According to director Shigeru Miyamoto in 1994, Donkey Kong never had a romantic interest in Pauline, and Mario and Donkey Kong are not enemies in the game. Donkey Kong was kept as a pet by Mario, and he decided to annoy Mario for the sake of it by kidnapping Pauline. Miyamoto intended for the game's ending (where Donkey Kong falls and bonks his head) to appear non-violent, more akin to "outwitting a prankster" rather than killing him.

Before Universal Pictures was alerted to Nintendo's Donkey Kong, leading to the very well-known lawsuit that Nintendo won, Universal licensed out the rights to the 1933 film King Kong to Tiger Electronics for a handheld LCD game, with Tiger's higher-ups being under the assumption that Donkey Kong was a licensed spin-off and not a derivative work. When the lawsuit began, Universal reworked their license with Tiger to be non-exclusive, demanded changes to Tiger's King Kong game to work less like Donkey Kong, and began releasing King Kong games on other platforms such as the Atari 2600. This was not done for monetary gain, but to try and prove that Donkey Kong's use of similar concepts was damaging their products. When Universal lost the suit, Nintendo opted to claim the royalties that Universal felt it was owed instead of claiming damages from Tiger, a move which could have been potentially lethal for Tiger.

According to court documents related to the 1983 legal case Universal City Studios, Inc v. Nintendo Co., Ltd., 19 alternate names considered for Donkey Kong included:

• Funny Kong
• Kong the Kong
• Jack Kong
• Funky Kong
• Bill Kong
• Steel Kong
• Giant Kong
• Big Kong
• Kong Down
• Kong Dong
• Mr. Kong
• Custom Kong
• Kong Chase
• Kong Boy
• Kong Man
• Kong Fighter
• Wild Kong
• Rookie Kong
• Kong Holiday

The name "Funky Kong" would coincidentally re-emerge as a character in Donkey Kong Country.

While Mario's mustache, red shirt and blue overalls were described by Miyamoto as the result of technical limitations, there's a possibility that they were also inspired by an issue of the Japanese men's fashion magazine Popeye, named after the fictional character that Mario was already partly inspired by. The March 1980 issue of Popeye magazine features cover art of a man with a mustache wearing a red shirt with blue overalls.

Crazy Kong was an officially licensed clone of Donkey Kong released by Falcon Inc. to compensate for Nintendo's inability to make enough Donkey Kong machines as there was demand for. However, Crazy Kong was only allowed to be distributed in Japan, but Falcon released the game abroad anyway with Elcron Industries, leading to a lawsuit where Nintendo won.

The development team behind Donkey Kong had concerns that the game had "no dream", in that the theme of construction sites and carpenters lacked a "sense of beauty which inspires you to dream about the future."

Some concepts considered for alternate games to use unsold Radar Scope cabinets for if Donkey Kong couldn't be developed were a Jack & the Beanstalk game, a fishing game, a space shuttle construction game due to space shuttles being a hot news topic at the time, and a game about fighting a disease in the human body, based on a movie (likely Fantastic Voyage).

The Donkey Kong start theme is plagiarized from the 1950s police drama Dragnet.

In a 1984 commercial promoting Donkey Kong-brand cereal, Mario can be heard with a distinctly Italian accent, even saying what would become one of Mario's catchphrases "Here We Go". This predates Charles Martinet portraying Mario with an Italian accent by 7 years.

In 1983, an album was released on vinyl by Kid Stuff Records titled Donkey Kong (alternatively called Donkey Kong Goes Home), retelling the story of the video game of the same name. It is notable for not only potentially being the first time Mario was voiced (having an unknown release date in 1983, which was also the debut year of Saturday Supercade), but also giving Mario a stereotypical Italian accent with an "-a-" verbal tic as opposed to the gruff Italian-American accent that would be used in multimedia projects for the rest of the 80s (including Saturday Supercade), predating Charles Martinet's debut as Mario in Mario Teaches Typing by 8 years. According to Kid Stuff Mario voice actor Pat McBride, the reasoning for this voice direction was


Nintendo never gave the team behind Donkey Kong Goes Home any form of guidance for the project, and did not give any word - positive or negative - about the finished album beyond approving it.

The earliest version of the "cross" design for a directional pad, developed by Gunpei Yokoi and named by the patented inventor Ichiro Shirai as the "Multi-directional switch", was first developed, patented and introduced for the 1982 Game & Watch port of Donkey Kong.

The development of the first Donkey Kong game was outsourced by Nintendo to Ikegami Tsushinki, a company who is believed but not confirmed to have previously worked with Nintendo on several of their early ventures into arcade games. They produced and sold to Nintendo somewhere between 8,000 and 20,000 printed circuit boards for Donkey Kong, and it is believed that Nintendo went on to copy an additional 80,000 boards from this batch without Ikegami's permission. Despite the sale, no formal contract was known to have been signed between the two companies, meaning Ikegami owned the source code to Donkey Kong as they had created it and never sent it over to Nintendo.

In order to create a sequel on the coattails of the success of the first game, Nintendo employed subcontractor Iwasaki Giken to reverse-engineer Donkey Kong so Nintendo’s staff could develop the game's sequel, Donkey Kong Jr. Should this narrative be verifiably true, this would make Donkey Kong Jr. Nintendo's first "in-house" video game created by themselves without any assistance from outside development companies. Ikegami viewed this use of the source code as blatant copyright infringement, and sued Nintendo in 1983 for ¥580,000,000 (around $91,935,800). A trial in 1990 ruled that Nintendo did not own the source code to the original Donkey Kong, and the parties settled out of court that year for an undisclosed amount.

In the Japanese version of the game, the message is "How high can you try?" This was changed to "How high can you get?" in the North American Release.

An unused Ikegami Tsushinki Co., Ltd logo can be found along side the title graphics in the game's data. ITC developed the hardware and program code for the Arcade version of the game.

The tune that plays while you have the hammer is based on the "Charge" bugle call that plays when a cavalry or troops are about to rush towards their enemies.

If the "INTEND" part of the "NINTENDO" string (the data used to display the name) is altered in anyway in the game's code, the game will freeze after approximately 4 seconds. This is a form of copyright protection used to protect the game's data.

There are five unused audio files within the game, An alternate Pauline theme, two unused pieces for cutscenes, and two voice samples of what appears to be Pauline saying "Thanks" and "Help". These sounds weren't discovered until 33 years after the game's release.

The twenty-second board is the final level of the game; Mario instantly dies within eight seconds of playing in the level, regardless of how many lives the player has left. This bug, known as a kill screen, happens due to a programming oversight which causes the game to set an impossibly short time limit.

Donkey Kong began development as a result of the commercial reception of the game Radar Scope. Radar Scope was a success in Japan, but failed to sell successfully in North America. To recoup costs, the game that would become Donkey Kong was developed using some of the unused arcade cabinets and hardware.

The game originally didn't have a jumping mechanic. It was implemented as a way to avoid obstacles when Shigeru Miyamoto and his team thought "If you had a barrel rolling towards you, what would you do?"