According to a later version of the "Project Wombat" developer bible for Crash Bandicoot (this version was given to a fan by the game's producer David Siller in 2015; an earlier version of it was officially published in 2018 in the book "The Crash Bandicoot Files: How Willy the Wombat Sparked Marsupial Mania"), Dr. Neo Cortex's backstory describes how he and Dr. Nitrus Brio when they were younger destroyed their high school by tampering with the physics department's test nuclear power plant. Afterwards, they traveled the world looking for a new home, but no matter where they went they were ridiculed and ostracized, and it is noted that soon after they left a location, that place was then met with "violent explosions and catastrophes". This culminates in one last account where the pair left the city of Chernobyl, drawing the attention of various international law organizations who connected the dots to their past incidents and soon added Cortex and Brio to the international most-wanted list. Feeling the heat, they finally settled down far away from humanity on the Australian island that he would soon name Cortex Island. This backstory heavily implies that Cortex and Brio were responsible for the real-life 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Soviet Union.