Banjo-Kazooie/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Why is it that Banjo and Kazooie never question Gruntilda's enormous lair that's only about 350 metres from their own house until after Tooty is captured?
    • Grunty wasn't bothering them, so they weren't bothering her.
    • It's a neighbor thing. It's bad form to yell at the neighbors for no reason, and they had no idea she was evil until Tooty was kidnapped. Perhaps she simply likes huge elaborate evil looking houses. Her perogative.
  • Why do Banjo and Kazooie keep a portrait of Bottles in their house despite having no knowledge of his existence until after Tooty is captured?
    • Tooty lives there too.
    • Ah, right. I thought that in the intro it seemed that Tooty and Bottles had never met before. Re-watching it, I realise that Bottles did in fact say her name, meaning they both must know each other. Still, it begs the question: Why does Tooty address Bottles as Mr. Mole, and why didn't Tooty ever mention anything about him?
      • Perhaps they had only met one other time and barely knew each other. Bottles' last name may be Mole.
      • I don't keep huge pictures of acquaintances above MY fireplace.
      • Perhaps Tooty was already great friends with Bottles prior to the first game but was just being polite and well-mannered like Banjo, who himself is pretty respectful and nice to others.
      • The manual for the first game confirms that Tooty and Bottles are long-time friends.
  • One of Brendila's "Facts" about Grunty is that she subscribes to "Fat Hag Monthly". If she wants to steal Tooty's youth and beauty so much, why does she subscribe to a magazine with a self-derogatory name and subject matter? And how could such a magazine exist in the first place?
    • As for why it exists, it's probably an independent magazine. Those can be about some odd things that aren't seen in the mainstream. Hence the myriad of say, furry magazines or fat-themed ones. They aren't something you would see on a bookshelf of a store, but they exist. A "Fat Hag Monthly" would be unusual, but not utterly impossible. Alternately, it could just have an odd name that doesn't fully reflect the contents, or be a magic-themed book that uses the title ironically.
    • Perhaps it covers how to STOP being a fat hag?
    • Grunty admits she's a big fat hog. What she really needs a nice hot bod(y).
  • What happened to Tooty? She kinda disappeared after Kazooie.
  • So, why did Grunty turn into a skeleton?
    • She's been buried underground for two years. Don't ask why she's still alive.
      • Why is she still alive? (Sorry. Couldn't resist.)
        • A Wizard Did It. (Well, she is a witch, what did you expect?)
        • Her sisters stole life force from the land and gave it to her. They couldn't resurrect her completely, though, so she ended up as a skeleton. That was the main plot of the game, remember?
          • Nope, she never died, her body just became skeletal while buried, the plot was to have her regain her flesh. And she never got to use B.O.B. in herself anyway.
            • Well, that's an easy way to lose weight.
            • The fact that we see Grunty's rock being knocked around during the title sequence and the intro scene makes it pretty obvious that Grunty was alive the entire time.
        • She's a witch. Apparently witches in this verse are immortal. At the end, she got blown to pieces and was still conscious; if that didn't kill her, lack of food, water, and oxygen wouldn't.
      • And why do her ribs show through her clothes?
      • Part of her clothes rotted while she was buried underground alive for two years (her hat has also visibly deteriorated).
  • In Banjo Tooie, why can't Banjo use his claw swipe attack when he's by himself? Most of the other moves make sense in terms of whether you need to have both characters together or just a specific one in order to perform them, but the fact that Banjo can do nothing to defend himself before learning to use his backpack to hit people is ridiculous, considering that they left all the duo's other moves from Banjo-Kazooie intact. While I'm at it, why does he suddenly need Kazooie to roll in the sequel when he was perfectly capable of doing it without her help in the original?
    • They changed the claw swipe for a ground version of Kazooie's peck attack in Tooie, specifically so Banjo couldn't use the move and thus need to learn the backpack attack. It was a lame attack anyway.
    • He wishes he could keep those moves, but he cannot. He is bound by a pack.
  • Is Banjo his world's police officer?
    • No, he is just a bear who happens to live in the same place as an evil witch.
    • Banjo-Kazooie, Freelance Police?
    • Given that nothing happens in the world without Banjo's direct intervention, it can be surmised that Banjo is actually God, and his people give him Jiggies as sacrifices for his various wonders. Presumably, somewhere, there are a bunch of monkeys smirking because Banjo evolved bipedal locomotion for them and didn't even come back for the Jiggy afterwards; it could be argued that Grunty is human, but the differences between her and a trash compactor seem to be largely cosmetic.
      • Perhaps Banjo himself is not god, but Master Jiggywiggy is, and Banjo, Kazooie, and Mumbo are his other disciples (i.e. not the one who guards the door to the temple).
  • Why is the first area called Spiral Mountain, when the terrain immediately surrounding it is elevated significantly higher? Wouldn't Spiral Valley be more appropriate?
    • Because the defining feature is an enormous spiral-shaped mound that one might call a "mountain"?
  • How big is Banjo, anyway? He's a bear, but Kazooie and Bottles (a mole) are all roughly the same size as him. This could be passed off as some trait of Funny Animal people in this world, but in Click Clock Wood, an ordinary eagle and a squirrel are bigger than he is. He's the same size as Mumbo, who's vaguely humanoid, so maybe the other animals are just huge... But then we meet Humba in Tooie, who is a totally normal human, and she's twice the size of Banjo. Is Banjo a really tiny bear, or...?
    • Humba is pretty much the same size as everyone else at the end of the game, so I'm assuming she was just giant in her wigwam because the designers thought it looked better. The eagle is also bigger than a bull or a crocodile, and many bugs are close to the same size as everything else, so take those how you will.
      • Not to mention Captain Blackeye, who's at least five times taller than Banjo.
    • Yes, Banjo certainly seems smaller in comparison to the other characters, but he seems to have grown in Nuts and Bolts. Now he's taller than most of the other characters, though not by a whole lot.
      • Taking this into consideration, Banjo appears to be about the size of a normal bear in Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing, being taller than just about everyone but Eggman, who is slightly taller than him. This would make Kazooie about the size of an Albatross, at LEAST.
  • Maybe I'm looking too far into this, but the thought that Tooty is the fairest in the land is just incredibly Squicky.
    • Errrr....ummmm...well, it is the opinion of the pot...not that that makes it any better. Or maybe he just didn't like Tooty and thought that if he said that she was prettier Grunty would "dispose" of her.
    • Look at it this way; how many female characters WERE there in the original Banjo Kazooie? As far as I can remember, there was Tootie, Kazooie, Gruntilda, Gruntilda's sister, and an unnamed pink squirrel that can be found sleeping in Nabnut's house in Click Clock Woods during winter. There's a very small pool of potential candidates for 'fairest,' assuming it's female exclusive, which Tootie just happens to be at the top of.
      • The next question is "how is Gruntilda in second place?" Bootlicking isn't an answer; if it was, he wouldn't have mentioned Tootie at all.
        • Presumably 'the land' meant Spiral Mountain. Kazooie's just that big a bitch.
    • Maybe he meant her potential for prettiness (e.g. by the time Tooty had grown to be as old as Grunty, she'd look as Fan Service-y as the game over screen can show us)?
    • And what about the totally hot girl in the red bikini from the ending sequence? Why didn't Dingpot pick her?
    • Okay, I know the whole "fairest" thing is a reference to Cinderella, but perhaps "fairest" doesn't refer to physical looks.
    • Except if you watch the Game Over scene, it totally does.
    • The "fairest of all" comment was most likely to be taken as a harmless comment on her looks and not as anything sexual, like how some people can innocently comment on each other's appearance without implying anything sex related.
    • Guys, isn't it obvious? It was all a Batman Gambit by Dingpot. He hated working for Grunty, so he deliberately chose Tooty as the fairest of the land in order to prompt Grunty to kidnap her. He did that so that Banjo and Kazooie would defeat the witch, and with her out of the way, Dingpot can go on with the rest of his life.
      • That would explain why he helpfully gives Banjo a boost up to the rooftop for the final battle in the first game, instead of, say, cooking him.
  • When Banjo is transformed, what the heck happens to Kazooie?
    • Banjo always has his pack while transformed, maybe she stays inside the whole time (possibly transformed into something small enough to fit into it.)
      • But in the transformations, it looks like the backpack is empty.
    • Rooreeloo hypothesises that they share one mind. Or something. He squicks himself out trying to come up with an answer.
    • The same place Pokémon go when they go back into their pokeballs: A parallel universe where time is non-existent; where there is no air, only vacuum; no light, only constant pain and darkness. I'd say she's a very good sport about all of it, really
      • I thought they had a waterbed and a jacuzzi in there.
        • I always imagined it being a mini house, kind of like a nice hotel room. At least, that's how I imagined the Pokéballs, so Kazooie's place is probably the same.
    • The point of the transformations, aside from getting new abilities, is to disguise Banjo. He becomes a Ticker (termite) to infiltrate the termite mound, a walrus to enter Wozza's cave, a bee so as not to arouse the Zubbas' suspicion, etc... Kazooie stays in the backpack because she knows that if Grunty's minions recognize her, then their cover is blown.
    • That didn't stop Kazooie from talking to one of the dinosaurs in Terrdactyland when Banjo learned how to roar from one as the Baby T-Rex, despite the fact that they were clearly enemies that kept trying to attack them and still do damage to them if they touch them even after the Baby T-rex transformation, not to mention Banjo referred to him and Kazooie as two people in the transformed state, saying "I don't think we do" when the dinosaur told them they didn't know how to roar properly, not to mention Kazooie further made herself known she was there and said "Let's go roar at someone" again, showing they weren't a one person talking after the two had been transformed.
    • I always thought Kazooie was transformed in a smaller form of whatever Banjo is transformed into. Don't ask me why I thought that.
  • Why is Banjo the only person in the entire universe that Kazooie doesn't hate?
    • Because they're friends, maybe something more. Why? Er, No Accounting for Taste, I suppose.
    • Maybe Kazooie's a Tsundere. She likes most things well enough, but acerbically hides her feelings lest people assume her weak and easy pickings. Also, she was far less bitter in the original game than in the sequels, so maybe all the hassle with Grunty the first time 'round made her more cynical.
    • To be fair, Kazooie doesn't hate King Jingaling in Banjo-Tooie. She even thinks that his "strange pet thing" is cool.
    • Maybe Banjo is Kazooie's Morality Pet, or maybe he's just the only one with the tolerance to put up with her.
    • Well, there is the idle animation for the first two games where Kazooie bugs Banjo by pecking him on the head for fun and the second time she does it Banjo grabs her by the neck and tugs her really hard: that's some stuff in the game where the two weren't exactly getting along. Then there's the Breegull Bash move in Tooie and in the first game's manual she does call Banjo fur face in the story section of the booklet.
  • Where, exactly, are the worlds in the original game? My Willing Suspension of Disbelief will let me believe that those mountains are deep enough to house a series of caverns big enough to be Grunty's lair, but given that many of the worlds are clearly outdoors... wha? Are they just on other parts of the Isle, linked there by magic? Are they in other dimensions entirely? How does Mumbo get to all of them, then? Is it his house? Or Bottles, for that matter? And if they're on the Isle O' Hags, then where are they in the overhead view you see in Cloud Cuckoo Land in the sequel?
    • There are portals: it's what the start pads are for.
    • In the first game, Grunty made the worlds both as challenges and to brighten the place up (or for more practical purposes, as in Clanker's Cavern). It's easy to assume they're pocket dimensions or something. Mumbo can probably just teleport between them - he'd never teach Grunty something he couldn't sneak by, after all. Bottles probably just uses the pads like Banjo, but he can get there before you because he can dig, or he's got a bit of magic as well (he can talk to you without being actually there, implying telepathy). As for Banjo Tooie, I have no idea.
    • The same place the paintings in Super Mario 64 lead, I would assume. Or at least a similar dimension.
    • Wait, what? The tower doesn't even connect to mountains aside from slightly jutting out.
    • I've always just assumed that the entrances to the worlds in Grunty's lair act as portals that lead to different places. In Cloud Cuckooland in Tooie, you can actually see some of the Tooie worlds on the Isle'o'Hags below; presumably, the Banjo Kazooie worlds are also down there somewhere as well.
    • Clanker's Cavern is under Rusty Bucket Bay. Mad Monster Mansion is Grunty's vacation house.
    • Check the WMG.
  • How did Bottles tunnel a molehill into the belly of a cyborg-shark-whale? Likewise, in the sequel, how did Jamjars build a silo that links to a cave in a floating mountain in the sky?
    • Do you mean the hatches? The Silos only appear on the Isle O' Hags.
      • Yes, actually. Thanks for clearing up the misconception.
    • At the end of Tooie, Kazooie tells Jamjars "At least we weren't hiding in our silos", so there are two types of Silos, the kind that Banjo and Kazooie use to warp in Isle O' Hags, and the ones Jamjars uses. In this same sense, how can Bottles tunnel into worlds created by Gruntilda's magic? And how does he move around so FAST anyway? One can only assume the molehills and silos are magic as well.
      • The worlds weren't created by Gruntilda's magic, the entrances in Grunty's Lair are portals to far-away lands.
    • I'm far more concerned about the molehill in Treasure Trove Cove where you learn how to fly. It's on top of a ship's crow's nest, the floor of which cannot be more than about 12 inches thick...
      • He burrows through it. As for Clanker's Cavern, he goes through the lock and each link in the chain to the underbelly.
    • He swims into Clanker. Who said he had to stay underground all the time?
  • Where exactly does Kazooie poop when she's confined to Banjo's pack? Makes you wonder if there was more to her being happy to leave than we think...
    • It's contained in the Blue Eggs, of course.
    • She probably just gets out. We just don't get to see when it happens since it'd be gross.
      • We don't see Banjo poop either... why does it matter?
    • Nobody Poops. Really.
      • This raises questions about Loggo.
        • Loggo is one of Grunty's toilets, duh.
        • Also, if nobody poops, then what the heck are the Clinker's in the Clinker's Cavern Mini-game in Grunty Industries in Tooie? They sure look a lot like feces.
          • Mold. They're mold. Not feces in industrial air ducts.
    • To be fair, as seen in Banjo-Tooie, have you seen how much Banjo's backpack can carry when he's not at risk of crushing Kazooie? (Hint, a baby triceratops much bigger than he is.) Perhaps it's a portable Hammerspace that contains Kazooie's apartment (she just craps whenever she's in the backpack).
  • About the vehicles...
    • Games that only contain Banjo the Bear and no vehicles:
      • Banjo-Kazooie
      • Banjo-Tooie (debatable as there are several minor vehicle segments)
      • Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge
    • Games that contain both Banjo the Bear and vehicles:
      • Diddy Kong Racing
      • Banjo-Pilot
      • Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts
      • Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing with Banjo-Kazooie
    • So, what's all this about vehicles being "un-Banjo"? Seems to me like he's been drivin' it up since Day One (note that I'm talking about the character himself and not the series).
    • I think the comment was referring to Nuts & Bolts gameplay taking away from the previous games rather the character's driving; if Nuts & Bolts retained the previous gameplay and limited the vehicle driving, it would have been more accepted.
  • So what's the deal with Grunty's Industries, anyway? The place is an enormous industrial factory that spews waste out of every corner. The air is polluted, the water is polluted, the ground is polluted, and the factory pumps out barrel after barrel of toxic waste. But the question still remains: what exactly does the factory produce? Twinklies? What does Grunty want with Christmas lights? And, if the factory does produce twinklies, why does 90% of it have nothing to do with them? As far as I can see the factory just manufactures toxic waste
    • Looks to me like it's a combination of Toxic Waste Plant (Everywhere), Freight Station (Train station on floor 1), Storage Facility (Floors 3 and 5), Mook Factory, and Sewer/Sewage plant (The fourth floor).
    • Keep in mind that Grunty also has an amusement park that (A) serves food that certainly violates FDA guidelines, (B) has rides which are very dangerous if working at all, and (C) has employees that try to kill the guests. Productivity seems to not be high on her list of priorities.
    • I read somwhere that it manufactures underwear. I think it might have been in the manual or Nintendo Power's Player's Guide.
      • Right, the Nintendo Power Player's Guide. The manual for the game states, and I quote, "Nobody knows what Grunty's monstrous factory produces." Probably whatever Kremcroc Industries, Inc. does.
      • The Prima stategy guide says that it's an underwear factory. That would make sense, considering the level's transformation is a washing machine that shoots underwear.
  • Ok, so why did Banjo and Kazooie never bother to fix up their house in the eight year gap between Tooie and Nuts & Bolts? Why did they live in it after Gruntilda had blown it up and turned the place into an entire dump? I mean, how on Earth could they stand to still live in it without it getting repaired? How does it not bother the two that they're living in a run down old building and never bother to fix it up? Granted, Jolly Roger did fix it at the end of Nuts & Bolts, but why on Earth did the two live in that dump for eight years without repairing it until that point in the series?
    • It helps to emphasize the fact that the two just let themselves go after so many years of not being in another game. Or perhaps they did fix it up, but let it go into disrepair after seeing no reason to clean up.
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