Neo Cortex

Dr. **Neo Periwinkle Cortex** (ネオ・ペリウィンクル・コルテックス, *Neo Periwinkuru Korutekkusu*), is both a fictional character and antagonist from the *Skylanders* *Crash* series created by Andy Gavin. He is a professional evil scientist born in Peoria, Illinois.

He is a scientific genius stubbornly bent on world domination, usually by kidnapping animals from the wild and turning them into his minions with mutating technology. He views world domination as an act of vengeance for the ridicule he has suffered in the past.

He is known as the creator of his nemesis: Crash Bandicoot. Crash was originally intended to be the general in his army of super animals, but the experiment failed and he couldn't control Crash's mind. The big-headed doctor has had his plans foiled by Crash ever since.

"*Defeated again! This is not fair! Maybe I should retire to a nice, big beach, with a nice big drink, and a woman, with nice, big... bags of ice for my head...*"

—Doctor Neo Cortex.

## Appearance & Biography

*Voice Actor*: Lex Lang (English), Shōzō Iizuka (Japanese), Not Known (Arabic), Not Known (Basque), Not Known (Brazilian), Not Known (Cantonese), Not Known (Catalan), Not Known (Chinese), Not Known (Croatian), Not Known (Danish), Marcel Jonker (Dutch), Not Known (Finnish), Not Known (Filipino), Not Known (French), Not Known (Galician), Not Known (German), Not Known (Greek), Not Known (Hebrew), Not Known (Hong Kong), Not Known (Hungarian), Not Known (Indonesian), Not Known (Italian), Not Known (Korean), Not Known (Mandarin), Not Known (Norwegian), Not Known (Polish), Ricardo Rossatto (Portuguese), Not Known (Romanian), Not Known (Russian), Not Known (Serbian), Not Known (Spanish), Not Known (Swedish), Not Known (Tagalog), Not Known (Thai), Not Known (Valencian), Not Known (Ukrainian), Not Known (Brazilian Portuguese), Not Known (Canadian French), Not Known (European Spanish), Not Known (European Portuguese), Not Known (Latin American Spanish), Not Known (Latin Spanish), Not Known (Spain-Spanish)

### Appearance

Neo appears as a short, typically yellow-skinned, large-headed human with a giant *N* symbol (which according to the official *Crash Bandicoot* website and *Wrath of Cortex* official strategy guide, stands for "Nerd, or more appropriately- Neo") located on his forehead since at the age of 3.

In the Naughty Dog-developed games as well as *Crash Bash* and *Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex*, this N appears to be painted or branded on; since *Crash Nitro Kart*, the N is shown to be metal-plated. He is most often seen wearing a lab coat, with some sort of black clothing underneath, and donning leather gloves and boots.

Cortex is balding, with hair only on the sides of his head and a thick strand on top. Whatever hair he does have is black and frazzled. He is also shown to have a short beard and bushy eyebrows with the same color along with this. His eyelids are prominently red.

The top of his head is typically depicted as being either unusually flattened or nearly-flattened towards the top. Cortex is a person of short stature in most of his games, seldom being taller than Crash in any of them (with the exceptions of *Crash of the Titans, Crash Mind Over Mutant* and to a lesser extent *Crash Bash* and *Crash Twinsanity*).

#### Younger

As a child at the Academy of Evil, Cortex's appearance was largely the same, the biggest difference being a full head of hair, trimmed eyebrows and lacking a beard. The N on his forehead is also depicted as lowercase rather than uppercase.

* Hair Color: Black
* Skin Color: Yellow
* Eye Color: Black
* Age: Not Known
* Birthday: Not Known
* Height: Not Known
* Weight: Not Known

## Personality

"*I ruined the lives of so many, I can't be expected to remember them all...*"

—Dr. Neo Cortex, to Uka Uka.
Cortex embodies many of the classic traits of psychopathy, being short-tempered, reckless, having no apparent conscience (as cited by Doctor Nefarious Tropy in *Crash Twinsanity*), and frequently manipulating others to get what he wants.

Like many stereotypical villainous mad scientists, Cortex holds a grudge against other scientists for ridiculing his outlandish (yet workable) ideas, and was originally driven towards world domination by the desire to prove his colleagues wrong. This no longer seems to be the case, as it is revealed in *Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped* that Cortex is working under the orders of Uka Uka (Aku Aku's evil twin), one of the only two individuals that Cortex fears (the other being Madame Amberly). Although Cortex talks big and acts confident in most of his appearances, he can be shown to become nervous (sometimes downright spineless) when put in the face of extreme and immediate danger (i.e. confronting Uka Uka, running out of ammo while fighting enemies, etc.).

Another notable personality trait is his stubbornness and inability to plan ahead or learn from his mistakes; he often relies on his minion Tiny Tiger to eliminate Crash by himself, despite the fact that Tiny is too incompetent to do so alone. This impulsive behavior is first witnessed in the opening cinematic of *Crash Bandicoot*, in which Cortex refuses to heed the warnings of his then-henchman Doctor Nitrus Brio and tries to make Crash the general of his army, despite numerous past failures. Cortex can become quite irritated or agitated when things don't go his way, especially in *Crash Tag Team Racing*; while most other characters express mild annoyance when Crash fails to perform an errand for them, Cortex scolds and lashes out at him the minute he comes back empty-handed, calling him a "blithering imbecile", "cantankerous twerp" and saying "You're the worst mutation I've ever created!". Mutually supportive relationships with other characters is also evident in the crossover game *Crash Bandicoot Purple: Ripto's Rampage*, in which Doctor Cortex temporarily teams up with Spyro's villain Ripto to destroy both Crash and Spyro, only to start bickering with Ripto at one point.

Cortex is not above lying and deceiving others to fulfill his evil desires, most of which include gathering Crystals to power up his doomsday weapons. He frequently uses the gullible Crash Bandicoot to complete these deeds, most evident in *Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back* and *Crash Tag Team Racing*, claiming in both games to use the weapons for "mass helping people" as he puts it. His egotistical tendencies also cause him to alter facts about his life, claiming himself to be the most popular student in his school, even though in reality he was an object of hatred among many students, one going as far as to toss a dagger in his direction. Cortex's vain side becomes most obvious in *Crash Tag Team Racing*, in which he often calls himself such things as beautiful and pretty. He also owns an airship which he uses from time to time, a possible reference to his inflated ego.

For most of the time, Cortex doesn't care for the lives and feelings of others, caring only for himself and what he wants. While this seems to be the case in most games, the one moment in which Cortex actually shows concern for someone else is in *Crash Twinsanity*, in which at one point his niece, Nina Cortex, is kidnapped by an evil version of Crash. It is at this point clear that Nina is the only living thing that Cortex cares about as well as being one of his only redeeming qualities, with the latter going as far as thoughtlessly putting himself in danger of being mauled by the ferocious Evil Crash during the level "Bandicoot Pursuit". Besides this instance, Cortex is largely unempathetic, seeing others only as tools for his quest in world domination (although presumably he likes N. Gin, Tiny and Dingodile really, as he puts up with them despite their past failings). It is unknown whether Cortex feels any regret for replacing Nina's hands with metallic death-traps, though this is unlikely, given Cortex's psychopathic tendencies.

## Relationships

### Friends/Allies

* Uka Uka
* Doctor Nitrus Brio
* Doctor N. Gin
* Tiny Tiger
* Dingodile
* Doctor Nefarious Tropy
* Papu Papu
* Ripper Roo
* Koala Kong
* Pinstripe Potoroo
* Komodo Bros.
* Dr. Nefarious Tropy
* Nitros Oxide
* Rilla Roo
* N.Trance

### Neutral

* Madame Amberly
* Apo-Apo

### Enemies

* Crash Bandicoot
* Aku Aku
* Crunch Bandicoot
* Tawna Bandicoot
* Penta Penguin
* Ebenezer Von Clutch
* Pasadena O'Possum
* Yaya Panda
* Chick Gizzard Lips
* Stew
* Farmer Ernest
* Carbon Crash
* The Evil Twins
	+ Tikimon
* Nitros Oxide
	+ Willie Wumpa Cheeks
	+ Zam
	+ Zem

## History

### Past

Neo spent his youth as the youngest son in a family of circus clowns. Unlike his family, which loved the spotlight and making people laugh, Cortex spent most of his time reading science books. He was always teased, and at the age of three, had an "N" tattooed on his head for "nerd" by a particularly evil group of circus performers. But soon, the torment stopped, after a "freak" explosion wiped out his entire family, leaving Cortex to fend for himself - though a sibling may have possibly survived, as Cortex's niece, Nina, is well known to him; however, Cortex may have married (or at least been in a relationship) and been Nina's father himself, as in *Twinsanity*, he says *"My daught... err... NIECE!*" - this was when Cortex decided that he would not rest until he ruled the world.

At the age of four, Cortex enrolled into Madame Amberly's  Academy of Evil, a school for evil children. It was here that Cortex met up with his life-long associates, Nitrus Brio and N. Gin. But soon, the torture of bullying caught up with Cortex again, and he and Nitrus Brio decided to sneak out and go to high school, where they thought they would be revered for being the youngest people to ever graduate.

At the age of eight, both Cortex and Brio enrolled in high school. But even here they were mocked by the cruel teenagers, a tradition that became the story of his life. It was also at this age in which Cortex made his very first prototype of the Evolvo Ray on his own, although credit is given to both N. Brio and Cortex. He then made his pet parrots Victor and Moritz be his first test subjects. The experiment went wrong, sending the two twins into the 10th Dimension where they learned skills from the dimension and later returned for revenge on Cortex in *Twinsanity*.

They suffered through high school together until another "freak" explosion blew up the entire building, as well as most of the surrounding town. By some amazing coincidence, they were far away from the detonation, two miles underground in an abandoned plutonium mine.

They decided to split and went on a world-smashing rampage. The terrible twosome, calling themselves the Cortex Commandos, left in their wake a trail of charred earth so monumental that they became international criminals. Seeking sanctuary from the various forces against them, they found three deserted islands off of the coast of Australia and set up shop. Soon, realizing that his puny body couldn't crush a fly, Cortex figured the only way to take over the world was to create an army that would do his bidding for him. In memory of his and Brio's "glory days", Cortex named them the Cortex Commandos. In a moment of diabolical genius, Brio came up with the ideas for the Evolv-O-Ray, an energy force capable of mutating common animals into intelligent super-beasts; and the Cortex Vortex, a device that trains the mutated animals to obey their master. Cortex, however, did not see one small problem with the machine.

## External links

* Dr. Neo Cortex *Wikipedia*
* Dr. Neo Cortex *Bandipedia*
* Dr. Neo Cortex *Crash Mania*
* Dr. Neo Cortex *Heroes Wiki*
* Dr. Neo Cortex *Skylanders Wiki*
* Dr. Neo Cortex *Spyro Wiki*
* Dr. Neo Cortex *Nintendo Wikia*
* Dr. Neo Cortex *Villains Wiki*