Cryro

Cryro is the friendship between Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon from the Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon and Skylanders fandoms.

Canon
Crash and Spyro have a long history that dates back to before they officially crossed over. See 'Behind the Scenes' below for more information.

Games
Excluding any and all cameo appearances and Easter Eggs, the first official crossovers were in Crash Bandicoot Purple: Ripto's Rage and Spyro Orange: The Cortex Conspiracy - know as Crash Fusion and Spyro Fusion in PAL regions - a pair of games that told the same story from either the perspective of Crash or Spyro respectively. While they were at first tricked into fighting each other, they agree to work together to defeat their enemies - Cortex and Ripto - who have teamed up. Upon the villains' defeat, Crash and Spyro said their goodbyes and went back to their home worlds.

The next crossover would happen over a decade later in Skylanders: Imaginators, for which Spyro was a character in. In this game, Crash Bandicoot was added to the Skylanders roster as a Brawler Sensei. Additionally, adding him to the game would unlock a bonus level called Thumpin' Wumpa Islands - a music level based on the world of Crash Bandicoot. If playing as Crash, certain characters - including Spyro - will change their dialogue slightly. In one instance, Aku Aku refers to Spyro as an old friend of Crash, although the Spyro in the Skylanders canon is considered to be a different character to the previous one.

Spyro would later repay the favor in Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled, where he was added as a playable character in a later update. While Crash nor Spyro interact with each other in-game, there were several promotional videos on Twitter depicting the two racing each other.

TV Shows
Crash would go on to make numerous appearances in the Netflix series Skylanders: Academy which featured Spyro as one of the main characters. In Episode 11, Crash Landing, Spyro - along with the other Skylanders - are tasked with finding a dark relic that will allow Master Eon to create a portal to send Crash back to his home-world after ending up in Skylands. Throughout their mission, Spyro begins to fanboy over Crash and attempts to imitate him. At one point, Spyro is captured by Chompy Mage and dragged away. Chompy Mage recognizes that Spyro idolizes Crash and says that he has a 'mancrush' on the bandicoot. Afterwards when Kaos arrives, Crash and the rest of the Skylanders turn up and Crash proceeds to pummel the villains. Spyro apologizes to his friends for his obsessive behavior. Back at the academy, Eon opens a portal that will send Crash home; after Spyro expresses his admiration for Crash's heroics, the group say their goodbyes with a hug and Crash enters the portal.

Although Crash returns in Episode 34, Days of Future Crash, during the events of this episode Spyro has been corrupted into Dark Spyro and thus behaves differently. Even so they only interact on a few occasions, such as when Dark Spyro questions Crash about Wumpan Puzzle Boxes, to which he responds that he has never heard of them.

Crash appears again in Episode 38, Raiders of the Lost Arkus, Part 2. When the Skylanders are preparing to defend the Core of Light from Kaos and the Conquetron, Spyro has an idea to go to the Wumpa Islands and ask for Crash's help. They do so and Crash stands by their side as they fight Kaos. Crash and Spyro rarely interact in this episode directly, however.

Behind the Scenes
As both of their creators - NaughtyDog and Insomniac Games - worked close together at Universal, both teams would support each others development. This would lead to them adding in demos of each others games when a new title would release from them during the late 90's to help cross-promote the series'. This was how the Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon relationship effectively started.

Even after NaugtyDog and Insomniac Games departed from Universal Interactive, the publisher continued to cross-promote the two series side by side during the early 2000's. This eventually led to the complete crossover Crash Bandicoot Purple: Ripto's Rage and Spyro Orange: The Cortex Conspiracy being developed.

When Crash Bandicoot returned with the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, many fans discovered that the demo cheat code for Spyro the Dragon still worked on the main menu when highlighting Crash Bandicoot: Warped. While this was treated as an Easter Egg at first, a later update added the 2018 E3 trailer for the Spyro Reignited Trilogy whenever the code was correctly implemented.

Fanon
Given the long history between the two, Crash and Spyro are arguably the most popular crossover pairing in either fandom. The two are regularly seen together on friendly terms, usually depicted in their classic designs. Artwork of them in their Skylanders designs is incredibly rare. Artwork that depicts the two as a slash ship are even rarer.

There are many fanfictions of the two working together, mostly with the assistance of other mascot characters from the same era.

Fandom
FAN FICTION
 * Crash/Spyro (Crash Bandicoot/Spyro the Dragon crossover) on FanFiction.net
 * Crash/Spyro (Skylanders; Gameverse) on FanFiction.net

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