Franchise: Donkey Kong

At one point, Nintendo approached Vicarious Visions about developing a new game in the Donkey Kong series for the Nintendo Switch, initially reported by fansite DK Vine and expanded upon by video game journalist Liam Robertson. The title was intended to be a 3D platformer with an emphasis on movement, with a major mechanic being the ability to grind on vines. According to Robertson, Vicarious Visions worked on the early stages of the project for only six months before it was cancelled in 2016, as their parent company Activision Blizzard shifted more focus towards the Call of Duty series. Reportedly, this was "the last straw" for Vicarious Visions founders Karthik and Guha Bala, who left the studio that year to form Velan Studios, a company that would later develop Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit for Nintendo, while Vicarious Visions would be folded into Activision Blizzard in 2021. That same year, rumors began to circulate that a new Donkey Kong game was being developed in-house by Nintendo EPD, who had previously developed Super Mario Odyssey, and would ultimately turn out to be true in 2025, when Donkey Kong Bananza was officially revealed for the Nintendo Switch 2.

Dutch electronics company Philips planned to release a Donkey Kong game for the CD-i as part of the deal with Nintendo that led to the release of Hotel Mario, Link: The Faces of Evil, Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, and Zelda's Adventure. The Donkey Kong game's existence was alluded to in two "Gaming Gossip" articles by Electronic Gaming Monthly as well as a trade ad which depicted Donkey Kong exiting a limousine alongside Mario, Link, and Zelda. However, more concrete evidence for the game's existence didn't emerge until former Riedel Software Productions employee Adrian Jackson-Jones included a post on his LinkedIn page stating that he programmed the engine for it (the LinkedIn post incorrectly cites Australian visual effects studio Rising Sun Pictures due to them sharing initials). This information was then brought to public attention in 2022 by the LostMediaWiki, a website which documents searches for lost or otherwise publicly unavailable works.

An investigation by Time Extension led to writer John Szczepaniak getting in contact with both Jackson-Jones and Riedel Software Productions owner Michael J. Riedel. Both parties have little memory of the Donkey Kong game due to the amount of time that passed and the company's habit of erasing their data for cancelled projects. Additionally, Jackson-Jones revealed that due to a memory disorder, he recalls little about the game other than his direct experiences programming it. Despite this, Jackson-Jones was able to confirm his involvement with the Donkey Kong game, stating that one of the biggest difficulties during development was the CD-i's memory limitations, which were circumvented by only loading in assets that would be visible on-screen, using the player's movement to determine what to put into memory.

Additional investigations by DidYouKnowGaming further revealed that the Donkey Kong CD-i game was intended to be a side-scrolling title similar to the later Donkey Kong Country series. According to an anonymous Riedel Software Productions employee who served as a lead animator for the game, development quickly stalled before June 1993, never making it past initial storyboards due to the CD-i's technical limitations and Philips' inexperience with the video game industry (contrary to Electronic Gaming Monthly's claims that it would be a sequel to the original arcade game and that it would be ready by 1994).

In 2019, Shesez, known for his YouTube series "Boundary Break", interviewed Kevin Bayliss, who was previously one of the animators and character designers for Donkey Kong Country. Bayliss mentioned during the interview that when Rare co-founder Tim Stamper and Nintendo tasked him to redesign Donkey Kong and "bring it up to date", Bayliss originally wanted DK's design to be "compact" similar to how NES characters were previously designed, and wanted the character to show up "nice and clearly." Bayliss later revealed that when designing Donkey Kong's new facial features, he used the same design as the Battletoads' eyes, believing that gorillas "look like they got this big brow". In a 2025 tweet, he expressed frustration that this design choice always made DK look "annoyed", in support of a contentious redesign first introduced in the 2023 film The Super Mario Bros. Movie and later incorporated into Nintendo's games starting with Mario Kart World.

Though Donkey Kong's neutral special Giant Punch has no specific origin, Donkey Kong performs a similar wind-up punch in "Bad Hair Day", the first episode of the 1997 animated series "Donkey Kong Country", which first aired 17 months prior to the Japanese release of Super Smash Bros.

Although King K. Rool's motivation for stealing Donkey Kong's banana hoard has never been officially confirmed, two theories have been brought up by former Rare employee Leigh Loveday: either K. Rool steals them because he likes bananas, or he wants Donkey Kong to starve to death so that K. Rool can occupy his treehouse.

The former theory is backed up by the instruction manual for Donkey Kong Country stating that the Kremlings steal the bananas for their rich nutritional value in potassium and Vitamin A, and by artwork drawn by Steve Mayles on Playtonic Games's Twitter page, which shows K. Rool sitting next to Gruntilda from Banjo-Kazooie on a pile of bananas while reading a book titled "101 Banana Recipes."

The latter theory is only supported by the game DK: Jungle Climber where K. Rool mentions how much he despises bananas.

Diddy Kong Racing DS is somewhat infamous for introducing the newly redesigned Tiny Kong, who despite being originally conceived by Rare as Dixie Kong's younger sister in Donkey Kong 64, is now depicted as a taller teenager. This design would carry over into future titles such as Donkey Kong Barrel Blast and Mario Super Sluggers.

Contrary to popular belief, as revealed on a December 20, 2007 edition of Rare's Scribes, the decision to redesign Tiny into a teenager was not Rare's call, but Nintendo's, which is appropriate considering Nintendo has retained full ownership of Rare's Donkey Kong characters since the latter company were acquired by Microsoft in 2002, and thus now have full creative control on how they're presented and portrayed.

One detail that is worth pointing out, and may provide an explanation to why Nintendo had no qualms with redesigning a character who was meant to be Dixie's younger sibling into a teenager, is that the Japanese localization of Donkey Kong 64 reportedly makes zero mention of Tiny being related to Dixie, instead just being described by the manuals as just a "Charming girl Kong". It's also worth pointing out that every game that has featured Tiny Kong since 2002, such as Mario Super Sluggers, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U has also made zero mention of Tiny's relationship with Dixie Kong, which adds credence to the theory that Nintendo opted to ignore and essentially retcon Rare's initial lore of the two being siblings.

Nintendo has reused Grant Kirkhope's (the composer of the music for Donkey Kong 64 as well as DK's voice actor) voice clips for DK's voice in other games such as Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour, Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, Mario vs. Donkey Kong, the GBA remake of Donkey Kong Country, & even in the E3 demo of Donkey Kong Jungle Beat.

There is an unreleased Donkey Kong music game called Donkey Kong no Ongaku Asobi (translated to Donkey Kong's Fun with Music). It would have been on the NES and would have followed Donkey Kong Jr. Math as a series of Donkey Kong edutainment games.

With the success of Donkey Kong Country, Nintendo gave Rare permission for a sequel on the Virtual Boy. This happened just after the launch of the Virtual Boy and was only in the early planning stages for a matter of weeks before it was cancelled due to lack of sales of the Virtual Boy console.

Swanky and Candy are the only two Kongs yet to be playable, though Candy was going to be a playable character in the cancelled Diddy Kong Pilot a few weeks after Redneck Kong was scrapped from the game. They both are members of the "Bonus Bonanza" in the Game Boy Advance remake of Donkey Kong Country 2.

Shigeru Miyamoto has stated the name "Donkey Kong" came from him confusing the word "donkey" with the word "ass", thinking it meant something stupid. He assumed an American audience would think "Donkey Kong" meant "big stupid ape". Nintendo laughed when he suggested the name, but it ultimately stuck.