The crates in the game were made to fill in the more boring parts of the levels.
During development, Crash Bandicoot was codenamed "The Sonic's Ass Game", since the camera always points to the characters back side.
The character of Tawna was initially removed from the series due to some complaints from the marketing director at Universal Interactive Studios. In her point of view, the initial character design for Tawna was too outrageous, so Tawna was re-designed before being built into the game. Naughty Dog thought the ending result was too different from what they had in mind, so she was ultimately removed in the sequels.
This game was made in memory of Tae Min Kim, who was part of Naughty Dog when they developed Way of the Warrior (1994) for the 3DO console.
When Naughty Dog came up with main character's title, the marketing executives at Universal Interactive Studios wanted Naughty Dog to use other names for the main character. Crash Bandicoot prevailed after Naughty Dog threatened to drop the project.