#cortex's dad

So... my headcanon is that Cortex's parents are descendants of immigrants. Cortex's dad - name unknown - speaks fluent Spanish, while Cortex's mom, Sharon, speaks fluent Romani. Both of them learned English growing up while performing on the vaudeville circuit with their respective families. (Remember, this was a very long time ago, Cortex is an old man.)

Cortex's dad was largely detached from his son emotionally, as he was disappointed in his son's nerdy pursuits of science, feeling he would never amount to anything. He did, however, at least bother to teach Neo how to speak Spanish just as fluently as him. Cortex takes great pride in his pronunciation skills.

However, Sharon not only did NOT teach her son a word of Romani, she went out of her way to make sure he would never understand a word of it, just so she could freely talk shit about him, insult him, or hide secrets from him just by speaking Romani. When Cortex finally purchased a book on the Romani language decades later and finally learned all the nasty things his mother called him, he nearly had a nervous breakdown.

And do you know who else talked shit about him in Romani? Cortex's grandmother, Sharon's mother. Oh sure, the old lady pretended to care about Cortex, but she believed every lie Sharon told her about him. How useless and stupid he was... how ugly he was... how much of a burden he was... how much of a loser he was for reading all the time... and making silly inventions...