N. Tropy


 * This page is about the main universe N. Tropy. For his alternate universe counterpart, see N. Tropy (female).

Nefarious Tropy (a.k.a. N. Tropy) is a recurring antagonist from the Crash Bandicoot series. Debuting in Crash Bandicoot: Warped, he's the self-proclaimed master of time and specialist in quantum warp technology. He is an old friend of Uka Uka, called upon by the latter to help take over the world in Warped. It is stated in the Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex manual that he can be seen disturbing the temporal flow by causing time paradoxes for laughs. He is also shown to be acquainted with N. Trance.

Crash Bandicoot: Warped
N. Tropy is introduced by Uka Uka in Crash Bandicoot: Warped as the creator of the Time Twister Machine, a device that will aid Dr. Cortex in his quest to gather the crystals in their original places in time. He later acts as the third boss of the game, battling Crash with his gigantic tuning fork. After being defeated, N. Tropy's suit seems to malfunction, as evidenced by his clock springing outwards, which sends him to the space/time vortex. Once he vanishes, Crash is granted the Death Tornado Spin. After defeating Cortex while in possession of all the crystals and gems, the ending will occur where is possible to see the two, who have transformed into infants, fighting over Uka Uka.

His boss battle style includes a wave of what appears to be electricity moving horizontally and vertically. Then, he switches up the platforms, which form a path to him. N. Tropy kneels down to rest and he is now exposed. When he is hit he uses his time warp/teleportation ability to warp other side of the room. If Crash is next to N. Tropy while he is still attacking or not kneeling down, N. Tropy will smash Crash with his tuning fork, vaporizing Crash across time and space. (He doesn't do this in the N. Sane Trilogy).

Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex
N. Tropy has a minor appearance in The Wrath of Cortex, in which he is an attendee of Uka Uka's convention and an occasional enemy in the game, attempting to hinder Crash's progress in Atlasphere levels by shooting at him with his tuning fork, and later racing against him in a car. He also appears in the flying levels to battle Crash's glider and Coco's spaceship. He only has one line in the whole game. He is erroneously referred to as N-Trophy in this game; Cortex pronounces his name that way during the intro cutscene, and his name is spelled "N-Trophy" in the credits.

Crash Twinsanity
N. Tropy appears yet again. He is first seen after the Rusty Walrus chase in High Seas Hi-Jinks, with Cortex's old colleague, Nitrus Brio, who were seeking the Evil Twins' treasure (as Tropy found out about here). After not getting any information from Crash, they decide to "wring it out of him". N. Tropy orders N. Brio to transform, and a battle ensues. After being defeated, the now frog-like Brio springs into the air and hits the iceberg's edge, sending Crash flying back to Cortex's Lab. N. Tropy reappears in the level Ant Agony, along with Nitrus Brio and N. Gin, to steal the Evil Twins' treasure, but was burned by Spyro the Dragon after Dr. Cortex mentioned that Spyro might want his stolen gems back.

Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy
N. Tropy reappeared in the N. Sane Trilogy serving the same role as he did in Warped.

Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time
N. Tropy appears in It's About Time in the opening together with Cortex and Uka Uka to escape the time prison, After Cortex had failed to destroy Crash and Coco again. N. Tropy betrays Cortex and reveals his new partner; an alternate, female N. Tropy. Intent on resetting all other timelines to create a new era with themselves as its gods, the Doctors N. Tropy attack Nitros Oxide and use his ship to get away from Crash and Coco's party.

Although the alternate Tawna gives chase on Oxide's hovercraft, she is easily beaten alone. When Crash and Coco's party arrive, the female N. Tropy reveals that she particularly enjoyed Tawna's screams when her friends were killed. The two agree to give their opponents "a fair chance" and toss Tawna towards their enemies before sending them off in new dimensional rifts.

With the help from all four Quantum Masks, Crash and Coco prevail over both doctors, and they are knocked into a dimensional hole by Dingodile; putting an end to their plans. In the 100% ending, the pair have never been heard since their defeat, but they likely have yet to give up, as indicated by the dialogue from Crash in the 100% ending that "evil geniuses are harder to squash than cockroaches."

Spin-off titles/other games
N. Tropy makes a return in Crash Team Racing, appearing as an unlockable character. To unlock him, the player must beat all eighteen of his records in Time Trial mode or use a cheat code. Tropy drives a light blue kart. Like Tiny, Dingodile and Papu Papu, N. Tropy has high speed and average acceleration, but bad turning.

The epilogue of CTR states that he began tinkering with his time machine again and he was last seen entering a time portal.

N. Tropy is the main antagonist of Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced, in which he teams up with his inter-dimensional crony, N. Trance, kidnaps Crunch, Coco and Fake Crash and hypnotizes them into working for him. He is later defeated by Crash and is forced to take a group picture (said photo being taken by Fake Crash) with the Bandicoots, much to his anger.

N. Tropy is an unlockable character in Crash Nitro Kart, where he races under Team Cortex with Cortex, N. Gin, and Tiny Tiger. To unlock him, the player must defeat all of his ghosts in Time Trial mode, much like in Crash Team Racing.

N. Tropy appears as a trading card in Crash Bandicoot Purple: Ripto's Rampage.

In Crash Boom Bang!, N. Tropy makes a cameo appearance in the Silhouette Quiz mini-game.

N. Tropy reappears in Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, once again as an unlockable character and is unlocked the same way as in Crash Team Racing. However, this time the player must beat all thirty-one of his records in Time Trial as opposed to eighteen in Crash Team Racing due to the inclusion of the Crash Nitro Kart tracks. Unlike in Crash Team Racing, N. Tropy cannot be unlocked via cheat code. His ending in Nitro-Fueled is identical to his original ending, except instead of going to a rainforest, he instead arrives in a futuristic city, only to head back after coming across a Marty McFly-like character.

N. Tropy's infant version from Crash Bandicoot: Warped, Baby N. Tropy, was added as a playable character in the post-Grand Prix update and is available for purchase from the Pit Stop for 1500 Wumpa Coins.

While N. Tropy himself does not physically appear in On the Run!, an N. Tropy themed skin for Crash was added in season two, Running Outta Time!, which was hosted by N. Tropy's female counterpart.

Physical Appearance
N. Tropy is a tall and skinny human character which has a blue and cold skin, result from his frequent travels through the cold and hostile vacuum of space and time, long eyebrows and two equally long and skinny beards and thin legs. He typically wears a golden-brown, smog-producing, piston-driven time machine, which appears to obscure his lab coat, he also wears a tall headgear with a small silver fork and his left arm has a huge metal glove with a clock on it.

In Twinsanity, N. Tropy's design suffered a few changes. His headgear, time machine and boots became gold, his left arm became bionic with the typical metal glove with a clock on it, his tuning fork became longer and he became taller than usual.

In N. Sane Trilogy and Nitro-Fueled, he returned to his original design, except more detailed and polished.

In It's About Time, N. Tropy had a significant tweak to his design to match the new art style, while still maintaining his concept. His skin is bluish-green, his armor is goldish-brown with some gold details, the clock on his time machine is octagon-shaped, his pistons are motionless and his fork is more detailed.

Personality
Nefarious Tropy is a nefarious and smug character, as opposed to the childish, outspoken temperament of Doctor Cortex, with a smooth British accent to match. He proves highly intelligent, his technological breakthroughs arguably making him the most advanced of all of Uka Uka's scientists. However, he tends to get frustrated when he repeatedly misses his target, and as a result, tires easily. This usually works to Crash's advantage and results in Tropy's many defeats at the hands of the bandicoot. Like Cortex, he is also highly pompous and foul-tempered, venting his frustrations at his associates or blaming them for his errors, something N. Trance was perfectly willing to call him out on. An antithesis to Cortex's pitifully jaded but often opportunistic nature, Tropy is an imperious and overconfident villain who often devolves into panic or frustration when events stop going according to plan, as demonstrated throughout N-Tranced when multiple oversights in his scheme weigh down on Tropy's nerves and eventually cause him to retreat in desperation.

Unlike most allies of Uka Uka, N. Tropy is not one of Cortex's henchmen, but more of an equal and occasionally a rival for the role of Uka Uka's right-hand man. This can lead to conflicts between the two prideful doctors; it is Tropy who exposes Cortex's secret weapon in The Wrath of Cortex out of suspicion he is holding out on ideas, while in Twinsanity, the two openly oppose each other for the Evil Twins' treasure, with Cortex ultimately mocking Tropy's comeuppance thanks to Spyro, who came to get back his gems from the Evil Twins. Even as infants, they both fight for usage of Uka Uka with equal footing in Warped. He seems to have an affinity for time related puns, rarely letting a sentence go by without one.

In It's About Time, he is very flirtatious to his female counterpart and is shown to genuinely care for her. He is nonetheless treated in a much more sinister and fearsome light in this interpretation, lacking much of the clownish and thin skinned demeanor of his previous roles, and proving sadistic and treacherous towards even his allies such as Cortex and Uka Uka when they have fulfilled their purpose in his ambitions (earning him the vengeance of Cortex in particular).

In the Japanese version of the original Crash Bandicoot: Warped, N. Tropy uses English phrases frequently compared to other characters.

Creation and early development
Nefarious Tropy was created as a boss and villain for Crash Bandicoot: Warped. , the developers of Warped, contracted concept artist Charles Zembillas to design the game's new characters. Concept work for N. Tropy began on January 22, 1998 and was finalized February 19, 1998. The earliest sketches included elements such as his large nose, a scowling expression, and two beards that may have been inspired by the character of. His skin being blue was suggested by Naughty Dog. Zembillas added a time traveling device worn around N. Tropy's waist. It at first had a digital display showing the year he intended to travel to, but was later drawn as a traditional clock face. Over the course of new sketches, the device evolved to "encase" him.

By February 12, 1998, N. Tropy mostly resembled his appearance in the final game. However, his suit had a complex array of pistons, gears, and other clockwork, intended to add absurdity to an otherwise sinister-looking character. Zembillas hoped these might be implemented as drawn textures placed over his model in the game. This was determined to be too complex, so the suit was further simplified in his finalized design.

Trivia

 * His name is a pun on the word "entropy."
 * When N. Tropy makes his first appearance in Twinsanity, he and N. Brio try to force Crash to tell them where the Evil Twins' treasure is. However, the scene that explains how he found out about the treasure in the first place was cut.
 * N. Tropy hearing about the riches was supposed to be a joke where N. Tropy was watching the events of the game from the outside, but decided to join in when the treasure was mentioned. Ultimately his scene was cut since it would have been too expensive to create a high quality N. Tropy for that one shot (as it was in an actual FMV). The scene was fully voice acted by the game's voice actors and was uploaded on Youtube in its storyboard form by a developer of the game on June 30, 2018.
 * Although N. Tropy does not appear in Crash Bash, some music elements of his and Dr. N. Gin's boss theme from Crash Bandicoot: Warped are remixed for some minigame themes, such as Pogo-a-Gogo's.
 * In Crash Team Racing, N. Tropy is one of the three characters who are never playable in adventure mode. The others are Fake Crash and Penta Penguin, who is unlockable via a cheat code. N. Tropy is the only one of those three to appear in the credits.
 * Even though N. Tropy doesn't appear in Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D, one of the cups is named after him.
 * His name is misspelled as "Trophy" in some games, such as in the credits of The Wrath of Cortex. This is lampshaded in the Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled Digital Comic, when Zem states that Nitros Oxide should be called "N. Trophy" after seeing his trophy collection.
 * Although he doesn't appear in-game, N. Tropy's tuning fork is used as one of Cortex's abilities in Skylanders: Imaginators. When placed, enemies around it will be slowed down; it can be upgraded to shoot sparks when Cortex fires his ray gun.
 * In Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, N. Tropy's helmet can actually come off while jumping through the air, revealing he is bald.

Names In Other Languages

 * Nefarious Tropy/N. Tropy


 * Baby N. Tropy