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I got some questions about Donkey Kong.

Dr. Feel Good said:
DK Jr is the odd man out I feel like. He made appearances in his self titled game, Super Mario kArt and Mario Tennis for N64 and Virtual Boy. What gives?
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Yeah, I've always wondered this, especially considering that if the original Donkey Kong is the same as the current Donkey Kong then that means he spends a lot more time with his nephew than his own son. I don't really think that the lore for this game is meant to be looked at deeply however... lol :P
 
What's interesting is that Funky is supposedly modern DK's older brother (I think?) which would make him technically next in line to inherit the title of Donkey Kong, but he decided to be a surfer dude/mechanic instead.
 
I love what Rare did with the Kongs, so much more interesting than a King Kong rip off.

This is my favourite picture of them.
dk-arrested.jpg


Edit: Credit to the very talented mattdog1000000 of Dkvine and Deviantart for the pic.
 
stuminus3 said:
He still is, sometimes.

Also, I wouldn't take that Cranky Kong = OG Donkey Kong thing too seriously. It's canon where canon isn't needed, same as anything else in the Mario world.
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I do think some people overthink some canon, but this is hardly a stretch, as Donkey Kong Country goes out of it's way to emphasise that Cranky is the original Donkey Kong. Hell, the game starts with him standing on top of a red girder, and playing the DK arcade theme on a gramophone. He also makes repeated rants about games being better in his day, when he only had two frames of animation.

The only point of inconsistency is whether he's Donkey Kong's father or grandfather, as he's referred to Donkey Kong as "son" (Donkey Kong 64) and "grandson" (DKC2). However, it makes more sense that they're father and son, as that would make the current DK the DK Jr. from the arcade games.

As for DK Jr. appearing alongside Donkey Kong in Mario Tennis (64), that's because the Mario games have never bothered with continuity in the slightest, so they just threw him in. Same as how Baby Mario and Mario co-exist. The canon that Rare established isn't undone because Nintendo don't care.
 
I see the Donkey Kong name as more of a mantle passed down through generations of Donkey Kongs. Like Batman. There will always be a Donkey Kong.
 
There was a Donkey Kong cartoon when I was a kid where DK was the nice guy and Mario was the asshole. I always assumed DK was a pretty cool guy.
 
TheUnsunghero26 said:
I love what Rare did with the Kongs, so much more interesting than a King Kong rip off.

This is my favourite picture of them.
dk-arrested.jpg


Edit: Credit to the very talented mattdog1000000 of Dkvine and Deviantart for the pic.
Click to expand...

I feel like this is a parody of some familiar trope or series. Any explanation as to why the Kongs were cast as these kinds of characters, besides the fact that it's totally weird? :D

edit: oh shit, it's arrested development! Haven't followed that show in a while, so I don't recognise everyone.
 
7JXJv9m.jpg


Rare's design for Donkey Kong is based on Miyamoto's design for the 1994 game Donkey Kong on the GameBoy, which is a re-imagining of the 1981 Donkey Kong arcade game. Diddy was originally going to be an updated version of DK Jr, but Nintendo asked them to make him a new character so in some ways DK of the arcades is the DK of today and also Cranky Kong. Then you have the fact DK Jr grew for Super Mario Kart and then shrunk back to his original size in Mario Tennis (64). The only logical conclusion is they are the same character on different time planes and future DK keeps sending himself back in order to aid himself.
 
It's like some of you guys have seriously never heard of dkvine.com

Go there and learn about the DK universe before you lol about making a book about it.
 
The Kongs are a sort of hairless, highly intelligent primates. They don't have a lot of hair aside from that on the top of their head, so they skin wild animals and use their fur as undergarments. That's why Cranky has a white beard and brown hair everywhere else; only the beard is his natural hair. You can observe a similar phenomenon with the blonde-haired female Kongs.

Young Kongs resemble monkeys and have long tails. Their proportions change and their tails fall out on the onset of puberty, making them seem more like gorillas. The reason Donkey Kong Jr. appears to be a small ape rather than a monkey is because he suffers from dwarfism. In the original Donkey Kong Jr. arcade game, Jr. was already a father and high school graduate. Sometimes the current Donkey Kong teams up with his dad to play tennis, but they're rarely on such good terms, and Jr.'s health issues don't help the matter.

Despite struggles from rage issues, Donkey Kong acts as a surrogate father for Diddy because he understands the pain of having an absent father. Jr. learned abusive behaviour from Cranky and Cranky learned it from Mario. Donkey Kong has decided that the cycle has to end.
 
Evilisk said:
Not really. It's actually pretty simple.

Cranky Kong (OG Donkey Kong, aka Donkey Kong Sr.) -> Donkey Kong Jr. -> the current "Donkey Kong"

Originally Donkey Kong was just a name between Donkey Kong Sr. (Cranky/OG Donkey Kong) and Donkey Kong Jr.

But due to the ageing difference of the Kongs and Mario characters (consider that Mario is as slick as ever while Cranky is an old monkey now) and that characters in-universe were probably getting confused at the two different Donkey Kong's (thinking Jr. was the same as DKSr. when Jr. got older) it was agreed that it would just became an honorary title starting with the newest (and our current) Donkey Kong.

Current Donkey Kong probably has a different name, just like how Cranky's name is not actually Cranky.

This isn't meant to be taken seriously btw, I'm mostly half-joking
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Thank God you added that spoiler note. I'd hate to see what would happen if someone took a game series they like seriously. I mean what is this, a gaming forum
 
Valjean Lafitte said:
Thank God you added that spoiler note. I'd hate to see what would happen if someone took a game series they like seriously. I mean what is this, a gaming forum
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Lol

Seriously though, the reason I added that spoiler is because most of my post was jokingly-made conjecture. I didn't want to mislead anyone into thinking that it was meant to be a straight faced explanation of DK canon, because it's not intended to be.
 
Mr-Joker said:
That family tree is wrong as Diddy Kong is Donkey Kong's nephew, suggesting that Donkey Kong has a sibling.
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He does. Funky is his sibling. Which means Funky is Diddy's father...?

I don't know. DK lore is even more messed up than Mario lore because it actually semi-tries to be there, but doesn't give any exposition on itself.
 
Evilisk said:
Lol

Seriously though, the reason I added that spoiler is because most of my post was jokingly-made conjecture. I didn't want to mislead anyone into thinking that it was meant to be a straight faced explanation of DK canon, because it's not intended to be.
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You pretty much got it right though. The only part you were off about is current DK's name: from what I remember Rare's explanation given in (probably several editions of) Scribes was DK, son, and grandson just all share the same name, much like someone named Robert Jr. may name his son Robert III to differentiate him from himself and his father Robert Sr. Only in this case the Sr. Kong took on the Cranky moniker, so that his grandson could be simply called Donkey Kong.

I hate that I'm the only person here who doesn't think it's silly that there is lore to be explored in the DK and Mario franchises. You all laugh about it because it's not meant to be "deep", but even if it's shallow or sometimes
contradictory its still there. Meanwhile, sites like DK Vine and Rare Witch Project have written about this soft of thing for years.
 
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