Ripper Roo

"You crazy enough to race me? I should race Oxide in the big race! I'll show you wild driving! Last once across the finish line is a rotten brain! You are crazier than me! Best get head checked if you think you could beat Oxide! Have a key. Good luck, you'll need it."

- Ripper Roo

Ripper Roo (also known as Doctor Roo) is an insane blue mutated kangaroo. He is widely considered to be Dr. Cortex's first and failed experiment with the Evolvo Ray, which is debatable seeing as how he managed to complete university-level education as of Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back. He frequently uses explosive crates when battling Crash. This can be seen in Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, where he lays down TNT and nitro tiles with his cane, in Crash Team Racing where he drops TNT Crates, and in his appearance in Crash Bash where he will randomly lay down TNT tiles. He also has razor sharp claws on his toes that are his main method of attack.

Crash Bandicoot
In the original Crash Bandicoot game, Ripper Roo was one of the many animal test subjects of Dr. Neo Cortex. After being captured, he was zapped at least twice by Cortex's Evolvo-Ray which caused his fur to turn blue and for him to go insane. He was quickly straight-jacketed and abandoned, and came to reside in some ruins on Wumpa Island.

During the events of the game, Crash stumbles upon Ripper Roo on his journey on the way to Cortex Castle. Ripper Roo tries to attack Crash, only for Crash to defeat him with the use of Big TNT crates floating by. He is last seen passed out on the ground.

In the alternate ending to the original game, it's revealed that after Cortex disappears, Ripper Roo undergoes intense therapy and eight years of higher education, after which he writes a well-received book: Through the Eyes of the Vortex: A Study of Rapid Evolution and Its Consequences. This is the reason for "Doctor" Roo's change in character between the first and second game.

Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back
In Cortex Strikes Back, Ripper Roo reappears as the first boss in this game. This time, he's working for N. Brio, and is known as "Doctor Roo" because of his newly obtained doctorate in psychology. He had renovated his ruins home into a library, installing bookshelves along the walls, a desk by the waterfall, and replacing the 9 stone platforms over the water with one large one with his face engraved on it.

Once again, Crash intrudes on Ripper Roo, interrupting him in the middle of his studies. Ripper Roo tries to attack Crash, this time by placing TNT and Nitro tiles on the ground. Crash tricks Ripper Roo into blowing himself up with the TNT squares, which is enough to transform him back into his old insane self. When Ripper Roo is tricked into blowing himself up once again, Crash can swoop in to deliver the final blow. After the fight, Ripper Roo collapses onto the ground and is never seen again in the game.

Dansu! De Jump! Na Daibouken
Ripper Roo appears in ''Dansu! De Jump! Na Daibouken'' Volume 1, where he is a doctor who spends his time researching. Instead of Crash and Aku Aku calling him 'Ripper Roo' they just call him 'Ripper'. When Crash and Aku Aku arrive at his house, he becomes obsessed with snatching the Power Stone from them and asks them to do some chores in return for some food and shelter. Unfortunately, Crash flattens his books and destroys his research. Ripper went crazy, bouncing around on his cane demanding them to hand over the Power Stone. After a brief battle with Crash, a chandelier drops onto Ripper's head knocking him out before he snatches the Stone from the exhausted Crash. He soon turned back to normal and decides to make them some food. His design is based off of his Cortex Strikes Back look and wears a long sleeved shirt instead of a straight jacket. He speaks perfect English and acts as a normal citizen with no indications of Dr. Cortex or Brio creating him.

Crash Team Racing
Ripper Roo made another appearance in Crash Team Racing as the first boss and an unlockable character. His home track is Roo's Tubes. When racing him, he is constantly drops TNT crates onto the track. After defeating him, he gives you the first of four keys needed to race Oxide. The key given by him leads to Gem Stone Valley and The Lost Ruins.

Ripper Roo's kart in the game was orange. He can be unlocked by completing the Red Gem Cup in adventure mode. He can also be unlocked by holding and  while pressing, , , , ,  and  on the main menu.

After the events of CTR, Ripper Roo ran a successful campaign for state governor with the slogan "Crazy is as Crazy Does!". There were rumors of a subsequent run for president.

Crash Bash
In this game, he made a cameo appearance in the third Pogo Pandemonium stage El Pogo Loco in his Doctor Roo look, but he's still his regular crazy self personality-wise. He creates TNT, Nitro and 4-way tiles by hopping around on his cane. He will occasionally fire off a series of rockets in all directions as well.

Crash Twinsanity
Ripper Roo didn't return until Crash Twinsanity, where he made a brief cameo at Crash's "Birthday Party". After Cortex and the Mecha Bandicoot are defeated, he agrees to go out to lunch with Dingodile. He is silent in this game, like most of other party guests.

Crash Nitro Kart 2
Ripper Roo reappears as a major villain and unlockable character in CNK2. In this game, he and Cortex agree to assist Nitros Oxide in his plan to turn the world into a parking lot. He is unlocked by completing missions 3 and 4 in mission mode. In this game he wears a white t-shirt as opposed to his usual strait jacket, with his hands and arms being clearly visible when turning.

Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D
Ripper Roo appeared in CBNK3D as a playable character who teams up with Cortex and Nitros Oxide. He has a different look: he takes after the classic stereotype of the boxing kangaroo, with boxing gloves instead of his trademark straitjacket, and a more realistic kangaroo head shape. He is also revealed to lack a pouch, much like actual male kangaroos.

Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 2
Ripper Roo appeared again in CBNK2 as an unlockable character. He went back to his CTR look, but wears his Dr. Roo top hat. He does his trademark laugh when he hits another racer with a weapon. He is unlocked by getting 62 mission points. His kart is unlocked by getting 67 points.

Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy
Ripper Roo reprises his role as a boss in the first two games in the N. Sane Trilogy. He has a new animation for each of his defeats. In Crash Bandicoot, he'll stumble and fall off the edge of the waterfall. In Cortex Strikes Back, his head gets stuck in the ground. He pulls it out, leaving his wig behind in the ground.

Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled
Ripper Roo reprises his role as the game's first boss. Like all other CTR bosses, he is instead unlocked by defeating him in Adventure Mode. His epilogue was completely changed: after the events of the game, Ripper Roo becomes a thrill ride engineer. Once it was revealed that he simply used each ride to check his limits in enduring pain, he was blacklisted by all amusement park owners.

Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time
Ripper Roo is seen hopping around the rooftops in the level "Off Beat". He is later seen in the 100% ending, having captured N. Brio in his pterodactyl form as a taxidermy exhibit at "Ripper Roo's Curious Cabinet of Curiosities".

Personality
Ripper Roo is famous for his insane, psychopathic, and somewhat dangerous behavior. As a result of his insanity, he can be fearless, reckless, impulsive and unpredictable, often blowing himself or others up repeatedly with explosives. He has also proven to be highly tolerant and resilient to pain, as demonstrated in his boss battles when he gets caught in a TNT or Nitro blast, either getting knocked out cold, becoming dizzy or just laughing it off. His resilience and thrill-seeking nature is further developed in the epilogue of Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled where he becomes a thrill ride engineer, only to get blacklisted due to his intentions in creating said rides (only to test the limits of his pain threshold).

Ripper Roo seems to have two sides to him - the other being Doctor Roo, seen primarily in Cortex Strikes Back. Prior to the game, he spent a year studying to become a psychologist, and penned a well-received book titled "Through the Eye of the Vortex: A Study of Rapid Evolution and its Consequences". He seems to spend his free time studying, and shows irritation at his studies being interrupted. However, an explosion is enough to return him to his usual self.

He is unique as the only speech he is capable of is insane laughter. In CTR, luckily for the player, subtitles are used while he is "speaking". In the Japanese version of the game, however, he spoke coherently. Oddly enough Ripper Roo seems to have some attachment to water as his boss fights always take near water and Roo's Tubes, his track in CTR, is an underwater facility.

Physical Appearance
Ripper Roo is a boomer (male kangaroo) with royal blue fur that covers most of his body, sky blue for his face and belly, and navy eyebrows and a black nose, which is dark pink in Crash Twinsanity. He has long floppy ears (straightened in Twinsanity) with sky blue insides, except for in Twinsanity, where they are pink. His eyes have yellow scleras with orange circles swirling around his pupils. In Twinsanity, his scleras are white, and he has no pupils, only red circles. He has sharp teeth, black claws on his toes and a long pink tongue. In Crash 1 he had darker blue fur on his toes, but this was removed in all subsequent appearances. He wears a white straitjacket that is completely buckled around his arms, limiting movement. The length of his tongue varies depending on the game, ranging from a very long one in the Naughty Dog games to a more realistic length in Twinsanity.

In his Dr. Roo getup, he retains generally the same appearance, but gains some new accessories. He wears a black top hat, glasses, a blonde wig and moustache, and a bow tie. The bow tie is red in Crash 2 and Crash Bash, but was changed to purple as of the N. Sane trilogy. He is also seen with a cane in this form.

Doctor Nitrus Brio
Ripper Roo and N. Brio are on very good terms, working together during Cortex Strikes Back. Brio had a hand in Ripper's creation as Cortex's former right hand man, though Ripper doesn't seem to hold a grudge against him at all. Ripper seems to hold Brio in higher esteem than Cortex, in any case. Their relationship takes a different turn in It’s About Time  where Ripper Roo captures N Brio in his pterodactyl form and displays him as taxidermy in his museum, “Ripper Roo’s Curious Cabinet of Curiosities”.

Doctor Neo Cortex
Cortex is Ripper Roo's creator, though he quickly escaped him and went to reside in the ruins over a waterfall on Wumpa Island. Ripper Roo hasn't been shown to hold a grudge against Cortex for this, though he never worked with him after that, siding with Brio instead in Cortex Strikes Back.

Crash Bandicoot
Crash and Ripper Roo have always been on opposite sides of the games' conflict. Ripper Roo attacked and tried to kill Crash multiple times through his boss fights, and he shows irritation at Crash arriving whilst he was studying during Cortex Strikes Back.

Dingodile
In Twinsanity, Ripper Roo and Dingodile are friends, or at least on very good terms. After the Mecha-Bandicoot boss fight, Dingodile asks Ripper Roo to hang out with him for lunch, and Ripper Roo enthusiastically accepts the offer. However, they have not been seen interacting with one another in any other game they both appear in.

Appearances

 * Crash Bandicoot
 * Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back
 * Dansu! De Jump! Na Daibouken
 * Crash Team Racing
 * Crash Bash (cameo)
 * Crash Twinsanity (cameo)
 * Crash Nitro Kart 2
 * Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D
 * Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 2
 * Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy
 * Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled
 * Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled Digital Comic
 * Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time (cameo)

Gallery
See: Ripper Roo/Gallery

Trivia

 * Although Ripper Roo's 2D/3D artwork from Crash Bandicoot depicted him as having his eyes colored yellow with red spirals, in Crash Bandicoot and Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back he had normal eyes instead of the former, even when insane. The same was true for his boss icons, and was corrected in Crash Team Racing
 * As a result of nothing below his waist being seen, Ripper Roo's model in Crash Twinsanity has no legs.
 * Ripper Roo was originally going to speak normal English like most of the characters in CTR, but this was later dropped and he still used his insane laughter but with subtitles.
 * However, if a disk sustains a certain amount of damage in certain areas, his voice will erroneously play instead of just his laughter.
 * Ripper Roo is the only CTR boss who isn't affected by the language glitch since he only laughs.
 * His voice is a re-tuned recording of Dallas McKennon's laughter first used in Lady and the Tramp, and was used in later movies like Chuck Connors' Tourist Trap, Will Ferrell's Elf, and the Disney theme park attraction "it's a small world" (the unedited version for all three). However, as of N. Sane Trilogy, these remixed sound clips have been replaced by new voice acting from Jess Harnell and Andrew Morgado in Nitro-Fueled.
 * Ripper Roo is one of five racers from CTR not to reappear as racers in Crash Nitro Kart, the other four being Komodo Joe, Papu Papu, Pinstripe, and Penta Penguin.
 * Ripper Roo has never been fully allied with Cortex, but he still appears at Crash's birthday party in Twinsanity. However, since Oxide, who also antagonized Cortex, was also present at the party, it's most likely that this was just a gathering of characters that Crash has fought in the past.
 * Ripper Roo was mentioned in the code of Crash: Mind Over Mutant meaning that he was likely planned to be in the game but was scrapped.
 * In the CTR epilogue, there is an error in his ending regarding his being elected State Governor that “started whispers of a run for the presidency”. Australia is lead by a prime minister, not a president.
 * One of David Siller's early level design documents for The Lab in the original game included failed genetic duplicates of Ripper Roo as minor enemies. These kangaroos, referred to as Ripper Clones, were planned to surprise-attack the player by suddenly jumping toward Crash from out of view.
 * When changing from Doctor Roo into his regular self, Ripper Roo demonstrates an ability to fully rotate his neck, and multiple times at that.
 * The beta of CTR included some extra jumping poses for his victory animation, which didn't make it into the final.
 * In the credits for the Japanese version of Crash Team Racing, Ripper Roo ends up becoming a stunt driver instead of a state governor.
 * Though his original Naughty Dog bio for the first game states he was living in the wilds of Tasmania before being captured by Cortex and Brio, flavor text for Ripper Roo’s home track “The Long Canyon” in Crash Nitro Kart 2  mentions that he’s from the mainland Australian Outback (Red Centre). It’s possible that he relocated to Tasmania as kangaroos are known to travel long distances in search of water and sustenance.

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