Doctor Neo Cortex

"Finally, after all these years of abuse, the tables have turned! Who's the little guy now?"

- Dr. Neo Cortex

Doctor Neo Periwinkle Cortex (also known as N. Cortex, Neo Cortex or simply Cortex) is the main antagonist of the Crash Bandicoot franchise. He is a mad scientist whose goal is to take over the world. Neo Cortex is the creator of Crash Bandicoot, and vows to eliminate him for repeatedly foiling his plans. Neo Cortex has a niece named Nina Cortex, and is often a source of. Neo Cortex serves under the command of Uka Uka, and also leads his own army of villains, notably N. Gin, Tiny Tiger, and Dingodile.

Neo Cortex is a short human with yellow skin and a big head with green tattooed "N" on his forehead. He is half bald, and has black hair and a goatee. Neo Cortex wears black clothes with a white lab coat on top, rubber gloves, and rubber boots. His name is a pun on "", a part of the brain.

Early history
Neo Cortex was the youngest son of a clown couple, he was different from his parents in spending his time reading science books. At the age of 3, started to be ridiculed by a particularly cruel group of performers and they tattooed on his head an N which means Nerd. Be cause this, Cortex causes a mysterious explosion in the circus that lived and his sinister goal that he was assigned is rule the world for this. The survivors is some brother who would generate Nina Cortex.

At the age of 6, Cortex enrolled in a high school where he meets N. Brio and the pair were bulled by students. Be cause this, the pair cause an explosion destroing the high school affecting a part of town and the both took shelter in an abandoned plutonium mine.

At the age of 8, Neo along with N. Brio enrolled at the Academy of Evil where mostly Cortex was overwhelmed by director Madame Amberly and was where he met N. Gin. It was here that Cortex developed the Evolvo-Ray and used his pet parrots Victor and Moritz as animal experimentations sending to the 10th Dimension.

In adulthood, Cortex served in the Da Nang Air Base during the Vietnam War. and worked in a community scientific where he is mocked by his colleagues for his outlandish theories and became motivated by the desire to silence his opposition. For their criminal activities, Cortex along with Brio were wanted by military forces and they were forced to take shelter on one from 3 islands. In one of the islands that is his base operations, he knows Uka Uka where he gives instructions on how to take over the world. So he establishes his facilities and capture various animals from the 3 islands to create an army of superanimals.

Crash Bandicoot
In Crash Bandicoot, Cortex enlists the help of Doctor Nitrus Brio to mutate animals into an army of super-soldiers dubbed the Cortex Commandos in his goal to achieve world domination. Cortex uses N. Brio's Evolvo-Ray to mutate the animals and the Cortex Vortex to brainwash them. One of the animals whom Cortex zapped with the Evolvo-Ray became Crash Bandicoot, whom Cortex planned to make the general of the Cortex Commandos. When Crash was put into the Cortex Vortex, it rejects him. This infuriates Cortex, who then tries to capture Crash, but Crash manages to escape from Castle Cortex. Cortex prepares to experiment on Crash's girlfriend, Tawna Bandicoot.

Crash eventually travels all the way from N. Sanity Island back to Castle Cortex to rescue Tawna from Dr. Cortex, just before he could expose her to the Cortex Vortex, and burns down the castle. This is followed by the final boss battle, which takes place on Cortex's Airship. During the battle, Cortex is riding a hoverboard, where he tries to shoot plasma beams at Crash. After being hit enough times, Cortex falls off his hoverboard. Crash rescues Tawna and leaves with her on Cortex's Airship, ending the game.

The 100% completion ending says that Cortex has been unheard of since Crash foiled his plans, but the text "evil geniuses are harder... to squash than cockroaches" hints at his eventual return.

Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back
In Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, immediately after plummeting from his airship by Crash in the first game, Cortex finds himself inside a cavern where he discovers a Master Crystal and comes up with another scheme. During the course of a year, Cortex built a space station with a Cortex Vortex powered by the Master Crystal, and hired N. Gin to become his new right-hand man. Cortex needs an additional 25 Crystals to fully power the Cortex Vortex so that it can have the power of the solar flux needed to enslave the human race. Having lost all of his colleagues on Earth, Cortex decides to recruit Crash under the guise of wanting to save the Earth from a deadly planetary alignment. Cortex has Crash use his Warp Room to access portals to various parts of the world Crystals. There are various points in which Cortex communicates to Crash through the use of a hologram. At one point, Crash's sister, Coco, manages to hack into the system, also appearing as a hologram, and expresses skepticism over Cortex.

Once Crash has collected 20 Crystals, Cortex sends N. Gin to retrieve them. However, Crash refuses to give the Crystals to N. Gin and defeats him in a boss battle. This infuriates Cortex, who then instructs Crash to retrieve the remaining five crystals and hand them over to him. Coco then informs Crash of Cortex's true intentions, but is too late as Cortex flees into outer space with the Crystals. During the final battle, Crash chases Cortex through space as Cortex attempts to reach the Cortex Vortex with the Crystals. Once Cortex has taken enough hits, his jetpack begins to malfunction, leaving Cortex stranded in space. With the power of the Clear Gems, Crash and N. Brio destroy Cortex's space station, causing it to collapse to Earth.

Crash Bandicoot: Warped
In Crash Bandicoot: Warped, set immediately after the ending of Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, Cortex's space station plummets to Earth but ends up destroying Uka Uka's prison. Uka Uka, who is the mastermind behind Cortex's schemes for world domination, furiously confronts Cortex and berates him for his past failures. However, Uka Uka spares Cortex because he indirectly freed him, so both of them plan another way to conquer the world. They recruit Doctor Nefarious Tropy and his Time-Twisting Machine to try and retrieve the Crystals from their original location in time. Both Crash and Coco learn of this plan from Aku Aku, so they decide to embark on a journey and use the Time-Twisting Machine to travel to various eras and collect the Crystals before Cortex is able to.

Once Crash has collected all of the Crystals, he confronts Cortex and Uka Uka in the core of the Time-Twisting Machine. The final battle consists of Cortex and Crash fighting while Aku Aku battles Uka Uka. During the battle, Cortex tries to attack Crash by throwing mines and shooting lasers at him. Whenever Cortex's forcefield is down, Crash can spin into him and knock him into a vacuum leading down to the time machine's core. The first two times this occurs, Uka Uka rescues Cortex, but the third time, Cortex is defeated. In the 100% completion ending, Cortex damages the time machine's core, causing it to implode. Crash, Coco, and Aku Aku manage to escape, but Cortex, Uka Uka, and N. Tropy are sucked into a warp sphere. They are turned into babies, and in another time period, Cortex and N. Tropy fight over Uka Uka.

Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex
In Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex, Cortex designs another space station where he and his goons get scolded by Uka Uka during the reunion. When N. Tropy and N. Gin talks about the super secret weapon, Cortex start remembering, would need a power source which is the final solution and in point which Uka Uka thinks of the Elementals. Neo Cortex presents his secret weapon to the Crash, Coco and Aku Aku which is the Crunch Bandicoot where the same is controlled by the evil scientist. After the first failure, there was a chance to collect the gems to resurrect the elementals. But the last flaw he was going to be eliminated by Uka Uka until he dodged the attack hitting the machinery. With the station about to be destroyed, Cortex along with Uka Uka goes to a capsule that is thrown to the south pole and Cortex is attacked by Uka Uka.

Crash Twinsanity
In Crash Twinsanity, Cortex disguises himself as Coco to make Crash follow him into a trap. At the end of the line, Cortex reveals himself by preparing a marsupial birthday (which is actually a convention of villains). Cortex tries to attack with plasmas and bombs until be hit by green plasmas countless times, but he does not give up and calls the Mecha Bandicoot (controlled by N. Gin). Cortex is very angry at his defeat and starts attacking Crash in which the two fight, find a crystal and try to survive along with Crash. The Evil Twins' appearance makes Cortex start having a complicated life, he is attacked by bees, chased by a bear and imprisoned by Tribesman until saved by Crash. With this, he starts to make a truce with his enemy showing his lab which begins operations to go in the 10th Dimension even have some setbacks and was even used as a surfboard by Crash to go on N. Gin's Battleship. As he was about to prepare everything, Cortex is attacked by Coco when he thinks he kidnapped a crash, Cortex is attacked by Coco when she thinks he kidnapped a Crash, When Coco sabotages the preparations, Cortex needs the help of his niece Nina Cortex to fix it and for that he needs to go to the Academy of Evil. In this institution he gets stuck in a pipe on boiler room, betrayed by Dingodile, faced several complications at the academy to search Nina and fight against Madame Amberly. Cortex already remembered who the Evil Twins are when he was 8 years old. In the 10th dimension, Cortex is once again used by Crash to save Nina, chased by the Evil Crash and is the second to battle against Evil Twins' machine. In ending, Cortex tries to send Crash to another dimension, but he is trapped on brain of same.

Crash of the Titans
In Crash of the Titans, Cortex kidnaps Coco and proceeds t steal a large quantity of Mojo from the Mojo Temple. Cortex plans to use the Mojo to create an army of Titans, who would help him create the Doominator, a giant robot that can destroy the Wumpa Islands. A boss fight against Cortex occurs early on in Episode 4: The Temple of Zoom. After failing to destroy Crash again, Cortex is lambasted by Uka Uka, who replaces him Nina.

Incapacitated for much of Crash's adventure, Cortex cannot watch his Doominator in action. In the ending, Cortex rescues Nina from the collapsing Doominator and praises her for her treachery, but vows retribution.

Crash: Mind Over Mutant
In Crash: Mind Over Mutant, Cortex deposits Nina at his Evil Public School, then reconciles with Brio to invent the NV, a mind control device that presents itself as a personal digital assistant. The device transmits negative Mojo, which is extracted from Uka Uka after Cortex takes him captive.

Cortex later battles Crash inside his new Space Head space station, empowering himself with the use of Brio's mutation formula. Upon losing, Cortex throws a tantrum, causing the Space Head to plummet towards Earth. Cortex returns to normal and escapes the Space Head in a smaller shuttle.

Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time
In Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time, Cortex and Tropy escape from their temporal prison, which creates rifts leading to different dimensions, and they begin a plot to conquer the multiverse. After another defeat to Crash, Cortex prepares to retire until Tropy announces his own plot to reshape the multiverse, which would erase both Crash and Cortex from existence. Cortex, incensed by Tropy's betrayal, teams up with Crash and his group to stop Tropy and seal the dimensional rifts. Following a celebratory trip to a futuristic metropolis, Cortex kidnaps Kupana-Wa − a magical Quantum Mask with time-altering powers − and uses her to travel back in time to his original bid for world domination and avert Crash's creation. However, he is unable to convince his past self to abandon the experiment, and is again defeated by the present Crash. The present Cortex is banished by the Quantum Masks to the end of the universe, where Cortex relaxes on a beach and enjoys the peace and quiet until Uka Uka suddenly appears before him.

A series of collectible Flashback Tapes in the game detail Cortex's training of the then-unnamed Crash prior to his initiation into Cortex's army, and the final tape featuring Crash includes Cortex christening him with the name "Crashworth Cortex the First", or Crash for short. In the subsequent tapes, which take place following Crash's escape from Cortex's castle, Cortex trains Crash's sister, whom he codenames Coco, hires N. Gin, and creates Dingodile as a potential substitute for Coco, who ultimately escapes Cortex's castle under the guise of undertaking another trial.

Crash Team Racing
In Crash Team Racing, Cortex is one of the playable characters. His racing stats are identical to Crash's. Cortex owns a hub called Citadel City, and his home track is Cortex Castle. Because he is a villain, Cortex has Uka Uka as his protective mask.

In the epilogue, Cortex discovers a new element with atomic number 117, which he names "Cortexrulestheworldium".

Crash Nitro Kart
In Crash Nitro Kart, Neo Cortex is a playable character and the leader of Team Cortex, which is named after him.

Crash Bash
In Crash Bash, Aku Aku and Uka Uka hold a competition to decide whether good or evil will reign supreme. Being a villain, Cortex is summoned to be on Uka Uka's team, and participates in various minigames.

Quotes

 * "Defeated again! This is not fair! Maybe I should retire... to a nice, big beach, with a nice big drink. And a woman, with a nice, big... bag of ice for my head!" — Crash Bandicoot: Warped
 * "Get ready to face my wrath, Crash Bandicoot!" — Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex
 * "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Tiny." — Crash Nitro Kart
 * "Crash, I've been like a father to you! I've created you, nursed you... uh... tried to destroy you" — Crash Twinsanity
 * "This is from Tiny. This is from Dingodile. Ripper Roo, you shouldn't have! Pinstripe, how thoughtful! Oh dear, two of the same! Don't worry, I kept the receipt." — Crash Twinsanity
 * "Here's one gift you can return!" — Crash Twinsanity
 * "Meet your brand new, hydraulically operated, twin brother, Mecha Bandicoot!" — Crash Twinsanity
 * "Oh, it's you, Crash. Look, there's something fishy going on around here, and I don't mean the salmon churos. I need to do some sneaking around but I can't, because my head is too big! I mean, look at me. I stick out like a chocolate bar in a swimming pool! I need you to get me something black and slimming, because I don't want my butt to look too big!" — Crash Tag Team Racing
 * "I'm off to do bad things, ta-ta!" — Crash of the Titans
 * "Hey, genius. I can't actually hear you. I'm really far away and I'm flying like a hovercraft or something." — Crash of the Titans
 * "Ugh... there was a piece of lettuce in the urinal! Who eats a sandwich while going to the bathroom?! Seriously.." — Crash: Mind Over Mutant