Nitros Oxide

"I love the smell of nitrous, smells like victory!"

- Nitros Oxide

Nitros Oxide, spelled Nitrous Oxide in Crash Nitro Kart, is an alien from the planet Gasmoxia. He is the main antagonist of Crash Team Racing and its remake, Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled. His name is derived from the anesthetic gas,.

Crash Team Racing
In Crash Team Racing, Nitros Oxide challenges Earth's inhabitants to a race, and threatens to convert the planet into a parking lot if they lose.

At the start of the final race, Oxide cheats at the start by starting before going green. Throughout the race he uses TNT Crates, beakers, Nitro Craters and Bombs. After losing a first time, he challenges the racers to collect all his Time Relics. Oxide has a fury attack in his last defeat where he finally leaves the Earth.

In the epilogue, Oxide had an indescribably gruesome accident with a unicycle after returning to Gasmoxia and recovering from the humiliation of his defeat by Crash. Neither the details of the accident or any effects on Oxide resulting from it have been shown in later games.

Crash Nitro Kart
In Crash Nitro Kart, Nitros Oxide is leader of Team Oxide under the Velo's tutelage. It was supposedly Nitrous Oxide who informed Emperor Velo about the racing skills of Earth's inhabitants.

Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D
Nitros Oxide returns as the main antagonist in Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D in which he teams up with Doctor Neo Cortex and Ripper Roo in an attempt to banish Crash Bandicoot and his friends from N. Sanity Island.

Crash Bash
In Crash Bash, Nitros Oxide returns as the final boss. The player fights a two part battle against him; first in a chase through an obstacle course in space, followed by a Ballistix battle in a city on the surface of a planet (presumably Gasmoxia).

Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex
Oxide made a brief cameo in the beginning scene of the menu in Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex.

Crash Twinsanity
In Crash Twinsanity, Nitros Oxide makes a cameo alongside various other villains from the series in a fake birthday party that Cortex has made for Crash.

Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time
In Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time, Oxide appears as male and female N. Tropy's hostage to take them on Bermugula's Orbit.

Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled comic
In the Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled comic, it is shown that Nitros Oxide and his cronies Zam & Zem come home in Gasmoxia after winning another race turning into a parking lot (like the other planets that he traveled). His plans for conquest is milky way where he conquers all the planets in that galaxy, but he is furious when he saw a poster realizing that he did not conquer all the planets.

Physical appearance
Oxide's head resembles that of a bagpipe, his mouth being at the end of a striped, elephantine trunk. Nitros Oxide has yellow stripes on his head and yellow-orange sacs on the edges of his head. Another notable facial feature is his eyes; one of his pupils is dilated, and his eyelids are red. He sports a purple jumpsuit-esque attire with a popped collar in all of his appearances. He has three digits on each of his hands, and he has four legs, each of them having two toes on each foot.

Personality
Oxide is a narcissist who claims to be the "fastest racer in the galaxy" and looks down on other planets, which he deems inferior. He challenges different planets to his "game" in a race for the planet just to prove his superiority to whoever lives on that planet, usually resulting in the destruction of the planet and its replacement with a parking lot of some kind. If he loses himself, Oxide can become so devastated that he'll slip into a deep seclusion, only healing from such emotional injury after years of therapy. Nitros Oxide appears to have a passion for tap dancing, as seen in the winner's circle of both Crash Team Racing and Crash Nitro Kart.

Trivia

 * His dialogue in Crash Team Racing Nitro Fueled's intro cutscene has been changed so he says that the Earth's population would become his minions rather than slaves.
 * This is the same with Uka Uka which that when Crash defeated N. Tropy, the same have placed all in grave danger rather than risk.