I've become fully King K. Rool pilled for Donkey Kong Bananza
King K. Rool will absolutely make an appearance in Donkey Kong’s upcoming outing, and I have a bunch of conspiracy theories to prove it to you!
As a child, I played (to use the scientific term) the shit out of Donkey Kong Country and its sequels. And Rare’s Banjo-Kazooie was my first “favorite” game, and it remains high on my personal list to this day. So when Rare took their Donkey Kong Country and mushed it with their Banjo-Kazooie, I was smitten with the infamous end result: Donkey Kong 64.
Yes, I suffer from the rare (heh) affliction of thinking DK64 (being scientific again) fucks. Oh, it has problems, to be sure. Problems that 2025 Ryan doesn’t really have the patience for anymore. But the world. The vibe. The music. Majesty. But none of that was my favorite part of the game.
There’s a lot of big lumpy weirdos in DK64 (including a giant Kremling called K. Lumsy, who we, as a society, don’t talk about enough), but none are so weird, and lumpy, and good as the man (Kroc) himself: King K. Rool.
This plump ruler is fashionable, theatrical, evil, and has what must be one of gaming’s worst astigmatisms. He’s also silly as shit, and has been such a perfect foil for the Kongs for decades. (The K. Rool boss fight in DK64 is one of the most — and I always hesitate to use this word, but it fits here — epic final encounters that’s ever played). If you were wondering who out there wanted King K. Rool of all character to show up in Smash Bros, it was me. I am that man.
But the thing about K. Rool (which was even goofed on in his Smash trailer), is that he hasn’t been around too much in the newer Donkey Kong eras. He skipped both of the Returns games from Retro, for example. And Donkey Kong hasn’t exactly had a lot of stand-alone titles in recent years.
Enter Donkey Kong Bananza, and a new roster of villains: VoidCo. “Another Donkey Kong game, another decade on the bench for King K. Rool,” I can hear you saying out loud to yourself as you read this. [Jeff note: It's okay if you're not saying that. Just let him have this.]
GUESS AGAIN, CHUMP! King K. Rool will absolutely make an appearance in Donkey Kong’s upcoming outing, and I have a bunch of conspiracy theories to prove it to you!
Below, I’m going to go over three big pieces of evidence and one incredible fan theory that point toward K. Rool's return in Donkey Kong Bananza. But before we do that, credit where credit is due. I went down a major Kremlings-coded YouTube hole over this past week, which is where I picked up most of these ideas. I’ll be linking to a ton of their videos below, but I really suggest you take a look at Uncle Al Plus and Kong Kompendium. Great stuff all around from dedicated DK YouTubers, which … what a world we live in. You unironically love to see it.
Anyway, let’s get to all of the stuff that will make me insufferable to talk to over the next 6 weeks regardless of if I’m right or wrong. (I'm right).
The Kroc motifs are everywhere
If you haven't seen any of the big, long trailers for Donkey Kong Bananza (what's wrong with you?), there are crocodile images everywhere. You can see it in the background of some shots, baked into the scenery of the world (an icy cliff that looks like a snout, complete with teeth comes to mind). But the most obvious reference is the "crockoid" enemies (notably missing the classic K spelling of the traditional DK croc enemies, the Kremlings ...). These guys appear to be working with VoidCo, the game's corporate monkey enemies, are are essentially mummified crocodile-lookin' dudes encased in rock.
There are a couple of things to look at with the crockoid that seem ... very obvious.
First, let's take a look at this boss enemy that DK and Pauline fight. We see Grumpy Kong, one of the VoidCo bastards, building this thing in a separate cutscene. But if you look closely at the top — the gold block — you'll see what looks like a crocodile with two lopsided eyes. Now who do we know that has eyes that look like that? Well, funnily enough, this is very common in a lot of Crockoid designs, where they each have these big, gold eyes, with one being bigger than the other. That's King K. Rool's whole thing, baby. He's got that fucked up eye and he loves gold.
What's inside the Crockoids is even more interesting, and you can see a bit of what I'm talking about if you look at the big boss' feet. They're crocodile skeletons. More specifically, they look almost identical to Kremling skeletons. You face skeletal Kremlings in Donkey Kong 64, and they look a lot like that, but they appear to be molten gold in Bananza.
To speculate a bit, it seems very possible that the Kremlings have gone extinct, or at least this sect has. And VoidCo are attempting to resurrect and use them. Maybe that includes a skeletal K. Rool. Or maybe King K. Rool is alive and well, actually in control of VoidCo, and is working to raise this undead army. Either way, it's pretty hard to ignore the very obvious K. Rool imagery both in the world and the enemies.
This Void Kong bastard seems suspicious
Void Kong, the tiny leader of VoidCo, is pretty suspicious. There's a lot to go over here that I'm going to skip over, including some pretty interesting stuff about the kind of monkey he is, and Journey to the West, etc -- the rabbit hole is very much there if you want to seek it out, and it is fascinating. Anyway, let's talk more about his obvious tells.
First, we gotta talk about the eye again. I KNOW, OK? I get it. But this creepy little bastard is often shown with one eye half-closed (almost swollen ...) and bloodshot. You sound crazy bringing it up until you remember that the series' main villain also has weird eye stuff, so it's one of the most obvious hints Nintendo could give. He's also extremely bedazzled in gold (I mean, check out them teeth), which is another beloved styling of the king. The guy has a gold plated belly, let's be real here.
This is a little more farfetched, I'll admit, but I've seen videos call out the edges of Void Kong's eyes. If you look real close, his eyes extend past his actual eyeballs, and have this maroon outline. The only other design we see in the game with that kind of language is DK when he's in his unsettling transformations. Curious ...
Nintendo also put out a goofy piece of news on the official eShop news board that's basically a press release from VoidCo about asking their employees to keep an eye (GET IT?) out for Pauline and DK. But at the bottom of the post, it makes this joke about Void Kong totally being the boss of the company. The very real boss. Got it. He's the boss? OK. Glad we're all on the same page. THERE IS NO SHADOW GOVERNMENT. Haha. Just jokin'. No for real, he's the boss. Cool.
That's the vibe, but here is the actual quote: "Oh, and did we mention that Void Kong is your boss? He's totally your boss." That feels like a very nervous "please ignore the man behind the curtain," but in this case maybe the man is a 10 foot crocodile monarch with a pension for pirate hats.
Finally, one of the bigger nails in the coffin for Void Kong is his name. If you're a Donkey Kong fan, you're familiar with the usual DK crew. You've got:
- Donkey
- Diddy
- Dixie
- Tiny
- Kiddy
- Lanky
- Chunky
- Funky
- Candy
- Cranky
- Wrinkly
- Swanky
- Poppy
- Grumpy
- Void
One of those things is not like the others. There are other very, very rarely seen Kongs that don't end in the "ee" sound, but Void is by far the most prominent. So what gives? Well, let's talk about some of the Void Kong possibilities here.
First, there's the world where Void Kong is K. Rool in disguise. Hence the weird name that doesn't fit with the rest of the crew (many videos will point out that Void means "not valid" or "empty") and the eye outlines that otherwise only appear on transformations. K. Rool loves a good costume, so this is relatively probable (at least until we get to The Boulder Theory, which I just love). Then there's the idea that Void Kong is more of a puppet, and that K. Rool is pulling the strings in the background.
Regardless, there's something not quite right about this little guy, and we should all keep a close eye (DID IT AGAIN) on him.
Cranky Kong is dropping a lot of hints
As usual, the most boring evidence is also the most compelling. And it's all about Cranky Kong (who, if you didn't know, is the original Donkey Kong from the arcade game, who captures an adult Pauline in his prime ... don't question the timeline right now, it's all sorts of weird at the moment. Current Donkey Kong is Cranky's grandson, and Donkey Kong Jr, Cranky's son and DK's dad, is kinda just MIA from all the DK games. ... anyway.)
Cranky appears around the worlds in DK Bananza with Ramby, the rhinoceros pal that DK rides in DKC and DK64. He, as usual, lives up to his name and is an absolute bastard to DK, lambasting him for being lazy and stupid. In some of the demo and preview footage for Donkey Kong Bananza, Cranky will go off on a tangent about a banana thieving monster burglar. Notably, when Cranky talks about this character (who apparently makes the ground shake), we don't see the little icons of the mysterious creature's face.
See, in both Mario Odyssey (made by the Bananza team) and in footage we've seen of DKB, images of character's faces appear in the text when you mention them. When Cappy refers to a "monster" in Odyssey, a little emoji of Bowser's face shows up next to it so the kids out there can follow along more easily. And we see the same thing happen with little emojis of VoidCo when NPCs mention them in Bananza.
But as you can see in the image above (and in the rest of the video, I'm not cherry picking here), as Cranky describes this assailant, there is no emoji at all. So he's not talking about VoidCo. He's also referring here to a singular entity. A male enemy, specifically, as Cranky calls out "his whole plan." Curious, no? Strange, don't we think?
Again, this is not sexy or red-string-on-a-big-board kind of evidence. But it is difficult to explain why Cranky would be describing K. Rool almost to a tee in these conversations unless Nintendo is hiding him in the game and teasing him throughout. Maybe we don't see an emoji of the character here because the character is supposed to be a mystery. We're supposed to be piecing together that there is another force at work here from the ramblings of this crazy old monkey. So when K. Rool shows up as the secret leader of VoidCo, or a puppet master behind the scenes, or a tool being used by VoidCo that they lose control of, or a third party force entirely, you can point back to what Cranky was saying the entire time.
Of all the evidence here, even the fun Boulder Theory I'll lay out below, I don't think there's anything more suggestive that something is at work outside of VoidCo than what we've seen of Cranky's dialogue. It's very interesting for those of us who need the Kroc King in this game.
“The Boulder Theory”
For most of these sections, I've been pulling from a few different videos, primarily the two sources I mentioned at the top. But for this one, it's all Kong Kompendium (and his sources), who put out a video called "The Boulder Theory" about two months before the game launches on May 7. It's gotten over 100K views, and is a ton of fun.
I'm going to just suggest you watch it for all the truly juicy details, but I'll give it away a bit here. The idea is that there is a shot in one of the trailers for Donkey Kong Bananza that shows VoidCo and a bunch of Crockoids on a ridge. And in the cinematic, you can hear Void Kong laughing at DK. But, if you listen closely, there is another, much deeper laugh behind Void Kong's. Then, if you look closely behind VoidCo, you'll see this weird-ass boulder that doesn't have eyes like like the other Crockoids and is moving very strangely.
As Kong Kompendium says (and as a pretentious Film Studies minor in college, I agree), the boulder totally fucks up the composition of the shot. It's really ugly in what is otherwise a really nice lineup of baddies. Almost as if it's not supposed to be there ...
We've seen Nintendo pull a fakeout with Pauline for the marketing of this game, and initial box art renderings featured DK and Oddrock, who we now know transforms into her true form, Pauline, within the game's opening hours. Now that they've revealed Pauline, Nintendo put out new box art and updated their websites to feature our gal instead of the weird little rock. What if they're doing the same thing here with the boulder, and it's actually supposed to be the silhouette of VoidCo's mysterious benefactor -- a figure that would be very easily recognized by the Kong-heads out there — King K. Rool?
Think back to before Spider-Man: No Way Home came out, and everyone was dissecting trailers pointing to weird shot composition and saying it seemed like Marvel had edited out characters from the scene in order to keep it a surprise. Well, as we all know, they did exactly that with the other two Spider-Mans who appear in that movie. Nintendo has ALREADY done it with Bananza, and Kong Kompendium thinks they're doing it again with the King of the Kremlings.
Watch the entire video, it rules.
Thank you for coming on this journey with me. I am doing well and have therapy twice a month. I appreciate your concern.
If you've read all of this, I can only assume that you too have the sickness, and can only be cured by being extremely right about King K. Rool showing up in Donkey Kong Bananza.
We'll know by this time next week, surely, if our boy is in the game or not. I clearly hope he is.
In the meantime, please, please go check out Uncle Al Plus and Kong Kompendium. They are both very funny and their videos do a great job of explaining these conspiracies and theories in more depth.
This post originally appeared on BigFriendly.Guide
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