Donkey Kong

NOTE: This page is dedicated to Milton Supman (1926-2009).

Donkey Kong "Banana Slamma!" ― Donkey Kong's catchphrase in the Donkey Kong Country TV series Gender: Male Type: Carefree King of the Jungle Species: Kong Portrayed by: Milton Supman (Saturday Supercade) Richard Yearwood (TV series) Sterling Jarvis (TV series, singing voice only) Grant Kirkhope (1999, with his voice clips being reused from 2003–2010) Takashi Nagasako (2004–present) Seth Rogen (The Super Mario Bros. Movie franchise) Status: Alive Media of origin: Donkey Kong

“I don't need anything special to break every bone in your tiny body!”
― Donkey Kong • The Super Mario Bros. Movie

Donkey Kong (DK for short) is a major character of the Mario franchise and the titular main protagonist of the Donkey Kong franchise.

He's the king of the jungle whose trademark is his red necktie, which bears his initials. Donkey Kong can hurl giant barrels with the greatest of ease, and is so powerful the ground shakes when he pounds on the ground. He loves bananas and always keeps a large stash of them in his treehouse.

Why He's the Leader of the Bunch

1. Despite being carefree, Donkey Kong is a brave, helpful, trustworthy, and friendly primate who cares for his friends and the island he lives on.
2. His reasons to getting mad are rather comprehensible, whether the cause are those who pressurize on him, the island or his family showing how protective he is.
3. Sometimes he's also portrayed as an antagonist (like in the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series), but he jumps headfirst into action as he protects the DK Island when trouble comes to play.
4. His role in the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series gives DK an antagonist role who acts immaturely all because he doesn't get what he wants. However, he shows some remorse in the end and relents when he is forgiven. In some games, he does it as a prank to distract Mario from his surprise, like his birthday.
5. Not unlike his mustachioed frenemy, DK is great at just about anything he does. Fighting bad guys, using weapons (notably the Coconut Gun), playing instruments (such as the bongos), and playing sports. But he isn't a gary-stu which is a good thing. One thing for sure is that he's a gorilla and they are highly intelligent animals and DK does that in the games.
6. He's one of the few characters in the Donkey Kong Country TV series to be tolerable compared to most characters in the show. His personality is largely the same albeit the dialogue he spouts out. The show even gives Donkey Kong a moral backbone that is strong as he used his reluctance to use the Crystal Coconut to wish for more bananas until Diddy manipulated him.
7. All of his voice actors (such as Grant Kirkhope, Richard Yearwood and Takashi Nagasako) did a great job voicing him, as his goofy dialogue (that can be heard outside of generic ape sounds) are great to listen to.
   • Let's not forget to mention that his singing voice by Sterling Jarvis is really awesome to listen to, despite the songs being shoehorned for some reason.
   • Seth Rogen in The Super Mario Bros. Movie fits his goofy personality, and hearing the silly charm of Seth Rogen's voice is hilarious to listen to.
8. His friendship with Diddy Kong is such a classic example of a good duo character, as they have been on many adventures and look out for each other.
   • Same can be said about Dixie Kong, tho who who acts like a big brother much like with Diddy. Mario Super Sluggers is a good example of this as he was quite defensive when Dry Bones antagonized her.
   • Mario's relationship with Donkey Kong is more in lies of a rivalry towards each other. Ironically enough, both of them are not the typical rivals you think of as they have a friendly rivalry. Even both are on good terms with each other like in the Mario Party games or at the endings of the Mario vs. Donkey Kong games.
   • While DK had kidnapped Pauline before, both still remain on friendly status. He often believes that she is the key to soothing his anger issues and even worked together in Tipping Stars as a message to Mario about how DK has good faith in Pauline.
   • Overall, he has shown to save his friends before like in Donkey Kong 64.
9. Similar to Cranky Kong, he can break the fourth wall like in the SNES trilogy of the Donkey Kong games. If you win a bonus room puzzle or even a boss, he'll turn to applaud you and give you a thumbs-up for succeeding. His wall breaks are nothing annoying to be exact.
10. He could be considered a breakout character. Donkey Kong is portrayed as an antagonist in the arcades (though the DK in the arcades is actually Cranky Kong, still) but was changed to a more likable character in later games, even if this Donkey Kong the newer generations know and love is the grandson of the original Donkey Kong..
11. He got a redesign by the British company Rareware in Donkey Kong Country. It's one of those redesigns that are so good that it became the mainstream design for DK himself.
    • He even got another redesign by Illumination in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, as it is slightly changed to reflect his comic-relief personalty, as his design is a combination of his original design from the arcade games and his current design as of Donkey Kong Country, and his design in the movie is pretty good.
12. He's really good at his strength:
    • In Donkey Kong Country Returns, he punches the Moon (yes, the actual Moon itself) right into Earth.
    • In Tropical Freeze, he used Lord Fredrik's horn to melt the ice away.
    • He also uses his strength to be more aggressive in Jungle Beat.
13. More often than not, he's extremely well-animated and is very goofily expressive.

Bad Qualities

1. He can occasionally be irritable, childish and prone to temper tantrums.
   1. This is proven in the Mario vs Donkey Kong series where his childish rage incited him to steal the Mini-Mario toys or kidnap Pauline, making him somewhat (while not highly unlikable) out-of-character. Granted, he does treat her very well, even if kidnapping her isn't still the best thing to do. Nevertheless, he redeems himself after every final battles of each games.
2. He's somewhat dimwitted, which doesn't make much sense since real-life gorillas are pretty intelligent.
3. Even if his personality remains the same most of the time in the '90s show, DK has moments of being pretty lazy and more sensitive than before.
4. While well delivered, his voice in the Donkey Kong country series is a bit childish.
5. He was an arrogant jerk in The Super Mario Bros. Movie. He even insults Mario while they were trapped in the Maw-Ray even after Mario Saved him from drowning. A “thank you” would’ve been nice! However, he does redeem himself and gets along with Mario and his friends more in the third act, dropping his rivalry and helping Mario defeat Bowser and saving the Mushroom Kingdom from getting terrorized by Bowser.
6. Mario has been overshadowing him, especially since he has been shoehorned in Mario spin-offs.

Trivia

1. Donkey Kong was supposed to be inspired by Bluto from Popeye mainly because the original Donkey Kong arcade game was going to be a Popeye game.
2. He is directly inspired by King Kong.
3. Shigeru Miyamoto used "donkey" to convey "stubborn" in English; the name Donkey Kong was intended to convey "stubborn ape" to the American audience. When he suggested this name to Nintendo of America, people laughed, but the name stuck.
4. Gave us a bunch of funny memes including Coconut Gun, "I Shower You with Coconut Cream Pie", and most especially "Banana Slamma".
5. Rogen himself liked playing Donkey Kong in the Mario movie and he started to become popular in several Internet memes. Seth Rogen even liked those memes and he hoped he could voice Donkey Kong again as he said, “If Illumination makes a Donkey Kong spin-off and a sequel, I'm in!”

Comments

Loading comments...