Donkey Kong Country Returns/Trivia


 * Shout-Out:
 * A stage set in the ruins features an enormous stone statue of the original Donkey Kong holding a Wii remote, as opposed to a barrel, over his head. In fact, the sprite is a modified sprite from Donkey Kong Jr. Math, with the tie added and a sign replaced with the Wiimote.
 * One of the stages is named King of Cling.
 * In "Foggy Fumes", one of the Smokey Factory levels, you can see the first level from the original Donkey Kong.
 * In the beach levels there are crab enemies that scuttle sideways along the ground. Ground pound near them and they'll flip over - ground pound again and they'll flip over again, unlike most enemies with stay stunned.
 * Mr Game and Watch appears in the background of the aforementioned factory stage, which itself is stylized to look like a Game & Watch game.
 * In 'The Mole Train', watch Mole Miner Max's facial expression carefully when he's enchanted by the tikis. Remind you of anything? Dun-dun-DUNNNN!
 * Tiki Tong has an eye tic similar to that of King K. Rool.
 * Retro created the Metroid Prime games, and they slipped in a few shout outs to Metroid in there:
 * In the first factory level, you can see Crocomire's skull in the foreground.
 * You can also see fossilized Infant Leviathans from Metroid Prime 3 in one of the cliff levels.
 * The Volcano Vibe theme also sounds very similar to the Magmoor Caverns theme.
 * The entire game is one to the original trilogy, although it predominantly references the first game. In fact, two of the stages reuse names from the original game: "Jungle Hijinx" and "Vine Valley".
 * In "Button Bash", there's a giant monkey statue wearing a tie patterned with the American flag. This is undoubtedly a reference to video game champion Billy Mitchell (from the movie The King of Kong), who was known for wearing the same.
 * Tiki Zing is named after an enemy that served a very similar purpose in DKC 1 and 2, the Zinger.
 * What Could Have Been:
 * There were going to be dinosaurs in the game. Live ones, not walking fossils like in the cliffs. Some unused concept art from Danny Richardson shows an enormous brachiosaur character, and art of the temple stage shows pterosaurs soaring in the background. A second jungle stage, creatively named "Jungle 2", was also planned but ultimately dropped.
 * There were going to be dinosaurs in the game. Live ones, not walking fossils like in the cliffs. Some unused concept art from Danny Richardson shows an enormous brachiosaur character, and art of the temple stage shows pterosaurs soaring in the background. A second jungle stage, creatively named "Jungle 2", was also planned but ultimately dropped.
 * There were going to be dinosaurs in the game. Live ones, not walking fossils like in the cliffs. Some unused concept art from Danny Richardson shows an enormous brachiosaur character, and art of the temple stage shows pterosaurs soaring in the background. A second jungle stage, creatively named "Jungle 2", was also planned but ultimately dropped.