>LOADING ENTRY OBJ_BRIO.ENT_ID?4D4158-3

HANDLE: DR. NITRUS "UNCLE" BRIO, Ph.D
AGE: 54
LOCATION: UNDERGROUND LAB, N. SANITY ISLAND
SPECIALIZATION: BIOTECHNOLOGY & MORPHOGENETICS
ALIGNMENT: CHAOTIC NEUTRAL
AFFILIATIONS: TEAM BANDICOOT, DOCTOR ROO, KOMODO BROS.LIKES: LEARNING, BAD JOKES, BEING PRODUCTIVE, CREEPY CRAWLY CRITTERS, LAUGHTER, CRASH, COCO, TAWNA, MIXOLOGY, PUPPETRY, THE BLUES, FEELING APPRECIATED, PICTURES OF SAD CLOWNSDISLIKES: NEO CORTEX & AFFILIATES, THE GOVERNMENT (& MOST FORMS OF AUTHORITY), COMPUTERS, THE UNEXPLAINABLE (MAGIC!), BEING TOUCHED, BEING TOLD WHAT TO DO, SENSELESS CRUELTY, BULLSHIT, COWARDICE, HIMSELFCHARACTERISTICS: ECCENTRIC, GOOFY, SHEEPISH, SCATTERBRAINED, NEUROTIC, PARANOID, DISTRUSTFUL, MANIC-DEPRESSIVE, MISANTHROPIC, JADED (BUT NOT OVERLY CALLOUS), SHADY, DUBIOUS SENSE OF RIGHT AND WRONG, SELF-DEPRECATING, GUILT-RIDDEN, STUBBORN, STRONG-WILLED, CARING (TOWARDS THOSE HE CONSIDERS FRIENDS), STRONG PATERNAL INSTINCTS

SO IS THIS CANON-DIVERGENT?

KINDA. While Mind Over Mutant, It's About Time, and On The Run each affirm that our favorite little man in green has returned to CORTEX's side, this BRIO is as he was last seen within the Naughty Dog continuity: self-proclaimed sworn enemy of NEO CORTEX and all affiliated parties, and just a holo-transmission away if the bandicoots ever feel like teaming up, but otherwise staying out of sight, up to who knows what on his own."UNCLE" BRIO is not a BRIO of the past, who simply has yet to progress to the events of these games, but a BRIO who's been living quietly in your PLAYSTATION since 1999, inhabiting an archived world that's persisted quietly past the events of CTR untouched by the sweaty, overworked hands of game developers, and uninterrupted by the twists and turns their divine intervention might otherwise bring.With the exception of being dragged to the Academy of Evil (because honestly, the notion of children going to evil school is too funny to pass up) some time after he and CORTEX first ran away together, this instance of N. BRIO only incorporates canon from the Naughty Dog-era titles and their supplemental materials, including this particular draft of the first game's production bible seen below. But beyond that, be warned that the rest of UNCLE BRIO'S character is comprised chiefly of "shit I just made up and thought it would make for a fun character."

MAJOR POINTS - HEADCANONS EDITION

BRIO feels a deep sense of paternal fondness towards CRASH, COCO, and TAWNA. The EVOLV-O-RAY project was the only thing he'd felt truly passionate about in years; he was invested in raising the mutants to be strong and intelligent and enabling them to thrive from the very beginning.Despite his best efforts to maintain a professional bad-guy attitude, he couldn't help but grow attached to his brainchildren over the five years he spent observing and caring for them almost singlehandedly at CORTEX CASTLE (CORTEX wasn't about to spend his precious time sweeping marsupial dung!). He spent a long time trying to suppress this sentimentality, and some complicated feelings of inadequacy and guilt as their creator have kept him afraid to delve deeper. But without CORTEX bearing down on him, he's finally free to start learning to work through it all.

BRIO was convinced by TAWNA to leave CORTEX and turn his life around after she reached out to him and helped him realize CORTEX wasn't his friend, and that it didn’t have to be this way. He was stubborn (and afraid of that reality) and tried to brush her off, but being shown real compassion for the first time since he was a child started doing funny things to his head, and soon his eyes began to open.Everything clicked the moment he found himself hurtling out that window; to CORTEX, he was just as expendable and devoid of personhood as the mutants were. But he'd always known the mutants could be so much more, just given the chance... and so could he.The way he sees it, she saved his life and he owes her more than he could ever hope to repay. A lot of his resolve to better himself comes from wanting to do it for her — she once told him that’s all she wants from him.(This headcanon is inspired by THIS tiny little excerpt from TAWNA's page in the same production bible revision referenced earlier):

Being indoctrinated into evil as a vulnerable, impressionable child left BRIO with a skewed moral compass; he's lost and trying to find his way, and often struggles to tell right from wrong. Even so, he does have a pronounced distaste for what he perceives as senseless, unwarranted cruelty, (cruelty he believes to be deserved is another story, though...) and he's more than happy to help the bandicoots in their efforts to thwart evil. But he's still kind of a shady guy, and sometimes he relapses into old habits. BRIO is always scheming, and while not always outright evil, his schemes often err more towards ethically questionable than not. His lab is not a place for the faint of heart.

BRIO absolutely despises CORTEX and has vowed to never return to him — he’s grown a backbone since CRASH 1 and isn’t about to let anyone push him around again. His main goal for the foreseeable future is to permanently neutralize CORTEX through any means necessary.He suffers from an unhealthy obsession with his former abuser and getting even with the doctor for all those years of mistreatment. Even though he's "free" from life under CORTEX's thumb, the doctor still haunts his psyche to a degree that prevents him from really feeling free; so much of his life revolved around the man that he struggles now to find a sense of purpose that doesn't connect back to CORTEX in some way or another.

This version of N. BRIO doesn’t have the massive ego seen in Mind Over Mutant (on the contrary, he has a very poor sense of self-worth), but he IS obsessed with how others see him and his work. He is desperate to prove himself as capable to any naysayer, stuck in the belief that his value lies solely in his usefulness to others. At his core, BRIO wants to be loved — seeking validation for his accomplishments is just a cry for help in the only language he knows.

OTHER HEADCANONS

  • Being an instance of N. BRIO specific to the Naughty Dog games, Uncle Brio speaks in the voice provided by Brendan O'Brien in those games, hence the goofy East Coast accent.

  • BRIO was born in Albany, NY to second-generation immigrants from East Europe and the Levant. He is mixed Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jewish. Though not much of a spiritual person, he has been reconnecting with Jewish culture and practices on his own in his older years, seeking a sense of connection to the family he left behind as a child and may never see again at this point.

  • BRIO is a transgender man. He began identifying himself as a boy around his "tween" years, and it was deciding to take medical transition into his own hands through the power of (mad) science that really kicked his morphogenetic research into gear.

  • BRIO is neurodivergent; he is on the autism spectrum and has severe ADHD.

  • BRIO is mentally ill, but he is not any worse or more dangerous of a person because of it. Without getting too much into specifics, trauma has left an impact on the old man, and he struggles at times to keep himself completely grounded. He is prone to experiencing paranoid delusions, and his memory is woefully unreliable. He's painfully aware of his condition, but he can't really stop it from affecting him and he never feels completely sure if things really are as they seem to him. Rest assured, his episodes do far more harm to him than to they do to anyone else.

  • BRIO has many skills and hobbies he's picked up over the years, especially in recent times as he's tried to find ways to occupy himself following his liberation from CORTEX. These include tending bar and mixing drinks (of course!), playing music (harmonica, banjo, bass guitar, & accordion), toymaking, puppetry, and the fine art of balloon animals.

PERIPHERAL CHARACTERS (HE'S NOT ALONE!)

A handcrafted muppet of UNCLE BRIO's own likeness and something of a tool for expressing himself. BRIO navigates much of his own conflicting thoughts and feelings through conversations with LI'L DOC, and it's difficult to explain when or why, but sometimes BRIO just finds it easier to speak to others through the puppet.
LI'L DOC is not a split personality or anything like that, just a coping mechanism. But a FUN coping mechanism! Look at his googly eyes!