Donkey Kong Country (video game)/Headscratchers

• Why doesn't Donkey Kong just buy a cage and pad lock for his banana's instead of leaving them in the open and not expecting anybody to steal them?
  • Where will he keep the key? It's not as if he has any pockets on him. And if your answer is "his house", I'll be forced to remind you that there's no lock (or door) on that, further complicating the key-storage dilemma.
    • He could probably wear it around his neck behind his necktie.
• How is it that, if you're carrying a barrel, and die, you drop the barrel, and come right back out, but only if you have your second monkey still? This implies that you are carrying yourself, but this defiance of the laws of physics is only possible when you have someone watching, like Schroedinger's Cat in reverse.
  • The Kongs probably bred really quickly and had LOTS of twins...yeah...
  • The barrel is empty until the Kong dies, then they get instantly teleported into the barrel as soon as it breaks - look closely at your Kong after he dies and falls off the screen - he instantly vanishes as soon as he pops out of the barrel. I think the bigger issue here is the two Enguardes in the first underwater level.
• It just bugs me that Mario fanboys simply cannot grasp the fact that Cranky is the original Donkey Kong and the DK seen from Donkey Kong Country onwards is DK Jr, all grown up.
  • Probably because Cranky apparently got smaller when he became old...you know what I want to see now? A muscle bound person in their eighties...random, I know, but it'd be awesome.
    • Don't abuse potions, kids. That also explains why the original arcade Donkey Kong is a wifebeater-wearing cranky kidnapper, while the modern DK is a tie-wearing gentleape.
      • That still doesn't explain how Cranky Kong has become such an old man but Mario hasn't aged a day.
        • That wasn't Mario, that was Jumpman! Have you forgotten?
        • Gorillas have shorter lifespans, but especially in the Mushroom Kingdom.
        • Or Mario was younger than he looked and (arcade) Donk ey Kong and DK Jr. were older than they looked.
        • It's most likely that they're ultimately all Legacy Characters (both the DK AND Mario cast), much like the recurring cast in Zelda games.
  • The real problem is that Nintendo can't even get the story straight (look at the trophy descriptions in the Smash Bros games).
• Why would pirates have a theme park? This applies for Monkey Island as well.
  • Pirates gotta have fun, too.
    • Exactly this. It's All There in the Manual.
  • Why wouldn't they have a theme park? It's Crocodile Isle, where Kremlings come from, and they probably have to find something to do when not stealing bananas and invading other islands.
  • If they want to have fun, why don't they repair it? Krazy Kremland is clearly in disrepair.
    • They have a weird sense of what's fun.
• Is there any official word on what started the Kremlings' animosity towards the Kong clan? It seems pretty random that a bunch of anthropomorphic crocodiles would suddenly declare a small group of gorillas their mortal enemies...
  • (Deep movie-guy voice) The ancient war between mammals and reptiles...continues...here. That and K Rool's a Jerkass.
  • Bazooka Bear mentions having fought in the "Kremean Wars"
  • Most Nintendo franchise games have some sort of animal as the main enemy species. In Donkey Kong, they're Crocodiles, in Mario, they're turtles, in Zelda, they're pigs, in Star Fox, they're monkeys, and in Metroid, they're lobsters and jellyfish.
  • No, wait. In the first game, the Kremlings discover DK Island on one of the seafaring missions, go "Hey, nice island... we'll take it!" and begin the invasion. Most of them aren't even aware that the Kongs have pretty much staked a claim to it already, and the conflict doesn't really become "personal" until Donkey Kong Country 2.
• Why are almost all the characters named "Kong"? Is that a last name or some sort of thing they stick to all names? And why do they call Diddy a chimp? He has a tail, people!
  • It's a reference to King Kong. Unknown if that's their last name and they're all related though. Probably not though, considering they're different types of monkeys/apes, and the fact that Diddy and Donkey both have Kong girlfriends.
    • Not to mention Lanky Kong. He's an orangutan, and, as such, is very unlikely to be directly related to the other Kongs (assuming, of course, that the gorilla Kongs are related).
  • "Kong" means "ape". With the exception of Diddy, they're all apes (gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans).
  • Given the mix of species and the relationships, Kong appears to be a clan. That said, Donkey Kong fights other Kongs in Jungle Beat.
• If Cranky Kong is the Donkey Kong from the original arcade game of the same name, why isn't he a gorilla? For that matter, if DK is Junior, why is he a gorilla and not a chimp?
  • Pretend that they're both a fictional species of ape that looks like a chimp when very young and very old, and looks like a gorilla when in its prime. "Kongs". And I don't think DK Junior looked like a chimp at all.
    • DK Jr. was a gorilla. No tail, fairly large arms, strong enough to lift a cage that has his old man in it? Seems pretty much to confirm he's a gorilla.
• Why does K. Rool care about taking away Kong's bananas so much? They're bananas, for god's sake! They're not weapons or anything a pirate king would find important.
  • Maybe he and his crew all had scurvy?
  • He was taking over the island, getting bananas was just extra.
  • Everyone knows crocodiles can't resist bananas.
  • He just wanted to be an asshole?
  • No, it's obvious. Collecting one hundred bananas nets you an extra life. The real question is, why wouldn't K. Rool want a huge cache of extra lives?
  • None of the above. DKCR shows banana juice gives temporary invincibility... As well as bestowing life to instruments.
• Why haven't the bananas gone bad? This is why you don't typically "hoard" perishable fruit. To make matters worse, bananas ripen and spoil more quickly when they're near other bananas, so the massive piles of bananas we see in the boss levels will surely become horrible brown pulp long before the Kongs can eat even a few of them.
  • Magic Kong Island bananas can do anything, including never spoil. Presumably, that's why DK was so ticked. Imperishable bananas are rare, and K. Rool just up and takes the biggest stash of the best sort of bananas anywhere? NOT ON DK'S WATCH.
  • That would actually go a long way towards explaining WHY K. Rool would want the bananas. An abundant non-perishable source of scurvy-fighting Vitamin C would be VERY attractive to a band of seafaring pirates.
  • Also, getting to K Rool in the first game might have only taken 2 or 3 days, depending on how much they rested between levels. There is sunset and nightfall in the early levels, but they theoretically could have done everything else the next morning (also, if days went by faster here, and bananas ripened at normal speed, all the better for the plot).
• What in the world does Squawks spit in DKC 3? Like, are those random nuts, or... they almost look like bits of honeycomb, but why would a parrot...
  • I thought they were eggs; my mom thinks they're nuts.
    • Officially, they're eggs.
      • Seriously?! I've only ever heard them being called coconuts before now! I wonder what I missed that had that info (along with other stuff jossing other fan theories, like the purple parrot in DKC 3 being called Quawks when it's not in the ending cast roll)...
• Why did King K.Rool want the Kongs off DK Isle before he could blow it up? Wouldn't it make his life easier just to destroy it on the spot? And for that matter, why doesn't he fire the weapon when the Kongs were inside of "Frantic Factory"? It's not even the last level, nor is it on DK Isle!
  • The Blast-O-Matic was damaged by the crash shown in the intro, and the Kremlings needed time to repair it, so they stole the banana hoard and Golden Bananas and kidnapped all the Kongs besides Donkey to buy time. The Blast-O-Matic only became functional again when Hideout Helm was unlocked.
    • And even then, it was hardly functional. K. Rool just ordered the weapon be fired immediately so that it could go off before the Kongs could deal with it. All of the guys testing it said that it wasn't safe to fire, and could very well go boom and kill them all.
• Why are there both temperate deciduous trees and tropical palm trees on the same island?
  • Maybe DK Island is very big, with part of the island in the tropical latitudes and part of the island in the temperate latitudes.
    • This makes sense when you consider that DK Island has a mountain high enough for the peak to be frozen. A mountain has to be spread over a much larger base than the size of a typical tropical island. So it follows that DK Island is not the size of a typical tropical island.
    • Conversely, the world the island is on may be small.
      • It is called Donkey Kong "Country"
• Will someone tell me how this is a "Mario clone"? Besides the Goomba Stomp, I don't see much similarities, and the Goomba Stomp was a standard way of defeating enemies in platformers back then, so I think this is acceptable.
  • If you jump on things to kill them and hop on platforms, it's a Mario clone.
  • This accusation really pisses me off. The only thing they share is a genre. Oh, and i guess you could say animal buddies are Yoshi expies, but still...
• Why would K. Rool lock K. Lumsy in a cage using keys that have Donkey Kong's monogram on them?
  • Maybe the cage and keys were originally DK's, and then he stole them one day?
• If the Kong's are a family of all or most primates were are the baboons?
  • We don't talk about them.
  • It seems like they're the butt monkeys of the Kongs then.
• In every single artwork that features him, including in-game cutscenes, K. Rool has always been shown to have 3 toes. But during Tiny Kong's portion of the final battle in Donkey Kong 64, he suddenly has 4! I know the other Kongs have to hit him 4 times, but couldn't they have made the last hit be the bottom of his foot?
• Why is there a factory level in every DK game except Crocodile Isle (DKC 2)
  • The factories in DKC (and DCK Returns, as they're the same factories) were set up by the crocodiles to steal the resources from DK Island. Same with 3, only with a different region. The reason there is none in 2 is because their own resources have been used up, and whatever's left is completely useless, which is why they need to steal others resources in the first place. Why there's no abandoned factories? They let the buildings deteriorate to nothing. Look at the state of the buildings that they do use, Kremland!
• Who lives in those creepy huts in Vine Valley?