The objective of this work is to study the fundamental instability behind the crown formation in the problem of drop splashing on a pre-existing liquid Him. Based on experimental and theoretical insights, we demonstrate that the most plausible instability mechanism is of the Richtmyer-Meshkov type associated with a nearly impulsive acceleration of the interface. We also discover frustration phenomena in the wave number selection of the crown spike structure and study the corresponding bifurcation picture. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.