Mug

A mug is an item that gives the player an extra life in most of the games. They are mostly found in Crash Crates but can also be found floating in the air. Mugs appear next to the player's life counter and next to the boss's health meter. There are also extra life mugs for Nina, Coco, Mecha-Bandicoot, and Dr. Cortex when players control them. They are replaced by a counter showing Crash's remaining lives in Crash of the Titans. If the player loses all lives, the game over screen occurs.

Mugs also appear in spin-offs. In the racing games, the leading four players' mugs are displayed at the side of the screen. In Crash Bash, mugs appear on top of the players' health, points, etc.

In Crash Boom Bang!, there are two additional catergories of mugs. The first are emotes, used for the distraction mechanic. Each playable character has a happy, angry and sad emote each. The second type are the cards used in the Silhouette Quiz minigame, featuring mugs for some non-playable characters.

In Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, each character has multiple mugs; one default mug, and one for each of their unlockable Skins. There also exists a category of Stickers consisting entirely of unique mugs (in this game known as Portraits) for each playable character, as well as a few non-playable ones. Like any other Sticker in the game, these can be used to customize the player's kart, and can be purchased in the Pit Stop. Some of these Portrait Stickers are unlocked via Adventure mode.

Crash Nitro Kart
The handheld versions as well as the NTSC-U releases of the console versions use older versions of certain characters' mugshots.

Trivia

 * In Crash Bandicoot, Aku Aku was originally going to have a 2D mug as a pickup for him, before eventually being replaced with just his 3D model.
 * In Warped, if the player is playing as Coco, Crash's mug will still be displayed. This was changed in Wrath of Cortex.
 * In the original three Crash games, mugs could be spun away like Wumpa Fruit. This also could be done with Aku Aku's mug in Crash Bandicoot.
 * In the N. Sane Trilogy, spinning an extra life mug away during the remastered version of the first game will earn the player an achievement ("I Meant To Do That!").
 * In Wrath of Cortex, Crash's mug in the status bar is animated, while Coco's isn't.
 * Upon death, Crash's mug in the status bar will close its eyes. This doesn't occur when playing as Coco.
 * In the console version of CNK, an icon for Big Norm exists in the game's files, but goes unused, with Big Norm not being tracked on the sidebar during the Norms' boss race. In the handheld version of the game, Big Norm is playable, therefore the icon is used.