Fake Crash

Fake Crash is a doppelgänger of Crash Bandicoot and a recurring character from the Crash Bandicoot series, debuting in Crash Bandicoot: Warped as a joke character, he then appeared in most games since.
==Appearances==
===Games===
====Crash Bandicoot: Warped====
Fake Crash is an easter egg in Warped. To see him, a player must get all the crystals and all the gems, and defeat Cortex on the player's save file. Then, he appears dancing (obviously parodying Crash's Dance) in some levels.
Fake Crash can easily be spotted in:
*Level 1 - Toad Village, on the lawn of the 3rd house on the right.
*Level 5 - Makin' Waves, on a small island near the end of the level.
*Level 8 - Hog Ride, seen dancing on the left side of the road (PAL version only).
====Crash Team Racing====
Fake Crash appears as an unlockable character. He can be unlocked in CTR by winning the Purple Gem Cup in adventure mode.
The Japanese version includes a bonus video with Crash racing against his fake counterpart, in which the two bandicoots show a fierce competitive streak with one another. Fake Crash is demonstrated to be jealous of Crash's fame and success, and constantly training to race him. In the end the two racers are shown to be evenly matched, both in their speed and their bad luck.
===Other major appearances ===
Fake Crash appears as an exclusive secret character in the Japanese version of Crash Bash. To play as him, the player must press + + Left + Down at the same time in the character select screen. Fake Crash's icon will appear at the bottom of the screen as a neutral character. However, this only works in the Japanese version, and in Versus and Tournament modes only. His appearance is different in this game, as a slightly modified version of Crash's model.
Fake Crash shares the same abilities as Crash and Coco. His addition in the Japanese version allows a third player to choose a character of the same type, whereas the other types only have two characters available. Fake Crash cannot be selected in Adventure Mode, and the CPU will never select him.
He makes one more appearance in the Japanese bonus video, where he appears along with Crash and a live action host to show off secrets from all four previous Crash games.
In N-Tranced, Fake Crash plays a major role instead of being a joke character, and was given an origin story. At the start of the game, N. Tropy uses a portal to kidnap Crash, Crunch and Coco, with the intent to have N. Trance hypnotize them. He succeeds in capturing Coco and Crunch, however upon trying to kidnap Crash, Aku Aku grabs Crash halfway through the portal. In The ensuing tug of war, Crash is seemingly duplicated, with the real Crash being saved, and Fake Crash being kidnapped in his place. Coco, Crunch and Fake Crash are then hypnotized by N. Trance, with Fake Crash being mistaken for the real Crash.
Fake Crash later appears as the third boss, confronting Crash in a trap-filled Egyptian tomb. In this boss fight he has 4 hit points. Crash outsmarts him by luring him into the various traps and snaps him out of N. Trance's brainwashing. After being defeated, Fake Crash becomes Crash's ally and helps him defeat N. Trance by pulling a lever to pour lava on him during his boss fight. Though he is mistake-prone, and will pour lava on Crash if he enters the attack zone himself. In the final ending, Fake Crash returns to take a group photo of Crash, Coco, Crunch, and the defeated N. Tropy.
Fake Crash appears in Crash Nitro Kart as an unlockable character and the fourth member of Team Bandicoot. In the console version, he is unlocked by getting 50 or more consecutive boosts on a track in adventure mode as Team Cortex, and in the handheld versions, he's unlocked by going off-road on the track Out of Time and finding him stranded by a campfire. His console version has terrible stats to reflect his status as a joke character. Somewhat notably, his victory podium animation for coming in first will feature him speaking, as he shouts "Me!?" in disbelief at his victory.
In Ripto's Rampage, he appears in Dragon Castles in a secret room in the area's second pit, chained to the ground. When the player talks to him he says nothing. Crash says nothing either. His Trading Card will be close by him, and has the highest card value. Unlike his player sprite in N-Tranced, which is merely a recoloured Crash sprite, his sprite in Ripto's Rampage is simply a compressed pre-render of his Nitro-Kart model.
In Boom Bang, Fake Crash appears as an unlockable character after completing the Desert board. Unusually, he wears a small patch on his pants in this game, suggesting they may be worn from overuse. Despite being playable in Adventure mode, his only story appearance is in the final cutscene where he's included in a reaction shot of the characters watching Crash reach the Super Big Power Crystal.
In N. Sane Trilogy, Fake Crash was included again as an easter egg in all three games. To see him, the player must earn 100% on their save file. Afterwards, Fake Crash will appear dancing in some levels, all his levels appearances can be seen below.
Game 	Level 	Crash Bandicoot	N. Sanity BeachHeavy Machinery
Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back	The PitsCrash CrushHang EightRuinationCold Hard CrashRock ItTotally Fly	 	
Crash Bandicoot: Warped 	Toad VillageMakin' WavesHog RideArea 51?Future Tense 	 	
Fake Crash returns as a playable character in the Nitro-Fueled, complete with new skins for him to unlock. Both the Cortex Castle and Nitro Court stages now have tapestries of Fake Crash dressed as a jester among tapestries of Cortex, N. Brio, and Nina. Like in the original game, Fake Crash is unlocked after completing the Purple Gem Cup. As the premise of the Back N. Time Grand Prix, Fake Crash stole and altered time with N. Tropy's staff, which resulted in a alternate past that the track takes place in where the dinosaurs and cavemen resemble Fake Crash. In addition, his meddling with time also transformed Crash and Coco into babies In a similar manner to Cortex and N. Tropy at the end of Warped, who were all added as playable racers who can be purchased at the Pit Stop.
Fake Crash appears in It's About Time. He, along with Fake Coco, are playable characters in the game's multiplayer modes. He is also an unlockable skin for Crash in the main story mode. In addition, he can be found dancing on a platform over the river towards the end of the level Run It Bayou, as well as its Dingodile timeline counterpart No Dillo Dallying. Unlike in previous games, he always appears here regardless of completion percentage. Also, a balloon float of Fake Crash dressed as a jester can be found in the level Off Beat.
===Spin-off titles/other games appearances===
Fake Crash appeared in Skylanders: Imaginators as the main villain of the Thumpin' Wumpa Islands special level. Fake Crash hijacked Cortex's Matrix Chamber, and terrorized the Wumpa Islands by disrupting the island's rhythms, sending Bad Vibes through his odd dance moves and lack of rhythm, which threatened to tear the islands apart.
Fake Crash is shown to antagonize Crash, Cortex, and the rest of the Skylanders, battling them in a boss fight when they attempt to stop him. He uses the chamber as a robotic suit to destroy the heroes on his dangerous dance floor. Once he is defeated, the Cortex Matrix Chamber breaks down, putting Fake Crash's destruction of the islands to an end.
In On the Run!, Fake Crash reappears on the side of evil once again in On the Run!, as one of the many bosses for Crash or Coco to defeat.
He attacks by using the player's own methods against them, throwing Boom Berries at them, firing bazookas at them and throwing serums to make toxic puddles on the ground. He can also sometimes deflect Boom Berries thrown by the player by spinning. Like all bosses, he is defeated by chasing him and throwing Boom Berries at him to reduce his health bar to zero, then using the Portal Weapons crafted beforehand to send him back to his own dimension.
===Other media ===
In Dance! Then Jump! Na Daibōken, Fake Crash makes an appearance in chapter 7, Panic at the Snow Mountain!!. Although the character does not physically appear, Cortex disguises himself as Crash to trick Polar into telling him where the Power Stone is, and the costume resembles Fake Crash. Cortex even does Fake Crash's signature dance in an attempt to convince Polar that he's the real deal.
==Characteristics==
===Physical Appearance===
As Fake Crash's name implies, he looks like an imitation of the original Crash Bandicoot, except with huge bushy eyebrows, tiny pupils, a large round nose, longer ears and big teeth (which can be either crooked or sharp). He also has a rather goofy voice. Some iterations (CNK, Purple and On the Run!) depicted him with a green pair of pants rather than blue.
===Personality===
Fake Crash is a lighthearted, goofy and unintelligent character, just like the original Crash, but exaggerated to a greater extreme. He often attempts to copy his arch-rival, Crash, creating his own version of the Crash dance and pretending to fall asleep in his kart just like Crash does in Nitro-Fueled. He isn't 100% committed to being good or evil, with his alignment varying depending on the situation, even working with Crash and friends from time to time.
==Behind-the-scenes information==
Despite common belief, Fake Crash's first appearance wasn't in Crash Bandicoot: Warped, or even in Crash Bandicoot: Dance! Then Jump! Na Daibōken. Rather, the character was initially created and used in a Japanese advertising campaign for Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnGMbZPH0DY
In the series, there is no common depiction of Fake Crash's origins. It's implied in Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced that Fake Crash was accidentally created after N. Tropy and N. Trance tried to abduct Crash Bandicoot by sucking him into a portal. As Aku Aku pulls Crash out, Fake Crash appears out of nowhere at N. Tropy and N. Trance's side of the portal, with them believing they captured Crash.Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced - N. Tropy: "N. Trance, you blundering idiot! That was not Crash! It was some sort of... Fake Crash!" N. Trance: "How was I supposed to know? He fooled you too." Some promotional material for N-Tranced claims Fake Crash was created by N. Trance, possibly in reference to the aforementioned events;https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Game-Boy-Advance/Crash-Bandicoot-2-N-Tranced-266507.html the manual for the game states that Fake Crash was made by accident in a "science-experiment gone wrong", also alluding to the game's events. Crash Bandicoot: On the Run! states that Fake Crash was created by Neo Cortex to confuse Crash and his allies.
===Trivia===
*Fake Crash is one of the two characters that has been evil, good, and neutral, the other being Penta Penguin. He is evil in Crash Team Racing and its remake (as evidenced by Uka Uka being his invincibility mask), Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced while being hypnotized and Crash Bandicoot: On the Run!. He is good in Crash Nitro Kart and Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced after being free from his hypnotism. He is neutral in Crash Bandicoot: Warped, Crash Bash, Crash Boom Bang! and Crash Bandicoot Purple: Ripto's Rampage. In Thumpin' Wumpa Islands, while he is the main antagonist, he doesn't seem to be evil, and merely entered the Cortex Matrix Chamber out of curiosity, and caused trouble out of stupidity.
*In his original appearance in Crash Bandicoot: Warped, Fake Crash's ears were pointed sideways, as opposed to Crash's ears which point further upward. Fake Crash's further appearances until N. Sane Trilogy did not have this distinction.
*Fake Crash has a more polished in-game kart model in the PAL and JP versions of the original Crash Team Racing compared to the NTSC version.
*During the beta version of the Crash Team Racing credits, Fake Crash claimed he was the real deal. He appeared in The Jerry Springer Show, where a DNA test was held. It ended when Fake Crash tried to dance and a brawl broke out.
*As seen in the Japanese Crash Team Racing bonus video, Fake Crash's exercise routine includes jumps, sit-ups, and carrying a pair of giant tires.
*He is the only playable character in Crash Nitro Kart not to appear in any of the promotional desktops, or adventure mode. 
**This is brought up again in Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled, where his mumbled speech when winning actually forms coherent sentences like "They said it was impossible!" and "You like me. You really, really like me. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you."
* In Crash Nitro Kart, if Fake Crash comes 2nd or 3rd in a cup tournament, his legs will clip through the podium. If he is 2nd, his shoes will also clip at the bottom.
* In Fake Crash's boss fight in Crash Bandicoot 2: N-Tranced, the music played in the background is similar to the music played in Rings of Power.
*He was intended to cameo in Crash Twinsanity, where he, along with Crunch, were going to be stranded on a small piece of land near N. Sanity Island. This was cut due to time constraints.
*If the player listens closely in areas affected by Fake Crash's bad vibes in Thumpin' Wumpa Islands, his faint singing can be heard.
*On November 18, 2020, the official Crash Bandicoot: On the Run Twitter account was updated to announce Fake Crash's appearance in the game. Changes included renaming the account to Trash Bandicoot: On the Run and all posts having poor grammar, suggesting that Fake Crash had taken over the account. These changes lasted for 24 hours before they were reverted.
==Additional information==
==Gallery==
Fakecrashkart.png|Promotional art of Fake Crash in his kart for CTR: Crash Team Racing.
Bash jp mascots.jpg|A Fake Crash mascot suit at the Japanese launch for Crash Bash.
Fake crash cutscene.png|Fake Crash's hiding spot in the GBA version of Crash Nitro Kart.
Fake+crash 5ad080 6313543.jpg|Fake Crash dancing in Makin' Waves in the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy.
OTR fake autograph.jpg|Fake Crash's autograph from his takeover of the Crash Bandicoot: On the Run! Twitter account.
== References==
de:Fake Crash
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fr:Faux Crash
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ja:ニセクラッシュ
pt:Fake Crash
pt-br:Crash Falso
ru:Фейк Краш
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