tawna can get a skin that turns her into one, via the Spooky Grand Prix.
• Huge Holographic Head: Oxide uses one in the intro, much like how Emperor Velo did in Nitro Kart. This is also present in front of Oxide's ship in Gem Stone Valley.
• I Meant to Do That: One of Hasty's lines when he spins out is "I...totally intended to do that."
• I Want My Mommy!: N. Trance will occasionally let out this sort of comment if he gets into a spinout.
• Impact Silhouette: Megamix Mania features one of Rusty Walrus, as it takes place on N. Gin's ruined battleship from Twinsanity.
• Incredible Shrinking Man: Happens twice to Coco with both her Star and Alice skin podium animations (though the former isn't a fully successful case).
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: Downplayed with Coco. Her clothing appears to stick to her silhouette overall, some of her skins have her show off her legs, some of them can also come with skirts that have her carelessly expose her shorts during trick jumps, and a few of her skins are the referential kind of fan service.
• Jiggle Physics: Played conventionally, as the kart and its driver shakes visibly when idle^note especially the Candy Cone, which is actually a sentient vehicle.. Otherwise, averted with Ami and Liz despite their large busts^note Although one E3 pre-release demo notably showed Ami's bust jiggling., and played straight with Crunch, Koala Kong and Papu Papu's gut. It's also the only real animation for the Iron Checkpoint Crate, with its lid popping off.
• Joke Character: One of the post-Grand Prix characters added to the game was, of all things, the Iron Checkpoint Crate. It has no voice clips or animations, and its podium victory is simply the crate just...resting on the podium, motionless.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Velo's appearance in this game counts as one, given that his real form in Nitro Kart was built up as a punchline that was revealed in the true ending, so the context is no longer present.
  • Megamix was the secret final boss for The Huge Adventure, but is advertised with much fanfare and readily accessible here.
  • Neo Cortex and N. Tropy being turned into babies is a plot twist that was only seen in Warped's true ending. Their baby forms become playable in the post-GP update.
• Level Ate: Gingerbread Joyride is a holiday-themed track made entirely out of sweets, right down to the blimps and even the starting banner.
• Living Toys:
  • A DLC skin for N. Trance from Back N. Time turns him into a wooden figurine. He falls apart easily.
  • Nina's Gold tier skin from the Spooky Grand Prix turns her into a ragdoll that comes to life, with stretchy arms.
• Logo Joke: Averted for Activision's logo (unsurprisingly, as their logo sequence never gets one), aside from Cortex's recycled line of "Activision presents; a smashing blast from the past!"; but played straight with Beenox's specially-made logo sequence - which is a perfect recreation of Naughty Dog's logo joke used in the original CTR. Also, from the Spyro & Friends GP onwards, the CTR logo in the main screen gets played with.
• Loveable Rogue: For the Gasmoxia GP, the Nitro Squad is rebranded into a group of these, referred to as the Nitro Pirates, complete with firearms (although Megumi isn't nearly as adept at using one as the others).
• Mascot with Attitude: Deliberately played up with the Rustland skins for the 8 default racers and Nina, who are all given punk makeovers and extreme attitudes (if some didn't have any already).
• Mechanically Unusual Class: The Drift class is more unique than its stat spread suggests: at first glance, it appears to act as an alternative to the Speed class by being slightly slower and having much worse acceleration in exchange for better turning. However, the stat spread doesn't account for Drift having a completely different drifting arc from the other classes: while the other classes are restricted to a general arc whether drifting left or right based on their turning, Drift is different in that if the stick is pressed in the direction it's drifting, it'll turn as tightly as the Turning class does, but if the stick is pressed away, it'll drift as straight as the Speed class does. This serves to grant the Drift class far more versatility in terms of drifting movement compared to the other classes in exchange for not being able to slip up due to their poor acceleration.
• Megacorp: Nuclear Pizza and Toxic Burger are two restaurant chains on Gasmoxia that are somehow able to afford a fleet of warships that will fight against each other in the Drive-Thru Danger track.
• Megamix Game: Although it's primarily a remake of Team Racing, the game also features content from the other racing entries, specifically characters and tracks from Nitro Kart, as well as characters and elements from Tag Team Racing, and a character and kart from Nitro Kart 2. Also, Megamix is in the game.
• Metalhead: Zem has been given this trait by Beenox to flesh him out more, such as throwing out devil horns when he wins and having a punk rock-inspired costume as well. Zam also gets into it a bit with his Bulldog costume giving him a mohawk. Oxide also gets to join in the fun with his (literally-named) Metal Head costume turning him into a KISS-pastiche in the Spooky Grand Prix.
• Microtransactions: A new feature added during the Back N. Time update is the ability to buy wumpa coins with real-world money. While completely optional, the pit stop's randomised design and the game's overall low coin distribution heavily encourages purchasing coins to reduce the grind for them.
• Mirror Match: On repeat playthroughs of Nitro-Fueled Adventure, you can have the five boss racers face themselves under your control. The cutscenes don't change in regards to this, however.
• Modesty Towel: One of Oxide's costumes has him clad in nothing but a bath towel, shower cap and flip flops and carrying a brush.
• Monster Clown: The Neon Circus GP gives Neo Cortex a clown outfit as DLC, and it doesn't affect his usual megalomaniacal behavior in the slightest, though he also possesses some shades of Sad Clown as shown in his podium victory animation, where it's clear that he does not enjoy this sort of thing at all.
• Monumental Damage: Besides the golden Crash statue that's half-buried, Megamix Mania has a hollowed-out and broken version of N. Gin's battleship from Twinsanity.
• Moving the Goalposts: Clearing all the time trials. Unlocked N. Tropy? Great, but you gotta beat Oxide's ghosts to get his default legendary skin. Think you're in the clear after that? As of the Gasmoxia GP, you'll also have to beat Oxide on the bonus tracks for a Champion kart decal. Oh, and when you're done with that, defeat Emperor Velo to get another decal. Finally finished? Not yet, there's still Beenox's staff times...
• Multinational Team: The Nitro Squad is composed this way. Tawna and Ami each have different American accents, Isabella is Italian, Liz is British, and Megumi is Japanese.
• Mundane Utility: In Baby Tropy's victory podium animation, he uses his time powers to retrieve his pacifier.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: The Spyro & Friends Grand Prix introduces the purple dragon himself alongside Hunter, Sparx (as an invincibility item) and Gnasty Gnorc...who's actually one of Spyro's enemies.
• Our Dragons Are Different:
  • Dingodile's panda costume gives him a red tail with blue spines, possibly meant to invoke the colors of a cartoonish Eastern dragon.
  • There's also the large dragon from Dragon Mines and Nitro Court as well as Spyro himself.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The game features all of the content from Crash Team Racing and most of the content from Crash Nitro Kart, with a handful of content from Crash Tag Team Racing as well:
    • Tiny Arena features billboards that appear to be advertising Wumpa Whip.
    • N. Gin's ballerina skin, Cortex's ninja skin, and Coco's princess skin are all outfits pulled from Tag Team Racing. The Nitros Oxide version also features Crash's Star Trek-inspired skin from the game, albeit with the addition of the helmet from the Japanese version of the same outfit. The Back N. Time Grand Prix also brings back his Mad Scientist costume.
    • Many of the customizable kart bodies are from Tag Team Racing, three of them even being exclusive to the PSP version of the game^note The Six-pipes and the Roadster (Pasadena Speed) in the base game, and later the Nautilus (NCRoadst) in the Spooky GP and one being a hidden unused test model^note The Cabrio.
    • The in-game currency is referred to as Wumpa Coins, which was the collectible currency in Tag Team Racing's single-player mode.
    • Penta has a ninja skin, which is a reference to the ninja penguin enemies that appeared in the game. In fact, an older revision of Penta's ninja skin seen in this scan looks just like how those ninja penguins were dressed.
    • The frequent appearance of chickens in the Adventure Mode and various tracks (including one as a playable character) likely stems from Tag Team Racing's obsession with chickens.
    • The "2+2=5" equation scribble seen on a wall near Sewer Speedway's shortcut is probably a reference to the notoriously poor math skills of Pasadena O'Possum, one of Tag Team Racing's characters.
  • Pinstripe's purple suit alternate skin is most likely a reference to his design from Crash Twinsanity, which depicted him with a purple suit.
  • One of Tiny's alternate costumes is a general uniform. This is a nod to the original Crash Bandicoot (1996), when Cortex wanted to make Crash the general of his Cortex Commandos. After Crash escaped, Tiny became Cortex's most loyal recurring minion, so the position seems to have been given to him instead. It could also be a passing reference to Tiny's design from Crash of the Titans, which had him wearing a military uniform.
  • Ripper Roo's subtitled dialogue before and after his boss race has been rewritten to be the dialogue he was originally supposed to have when he was to be Suddenly Voiced in the original CTR, although he still only speaks via his trademark cackling, even in the Japanese version where he actually did speak coherently in the original game.
  • Unlocking Penta through the original code has him say "Penguin Yay 1", a reference to his original appearance in the North American version being unfinished and including placeholder dialogue recorded by programmer Gavin James, resulting in Penta occasionally speaking in a dull, monotonous adult voice in addition to his usual penguin squawking. Also, he retains the mask glitch from the original game, where he has a chance of getting either mask instead of only one or the other.
  • The dragon that appears in Dragon Mines and Nitro Court is the same one that chased Crash in the medieval-themed levels of Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex.
  • Oxide has a pair of fuzzy orange dice hanging from his rear view mirror in the intro. This is both a reference to an old Nitro Kart commercial where Crash finds a pair of fuzzy dice and asks if they come in orange, and a reference to how the announcement of this game was teased online.
  • Nash being an acceleration class racer might be based on Velo saying that he was engineered to always move. Racers with high acceleration reach their top speed the quickest and also bounce back from being hit more easily.
  • Cortex Castle features a stained glass window of Cortex dressed as Coco like in the beginning of Crash Twinsanity, as well as baby Cortex from the end of Warped. In addition, the tapestries in the castle depict Cortex, N. Brio, Fake Crash and Nina.
  • The Trophy Girls/Nitro Squad's promotion to playable racers may be a reference to Ami's "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue, in which she becomes a racer herself due to being tired of handing out trophies and wanting to win one for herself.
  • Crash has a skin that makes his fur colored and patterned liked a skunk, likely referencing N. Tropy's insult towards him in Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped.
  • The tie-in comic shows Mars as a giant parking lot, having lost Oxide's challenge. The original game had unused dialogue where Oxide brags about being the reason there's no life on Mars.
  • One of the kart bodies you can unlock^note the Six-Pipes from the PSP version of Crash Tag Team Racing is a downscaled version of the cars used by the racers in the motorcycle levels of Warped. Give it the Relic Sapphire paint job and you can even make it look like the same cars!
  • Dingodile swapping his flamethrower for a super soaker in his Beach costume and becoming a fireman in the credits might be a reference to the DS version of Crash of the Titans, which had him with a water gun instead of his flamethrower.
  • In the CTR TV report that announces the launch of the Nitro Tour Grand Prix, Tawna boasts "This time, no one will catch me.". This is almost certainly a cheeky nod to her previous Damsel in Distress status.
    • The same report has Liz claim that she'll be on every front cover, most likely alluding to her career as a cover girl for Bandiboy in the original Team Racing's epilogue.
  • The Bling Bling decal for the Six-Pipes kart has spirals that resemble Crash's tribal tattoos from Crash of the Titans and Crash: Mind Over Mutant.
  • One of N. Tropy's Idle Animations has him cross his arms and grin the exact same way he does in the intro for the N. Sane Trilogy version of Warped. Likewise, one of his victory quotes, "Now you're on my time!", is also taken from Warped, when Crash confronts him as the third boss.
  • Three of Crash's costumes^note Aviator, Scuba and Biker are taken from some of Warped's levels^note specifically, the plane, underwater and racing ones respectively. Similarly, Cortex' Pharaoh costume is based on the Egyptian levels, which had Sphinxes and hieroglyphs in his likeness. Tiny also gains his Gladiator costume from the same game in the Back N. Time Grand Prix.
  • One of Cortex's victory lines is "I'm an evil scientist! What did you expect?", taken word for word from a scene in Twinsanity.
  • Some of the coins in Twilight Tour's tomb section bear the tech element symbol from Skylanders.
  • The Mammoth kart body highly resembles the Warthog Bumper from the canceled Crash Team Racing game meant to tie in to the also canceled Crash Landed.
  • The Spyro & Friends Grand Prix adds many nods to the Spyro franchise.
    • The track, Spyro Circuit, replaces the collectible Wumpa fruit with gems, and the crates are restyled to resemble the treasure chests from Spyro's series. The track itself is composed of elements from several levels from the original game, including the Artisan Home, Dark Hollow, the Magic Crafters Home, High Caves and Wizard Peak. Statues of the elder dragons are lined along the track, and the music is taken from Mushroom Speedway from Year of the Dragon.
    • Sparx acts as the invincibility mask for the Spyro cast, oddly enough including Gnasty Gnorc.
    • Gnasty Gnorc being a beginner/turning based character is likely not only based on him being called "simple" in the first game's intro, but also on the boss fight with him which consisted of chasing him around a pathway filled with tight turns.
    • Spyro being a speed character is probably based on his charge attack, which had him go faster at the cost of control.
    • Two of Spyro's skins (Superflame and Ice Breath) are both based on power-ups from his series.
    • Zam gains a costume based on the devil dogs from the level Dark Passage, while Komodo Joe (a komodo dragon) gains a wizard outfit similar to what many of the Magic Crafters dragons wear.
    • One of Spyro's racing quotes is "Whoa! Supercharged!", a small reference to the Supercharge Powerups from the second and third games of the classic Spyro trilogy. It may also be a reference to the Activision-published Skylanders SuperChargers. A few of his other quotes are references to the original trilogy: "I'd say the sky's the limit!" comes from the non-100% ending of the first game, "Looks like I've got some things to do..." comes from the intro of the first game, and "Last one there's a Gnorc!" comes from the intro of the second.
    • Speaking of Skylanders, Dark Spyro is one of Spyro's skins, which also doubles as a reference to the character of the same name from The Legend of Spyro.
    • Most of the Elemental wheels are based on elements from Skylanders.
    • Hunter's animation upon winning a race has him jump into the air with his hand raised and spin around, referencing a similar motion he did in the Reignited version of the intro of Spyro: Year of the Dragon.
    • Hunter's losing animation on the podium has him fidgeting his paws together, referencing the intro to the Reignited version of Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!.
    • In the opening cinematic to the Grand Prix, Gnasty Gnorc proclaims that he's "Here to defeat Spyro again!" despite having lost to Spyro in all of their encounters. This appears to be a reference to Spyro: A Hero's Tail, where Gnasty had misremembered his first encounter with Spyro as him defeating the dragon.
  • Crunch and Coco both get costumes based on their brainwashed/mutated forms from Mind Over Mutant in the Spyro & Friends GP.
  • The haunted mansion segment of Nina's Nightmare evokes the dreary, gothic atmosphere of Madame Amberly's Academy of Evil. In addition, Amberly herself appears in several portraits, one of which is of her with Cortex, Brio, N. Gin, and the Evil Twins as children (with a picture of Nina placed in an empty space in front of Amberly).
    • The name of the track as well as the blog post's description of it makes reference to the scrapped plans of Crash Twinsanity, wherein the group would travel through Coco's mind using the Psychetron.
    • The giant spider-pumpkin monster that appears at the fork in the track as well as acting as the Spooky Grand Prix's logo isn't the first time Nina's been associated with spiders; In the final fight of Crash of the Titans, the custom Titan she took command of was the Arachnina, a giant cyborg spider-beast.
    • One of the hallways in the track's mansion segment has the shadow of Twinsanity's Evil Crash appear on it, when lightning strikes. In addition, the said shadow is featured as one of the GP's stickers.
  • Young Cortex's appearance in the Academy of Evil alumni photo on Nina's Nightmare looked somewhat jarring at first glance due to him having facial hair at a young age. However, this is actually a nod of Warped's Golden Ending where a baby-fied Cortex sports the same facial hair.
  • Almost all of Nina's lines are taken directly from Tag Team Racing, while one of her victory quotes, "Take out the trash, girls!" is taken from Mind Over Mutant.
  • N. Brio saying how he created the Skull Rider kart in the Spooky Grand Prix video may be a reference to how in Mind Over Mutant he would claim to have invented everything, including the concept of recycling and slinkies^note Except for Lite-Brite. Burt Meyer made that.. Him drinking his potion in his lose animation, and his losing quote are also both direct references to Mind Over Mutant.
  • Monster Fake Crash's slimy green body, stretchy arms, and ability to melt into a puddle of goo is reminiscent of the Sludge mutants from Crash of the Titans and Mind Over Mutant.
  • The Neon Circus Grand Prix having a new track called Koala Carnival, bringing back Koala Kong and featuring a background cameo for Rilla Roo likely stems from Crash Bandicoot Carnival, the Japanese name for Crash Bash.
  • Cortex' clown costume is no doubt a reference to the strategy guide for The Wrath of Cortex saying that he was raised in a family of circus performers. It's also a nod to Big Norm's insult to him in Nitro Kart where Cortex dismissed the Norms as "clowns".
  • Ami's circus outfit gives her an umbrella to twirl in her podium animation, which is what she and the rest of the Nitro Squad did in the original Crash Team Racing.
  • Yaya Panda has a small height, most likely reflecting the super-deformed presentation of her debut game, Nitro Kart 2.
  • Baby Crash's Monster PJ skin bears a resemblance to the Ratcicle skin in Mind Over Mutant.
  • N. Gin's battleship from Twinsanity is present in Megamix Mania, only here it's completely ruined. Rusty Walrus also makes an appearance as a piece of graffiti art on the outside of the ship and as an Impact Silhouette inside the ship. The dried up ocean bed seems inspired by a scrapped concept art, as well.
  • The new invincibility mask exclusive to Megamix Mania, Apo-Apo, is styled as a mashup between Aku Aku and Uka Uka's designs in the Radical era. The mask's overall shape is taken from Aku Aku while its faceplate is inspired by Uka Uka.
  • The Rustland GP's online store summary refers to Megamix as "Crash's biggest mistake". Which is technically accurate, since Crash caused the Planet Minimizer to malfunction and create it via merging the villains' molecules, back in The Huge Adventure.
  • Megamix's cybernetic red eye is based on the Off-Model eye N. Gin had, back in Nitro Kart.
  • Emperor Velo's Space Pirate skin changes his hair color from purple to orange, referencing his inconsistent hair color in Nitro Kart, where he had purple hair in-game and orange hair in the cutscenes. In addition, the Gasmoxia Grand Prix intro cutscene features Velo with orange hair, again referencing the inconsistency.
  • Emperor Velo's podium loss animation has him short-circuit before he can lash out, referencing the ending twist of Nitro Kart that Emperor Velo was just a piloted mech suit all along.
  • The unlockable karts in the Gasmoxia GP, the Galactic Cruiser and the Void Manta, are both nods to the vehicles used in the space levels in Crash Bash.
    • Following more nods to Bash, Fixed Rilla Roo's engine class is Speed, mirroring his first appearance as Dingodile's (whose engine class is also Speed) Moveset Clone in said game. Likewise, one of the unlockable Exotic skins for the Iron Checkpoint Crate is a purple exclamation mark crate present in Pogo Pandemonium minigames.
  • Lab Assistant's podium loss animation is the exact recreation of the pose the first Lab Assistant Tawna punched out in the intro of N. Sane Trilogy version of Crash Bandicoot.

N-P

• Nerf: Oxide, Penta (in the European and Japanese versions only), both Velos, Spyro and the GBA Nitro Kart bosses had maxed-out stats in the original installments, but with this game introducing online multiplayer, they've been rebalanced to keep them in line with the rest of the roster.^note Oxide, Nash and Emperor Velo are acceleration class, Small Norm and Geary are balanced class, Penta, Big Norm and Spyro are speed class and Real Velo and Krunk are turning class.
• Nice Girl: Megumi. When she loses but gets a podium position, she gives the winner a warm smile and a thumbs up.
• Ninja Prop: The trophy that appears above the victory podium looks like it's just for show...that is, until Nina Cortex got added, as she can actually grab it from off-screen with her extendable hands when she wins^note although the immersion does get ruined a bit if you won anything other than a trophy, such as a CTR token, relic or gem.
• No Fair Cheating:
  • Want to unlock Penta Penguin? Sure, no problem, the code works just fine. Want to blast through time trials and the Adventure mode with Infinite Wumpa Fruit, Super Turbo pads, and other boosts to your cart? By all means, but you won't earn a darn thing. Not even Wumpa Coins. Since the Spyro & Friends Grand Prix update, the race counts required to unlock the Palette Swap skins also no longer increase while non-Penta codes are active to discourage quick skin unlocks.
  • Quite a number of players found and mastered unintentional shortcuts and tricks in the original tracks. Unfortunately for them Beenox noticed and removed most, if not all, of the most egregious ones like in Hot Air Skyway. Further, when new exploits are found Beenox actively corrects them. For example, Thunder Struck had an exploit where a lap could be done in about 30 seconds as opposed to nearly two minutes, and further glitches made repeat laps done in seconds. The track was removed from online multiplayer until the exploit was fixed with an invisible wall.
  • If on an online race and a player fails to cross the finish line in the last 30 seconds that player doesn't get any Wumpa Coins if they are not far enough on the final lap. On the one hand, this punishes would-be idlers from gaining an easy 75% of boosted Coins by doing nothing. On the other, it punishes those who tried but just couldn't keep up. This can be really aggravating if one player ends up being significantly better than the others allowing them to unintentionally grief just by being good at the game and thus depriving others of Coins.
• Non-Indicative Name: The Spyro & Friends Grand Prix introduces, apart from Spyro himself, only one friend of his, Hunter. The only other character is Gnasty Gnorc, the Big Bad of the first game and most certainly not his friend. However, one could technically count Sparx, who acts as the invincibility mask item for them, including Gnasty.
• Non-Ironic Clown: The Neon Circus GP gives jester and harlequin skins for Penta and Megumi, and they genuinely enjoy their roles in contrast to Neo Cortex, who hates every minute of it.
• No OSHA Compliance: Whatever flimsy maintenance N. Gin's battleship had is completely gone in Megamix Mania's post-apocalypse, as there's sparks coming out, many holes in the catwalk, at least one area has no handrails, and the missiles haven't been removed from their launchers (on top of still being functional, as an oblivious chicken that sits on one finds out when you pass through during the second lap).
• No Plot? No Problem!: While Adventure Mode retains the original Team Racing's Excuse Plot, the Grand Prix events don't provide any reason for the newly-added racers to be here at all outside of a brief presentation from Chick & Stew^note Occasionally, there is an official premise that justifies the existence of a track, like with Prehistoric Playground, but that's it.. They're shown off roll call style, then it's off to the races.
• Not Me This Time: When Oxide interrupts the race in the intro, Coco turns to Cortex with an annoyed look, and Cortex turns to her looking confused.
• Octopoid Aliens: Downplayed with the N. Brioctopus skin, which replaces N. Brio's legs with tentacles.
• One-Steve Limit: Done with, of all things, two legendary skins; since the Mind Over Mutant skin for Coco already gets named Evil Coco, the one from Twinsanity gets the Dark Coco designation instead.
• Only One Female Mold: With the exception of Nina, the design differences between the female cast are downplayed heavily in this game. While the Nitro Squad were always proportionally similar to Tawna, their anime influenced aspects are gone, while Pasadena is now the exact same height and frame as them compared to the smaller lankier figure she was originally. Coco and Yaya are different sized, but more from age difference, and still very closely follow the same feminine Beast Man design. This only sticks out further given the game has otherwise tried to make nearly every male character look and act more distinctive.
• Our Gnomes Are Weirder: Real Velo can get a costume in the Spyro and Friends GP that turns him into the garden gnome variety, complete with a chipped body and performing statue-esque poses in his podium victory animation.
• Our Orcs Are Different: Gnasty Gnorc, natch. Big Norm also gets a costume that turns him into one himself.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: Tiny can become one in the Spooky Grand Prix, complete with torn 50's-era tracksuit.
• Palette Swap: The Neon Hawk plane kart is this to the Firehawk.
• Pass Through the Rings: The "Ring Rally" gameplay mode, introduced in Neon Circus GP. Here, tracks are littered with "ring groups" that you have to pass through, and with a time limit. Like in Rings of Power from Warped, passing through the rings will give your character a speed boost, as well as extension for the timer and points. Finishing a lap will also give you extra points. On the 3rd lap onward, the rings will give you "blue fire boost" that makes your racer go even faster. The rings will become smaller with each lap finished, so extending the timer will become trickier the longer you go on.
• Perky Goth: The Dark Coco skin is effectively this, as she only shows blasé behavior in her victory podium animation, while her regular racing lines remain unaffected.
• Permanently Missable Content: Averted; if you don’t buy content during a Grand Prix, it will become available in the Pit Stop three months later. This was almost the case with a series of national flags available in the Nitro Tour Grand Prix, but they were added to players' collections free of charge at the start of the Rustland Grand Prix. The only things that are actually missable are skins for the Champion Kart, which require players to be in the Top 5% on the leaderboard.
• Play Every Day: There are incentives to play every day, like increased Wumpa Coin payouts for playing online and daily challenges.
• Playing Card Motifs: The redesign of Hot Air Skyway adds casino themes to it, and Pinstripe's gangster outfit gives him playing cards tucked away in his hat band and vest. Two of the Deadinator's decals also follow the same casino theme.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: Since the tracks from Nitro Kart relied heavily on driving up walls and ceilings, they've had to be changed and reshaped to better fit with the original CTR's more grounded physics. Additionally, the vehicles from Tag Team Racing can no longer clash with other racers and they function much closer to the karts from the first two games.
• Precision F-Strike: While there's no cursing otherwise, Devil Dog Zam's bundle is labelled as "Hell On Leash".
• Prehistoria: Other than the remade Mystery Caves, the game adds a new Mesozoic-themed level: Prehistoric Playground.
• Prince Charming: Prince Lab Assistant acts the part very much, presenting a rose, although his bow gets messed up when his crown goes through his head.
• Product Placement: A promotional deal between Activision and Mondelēz International created a candy-themed kart that can only be unlocked by entering codes found in specially marked packages of Sour Patch Kids and Trident Vibes.
• Production Foreshadowing: Possibly a subtle case with the post-GP update's inclusions of Baby Cortex and Baby Tropy, as the game following this one occurs sometime after the predicament they were in to begin with.
• Production Throwback: In a unique case of being one to a different company's work, the Desert Duster kart's design is almost identical to Professor Frink's hovercar in The Simpsons Hit & Run. The developers for that game, Radical Entertainment, were also responsible for the Tag Team Racing elements and characters present in Nitro-Fueled.
  • Similarly, the Red General Tiny exotic skin has a dog paw print on the back as a reference to the logo of Naughty Dog, the developers for the original Team Racing.
  • Geary's Beenox Robot skin is heavily based on a mascot that they had used, in the intro for some of their games. The way he blasts off is near-identical, as well.
• Promoted to Playable:
  • Nitros Oxide, although this is not the first time he is playable (that goes to Crash Nitro Kart). Players can also select his hovercraft to be used by other characters.
  • Krunk, Nash, the Norms, Geary and Emperor Velo were only playable in the handheld versions of Crash Nitro Kart, while in the console version of said game, they were completely unplayable boss racers. Now they join the rest of the cast as playable characters, with Velo joining them in the Gasmoxia GP.
  • Tawna, as well as the Trophy Girls; Ami, Isabella, Liz and Megumi (now known as the Nitro Squad), are added as playable characters in the first Grand Prix.
  • Baby T from Warped, who is added through the second Grand Prix.
  • In regards to the third Grand Prix, while Hunter was previously playable in Spyro: A Hero's Tail as well as a few parts in Spyro: Year of the Dragon, this is the first time Gnasty Gnorc has ever been playable.
  • Komodo Moe and N. Brio have now become playable as of the Spooky Grand Prix. Neon Circus GP also makes Koala Kong playable.
  • Chick and Stew have finally become playable for the first time via the Winter Festival GP.
  • While previously playable in N-Tranced's multiplayer mode, the Rustland Grand Prix makes this the first time that Megamix is playable in a racing game.
  • Baby Cortex and Baby Tropy become playable after previously only appearing in the true ending of Warped.
  • The Lab Assistant is finally playable, after being a simple regular enemy for years.
  • The Iron Checkpoint Crate becomes the very first playable item, weirdly enough.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Chick introduces the Back N. Time Grand Prix in this manner.

R-S

• Real Men Wear Pink: One of Astronaut Kong's recolours added in the post-GP update changes his colour scheme to bright pink, complete with hearts and flowers. It doesn't change his manliness any bit.
• Reckless Gun Usage: Star Crash, Raider Megumi and Baby Cortex show some exceptionally poor ray gun etiquette compared to the others, in their victory podium animations; Crash's ray gun misfires, and he points it at himself before the laser shot bounces right off his visor, while Megumi spins her ray gun and ends up overshooting enough to lose it from the recoil, and Baby Cortex recklessly shoots huge laser blasts before losing his ray gun from the recoil of it malfunctioning.
• Recursive Reality: Farmer N. Gin's victory podium animation has a bit of fun with this; after he struggles to pull up a big carrot that sprouted up, he falls off the podium...and comes out of the hole where the carrot is.
• Recycled Animation:
  • The racers' idle animations remain the same, regardless of what skin they wear. This is most evident with Coco, who tries to blow her cowlick away from her eyes even when it's not there.
  • All Legendary skins' podium victory animations^note bar Rustland Coco, Rustland Megamix, Buccaneer Ami, and Knight Lab Assistant play a portion of their default podium victory animation.
    • A more apparent case is with Coco's Elf skin; A part of the animation (particularly her eating a piece of food) is reused from her Princess skin.
  • Invoked with King Chicken as he's supposed to be a regular chicken and nothing else; his podium victory and loss animations are just him looking around and pecking on a pile of bird seeds. This also extends to his Space Chicken skin, except he can't peck on the ground directly as his head is encased with a helmet.
  • Oxide's cutscenes from the CTR TV report for Gasmoxia Grand Prix are reused from his Adventure Mode cutscenes.
• Recycled In Space: Drive-Thru Danger's concept of an airborne track that mostly lacks railing is fairly similar to Hot Air Skyway, only here it's set on Gasmoxia, has fast food restaurants and even more u-turns.
• Redemption Demotion: Naturally happens to the pre-Oxide boss characters after you unlock them in Nitro-Fueled Adventure, since their stats are adjusted to those of the four normal engine classes and they lose the ability to naturally spawn infinite items.
• Related in the Adaptation: Downplayed, as the Gasmoxia GP reveals that Emperor Velo is from the eponymous planet like Oxide, Zem and Zam are.
• Remember the New Guy?: Since the game lacks Nitro Kart's story mode, the characters from that game are never given a proper introduction to the player, meaning anyone new to the series coming from the N. Sane Trilogy will recognize the CTR cast, but anyone from beyond the original three games will be new to them.^* This especially applies to any characters who debut in this game, as they are brand-new by default.
• Retraux: Exclusive to the PS4 are Crash, Coco and Cortex skins that dial back on the polygons, calling back to their original PS1 days, low-poly karts, and Retro Stadium, which is the PS1 version of Turbo Track with PlayStation logos spread around.
  • Nuclear Pizza and Toxic Burger's mascots are anthropomorphized food drawn in a rubber-hose style.
• Revisiting the Roots: While it incorporates various vehicles and costumes from Crash Tag Team Racing, Nitro-Fueled scales back the zaniness from said game by decreasing the lines of banter said by each racer, making the weapons relatively simple (no submarines as of yet), and keeping the characters' personalities more in line with how they were in the original three titles (ex. you can dress N. Gin in his CTTR ballerina outfit, but he lacks the goofy masochism from that game).
• Rewards Pass: The Nitro Gauges from the Grand Prixes worked like these, though unlike in many games they are exclusively free to start and complete.
• Robot Me: Exclusive to the Oxide Edition is a skin for Crunch that turns him into a full robot rather than a Cyborg. Cortex can also get one that shows him blasting Eye Beams in his victory animation. N. Gin can get one as well through the Nitro Tour, but it's a Crash Test Dummy form whose only use is to get reassembled after an impact. Pura also becomes this in the Rustland GP.
• Scenery Porn: Like the previous remake, the jump to eighth generation graphics really highlights the attention to detail in everything. Special mention, though, goes to the redesigned Electron Avenue, whose futuristic, vaporwave-inspired city design full of bright colors, neon lights, and so many things going on in the background make it extremely eye-popping. Developers definitely wanted to show off when they made it the first of the CNK tracks to be revealed.
  • Scenery Gorn: Megamix Mania, on the other hand, looks dilapidated in the most glorious way; it's a used, broken version of Roo's Tubes on a dried up seabed with burning coral, N. Gin's destroyed battleship, an oil refinery and graffiti smeared on everywhere.
• Sensual Spandex: Despite the bowdlerisation mentioned above, the Nitro Squad still comes with skin-tight motorsport outfit skins, and Isabella's track suit is tighter than it used to be. Ditto Pasadena.
• Sentient Vehicle: The Candy Cone, a vehicle that looks like a unicorn made of candy, has a face on the front that actually moves and emotes.
• Serious Business: The track Drive-Thru Danger is set in the middle of a space battle in the orbit of Gasmoxia...between two fast food companies, vying for a sponsorship with CTR TV.
• Sexy Santa Dress: Tawna's winter outfit.
• Sewer Gator: Sewer Speedway has a gigantic one, although he thankfully only seems interested in watching the race.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: Justified for the Rustland GP's CTR TV report; while the entire event is more serious than usual, the studio's empty because Chick and Stew are racing, as shown in the following cinematic.
• Short Teens, Tall Adults: Since Coco and Nina use modern versions of their classic designs, they are practically puny compared to many of the grownups in this game (especially the adult women). Ditto Yaya, who's even smaller.
• Shout-Out:
  • Polar has a raincoat costume, and his podium animation has him jumping around in puddles, which calls to mind another bear in a raincoat, Paddington Bear. This would eventually come full-circle in the post-GP update with a recolour that outright references him (Marmalade, which is Paddington's favourite stuff to put in his sandwiches).
  • Pura can wear a costume resembling that of Puss in Boots. His victory animation involves him swinging the sword similarly.
  • Papu Papu has an alternate skin that makes him green with red hair, making him resemble Blanka and Ogre.
  • In the dirigible tunnel just behind the finish line of Hot Air Skyway, there are a couple of paintings of Pinstripe done in the style of the Scarface (1983) poster.
  • When Crunch wins a race with his robot skin, his podium animation has him fly up and land back on it with his fist thrusted downwards, Iron Man-style.
  • Crunch's dirt biker costume bears a resemblance to Master Chief.
  • Nash fires the laser cannon mounted on his helmet for his win animation. Dr. Evil would undoubtedly approve.
  • The Nitro Squad's podium animations, particularly when wearing their motorsports outfits, all contain nods to Street Fighter.
    • Ami's flexing looks similar to when Guile throws a Sonic Boom, and her backflip to Guile's Flash Kick.
    • Megumi's imitates Chun-Li's lightning kicks. Her happily jumping around also resembles Chun-Li's classic "Yatta!" victory animation from Street Fighter II.
    • Liz's animation ends with her in the same kung-fu pose Chun-Li uses in her victory animation in Street Fighter V.
    • Isabella shoots a blue fireball resembling a hadouken from her hands.
  • The Back N. Time Grand Prix adds a lot of references to Back to the Future.
    • The name of the Grand Prix itself is a reference to the Huey Lewis and the News song "Back In Time".
    • The Problulot 2000 kart resembles Doc Brown's flying DeLorean, and both Crash and Ripper Roo gain Mad Scientist costumes to go with it. Also, the kart's "Side Stripes" decal evokes the look of the arrows featured in the movie's title logo.
    • Fake Crash's "Dashing Fake Crash" costume dresses him like a nerd not unlike George McFly. In addition, his podium victory animation also references Napoleon Dynamite.
  • One of the Probulot 2000's decals is themed around Pitfall!. The Spooky Grand Prix also adds stickers based on the aforementioned Pitfall as well as Barnstorming and Freeway. The Gasmoxia Grand Prix, in turn, adds a sticker based on Space Shuttle.
  • The Spyro And Friends Grand Prix added an Orc and Goblin outfit for Big and Little Norm respectively. Both of these are sold together with Gnasty Gnorc in a character pack named "For the Horde".
  • In the aforementioned Spyro GP, the archer Hunter is sold in a character pack called "Hunter Games".
  • Nitros Oxide's Metal Head costume is clearly a reference to KISS.
  • Tiny's school jacket-bearing werewolf skin is evocative of werewolf movies, particularly I Was a Teenage Werewolf and Teen Wolf.
  • A portrait of Nina Cortex dressed as Wednesday Addams from The Addams Family can be seen in the "Nina's Nightmare" track. Especially fitting, since Nina's voice actress Debi Derryberry once did one version of Wednesday.
  • One of N. Brio's skins in the Spooky Grand Prix is a clear reference to Frankenstein's Monster.
  • Komodo Moe's final unlockable skin is "Master Moe", which gives him a brown cloak, white undershirt, and white beard, bringing Obi-Wan Kenobi to mind. It even changes the swords he uses in his podium animation to look like Laser Blades.
  • Lion Pura does a strutting dance highly reminiscent of the one Simba does during "Hakuna Matata" while jungle drums play in the background.
  • Witch Tawna rides her broom in a very similar way to Samantha in the opening credits of Bewitched.
  • The Nautilus takes many cues from the Cthulhu Mythos (namely, its decals).
  • Nash's Cannonball skin is a biker suit and helmet styled after the famed stunt racer Evel Knievel.
  • Cortex' clown costume is reminiscent of Needles Kane/Sweet Tooth, straight down to the firey-looking hair. He also references Pennywise who has a similarly-coloured hairdo, as well as a gag involving floating balloons. His art render also has him doing one of Arthur Fleck's poses.
  • Liz's circus costume bares a striking resemblance to Sombra from Overwatch.
  • Circus Isabella's lightning bolt facepaint is highly reminiscent of David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust.
  • Yaya Panda's voice is eerily similar to that of Vanelope Von Schweetz. Incidentally, both characters also wear green and are known to race with karts and in a location that are both made out of sweets.
  • Likewise with the stickers mentioned above, Hasty's jacket also bears the Barnstorming logo.
  • The Rustland Grand Prix as a whole is one to the Mad Max series.
    • The tagline in the reveal trailer says "What a lovely day for a Grand Prix."
    • The showcase of the legendary skins are shown as the cast racing closely at each other, referencing the chase scene in Fury Road. This caps off with Tiny strumming his guitar, much like the Doof Warrior from the same movie.
    • Apo-Apo's mask bears a resemblance to Lord Humungus' signature hockey-like mask.
  • Megamix Mania has a half-buried statue of Crash holding a trophy and a book, posing very much like the Statue of Liberty in the ending of Planet of the Apes.
  • Tiny's Rustland costume references Rage 2 with its colour scheme and the pose Tiny does for his Rustland art render being identical to that game's box art.
  • Rustland Dingodile having a chainsaw bayonet mounted on his flamethrower gun is the almost exact same setup that the Gears of War cast uses, for their guns.
  • Privateer Tawna's bangs-and-eyepatch combo is reminiscent of the more notorious space pirate Harlock.
  • Corsair Liz has a scouter that would fit in anime and manga works like Layzner and Dragon Ball.
  • Emperor Velo gets a space pirate outfit with a cybernetic arm, bringing John Silver to mind.
  • The Robo-Cortex skin bears a bit of a resemblance towards Dr. Nefarious (no relation to N. Tropy).
  • The golden wumpas that occasionally appear in races essentially function the same way as golden snitches.
  • If the name doesn't ring a bell already, Alice Coco is an obvious one for Alice in Wonderland.
  • Traveler Lab Assistant is a subtle reference to Where's Waldo, with Black Dot Pupils inside his glasses and wearing a striped sweater, although with blue stripes and wearing red pants as opposed to Waldo's red striped sweater and blue pants.
  • Lumberjack Lab Assistant is a rather obvious reference to Mario, with his blue shirt and red overalls bringing Mario's design from The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! to mind.
  • Negative Gangster Pinstripe is reminiscent of Mr. Negative.
  • Space Aviator Crash gives him a red and white helmet with orange pants, making him resemble a rebel pilot from A New Hope.
  • Green Fixed Rilla Roo has green fur and purple pants. Sound familiar?
• Shown Their Work: The game contains a gigantic amount of references to past games in the series, some of which are so obscure that even long-time fans wouldn't pick up on them. For example, the Six-Pipes kart and the Roadster kart were brought in from the PSP version of Tag Team Racing, with many people mistaking the former for the Hot Rods driven by the Lab Assistants in the Warped motorcycle levels, and the Cabrio kart is based on an unused test car from said game as well. Even more obscure is the Rocket kart which was taken directly from the 2010 mobile phone racing game Crash Nitro Kart 2, as well as the Mammoth kart, added during the Back N. Time Grand Prix, which strongly resembles the boar-themed kart from the cancelled Crash Team Racing 2010 reboot.
• Slapstick: While this was already the case with Coco in the original Team Racing, Nina and Pasadena in Tag Team Racing and Yaya in Nitro Kart 2, Tawna and the Nitro Squad are now just as likely to suffer from comical obstacles and attack-based items.
• Spectacular Spinning: Two cases with some Legendary skins;
  • Blizzard Rider Hasty does this twice; one as he leaps and somersaults, and one to create a mini tornado.
  • Crash, Coco, Polar, Pura, and Nina's Rustland skin also does this, with all of them spraying sparks everywhere.
• Sssssnake Talk: Komodo Joe speaks this way, as he did in the original game, and so does his brother Moe.
• Socialization Bonus: You gain more Wumpa Coins when you complete a multiplayer match than playing offline, letting you make Pit Stop purchases more frequently.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: After being launched for the Spooky GP, Nina, Komodo Moe and N. Brio all inexplicably shared the victory podium theme for the bandicoots and Baby T. Fortunately, the former two were given more fitting victory themes during the Neon Circus GP.
  • Lab Assistant, Baby Cortex, Baby Tropy and Fixed Rilla Roo also all share the bandicoots and allies' victory podium theme^note Which is particularly glaring in Fixed Rilla Roo's case, as his first design uses the scientists' victory podium theme, although they are conceptually silly additions anyway.
• Space Is Noisy: Averted. A memorable moment in Oxide Station that wasn't present in the original is when you go through the part with the long jump through open space, all music and sound effects are temporarily muted until you reach the other side. Played straight in Hyper Spaceway however; the music and SFX will still play when you make the jump through space into the tunnel with the rotating lasers.
• Space Pirate: For the Gasmoxia GP, the Nitro Squad gets skins that dress them up as these. Meanwhile, Emperor Velo's Gold-tier skin is a more literal case.
• Standard Snippet: Koala Carnival's theme samples the famous refrain from Julius Fucik's Entry of the Gladiators, predictably enough.
• Stealth Pun:
  • Possibly unintentional, but think about it: the game is Crash Team Racing pumped up with elements of Crash Nitro Kart. Nitro-Fueled— get it?
  • One that's possibly intentional: most of the Nitro Squad members were once known as the Trophy Girls, a group of race queens.
• The Stinger: Right after the CTR TV report for the Winter Festival GP ends, it cuts to Stew's own racer intro.
  Stew: Who's ready to get scrambled!?
  • Once the CTR TV report for the Rustland GP ends, a static signal switches over to the toppled-over camera in the studio, showing Chick and Stew's hastily-made decoys falling down.
• Suddenly Voiced: Many characters who have either been silent or only made grunts are now given proper voice acting in this game.
  • This game marks the first time Tawna and the Nitro Squad are fully voiced, after being silent in previous appearances.^note Tawna only made grunts in the N. Sane Trilogy and Crash Boom Bang, but here, she has proper dialogue.
  • As of the Spooky Grand Prix, Komodo Moe now has proper dialogue, whereas he originally just had an Evil Laugh and a few grunts.
  • Downplayed with Koala Kong. While he did spoke a line of sentence in the Neon Circus GP introduction video, his in-game dialogue still stems from his grunts and roars.
  • Similarly downplayed with Rilla Roo, who used to have stock monkey noises but does proper grunts now. In his case, it doesn't even look like he can speak a full sentence.
  • Back in the mobile racing games, Yaya Panda only spoke via dialogue text boxes. She gets a voice here.
  • Megamix now has an actual voice after previously speaking entirely through text boxes, with his voice being a grotesque mixture of Cortex, N. Gin, Tiny, and Dingodile's.
• Sudden Soundtrack Stop: In the track Oxide Station, during the large jump in outer space, the soundtrack will momentarily go silent until you land.
• "Super Sentai" Stance: One key art has the Nitro Squad do this.
• Super-Speed: In their victory podium animations, Crash, Coco and Cortex in their Electron skins show off this power.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: The Neon Hawk kart introduced in the post-GP update is essentially the limited-time Firehawk kart with customization options enabled and readily available to all players to purchase from the Pit Stop.

T-Y

• Technicolor Fire: The Lava Rock wheels leave coloured trails of blazing fire behind when used. There's also the Ultimate Sacred Fire, which turns your boost bluish-orange when in use.
• Teleporter Accident: In the podium animation for Coco's Star skin, she presses a button on her utility belt to call a teleporter beam. She comes back shortly after with her body comically shrunken and her head still normal size, then calls another beam to turn her back to normal. Oxide's Star skin has something similar happen to him.
• Tempting Apple: Coco's podium animation while wearing her princess outfit has her pull out a Wumpa fruit and take a bite. She then starts gagging, making it seem like it was poisoned before she reveals that she was faking.
• Terrible Trio: Team Oxide, just like in Nitro Kart. However, Zem and Zam are only shown to work for him in the tie-in comic.
  • The Spooky Grand Prix's trio of DLC racers is made entirely of villains: Nina Cortex, Komodo Moe and N. Brio.
• Thememobile: The Spyromobile from the Spyro & Friends Grand Prix, which is obviously themed after Spyro himself. The Gnasty Ride could also count as this for Gnasty Gnorc.
  • The Gasmoxia GP makes the CNK boss kart, now called the Velo Chopper, into this for Emperor Velo, complete with "V" insignia on the bonnet.
• Token Evil Teammate: The roster for the Neon Circus GP includes Koala Kong with Pasadena and Von Clutch. If their intro's any indication, they don't exactly get along.
  • The Winter Festival GP's roster takes it even further with Rilla Roo being the only villain in a group full of good guys (1 out of 5 racers total). ^note Chick and Stew form their own racing team, but that's besides the point.
• Tron Lines: The Electron paint jobs sport this, with the decals acting as the aforementioned lines. Crash, Coco and Cortex also get this with their Electron skins, as does N. Tropy with his Digital skin.
  • The Spectral paint jobs take this even further, having the decals actually pulsate in whatever colour's been chosen for them.^note Well, except for the black and white ones And having ghosts drifting about on the kart. Ditto the Atomic paint jobs.
• Unintentionally Unwinnable:
  • It is possible for the randomly-generated Daily Challenges to generate at least an objective that uses a combination of track and objective type that renders completion impossible. It finally happened during the Back N. Time Grand Prix, where one of the Daily Challenges is a No Boost Needed challenge... on Hyper Spaceway, a track that requires boost pads to navigate.
  • For the Relic clear challenges, getting Platinum Relic does not count as winning, only Sapphire/Gold ones. Thankfully, the player can just repeat and aim for the lower-tier Relic if that is the case. The issue did get fixed once the Grand Prix events came, allowing anyone to win with a Platinum Relic.
  • One Daily Challenge in the Rustland GP required capping 5 flags in Capture the Flag battle mode... in Coco Park.
• Unsportsmanlike Gloating: Many of the racers, but Spyro in particular roasts his opponent(s) pretty badly when he wins a race. With a pun, no less.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Just how often do the Wumpa Islands get threatened? So frequently that while the giant Oxide hologram head is declaring his intention to enslave the planet, Crash is sleeping. Guess it really was just a normal Tuesday for him.
  • At the end of the CTR TV report for the Neon Circus GP, Chick doesn't draw any attention to King Chicken suddenly having appeared on the desk, and ends it right then and there while Stew takes care of his crown.
• Variable Mix:
  • Some tracks have dynamic music:
    • Every track has a final lap variation which is faster and sometimes has some small, subtle changes
    • In Crash Cove, an accordion starts to play when you race through the pirate ship near the end of the track, giving emphasis to the pirate theme of the level.
    • In N. Gin Labs, the sounds of the Lab Assistants working on N. Gin's mech will play in rythm with the music.
    • In Cortex's Castle, an organ starts to play in the stained glass room right before the finish line.
    • In Clockwork Wumpa the clock will tick in rhythm with the song.
    • The music for Twilight Tour changes depending on which part of the track you are. When you are in the egyptian section the main instrument will be a woodwind and when you go to the arabian section it changes to a sitar.
    • In Koala Carnival, the usually jovial and zany track will change into a trance-like remix when you pass through the equalizer tube.
  • In a few tracks, the sound effects in the background will play in rythm with the songs
    • In Papu's Pyramid, the tribesman near the finish line will chant along with the music
    • In Polar Pass there's a DJ polar bear remixing the music
    • In Tiny Arena at the starting line there's a hologram of Tiny playing guitar along with the music
    • In Clockwork Wumpa the bells in the different parts of the track will play along with the music
  • Some songs have different remixes like:
    • Each of the game's bosses now has their own variation on the boss theme from the original game.
    • The music for Slide Coliseum is a techno remix of the one used in Tiny Arena and Turbo Track.
    • The Nitro Squad's victory podium theme is a techno remix of the bandicoots' theme.
    • The music for the adventure mode maps are all very similar.
• Version-Exclusive Content: The PS4 version of the game includes PS1-style skins for Crash, Coco, and Cortex as well as a retro version of the main Classic kart (comes in eight colours!) and a handful of PlayStation-themed stickers. It also has a PS1-style version of Turbo Track, called Retro Stadium here.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The game's final DLC track, Drive-Thru Danger, is an airborne road with fast food restaurants, set within Gasmoxia, Oxide's home world. If that doesn't say "final challenge", nothing does.
• Video Game Remake: Of Crash Team Racing, but with the addition of the majority of Nitro Kart's content, and a pinch of Tag Team Racing as well, alongside a sprinkle of Nitro Kart 2.
• Villain Episode: The Spooky Grand Prix can be viewed as this, as all of the newly-introduced characters are firmly on the side of evil.
  • The Rustland Grand Prix is a more explicit case, with a bad guy as its only new addition to the roster and the new track being a full-on Villain World.
  • The Gaxmoxia Grand Prix can also be viewed as this. As the name suggests, the new track is hosted in Gasmoxia, which is CTR antagonist Nitros Oxide's turf (who also just so happens to announce the event instead of Chick and Stew). Moreover, the one new character in this Grand Prix is Emperor Velo, the antagonist of Crash Nitro Kart.
  • Downplayed with the post-GP update. While there's no underlying theme, the new additions are all villains (and the Iron Checkpoint Crate). In addition, the centerpiece legendary skin is for none other than Geary.
• Vocal Evolution: John DiMaggio's Uka Uka has undergone another significant alteration, lacking the reverb from N Sane Trilogy and sounding far more high pitched and relaxed. This matches Clancy Brown's own take of Uka changing for the original game, likely in both cases so Uka's voice is more coherent as a tutorial character.
  • Debi Derryberry's Nina sounds much more distinct than it was for the Nintendo DS version of Crash of the Titans, being closer to a soundalike of Amy Gross's take of Nina.
• Wackyland: The DLC track Gingerbread Joyride is unlike any other setting out there in the Crash universe; it's a village made entirely out of desserts and other sweets, from cookie roads to cotton candy trees, and the denizens are sentient jelly.
• Weird World, Weird Food: Both of the fast food establishments in Drive-Thru Danger serve food that's not remotely fit for earthly consumption. If Nuclear Pizza's name is any indication, they cook theirs with radiation. As for Toxic Burger, their burgers clearly look spoiled and rancid, implying the use of nuclear waste.
• Westminster Chimes: Briefly heard as part of the music for Gingerbread Joyride.
• What If?: The DLC track Prehistoric Playground has been made on the premise of "What would happen if Fake Crash stole N. Tropy's scepter and traveled back in time?". Bizarro versions of the local wildlife in the Mesozoic Period, evidently.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The original game had these during the credits, but some of them have either had additions made to them or been changed entirely.
  • Cortex still discovers and names "Cortexrulestheworldium", but now it's element number 119 instead of element 117 (which had already been given an official name of "Tennesine" by the time Nitro-Fueled was released).
  • Tiny posts his Tiny-Bo exercise videos on the internet rather than invokedselling them on VHS, and moves to Beverly Hills afterwards. At his fitness clubs, he sells a popular blend of lemongrass and avocado protein supplements.
  • Coco starts her own video game streaming service rather than an online dating website.
  • After N. Gin's auto parts store shuts down, he lands a job as a commentator on the Giant Robot Battle Network due to his affinity for flair and destruction.
  • Dingodile doesn't start an animal breeding program for the creation of Mix-and-Match Critters. Instead, he seems to pull a Heel–Face Turn and becomes a fireman, trading his flamethrower for a water hose. He becomes extremely successful on the job, and even appears on the cover of the yearly Fireman Calendar.
  • Polar becomes a flavor scientist for an ice cream company rather than just a taste tester. In addition to Salmon Swirl, Squishy Squid Sundae, and Mackerel Mint, Polar also creates the flavor Tuna Spumoni, which puts the company on the map.
  • Pura's epilogue omits the part about him accidentally killing one half of the duo Zigfield and Floyd, and instead just has him go solo afterwards.
  • Pinstripe still becomes a used car salesman in New Jersey, but his use of "atypical methods" (meaning pulling a gun on his customers) leads to him losing his license and going back to being a CEO and bodyguard like in the first game.
  • Papu Papu still becomes a wrestler under the name Mr. Bad Belly, but rather than his signature move, the "bad belly bounce", getting banned, it starts a worldwide dance craze.
  • Ripper Roo is not elected state governor, nor does he run for president. Instead, he becomes a thrill ride engineer for amusement parks, but gets blacklisted after it was discovered he was just building rides to test his pain threshold.
  • Komodo Joe still opens Honest Joe's Wedding Ring and Rare Gem Outlet in Zurich, and is still convicted of laundering stolen cubic zirconia for the Couch Slouch Shopping Network, but afterwards, his brother Komodo Moe opens a jewelry auction house.
  • Rather than going back in time, N. Tropy goes forward to the distant future. He meets a peculiar man with a red coat and "the sweetest kicks you've ever seen", and decides he should go back.
  • Nitros Oxide's ending adds a disclaimer that the ratings boards are watching.
• The Worf Effect: In the Rustland GP intro, Megamix is introduced shortly after blowing away Nina, Chick and Stew.
• World Tour: The main theme of the Nitro Tour Grand Prix. Downplayed however in that, while it does introduce stickers featuring various countries' flags, only two locations actually get visited in its signature track (Twilight Tour, which goes through Egypt and some Arabian country).
• Wrap Around: This gets used against Tawna, of all people; during her Winter Tawna skin's victory podium animation, she throws a snowball, hunches down to see how far it went, then it falls back in diagonally from the top of the screen and hits her in the back of the head, leaving her puzzled.
• Wrestler in All of Us: Koala Kong's Gold tier skin for the Neon Circus GP is a strongman outfit with a luchador mask.
• Your Mom: One of Liz's lines for passing another racer is "Your mum's an armadillo!"
• Your Size May Vary:
  • Averted this time with Oxide's boss battle, where he's the same size as the rest of the cast, as opposed to being a giant like in the original game.
  • Several character models have also been resized to fit into standard character karts. The likes of Papu Papu and Nash suffer most visibly, with the latter almost half his original height even in the podium cutscenes. The biggest offender, however, is Geary, who was around the same height as Tiny in Crash Nitro Kart but is unusually small when you see him on the podium for this game. This is most noticeable if he is on the podium with taller characters such as Tawna, Nitros Oxide, or Dr. N. Tropy. Gnasty Gnorc is also hit hard with this. In his original game, he was a giant bigger than any of the elder dragons, and Spyro barely came up to his knees, and that's despite Gnasty being a Top-Heavy Guy with tiny legs. Here, he's around the same size as Tiny. Big, but nowhere near the size he originally was.
  • Many of the characters that appear in the backgrounds of stages, such as Pinstripe's goons or the Lab Assistants, are much larger than they were in previous appearances, presumably to make them more visible in the heat of a race.