You crazy enough to race me? I should race Oxide in the big race! I'll show you wild driving! Last once across the finish line is a rotten brain!
You are crazier than me! Best get head checked if you think you could beat Oxide! Have a key. Good luck, you'll need it.Ripper Roo, Crash Team Racing / Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled
Ripper Roo (also known as Doctor Roo) is an insane blue mutated kangaroo. He is widely considered to be Dr. Cortex's first and failed experiment with the Evolvo Ray, which is debatable seeing as how he managed to complete university-level education as of Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back. He frequently uses explosive crates when battling Crash. This can be seen in Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, where he lays down TNT squares and nitro squares with his cane, in Crash Team Racing where he drops TNT Crates, and in his appearance in Crash Bash where he will lay down TNT squares on random tiles. He also has razor sharp claws on his toes that are his main method of attack.
History
Crash Bandicoot
In the original Crash Bandicoot game, Ripper Roo was one of the many animal test subjects of Dr. Neo Cortex. After being captured, he was zapped at least twice by Cortex's Evolvo-Ray which caused his fur to turn blue and for him to go insane. He was sent out to destroy Crash, but unfortunately for him, Crash used the Big TNT crates that were floating by to blow Ripper Roo up.
In the alternate ending to the original game, it's revealed that after Cortex disappears, Ripper Roo undergoes intense therapy and eight years of higher education, after which he writes a well-received book: Through the Eyes of the Vortex: A Study of Rapid Evolution and Its Consequences. This is the reason for "Doctor" Roo's change in character between the first and second game.
Although a genuine kangaroo, because of his floppy ears, sharp teeth, hanging tongue and the way his nose is rendered in this game, many people mistook him to be a dog. However, this is unintentional considering the art-style of the game is cartoony.
Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back
Doctor Roo's promotional design in Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back.
After going through college, becoming his former genius self, and building a library, Ripper Roo reappeared in Cortex Strikes Back as the first boss in this game. This time, he's working for N. Brio, and is known as "Doctor Roo", mostly because of his uniform: a bow tie, glasses, a mustache, a cane, and a top hat. He apparently went to college to become a psychologist. He also turned his home into a library, and judging by the formulas written on his floor, he heavily studied mathematics and science as well. However, it's revealed that one explosion is enough to return him to his former, dangerous self. Once again, however, he fails to stop Crash. Right before the battle starts, when he is seen reading books, the top book on the stack has the word "Crash" on the spine. When battling him, he hops around on his cane, turning regular squares into TNT squares. When the first square explodes, the rest lead straight to Ripper Roo, turning him insane again and revealing a blond wig. This time he creates Nitro squares. For some reason, when he's done he hops on top of the last Nitro square, detonating the entire field and leaving himself stunned and vulnerable (and turning him into "Doctor Roo" once more, and the whole method goes over again until he's defeated). Under his top hat is hair the same color of his mustache.
Dansu! De Jump! Na Daibouken
Ripper Roo appears in Dansu! De Jump! Na Daibouken Volume 1, where he is a doctor who spends his time researching. Instead of Crash and Aku Aku calling him 'Ripper Roo' they just call him 'Ripper'. When Crash and Aku Aku arrive at his house, he becomes obsessed with snatching the Power Stone from them and asks them to do some chores in return for some food and shelter. Unfortunately, Crash flattens his books and destroys his research. Ripper went crazy, bouncing around on his cane demanding them to hand over the Power Stone. After a brief battle with Crash, a chandelier drops onto Ripper's head knocking him out before he snatches the Stone from the exhausted Crash. He soon turned back to normal and decides to make them some food. His design is based off of his Cortex Strikes Back look and wears a long sleeved shirt instead of a straight jacket. He speaks perfect English and acts as a normal citizen with no relations of Dr. Cortex or Brio creating him.
Crash Team Racing
Ripper Roo made another appearance in Crash Team Racing as the first boss and an unlockable character. His home track is Roo's Tubes in N. Sanity Beach. When racing him, he is constantly drops TNT crates onto the track. After defeating him, he gives you the first of four keys needed to race Oxide. The key given by him leads to Gem Stone Valley and The Lost Ruins.
Ripper Roo's kart in the game was orange and was enabled to handle tight corners with slightly lower speed than average karts, much like Polar and Pura. He can be unlocked by completing the Red Gem Cup in adventure mode. He can also be unlocked by holding 
and 
while pressing 
, 
, , 
, 
, and on the main menu.
After the events of CTR, he has been elected State Governor (much to everyone's surprise) with the slogan "Crazy is as Crazy does!" Rumor has it he's also running for President.
Stats
Speed: 1/6
Accel: 3/4
Turn: 4/4
Difficulty: Beginner
Crash Bash
In this game, he made a cameo appearance in the third Pogo Pandemonium stage El Pogo Loco in his Doctor Roo look, but he's still his regular crazy self personality-wise. He creates TNT, Nitro and 4-way tiles by hopping around on his cane. He will occasionally fire off a series of missiles in all directions as well.
Crash Twinsanity
Ripper Roo didn't return until Crash Twinsanity, where he made a brief cameo at Crash's "Birthday Party". After Cortex and the Mecha Bandicoot are defeated, he agrees to go out to lunch with Dingodile. He is silent in this game, like most of other party guests.
Crash Nitro Kart 2
Ripper Roo reappears as a major villain and unlockable character in CNK2. In this game, he and Cortex agree to assist Nitros Oxide in his plan to turn the world into a parking lot. He is unlocked by completing missions 3 and 4 in mission mode. In this game he wears a white t-shirt as opposed to his usual strait jacket, with his hands and arms being clearly visible when turning.
Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D
Ripper Roo appeared in CBNK3D as a playable character who teams up with Cortex and Nitros Oxide. He has a different look: he takes after the classic stereotype of the boxing kangaroo, with boxing gloves instead of his trademark straitjacket. He looks nothing like his original design.
Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 2
Ripper Roo appeared again in CBNK2 as an unlockable character. He went back to his CTR look, but wears his Dr. Roo top hat. He does his trademark laugh when he hits another racer with a weapon. He is unlocked by getting 62 mission points. His kart is unlocked by getting 67 points.
Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy
Ripper Roo reprises his role as a boss in the first two games in the N. Sane Trilogy. He has a new animation for each of his defeats. In Crash Bandicoot, he'll stumble and fall off the edge of the waterfall. In Cortex Strikes Back, his head gets stuck in the ground. He pulls it out, leaving his wig behind in the ground.
Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled
Ripper Roo reprises his role as the game's first boss. Like all other CTR bosses, he is instead unlocked by defeating him in Adventure Mode. After events of the game, Ripper Roo becomes a thrill ride engineer. Once it was revealed that he simply used each ride to check his limits in enduring pain, he was blacklisted by all amusement park owners.
Stats
Speed: 3/7
Accel: 4/7
Turn: 7/7
Difficulty: Beginner
Driving Style: Turn
Characteristics
Personality
Ripper Roo is famous for his insane, psychopathic, and somewhat dangerous behavior. As a result of his insanity, he can be fearless, reckless, impulsive and unpredictable, often blowing himself or others up repeatedly with explosives. He has also proven to be highly tolerant and resilient to pain, as demonstrated in his boss battles when he gets caught in a TNT or Nitro blast, either getting knocked out cold, becoming dizzy or just laughing it off. His resilience and thrill-seeking nature is further developed in the epilogue of Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled where he becomes a thrill ride engineer, only to get blacklisted due to his intentions in creating said rides (testing the limits of his pain threshold).
He's not truly evil, and only does what he does because of his insanity and inability to think. It's not safe to say, however, that he's always this way. In fact, before Cortex Strikes Back, he spent a year studying to become a psychologist, proof that he was still civilized and sophisticated in some way. Another hint of his sane characteristic is that he wrote books, such as "Through the Eye of the Vortex" which was well received. Being very intelligent, he has shown to be able to read as well. Finally, he is capable of forming friendships with others, as shown with his interaction with Dingodile in Crash Twinsanity. However, an explosion is enough to return him to his usual self.
He is unique as the only speech he is capable of is insane laughter. In CTR, luckily for the player, subtitles are used while he is "speaking". In the Japanese version of the game, however, he spoke coherently. Oddly enough Ripper Roo seems to have some attachment to water as his boss fights always take near water and Roo's Tubes, his track in CTR, is an underwater facility.
Physical Appearance
Ripper Roo is a boomer (male kangaroo) with royal blue fur that covers most of his body, sky blue for his face and belly, and navy eyebrows and a black nose, which is dark pink in Crash Twinsanity. He has long floppy ears with sky blue insides, except for in Twinsanity, where they are pink. His eyes have yellow scleras with orange circles swirling around his pupils. In Twinsanity, his scleras are white, and he has no pupils, only red circles. He has sharp teeth, black claws on his toes and a long pink tongue. In Crash 1 he had darker blue fur on his toes, but this was removed in all subsequent appearances. He wears a white straitjacket that is completely buckled around his arms, limiting movement. The length of his tongue varies depending on the game, ranging from a very long one in the Naughty Dog games to a more realistic length in Twinsanity. In his Dr. Roo getup, he retains generally the same appearance, but gains some new accessories. He wears a black top hat, glasses, a blonde wig and moustache, and a bow tie. The bow tie is red in Crash 2 and Crash Bash, but was changed to purple as of the N. Sane trilogy. He is also seen with a cane in this form.
Relationships
Doctor Nitrus Brio
Ripper Roo and N. Brio are on very good terms, working together during Cortex Strikes Back. Brio had a hand in Ripper's creation as Cortex's former right hand man, though Ripper doesn't seem to hold a grudge against him at all. Ripper seems to hold Brio in higher esteem than Cortex, in any case.
Doctor Neo Cortex
Cortex is Ripper Roo's creator, though he quickly escaped him and went to reside in the ruins over a waterfall on Wumpa Island. Ripper Roo hasn't been shown to hold a grudge against Cortex for this, though he never worked with him after that, siding with Brio instead in Cortex Strikes Back.
Crash Bandicoot
Crash and Ripper Roo have always been on opposite sides of the games' conflict. Ripper Roo attacked and tried to kill Crash multiple times through his boss fights, and he shows irritation at Crash arriving whilst he was studying during Cortex Strikes Back. Though Ripper Roo might've only tried to attack him because of his insanity kicking in.
Dingodile
In Twinsanity, Ripper Roo and Dingodile are friends, or at least on very good terms. After the Mecha-Bandicoot boss fight, Dingodile asks Ripper Roo out to lunch, and Ripper Roo enthusiastically accepts the offer.
Appearances
- Crash Bandicoot
- Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back
- Dansu! De Jump! Na Daibouken
- Crash Team Racing
- Crash Bash (cameo)
- Crash Twinsanity (cameo)
- Crash Nitro Kart 2
- Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D
- Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 2
- Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy
- Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled
Gallery
See: Ripper Roo/Gallery
Trivia
- Although Ripper Roo's 2D/3D artwork from Crash Bandicoot depicted him as having his eyes colored yellow with red spirals, in Crash Bandicoot and Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back he had normal eyes instead of the former, even when insane. The same was true for his boss icons, and was corrected in Crash Team Racing
- As a result of nothing below his waist being seen, Ripper Roo's model in Crash Twinsanity has no legs.
- In CTR, Ripper Roo was still in his straitjacket, so he couldn't drive with his hands. Instead, his left foot was used to steer the wheel, while his right foot worked the gas pedal, therefore he is the only racer to drive with only his feet.
- Ripper Roo's theme in the first game is the shortest theme.
- Ripper Roo was originally going to speak normal English like most of the characters in CTR, but this was later dropped and he still used his insane laughter but with subtitles. A video at YouTube has what he would say. This was likely removed due to being inaccurate.
- However, if a disk sustains a certain amount of damage in certain areas, his voice will actually play instead of just his laughing.
- Ripper Roo is the only CTR boss who isn't affected by the language glitch since he only laughs.
- Furthermore, this makes Ripper Roo the only CTR boss who doesn't brag and warn about Oxide before and after his defeat, respectively, except in his normal English.
- His voice is a re-tuned recording of Dallas McKennon's laughter first used in Lady and the Tramp, and was used in later movies like Chuck Connors' Tourist Trap, Will Ferrell's Elf, and the Disney theme park attraction "it's a small world" (the unedited version for all three). However, as of N-Sane Trilogy, these remixed sound clips have been replaced by new voice acting from Jess Harnell and Andrew Morgado in Nitro Fueled.
- He is seen using TNT crates, possibly because it was his first boss weakness, though unlike Komodo Joe, he doesn't use Nitro crates.
- Ripper Roo is one of five racers from CTR not to reappear as racers in Crash Nitro Kart, the other four being Komodo Joe, Papu Papu, Penta Penguin, and Pinstripe.
- Ripper Roo's boss battle is reference in The Oblongs episode "Father of The Bribe", when the Animal Control Guy drops some shaved cats in a way similar to how Roo's pogo cane makes TNT Crates.
- The background music of Ripper Roo's fight in Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back was a remake of his original theme song.
- He has a doctorate in political science.
- Ripper Roo has been known to laugh uncontrollably when he gets hurt.
- Ripper Roo has never been fully allied with Cortex, but he still appears at Crash's birthday party in Twinsanity. However, since Oxide, who also antagonized Cortex, was also present at the party, it's most likely that this was just a gathering of characters that Crash has fought in the past.
- It's even questionable if he was allied with Cortex in the first game, or if Cortex simply put him in the waterfall ruins and simply attacks anyone he sees. Concept art for his picture in the Crash Bandicoot Bible implies he wasn't allied with Cortex in the first game.
- Ripper Roo has appeared in every Crash game on the PlayStation except Warped. He is the only such character. The other three characters to appear in exactly four of the five PlayStation Crash games are Coco Bandicoot, N. Gin, and Tiny Tiger, all three of which were absent in the first Crash Bandicoot game.
- Ripper Roo's epilogue in the first game states that he became a doctor after going through intense therapy for 8 years. This could've been foreshadowing his return in Cortex Strikes Back. However, in the battle between Crash and Ripper Roo in Cortex Strikes Back, "Doctor" Ripper Roo is still wearing his straitjacket.
- Ripper Roo's epilogue in Crash Bandicoot makes no chronological sense. It states how Roo went through intense therapy and eight years of education, however, he appears once again in Cortex Strikes Back as the first boss in the game. Roo appears to now have some sense from his therapy and education, but Cortex Strikes Back takes place only one year after the first Crash Bandicoot.
- The secret ending in Crash Bandicoot is non-canon, but Ripper Roo appears in Cortex Strikes Back in his own office with a bunch of books, presumably about psychology, which means Roo's Crash Bandicoot epilogue is somewhat canon, somewhat not.
- Ripper Roo is one of the two kangaroo characters that have been mutated by the Evolvo-Ray. The other is Rilla Roo.
- Ripper Roo is one of 2 characters to feature in Crash Bandicoot and Cortex Strikes Back, and not to feature in Warped. The other one is Doctor Nitrus Brio.
- In Cortex Strikes Back, a book near Ripper Roo's bookshelf reads "CRASH".
- Ripper Roo was mentioned in the coding of Crash: Mind Over Mutant meaning that he was going to be in the game but was scrapped.
- In Crash Bash, if one should remember Ripper Roo's battle in Cortex Strikes Back, Ripper Roo doesn't become insane until he is harmed by explosives. The same may be true in Crash Bash. Furthermore, in Cortex Strikes Back, "Dr. Roo" drops TNT much like in Crash Bash.
- In Cortex Strikes Back, since Ripper Roo was working with Dr. Nitrus Brio alongside the Komodo Brothers and Tiny Tiger against Dr. Cortex and Crash (unknowingly working), it can be argued that he alongside the other evolved animals and Brio are not technically villains in that game in the traditional sense since them preventing Crash from collecting crystals would save the world from Cortex's mind-control device, therefore making them anti-villains, or anti-heroes depending on how one looks at it.
- Despite being a kangaroo, he has been heard to growl and bark. Coincidentally, real-life kangaroos have been documented making those vocalizations: the former when males attempt to assert their dominance, and the latter to warn the rest of the mob of incoming danger.
- Crash Bash and Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 2 has Ripper Roo use completely different laugh files than the one he used in the Naughty Dog games, the former by an unknown voice actor, and the latter by Jeff Bennett.
- In the CTR epilogue, there is an error in his ending regarding his being elected State Governor that “started whispers of a run for the presidency”. Australia does not have a president, but a prime minister (Ripper Roo was specifically implied in the original Crash Bandicoot manual to be a wild kangaroo that was captured by Cortex and Brio, therefore making him Australian since Australia’s the only country with wild kangaroos). This could just be a developer oversight however.
- One of David Siller's early level design documents for The Lab in the original game included failed genetic duplicates of Ripper Roo as minor enemies. These kangaroos, referred to as Ripper Clones, were planned to surprise-attack the player by suddenly jumping toward Crash from out of view.
- Other than the exchange of friendship in Crash Twinsanity, Ripper Roo has never interacted with Dingodile in any other game in the series in which they both appear in nor acknowledge each other’s presence. Ironically as well, certain species of macropods (which include kangaroos and wallabies) are prey to both dingos and crocodiles, but males of larger species often fight back by luring the pursuing dingo into a body of water and drowning the predator using its forepaws.
- The shape of Ripper Roo's hair and moustache in the second game is likely modeled after Albert Einstein.
- When changing from Doctor Roo into his regular self, Ripper Roo demonstrates an ability to fully rotate his neck, and multiple times at that.
- The beta of CTR included some extra jumping poses for his victory animation, which didn't make it into the final.
- Ripper Roo's boss fights always take place near water.
- In the credits for the Japanese version of Crash Team Racing, Ripper Roo ends up becoming a stunt driver instead of a state governor.
- In contrast with many other male kangaroos in fiction (and truer to real-world male kangaroos), Ripper Roo is revealed to not have a pouch, as shown in Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D. It is also the only game in which he is shown not wearing a straitjacket, opting to wear boxing gloves instead.
| Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy | ||
| DLC Content | Crash Bandicoot: Stormy Ascent Crash Bandicoot: Warped: Future Tense | |