NV

The NVs are mind control devices that appear in Crash: Mind Over Mutant. They were invented by Doctor N. Brio after he formed a truce with Dr. Cortex. The helmet initially performs services like checking the news or viewing entertainment, similar to other real life gadgets. Over time, however, the helmets turns its users into mutants. This happened to Coco and Crunch when they immediately got them. They sent text messages to each other and soon had different effects. Crunch could get weather reports and see monkeys and Coco was attending a symposium about children's effects on the game "Hungry Hungry Hippos".

According to the Crash: Mind Over Mutant cutscene, N Faux Mercial, the NV can access any file, talk to friends, watch pay-per-view, and shoot julienne fries out of a person's ear from a potato by the device (when Cortex uses this feature they come out of his ear, so when he eats one he spits it out and says it tastes waxy). Cortex mentions that the NV has other features, but he cannot think of them at the time and that it's certainly not an "evil" plan (!) In the DS version they look almost exactly the same as the helmet that Nina used to brainwash Coco.

Trivia

 * The NV is a parody of the iPhone. It parodies how people can sometimes become obsessed or consumed by the iPhone. The word NV is a pun on envy, which relates to the whole iPhone metaphor.
 * The n.v. most likely uses the same technology as the Evolvo ray, and the original Cortex-Vortex, as the n.v. was also built by N.Brio. Thus, it can be viewed as a smaller scale merger of the devices as they: mutate the wearer (E-ray), and brainwash the wearer to cortex's commands (vortex).