Neo Cortex

Doctor Neo Cortex is a mad doctor and the main villain of the Crash Bandicoot series. In Crash Bandicoot, he is voiced by Brendan O'Brien, along with all the other characters. From Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back to Crash Nitro Kart, he is voiced by Clancy Brown. As of Crash Twinsanity, he has been voiced by Lex Lang. In most games Cortex is mostly the final boss.

Personality
Cortex is very impulsive and obviously wants to get rid of Crash Bandicoot. He is also cruel to N. Gin, as shown in Crash of the Titans when Cortex spits scalding tea in N. Gin's eyes. He seems to be very grumpy and grouchy in his mutant form in Crash: Mind Over Mutant. At the beginning of the Crash series, he was a pure evil genius, but slowly turned into a clumsy failure. In Crash Twinsanity he is shown to be a coward and is not very bright as he seems. He seems to be easily startled, as seen in Crash Tag Team Racing when Willie Wumpa Cheeks pops out for the first time and Cortex hides behind N. Gin.

Appearance
Unlike normal humans in the real world, Cortex has yellow skin. His head is also hammer-like in shape that became useful in Twinsanity. He has an N stamped on his forehead standing for his first name Neo. He also has a small stature which he does not like. In the series he wears a lab coat, gloves and boots that change colour throughout. In Crash Tag Team Racing Cortex thinks he is pretty and wants to know how his backside looks.

Crash Bandicoot
Prior to Crash Bandicoot, Dr. Cortex planned to take over the world (and make the people who mocked him shut up) by creating an army of superanimals. Using his Evolvo-Ray and Cortex Vortex made by him and Doctor Nitrus Brio (most of the work was Brio's) they begun evolving and mutating the animals and plants from the surrounding islands. Some of them were not so succesfull such as Ripper Roo, an experiment gone wrong. But none compares to Cortex's greatest mistake ever - Crash Bandicoot. His blunder is seen in the introduction of the game where Cortex and Brio evolve (and eletrocute) Crash with the Evolvo-Ray and put him in the vortex. Cortex also states that Crash would of been the general of his army. However an error occours rejecting Crash ensuring in a chase ending with Crash escaping by jumping out the window. But, Cortex had another evolved bandicoot, Tawna hostage.

He does not appear again (excluding bonus rounds) until the end where he and Crash have an epic fight at sunset on his Airship and flying on his Hoverboard with his castle burning in the background. He losses though and gets shot down deep into the castle below where he finds a well hidden Crystal Cortex starts laughing menacingly at least until his match burns out...



Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back
One year later, Cortex got a new partner, a half man half machinne called Doctor N. Gin and just finished building a new Cortex Vortex in space. The crystal Cortex found turn't out to be a Master Crystal but N. Gin informs him that they will need twentyfive Slave Crystals to power the Vortex which Cortex plans to bast Earth with it turning everyone into brainless slaves. None of his former henchmen on Earth help him now, so he locates Crash and warps him to a Warp Room where Cortex (as a hologram) tricks Crash into getting the crystals for him with promise that he is using it for good purposes. He sometimes drops hints of his real plan as Coco Bandicoot starts hacking into the hologram and tries to tell Crash what's really going on. By the time Coco finally tells Crash he has already gave the crystals to Cortex. So the final battle takes place in space in jet packs and Crash has to stop Cortex before he get's to the Vortex. He looses once again and blasts off to outer space saying his final words "You haven't seen the last of me, Crash Bandicoot!" However the Cortex Vortex is still in space so after Crash collects all the Gem's Dr. Nitrus Brio helps to blow it up with a plasma cannon. However a part of it falls towards Earth and smashes a temple freeing an evil mask- Uka Uka.

Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped
It is revealed that Cortex was working on the orders of Uka Uka, a legendary powerful witchdoctor whose soul was placed in a mask much alike his brother Aku Aku. Cortex is joined by Dr N. Tropy who bends time in order to gather ancient crystals. Crash and Coco Bandicoot intervene however, and destroy the Time Twister machine in the process.

Crash Team Racing
Cortex later joins the good guys to fend off Nitros Oxide, a racer who plans to turn the Earth into a giant parking lot. Oxide is defeated, and Cortex returns to working for Uka Uka. As told in the credits, he returned to scientific research and he found the 117. element "Cortexrulestheworldium". Not long afterwards, he is summoned to partake in a battle between good and evil. Lasergun in hand, and old buddies on his side (including oddly enough N Brio, who is supposed to have gone to the good side), the games commence. These events happen in Crash Bash, and are not to be considered as canon for the series.

Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath Of Cortex
Straight after the events of Warped (Crash Team Racing and Crash Bash do not count), he is seen at a meeting for the villains in the series, it is decided that Crash Bandicoot must be eliminated. Cortex unveils his perfect bandicoot warrior, Crunch Bandicoot. However, Crunch is defeated by Crash at every turn, even with the assistance of The Elementals on the evil side. Crunch is taken to the good side after Cortex's defeat.

Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure
In a space station orbiting the Earth, Uka Uka is upset with Doctor Neo Cortex for failing him once again, but Cortex promises a plan that will bring the Earth's inhabitants down to size. Cortex then introduces his Planetary Minimizer, which he immediately uses to shrink the Earth down to the size of a grapefruit. The situation is brought to Aku Aku's attention when Cortex taunts the now-microscopic people of Earth. Crash eventually manages to return Earth to its normal size, foiling Cortex's plans once again.

Crash Bandicoot Purple: Ripto's Rampage
Doctor Neo Cortex and Ripto from the Spyro the Dragon series joined forces to rid themselves of their respective nemeses Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon, by genetically modifying Ripto's "Riptoc" minions and disguising them as Crash and Spyro, leading the two protagonists to believe they are against each other. The two heroes eventually discover this and work together to defeat the two evil-doers. Spyro eventually ends up tagging Cortex with a transmitter which leads both Crash and Spyro to Cortex and Ripto's headquarters in outer space where they are defeated.

Crash Twinsanity
Cortex teamed up with Crash once again to help stop his demented former pets Evil Twins: Victor and Moritz (two parakeets he tested his early Evolvo-Ray on, which not only hyper-evolved them into criminal masterminds, but dimensionally displaces them). He often ends up in embarrassing situations, cross-dressing as Coco (and apparently enjoying it), having his brain forcibly removed from his head (while still alive), being captured by Papu Papu, used as a snowboard (and later a skateboard), getting into a pay dispute with former henchmen, trapped in a pipe (before farting in it), being chased by bees and a bear to name a few.

Crash Of The Titans
In Crash of the Titans, Cortex uses Mojo to mutate the island's residents into Titans. After the Yuktopus failed to kill Crash after the first boss fight, Uka Uka replaces him with Nina. At the end of the game, Nina is defeated and Cortex "forgives" Nina for what she did.

Crash: Mind Over Mutant
In Crash: Mind over Mutant, Cortex has sent Nina to Evil Public School as punishment for betraying him, then reconciles with his old colleague Dr. Nitrus Brio to invent the NV, a personal digital assistant that controls whoever uses it by transmitting bad Mojo, unwillingly supplied by Uka Uka through the use of a milking machine. He later engages in a fight with Crash inside his new Space Head space station, empowering himself with the use of a mutagen formula stolen from N. Brio. Upon losing the fight, Cortex throws a tantrum, causing the Space Head to plummet towards Earth. Returning to normal, he escapes the Space Head in a smaller shuttle with an unnamed Znu.

Alignment

 * In all Games he has been evil except for Crash Twinsanity.
 * After the player defeats him in TwinSanity, he appears to become good but, as expected, given his past, this is only temporary.
 * The N on his forehead could possibly stand as the first letter of his name which is Neo.

Trivia

 * Crash Bandicoot: N-Tranced is the only game not to feature Cortex because he failed to stop Crash again.
 * Cortex appeared in all Crash games as a final boss except Crash Bandicoot: N-Tranced, Crash Twinsanity, and Crash of the Titans.
 * Cortex has been voiced in "Crash of the Titans", "Crash Twinsanity", "Crash Tag Team Racing" and "Mind Over Mutant" by veteran voice actor Lex Lang. Lang's previous credits include being the person with the deep voice in many movie trailers such as The Matrix, numerous other games and cartoons. He has even voiced in [[wikipedia:Sesame Street|Sesame Street.
 * His name is a pun on the neocortex, a part of the brain
 * Cortex's middle name has been revealed to be Periwinkle.
 * Despite being a genius, he can be stupid sometimes. A good example is seen in Crash Twinsanity where he said they need 6 Power Crystals but they only got 4. He input the number of their crystals on the computer and then realized it is not enough after the computer tells him.
 * His initials are NPC, which also stands for Non-Playable Character, but he is a playable character in the racing games, Twinsanity, Crash Bash and Crash Boom Bang!.
 * In the tutorial of Twinsanity (where he dresses up like Coco) its seems he can do stuff what Crash can (like spinning, sliding and body slamming).
 * In the same game, the theme to him seems more evil and manical to him.

Gallery
Neo Cortex