What A Crash Bandicoot Character Can Teach Us About Toxic Relationships
Video game platforming villains are repetitive, predictable clowns
Much as I love them — and I do — these characters do the same thing every single time. They kidnap a princess or steal a MacGuffin or attempt to seize power in some kingdom, and they never. Change. Course.
Of course I’m mainly talking about the ones who appear in more than one game, so I can’t be too hard on the Lord Fredriks or the Sorceresses of the world, however one-note they may be. You know who comes to mind when I say “platformer villain” — Bowser, Eggman, Dr. Wily, King K. Rool…all of these jerks try the same thing over and over, and they just never seem to truly give up, even when their skin melts off in a pool of lava.
It’s sort of an inevitability of the genre, you could say; most platformers don’t have super involved stories, so when you need to crank out an Excuse Plot for the ninth installment of your jump’n’run franchise, you usually don’t feel the need to pull out all the stops in the villain department. You stick with what’s familiar, with what the fans will recognize. It’s why the Mario series never branches out with new bad guys anymore. It’s why we’re still seeing Dr. Wily after all of these years. It works, people like these characters, so the developers keep on using ‘em! No problem, right?
Well, no, not really. I mean, I freaking love Bowser. And when King K. Rool was replaced by a walrus copy of himself, that decision was met with cold disappointment. Usually, there’s no problem with using the same villain over and over again — not at all.
But the way the Crash Bandicoot series does this is…interesting. On the surface it follows the same practice as your Marios and your Mega Men: you’ve got Neo Cortex as the main villain in nearly every game, with a rotating cast of misfits serving as henchmen for boss fights. But there’s one dork who stands out as the one guy who called it quits, seemingly, for good. Of course, I’m talking about Dr. Nitrus Brio.
You may not remember if you haven’t played the games in a while, but this guy was once just about as important as Cortex. The two doctors stood side-by-side and worked together to create crazy mad scientist stuff like deranged kangaroos and gun-toting weasels, and Brio even served as the penultimate boss in Crash Bandicoot instead of siccing another mutant on the poor bandicoot. The problem was that Cortex never really seemed to respect the contributions that Brio made to their work — he took credit for the Evolvo-Ray, the device that mutated all of Cortex and Brio’s minions as well as Crash Bandicoot himself. Brio never had the self-esteem to step up and claim ownership despite the fact that he invented the thing.
Fast forward to Crash 2: Cortex Strikes Back. We see Brio again, via hologram, and he finally airs his grievances out loud to a very confused Crash. We learn that he invented the Evolvo-Ray, and that he’s now developed an intense hatred for Cortex as a direct result. Brio gets his revenge on Cortex by having Crash gather up the gems, and the frenemies use their energy to destroy his spaceship.
And that…was the end of N. Brio’s story.
Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped, the most popular game in the franchise, did not feature N. Brio in the slightest. Crash Team Racing doesn’t even offer him as a racer. His and Cortex’s union was now just a memory, like a middle school friendship that fizzled out before ninth grade. It’s strange, too, because CTR had even brought back some characters who had been long abandoned, like Papu Papu and Pinstripe. But they didn’t think to include the guy who created Crash?
The thing about the Crash Bandicoot series is that villain characters are rarely retired. You’d be hard pressed to find a game after Crash 1 that doesn’t feature Tiny Tiger, Dingodile or N. Gin in some way, to say nothing of Cortex himself. So why did this once-prominent figure go gently into the night? Why did Naughty Dog throw him away like a broken beaker?
Well, I believe that Nitrus Brio was less a villain in this scenario, and moreso a victim. A victim of a toxic relationship with Dr. Neo Cortex, who stole his inventions and never showed even a modicum of respect for his colleague. That’s why after settling the score in Crash 2, Brio removed himself from the situation — there was no longer anything to be gained by involving himself in the affairs of Cortex or Crash or Nitrous Oxide because he’d had enough. He’d done everything there was to do at this point — playing the villain? Didn’t go well. Siding with Crash? Worked out pretty great, but now that was done. Brio never really had a reason to return to center stage of a Crash game, so like any autonomous human being would do, he decided to end his involvement with all parties.
This might seem silly given that, well, this is a silly series — a series where most of the villains you fight are mutated animals who speak with accents or broken English. A series where you collect fruits to get extra lives like you’re some kind of ape with a tie. In other words, it’s a cartoony platformer — the developers Naughty Dog probably weren’t intending to include subtext of an abusive partnership, were they?
I would argue that this doesn’t matter.
Regardless of authorial intent, N. Brio’s story is inspiring. Have you ever been friends with someone who never seemed to care about you or your accomplishments? Has anyone ever taken credit for something you’ve done, whether that be at work or in your personal life? N. Brio was in a situation just like this, and he…just left. No coming back for round three, not even coming back for the fun kart racer where even the Japanese bootleg character was invited! Why would he want to race go-karts with the man who stole his inventions and wasted years of his life? No, as far as Naughty Dog was concerned, that was where Brio’s tale ended. That was the last we were to see of the Simpsons-looking scientist, and that was for the best. Perhaps he went on to become a bartender, or a disc jockey, or even a well-regarded inventor in his own right — as long as he was away from Cortex, I’m sure he was happy.
It’s just too bad that the other developers didn’t pick up on this.
Now, I know: this is all just fan interpretation to begin with. There’s no real evidence that Naughty Dog strictly intended for Crash 2: Cortex Strikes Back to be Brio’s final appearance for the rest of time (though I could argue that leaving him out of the all-star kart racer was pretty damning). This is just how I’ve come to understand the character over the years, but regardless of what I thought or wanted, N. Brio would go on to appear in several games after the Crash Bandicoot series left the hands of Naughty Dog.
And I think that’s kind of a shame.
The very first post-ND game was Crash Bash, and wouldn’t you know it — Brio’s back, aligned with Cortex once again like nothing ever happened. Yeah, it’s a party game, but it still has a story justifying its events in-universe, and with only eight playable characters it would have been so easy to throw in Pinstripe or Komodo Joe or the stupid hog from the first game to take his place on the roster. But as if to intentionally poke a hole in my entire theory, Eurocom reintroduced N. Brio and deleted any kind of progression he might have made in his past two appearances. He was Cortex’s buddy once again, fighting for the evil side! Woohoo!
Next was Twinsanity, and this game has the decency at the very least not to partner him up with Cortex again. Instead, he works with Dr. N. Tropy to find…treasure, or something, and gets defeated by Spyro (this was a weird game). It’s not an awful portrayal, but frankly unnecessary. Why is Brio involving himself with these rejects again? When has he ever been motivated by wealth? Didn’t this game have enough villains already? At the end of the day, I can only be thankful that he and Cortex weren’t buddy-buddy again — although partnering up with someone who was still allied with Cortex is…an odd strategic decision.
Brio’s final appearance, and likewise the series’s final appearance for about eight years was in Mind over Mutant, an even weirder game than Twinsanity that has South Park cutscenes and self-aware humor. For once I believe he was actually done a little bit of justice. He’s back with Cortex, but this is actually portrayed as an anomalous development in the dynamic of the characters — it’s made clear that Cortex and Brio were not on good terms prior to the events of this game. He’s gone slightly mad like any good scientist should be, constantly taking credit for things he didn’t invent in a humorous over-correction of his previous passive nature. It’s also pretty funny that drinking from strange beakers, something he did in his original boss fight for practical purposes, is now something that he just does for fun. It could just be his portrayal by the always-fantastic Maurice LaMarche, but I really like this take on Brio. If they couldn’t leave him be, at least they gave him a continuation that made sense for his character.
Personally I tend to ignore Brio’s appearances in later games (but I don’t ignore the games themselves — how does that work?). I think his story was told best in the span of two games, and also by nature of his absence in the following two. There’s no need to bring back every single character who’s ever appeared, whether you’re in charge of a dumb video game franchise or an HBO original series, just because you want to have fan service and continuity nods in a shallow attempt at recreating the good old days. A healthy balance of old and new is always best, and if something seems to be a relic of the past, maybe that’s for a reason.
So what can we learn from Dr. Nitrus Brio? I think it’s important to realize that if you find yourself in a toxic or abusive relationship, whether it be personal or professional, it’s always best to leave that relationship behind. Of course, this is sometimes hard for those who rely on their abusers for financial support. Some people don’t even know that they’re in an unhealthy situation until it’s too late. Whatever the case, it can be a complicated, sticky mess; but at least N. Brio shows that if you’re given a clear out, you should just take it. That’s advice that I live by, and N. Brio deserves all the credit for that.
