Donkey Kong Bananza has been out for a week now, and it’s been met with rave reviews across the board. If you’re playing through casually and not going for 100% completion, the game isn’t overly long – you can get through the main story in about 20 hours, so we’d imagine some of you have already rolled the credits. Donkey Kong Bananza contains plenty of interesting story elements, and today we’re analyzing how this could change the lore of the greater Mario franchise. Yes, we’re aware that it’s a Donkey Kong game and lore isn’t terribly important – but it’s still fun to speculate. Needless to say, there are major spoilers within, so you might want to bookmark this post and come back later if you haven’t beaten the game yet.
To produce this analysis, we combed through all sorts of dialogue and references in Donkey Kong Bananza. To start things off, the game begins when Donkey Kong leaves DK Island to check out Ingot Isle. He heard rumors that golden bananas were being mined there, and actually headed out solo to try and find some golden bananas of his own. Along the way, he meets and teams up with Pauline and fights against Void Kong, who aims to get to the Planet Core to have his greatest wish granted (infinite money, go figure).
If you have indeed rolled the credits yourself, you may be wondering how on earth Pauline is a child in this game. She is in fact thirteen years old, and according to the end of the game she has always lived in New Donk City. You might think this is a prequel of sorts to the entire series then, but that’s only half correct. On the Racing Layer, Diddy Kong and Dixie Kong appear and explain that the three have been on many adventures together. Dixie Kong specifically mentions an adventure where she and Diddy Kong had to save Donkey Kong, which means all three Donkey Kong Country games have already happened by now.
That leads us into King K. Rool, who serves as this Donkey Kong Bananza’s surprise true antagonist. Since all three Donkey Kong Country games are confirmed to have happened, DK and K. Rool already know each other. This may seem obvious to some, but we’ve seen some theories that this was actually the first time Donkey Kong and King K. Rool met each other according to canon. According to dialogue from some nearby Fractones, King K. Rool actually made it to the Planet Core himself a long while ago in search of the Banandium Root. He got close to obtaining it, but the Banandium Root actually wound up sealing him away. It was Pauline’s singing that ultimately awoke him.
If you play through Donkey Kong Bananza, you’ll notice there is pretty much no explanation on why Pauline is a child. Before the game launched, players theorized she was under a curse or time travel or something, but none of those are true. However, the game does provide one helpful tidbit – Pauline often mentions her grandma. Not her mother, but her grandmother specifically. Considering that Cranky Kong is Donkey Kong’s grandfather, it stands to reason that both Cranky Kong and Pauline’s grandmother would be of a similar age. Cranky Kong has been stated to be the original Donkey Kong from the arcade game, which means Pauline’s grandmother would be the one who was kidnapped instead of her. It’s important to note that “Lady”, the creatively-named character from the DK arcade game, has blonde hair and a pink dress and looks very different. There’s also a Spirit in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate called “Donkey Kong & Lady” rather than Donkey Kong and Pauline, so it’s possible that Nintendo is working to differentiate these characters so that the Mario timeline makes a little bit more sense. Given that Pauline is a child, too, it means Donkey Kong Bananza is a prequel to Super Mario Odyssey.
This would also mean, then, that Jumpman is not Mario. Presumably, he’d be Mario’s grandfather. In the Super Mario Bros. Movie, Mario’s grandfather actually does appear. He has bushy white eyebrows and a white mustache, and he’s also short and stocky like Jumpman in the arcade game. This isn’t confirmed to be Mario’s grandfather in the games’ canon, though – only in the movie’s canon. Still, it makes sense to differentiate Jumpman from Mario. In Donkey Kong Jr., Jumpman captures DK in a cage, which feels a little bit uncharacteristic for a character like Mario who is normally fairly forgiving to his opponents (and especially to Donkey Kong).
This creates an interesting dynamic, however. In Super Mario Odyssey, Pauline mentions a traumatic experience where she was kidnapped by an ape. Either due to lucky wording or knowing that DK Bananza was going to be developed ahead of time, Pauline is fairly vague about this situation – which means you could reasonably assume she’s talking about being kidnapped by Void Kong, not Donkey Kong. Another interesting point is that Donkey Kong does kidnap an adult Pauline in some of the Mario vs. Donkey Kong games. This is completely unconfirmed, but it’d be neat if part of the reason DK kidnapped Pauline was because of a growing resentment that the two have grown apart. In Donkey Kong for the Game Boy, DK specifically kidnaps Pauline and not “Lady”, and that would be an interesting motive. As one extra note here, in Mario Kart World’s ending screen, DK and Pauline also stand close to each other and appear to be on friendly terms, which is another neat little nod to Donkey Kong Bananza.
Just because Pauline is a child doesn’t mean that Donkey Kong Bananza takes place in the far past, either. She’s thirteen, so in six or seven years Pauline would pretty much be an adult. That’s not a very long gap in the grand scheme of things, and it also means the Donkey Kong Country games did happen quite a while ago. Perhaps Donkey Kong Country Returns and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze happen much later after the events of Donkey Kong Bananza. It’d be extra neat if they had new villains because King K. Rool was trapped within the Planet Core, but that’s some more speculation on our part.
Donkey Kong Bananza’s updated lore might not make a ton of sense at first, but when you start to put the pieces together, it’s pretty neat! We would really benefit from a follow-up 3D Mario game that somehow includes Jumpman as a separate character, even if he’s just a one-time minor NPC or is referenced via dialogue only that he’s a different person. We’re sure that we’ll eventually see a new 3D Mario on Nintendo Switch 2 – Donkey Kong Bananza was deep into development in 2021. We’re not sure how long the game sat completed before it launched, but the next 3D Mario game is almost certainly in development. We just don’t know how long that development has lasted at this point.
How do you feel about Donkey Kong Bananza’s lore additions? Does our big theory make sense to you? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments down below. Again, yes, lore and story have never been a big focus in the Donkey Kong or Mario series, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth talking about anyway. Donkey Kong Bananza is, in our opinion, proof that Nintendo does actually care about establishing some form of continuity, especially given the comments from Diddy Kong and Dixie Kong. If you want to learn more about the game, you can do so over at the official website for Donkey Kong Bananza.
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