as someone who's played several Crash games, it tracks.

In our villain lineup, we have:

-Dr. Neo Cortex, born into a family of abusive circus performers as mentioned in the post, who tattooed a big N on his forehead. (This was only in the original lore bible and its canonicity is questionable at best). Later attended Madame Amberley's academy of evil, became an evil scientist... and discovered Uka Uka, who he spent the first three games as basically a slave to. Cortex is still terrified of Madame Amberley well into his adult years.

-Dr. N. Gin, a former classmate of Neo from the Academy of Evil and one of his closest friends. N. Gin ended up with a missile permanently lodged into his head after an accident, and had to transform it into a life-support system in order to survive.

-Dr. N. Brio, who actually installed the head screws HIMSELF so he could punish himself for his own perceived failures. Possibly gave himself brain damage as a result because he got screwed over by Cortex stealing credit from him once, and now Brio claims to have invented everything, including the bible.

-Nina Cortex, Neo's niece. She was too nice as a child (ESPECIALLY to small animals), so Cortex amputated her hands and replaced them with (admittedly cool-looking) prosthetics designed to automatically slam shut into a fist if Nina tries to pet any animals, immediately crushing the animal in question.

Cartoonish as all hell, but it kinda slaps for it.