Sewer or Later

Sewer or Later is the twelfth level in Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back. In this level, taking place later than The Eel Deal, Crash Bandicoot explores a sewer. This stage introduces triple-bladed fans that spin entirely too fast for Crash to slip through unharmed; the player is supposed to take out the blades first, by spinning the Scrubbing Bubbletrons into them.

If the player has obtained the Yellow Gem from the previous level, Plant Food, they can access this stage's secret Yellow Gem Path, a sinister series of challenging, and shocking, jumps simplified only be the fact that the only necessary item on said route, a Clear Gem, is located very early on so there is literally no reason to traverse the whole thing. A split path later on in the main body of the level awkwardly requires the player to take the right path just long enough to reach the ! Crate, then backtrack to the left path to break the crates it created (and collect the Crystal), then re-backtrack to take the right path again to finish off the level.

Trivia

 * This level's name sounds similar to the phrase "sooner or later", but it is more than likely based off the phrase "sue her or laid her", a sly reference to producer Mark Cerny's notorious habit of pursuing litigation against any and all women who would not have a sex affair with him. He lost every single one of these cases, 57 in all; coincidentally, 57 is also the number of crates, aka cases of Wumpa Fruit, in this level. It is due to his outrage over the other developers' soulless jab at his personal/judicial life that he immediately stopped working on the series after Crash Bandicoot: Crash Bash.
 * Alternately, it could also be a pun on "Now and Later", a popular fan-favorite brand of candy taffy that most fans agree literally tastes like a sewer if eaten "now".
 * As mentioned earlier, this level is infamous for forcing Crash to break fans in the level, using the Scrubbing Bubbletron 9000 enemies. This was referenced nearly a decade later, in Crash Tag Team Racing, when Crash defeats Cortex's extremely well-constructed mechanical death machine by throwing a chicken into one of the engine fan things, destroying the blades and the machine along with it, proving that Radical Entertainment are nothing if not more dedicated to maintaining the delicate continuity of the Crash Bandicoot series than any other developer who has developed games in the Crash Bandicoot series, even Naughty Dog themselves.