The Donkey Kong timeline is a mess — can Bananza clean it up?

Donkey Kong Bananza will add even more chaos to the confounding timeline of the Donkey Kong games, which over the past 40-plus years, has been a tangled mess of contradictions and confusion.

But Nintendo’s revelations about Pauline and its coyness about her age — she’s just 13 years old in this game — plays into the story of Donkey Kong Bananza offer a glimmer of hope that the Switch 2 exclusive might help clear some things up. And this is big news for weirdos who think about the Donkey Kong timeline.

Of course, this is Nintendo after all, a company that has both contorted itself to try to explain away the diverging timelines of The Legend of Zelda franchise but also loves a paradox in which Baby Mario and adult Mario exist in the same time period and race karts against each other. The company is here to make fun games and put smiles on faces, even if it means frowns for the people who try to dissect whether Cranky Kong is Donkey Kong’s father, grandfather, or an older version of Donkey Kong himself.

In order to understand (or try to understand) the Donkey Kong timeline, we need to start at the beginning: 1981’s Donkey Kong.

Who even is Donkey Kong anyway?

Nintendo’s original arcade platformer game establishes that Mario (aka Jumpman) must rescue damsel-in-distress Pauline (aka Lady), who has been kidnapped by Donkey Kong. It wasn’t established at the time why DK wants to secure Pauline — Love? Hatred of Mario? — because arcade games of the ’80s didn’t have ROM space to waste on things like “narrative.”

Later games would establish events in the Donkey Kong timeline that occur prior to the events of Donkey Kong. 2006’s Yoshi’s Island DS confirmed the existence of Baby DK, an infant version of Donkey Kong roughly the same age as Baby Mario, Baby Luigi, and Baby Peach, which would assuredly put that game in the distant past. Remember: Mario is canonically (permanently?) about 25 years old, which means the Yoshi’s Island game occurs decades before Donkey Kong. Anyway, Baby DK wears a red bib with the initials “DK” in yellow, similar to how adult Donkey Kong wears a monogrammed red tie. (I’ll also note here that Baby DK and adult Donkey Kong exist in the same time-space, as established by 2005 baseball game Mario Super Sluggers.)

Baby DK’s connection to the baby Mario Bros. and other Mushroom Kingdom infants is fleeting, and he is presumably returned to his ape troop after the events of Yoshi’s Island DS.

Sometime between the events of Yoshi’s Island DS and Donkey Kong, Mario and Donkey Kong cross paths again in Donkey Kong Circus, a 1984 Game & Watch game in which Donkey Kong is forced to perform while in captivity, juggling pineapples (and avoiding fireballs) while birling on a barrel. Should DK fail in his task, Mario proceeds to laugh his ass off at the ape’s misfortune.

Donkey Kong Circus appears to provide proper justification for Donkey Kong to seek revenge on Mario, namely by kidnapping Pauline and throwing barrels and sentient fireballs at her would-be rescuer.

Donkey Kong Jr., which introduces the concept of Donkey Kong as a father and presents Mario as a huge dick, follows Donkey Kong. Junior must reclaim his father, who has been abducted by a whip-wielding Mario after the violence of its predecessor. In games set after the events of Donkey Kong Jr., the senior Donkey Kong breaks into Stanley the Bugman’s greenhouse — from Game & Watch game Greenhouse — and having escaped Mario and Stanley’s constant harrying, pauses to teach Junior basic arithmetic (see Donkey Kong Jr. Math).

At this point, the Donkey Kong timeline shatters.

Donkey Kong Country for Old Men

After more than a decade out of the spotlight, 1994’s Donkey Kong Country establishes that the Donkey Kong seen in Donkey Kong and subsequent arcade and NES games has aged considerably, and is now known as Cranky Kong. The Donkey Kong that stars in and is playable in Donkey Kong Country is the grandson of Cranky Kong (the original Donkey Kong) and the son of Donkey Kong Jr.

Adding to the confusion is that, just a few months prior to Donkey Kong Country’s debut on Super NES, Nintendo released Donkey Kong, a Game Boy reimagining of the original Donkey Kong that expands Mario’s quest to rescue Pauline into a globetrotting puzzle adventure. So, two entirely separate apes known as Donkey Kong get games that year.

Donkey Kong Country builds the foundation for a long list of Kongs, including the “new” Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, Dixie Kong, and Wrinkly Kong — Cranky Kong’s late wife and therefore Donkey Kong’s grandmother, who is also a ghost. Later games in the Donkey Kong franchise, building on the new canon established by developer Rare, add even more Kongs, but keep much of the action centered on Kong Island and surrounding lands and the new Donkey Kong.

Despite Rare’s intention to turn the original Donkey Kong into Cranky Kong and establish a new identity for Donkey Kong, it seems that Nintendo, Rare, and other developers behind games like Super Smash Bros. and Mario vs. Donkey Kong can’t agree on the whole Crank-Junior-Donkey Kong lineage. Older games claim that the Donkey Kong that appeared in the arcade original is the Donkey Kong we know and play as today. Some recent games, like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, however, affirm the idea that Cranky Kong is grandfather to the character Donkey Kong, but the recent Super Mario Bros. Movie makes it pretty clear that Cranky is DK’s father, not grandfather. In some Rare-developed games, Cranky confusingly refers to Donkey as “son.”

Suffice it to say, the Donkey Kong family tree and timeline is confusing, and one should probably resign oneself to the canon established by the Rare games, in which the original Donkey Kong seen in 1981’s Donkey Kong is now Cranky Kong.

However! Donkey Kong Bananza appears to take place between the events of Yoshi’s Island DS and the original Donkey Kong, based on the age of Pauline. She’s just 13 years old in the Switch 2 game, much younger than her appearance in Donkey Kong and subsequent games, like Mario vs. Donkey Kong and Super Mario Odyssey. Exactly how Nintendo plans to explain this is unclear, especially since Cranky Kong, Diddy Kong, and Dixie Kong from Donkey Kong Country games set generations after the original Donkey Kong are also in Bananza!

Given Nintendo’s liberal use of time travel shenanigans in the Super Mario universe and a general “You guys really care about this shit?” attitude when it comes to gelling decades of canon, don’t expect a satisfying answer to how Teen Pauline fits into the larger Donkey Kong timeline. Or why Donkey Kong in Bananza has been slightly redesigned to match his classic look. Whatever the explanation, it’s enticing enough to care about seeing through Donkey Kong Bananza’s story, and uncovering what lies beneath the game’s deep layers.