King Kong Copy

Clockwise Order: King Kong, Oozaru/Great Ape, Donkey Kong and Gorizilla.

King Kong is one of the most famous and enduring movie monsters ever to be put to screen. "The 8th Wonder of the World" he was called since his 1933 debut. He has appeared in things from sequels to remakes, spin-offs, animated spin-offs, comic books and video-games. Thus, copyright-dodging spoofs trying to ape him are just as likely to exist. (Notably, while Godzilla is more difficult to knock off due to his unorthodox and outdated Tyrannosaurus-inspired design combining features of several other dinosaurs, King Kong, aside from his size, mostly resembles a typical gorilla or ape and thus is more difficult to copyright as a trademarked character.)

In most cases, a King Kong Copy takes the form of an ape, a giant creature, or a giant ape. They often live on an Isle of Giant Horrors, where they are worshipped or at least appeased by primitive peoples. As any visitors find out sooner rather than later, worship takes the form of offering a nubile young woman to the King Kong Copy. A "King Kong" Climb towards the end of the story is inevitable, followed by a long drop to their death after being shot at by fighter-pilots. Primal Chest-Pound may also be used. A Behemoth Battle with another giant monster (usually a giant reptile) is optional.

Many King Kong Copies have names that sound vaguely like "Kong", including variants of "Congo", "Conga", "Ping Pong", etc.

Compare with the other Captain Ersatz/Expy Stock Parodies like Notzilla and Monkey King Lite.

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Examples:

Advertising

• This 1995 and for Coca Cola has a woman getting offended because the giant gorilla that kidnapped her is more interested in a giant bottle of Coke than her.

Anime & Manga

• The Oozaru (the Great Ape in some English Dubs) from Dragon Ball seem to be inspired by King Kong, but are different from other examples in many respect. They are Saiyans, a savage Human Alien race that conquered planets, who can transform into giant primates (resembling a cross between a gorilla and a baboon) under the light of a full moon in a werewolf-like manner. The transformation stops and they come back to normal when the moon hides or disappears (temporarily), or if the monkey tail of a Saiyan is cut (meant to be permanent, but there's been instances of the tail growing back under the light of a subsequent full moon). A Saiyan who doesn't know how to control the form (as was the case for Goku in the original Dragon Ball and Gohan in Dragon Ball Z) is likely to do the stereotypical gorilla chest-pounding (despite the Oozaru technically being a monkey) while firing energy blasts from their mouth at everything in the general vicinity.
• Kaiju Girl Caramelise: Raimu Kouno, aka "Rairi," is a Downplayed example. Underneath her makeup, she has an apelike face, and she has a tendency to act a bit apelike when her real face is exposed. She also did a "King Kong" Climb in middle school during her outburst against the classmates bullying her for her appearance. However, she's a normal human girl otherwise. In a bit of Irony, she also becomes close friends with Kuroe Akaishi, who can secretly turn into a Notzilla.
• In Captain Celebrity's commercial for Narufest in My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, he is seen beating a villain who's "a giant gorilla with, let's say, an air of royalty about him" climbing the Tokyo Tower.
• The Pokémon the Series: Ruby and Sapphire episode "Slaking Kong" features a gigantic Slaking (a pokémon resembling a cross between a sloth and a gorilla) living behind a massive wooden wall. It is ultimately revealed to be a Humongous Mecha built by Team Rocket.

Art

• As well as painting official King Kong posters and the cover for the novelization to the 1976 movie, Frank Frazetta painted Queen Kong◊. A naked Giant Woman standing on a skyscraper holding a regular sized gorilla.

Comic Books

• Klyde from Cavewoman is a genetically engineered 15-foot-tall gorilla who regularly wrestles with dinosaurs.
• Obscure DC hero, Congo Bill had a magic ring that let him swap bodies with his giant golden ape, Congorilla.
• The defunct Disney Adventures had a comic called Gorilla Gorilla, about a gorilla called Gorilla Gorilla who would turn giant and fight a Not Zilla who he didn't realize was actually his roommate, Lizard Lizard.
• Space Ape is basically is a giant gorilla who joined the Green Lantern Corps.
• Notably MAD Magazine's first movie parody comic was Ping Pong. They later did Son of Mighty Joe Kong combining it with Son Of Kong and Mighty Joe Young. They then went on to do two King Korn strips parodying the 1976 and 2005 King Kong remakes when they came out.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) Issue # 17 had a giant robot gorilla called King Gong.
• Superman fought a few;
  • Titano the Super-Ape is a recurring foe. In the Pre-Crisis version, is an ape of gigantic size with kryptonite Eye Beams which forces Superman to deal with him carefully. His species (i.e. gorilla or chimpanzee) and origin story varies from comic to comic. On one comic book cover, he's climbing the Daily Planet tower.
  • He once fought a giant superpowered gorilla called King Krypton. Before dying KK turned humanoid and revealed he was a Kryptonian scientist who was turned into a gorilla and launched into space hoping cosmic radiation would cure him.
  • Superboy once fought a giant gorilla called Chandu who could use X-Ray Vision, heat vision and Kryptonite Eye Beams after drinking water that had been polluted by Kryptonite. Supes defeats him by using a giant battery to drain the thunderclouds of their excess energy.
  • Superboy once had to rescue Lana Lang's parents after they were kidnapped by an African tribe and going to be fed to a giant ape called Kingorilla.
• Supreme had a parody of Titano called Stupendo the Simian Supreme. Supreme ended up taking him to live on Conqueror Island, a Lost World similar to Skull Island that Kong came from.
• A giant ape named King Colosso appeared three times in Tomahawk. All three tales are obviously inspired by elements in King Kong (1933). King Colosso was an antagonist for two issues but a member of the Rangers for the last.

Comic Strips

• One The Far Side strip has a bunch of insects lining a wooden palisade and a single butterfly chained between posts outside, screaming with horror at the approaching giant butterfly collector.

Fan Works

• Jaune Arc, Lord of Hunger: During the Breach, the Grimm horde attacking Vale are led by a gigantic Beringel referred to as a King Beringel. Like Kong, it has the title king and is introduced attacking a city.
• In the Steven Universe fanfic series A Pink Planet, an experimental gem-organic hybrid (or "geminal") attacks the Treetop Palace in India right around the time when Steven is visiting there. While safely held-up in the guardhouse, Steven amusingly names it "Queen Kang", the geminal itself being monkey-like and reaching massive proportions uncommon in geminal experiments.

Film — Animated

• In BoBoiBoy Movie 2, the heroes are tasked to pluck the hair off a giant space ape called King Kang Kong.
• The Croods: A New Age: The film's Big Bad is a Kaiju-sized ape (part mandrill, part gorilla, part echidna) called the Spiny Mandrilla. The Betterman family hide behind a wooden wall from him, just like the Skull Island natives do from Kong. The local tribe of Punch-Monkeys appease him with sacrifices (primarily bananas), but when Grug eats the bananas intended as sacrifice, the Punch-Monkeys kidnap him along with Phil and Guy and give them to the Mandrilla as Human Sacrifice. Finally, the Mandrilla also suffers a Disney Villain Death, falling into a chasm to his doom.
• Monster Family 2: One of the monsters Mila Starr is send to capture for her parents' experiments is a giant gorilla named King Konga.
• The Powerpuff Girls Movie has Mojo Jojo ripping off King Kong after loading himself with Chemical X. Not only does he mutate into an enormous ape, but he also gains several abilities fitting that of a Kaiju, like fire breathing.
• Scooby-Doo! and the Reluctant Werewolf has one of the most bizarre examples: Genghis Kong, who is a mash-up between a giant orangutan and Genghis Khan.
• Yellow Submarine: Behind one of the doors in the house of The Beatles, there's a woman's bedroom where a giant gorilla (not identified explicitly as Kong) peeks in through the window, breaks it and kidnaps the screaming woman.

Film — Live-Action

• The 1976 South Korean film A*P*E features a giant gorilla that is best remembered for Flipping the Bird at the helicopters trying to shoot it.
• King Louie from The Jungle Book (2016) evokes this with being a giant ape who rules over his own little kingdom of monkeys. He does Kong one better as he's a real type of extinct giant ape, Gigantopithecus but modeled after an orangutan.
• The 1961 British-American movie, Konga, involves a Mad Scientist who uses a growth serum that eventually turns an ordinary chimpanzee into a gargantuan gorilla-like monster that rampages through London in the climax. The film proudly wears its status as a knockoff right in the title, and the director even paid RKO Pictures twenty-five thousand dollars for the right to use the name.
• The infamously schlocky The Mighty Gorga features the eponymous giant ape living in an African valley.
• Mighty Joe Young is a giant gorilla much friendlier than Kong who is tamed by a woman named Jill Young. Similarly to Kong, Joe is taken to the city and exhibited to the public, where he escapes and goes on a rampage. The same effects man who worked on Kong, Willis O'Brien, also worked on this film (alongside his protege, Ray Harryhausen). The film got a remake by Disney in 1998.
• The 1977 Hong Kong film^note yes, it's a Hong Kong King Kong Copy The Mighty Peking Man features a giant yeti named Utam, who raised a Fur Bikini-clad blonde woman named Samantha.
• The 1976 British parody, Queen Kong, has a gender flipped cast, including the eponymous female ape.
• Rampage (2018), adapted from the video game of the same name, stars a giant gorilla named George along with two other Kaiju. In this version, George gets some Adaptational Heroism, is a friendly zoo animal that is turned gigantic and aggressive by a serum, and has white fur to look distinct from King Kong.
• Space Monster Wangmagwi, the oldest Korean monster movie released in 1967, have it's titular monster being a kaiju simian not unlike Kong, albeit one who's hostile and serving a group of aliens intending to conquer Earth. It even develops affection towards the movie's female lead and snatches her away in it's paws late into the movie.
• The 1977 Italian film Yeti Giant Of The20th Century has a giant prehistoric apeman discovered in a block of ice in Canada.

Literature

• Johnny from Go, Mutants! had a human mother and a giant gorilla father. Here King Kong (1933) is A True Story in My Universe being based on Johnny's dad.
• There was a parody novel called King Dong written by Edgar Rider Ragged.
• Inverted in Moving Pictures (Discworld); the climax involves a Giant Woman climbing a tower while holding a screaming ape in her hand.
• Wild Cards has a rather literal example in Mr. Nobody, a shapeshifting ace who transformed into King Kong, got stuck in that form and forgot who he was, and spent decades escaping from a zoo and reenacting Kong's climb up the Empire State Building.

Live-Action TV

• Bulgario from Genseishin Justiriser is a robotic example, being a giant gorilla-like Deathborg directly based on Mechani-Kong from King Kong Escapes.
• Journey to the West (1996) (the TVB adaptation of the novel with the same name) has its first story arc being the Six Eared Macaque, a behemoth-sized monkey monster born from a rock (not unlike Sun Wukong himself) who is initially content with living in the countryside, until the Emperor Taizong, seeing the monkey monster as an "omen of fortune", decide to launch a campaign to have the Macaque transported into Chang 'an, the Capital City, despite his courtiers' protests. The Macaque is successfully put to sleep and captured thanks to the help of three bumbling demons hired by the Emperor, but much like King Kong, it regains consciousness and starts wrecking the entire city, nearly killing Emperor Taizong's friend Tang Sanzang (via Giant Foot of Stomping) until Sun Wukong pulled a Big Damn Heroes and stops the macaque from causing further damage.
• In one Sesame Street skit, a large primate is invading a city and the skit talks about various physical sensations (hunger, thirst, being too hot, and having to pee) and shows how the primate deals with them (eating a store that's Shaped Like What It Sells, namely burgers, drinking from the fire hydrant, using a plane's propeller to cool down, and using a giant toilet respectively).
• The Ultraman Neos episode "King of the Biosphere" practically rehashes the plot of the original King Kong film, with a monster named King Bamos as a Kong Expy, although this one had a bit designs lifted from a pug and a lion thrown in. There's even a group of T-Rex-looking monsters called the Rock Eaters who serves as Bamos' sworn enemy.

Tabletop Games

• In Isle of the Ape, the island is lorded over by Oonga, the prized pet of a mad god. Killing Oonga is impossible as a practical matter even for high-level characters, and he can slaughter a party very quickly. Sneaking past him to get to the exit is the only realistic way to deal with him.
• This is the entire point of the Empire of the Apes in Monsterpocalypse. Their ground troops are twenty-foot gorillas using howitzers for battle rifles, while one of their kaiju is an ape general so large he uses a mobile SCUD missile launcher as his personal BFG. Another kaiju, King Kondo, is a much straighter example.
• King of Tokyo has "The King", a giant simian-cyborg creature, though an expansion pack later added Kong himself.
• Pathfinder:
  • The game features a monster called a Megaprimatus, that is pretty clearly meant to be the 2005 version of Kong. The name even comes from the supplementary material from that movie.
  • Angazhan, the Demonic Prince of savagery, who resembles a mix of this trope and a Big Red Devil. He rules over his own layer of The Abyss, a Hungry Jungle called Ahvoth-Kor riddled with apelike demons and fiendish dinosaurs, usually fighting each other, as well as Big Creepy-Crawlies and carnivorous plants.

Toys

• The closest BIONICLE got to this was Keetongu. A reclusive cryptid and Last of His Kind who's not on the level of sapience as the dominant species but is pretty close. He is a legendary figure that only few believe in. Originally he was meant to be a giant compared to the other characters and sold as part of the "Tower of Toa" playset. LEGO though changed their minds and removed him from the set, releasing another Keetongu toy that, while large, didn't tower over the others. However, some of his King Kong-like traits survived in the story where he is portrayed as a giant depending on the scene, and even climbs and is shot down from a tower in the climax. Unlike Kong, Keetongu is tough enough to survive and kill one of the villains. The reference is made more clear in the Polish dub of the animated movie Web of Shadows where Onewa mishears Keetongu's name as "King Kongu".

Video Games

• One of the three original bosses in ARK: Survival Evolved is this, referred to as the Megapithecus, specifically resembling the incarnation from King Kong (2005) but with white fur.
• The first boss in Banjo-Kazooie was a Donkey Kong expy called Conga. A giant gorilla who threw oranges at the duo from the top of a tree.
• Famous Nintendo character Donkey Kong is said to be directly based off of King Kong, possessing the last name "Kong" (a word that applies to every other ape present in the franchise) and first name "Donkey" meant to be associated with "stubborn" to American audiences. This famously led Universal Studios to sue Nintendo for copyright violation despite having established themselves in an earlier lawsuit that King Kong falls under public domain. In his debut game, DK kidnaps a woman and carries her up to the top of a building. In Super Smash Bros. Melee, one of the Event Matches has a giant Bowser and a giant Donkey Kong face off on skyscrapers, a clear King Kong vs. Godzilla matchup.
• Dusty Revenge, set in a world of andromorphic animals, has a giant Kong Kong-esque gorilla named Tongada as it's boss. It's also the largest boss in the game, and introduces itself attacking a train Dusty is on before flipping the carriage aside with his bare hands, similar to the train scene from the 1930s film.
• Gigabash: One of the playable Monsters in Gigabash is called Gorogong, despite being a Lava Monster with Horns of a Bull, and a Shell like a Turtle, his overall appearance is mainly a Gorilla like Kong, plus, has unlockable costumes called Jungle Warrior: Brown Fur like Toho and Monsterverse Kong, The Abominable: White Fur like a Yeti and George from Rampage 2018, and Gorokong: Black Fur like the Classic and Peter Jackson’s Kong.
• Kommie Kong (renamed Gorillazilla in the Updated Re-release) from Heavy Weapon is a giant gorilla with cybernetic attachments that your tank has to fight as one of the bosses.
• Kaiju Wars: Megalodonkus (or Big Donk, as Major Danger nicknames it) is a tank-stomping, plane-swatting, city-smashing behemoth of a gorilla. As the nickname implies, it bears more than a passing resemblance to Donkey Kong, having the latter's famous cowlick.
• The boss of the amusement park stage of Monster Eye is a giant rampaging gorilla taller than most buildings, who attacks you as you're stuck on top of a Ferris Wheel (possibly a nod to Mighty Joe Young). The gorilla boss itself seems to be based on Peter Jackson's Kong from the 2005 film, with a scar around his right eye (visible when it tries chomping on you) and a similar fur colour.
• Overwatch: The super-intelligent gorilla from the Moon, Winston, is directly compared to Donkey Kong (himself a Kong Expy) in interaction with D.Va
  D.Va: A giant gorilla! Just like in those old video games.
  Winston: [chuckles] I get that a lot.
• Primal Rage features two King Kong Copies, both of which are deities with the form of gigantic apes (though with a few baboon elements as well): Blizzard, the God of Good and leader of the Virtuous Beasts who wields cryokinetic powers; and Chaos, the God of Decay and most foul and disgusting of the Destructive Beasts, who fights with flying vomit, noxious flatulence and acidic urine.
• Rampage: This game lets you play as an Expy of either King Kong (named George), Godzilla (named Lizzie), or a giant wolf (named Ralph). The object of the game is to...well...rampage across the world and destroy as much as possible. A Game Over implies that all three monsters are actually mutated humans, as they revert back to human form after taking too much damage.
• Tecmo Knight has a giant gorilla kaiju as a Recurring Boss, who will pop out in-between random levels as a Background Boss as you're atop buildings and structures, with the gorilla climbing up in the background and trying to smash you with its fists. You don't get to kill it despite fighting it multiple times, however — you slash and stab his arms, both with it's own life meter, and once each arm is defeated the gorilla monster retreats only to come back later.
• War of the Monsters: One of the principal monsters (to the point he's featured on the game's cover) that you can play as is a gigantic ape called Congar, who's special attack is his devastating roar. He even scales a skyscraper during his introduction animation in story mode. His origin is revealed that he was a chimpanzee launched in a rocket that collided with a crashing flying saucer.

Western Animation

• An episode of Nelvana's Babar animated series is about the elephant king and his friends getting shipwrecked on an Isle of Giant Horrors explicitly called Skull Island, inhabited by a giant gorilla named Conga the Terrible.
• The Beetlejuice episode "Beauty and the Beetle" featured Thing Thong, a giant Neitherworld ape (so named because he wears thongs—the footwear like sandals) who takes Lydia captive because he thinks she's beautiful, and he's self-conscious about his own appearance. Lydia helps Thing Thong overcome his neurosis.
• Honky Kong from the Black Dynamite episode "'Honky Kong!' or 'White Apes Can't Hump'" is a giant albino gorilla that winds up in the possession of drug-dealers Rallo and Rallo and used as an act in the circus. He takes one look at Honey Bee and winds up falling for her, kidnapping her and taking her back to the island he was captured from.
• Classic Disney Shorts: The Mickey Mouse cartoon "The Pet Shop", released about seven months after Kong, features Beppo, the Movie Monk^note spelled like this, rather than "movie monkey", on his cage, a movie-loving gorilla who breaks out of his cage, kidnaps Minnie and takes her to the top of a bird seed display in order to imitate his favorite screen idol.
• The Darkwing Duck episode "Film Flam" has an in-universe movie called "Son of Kongo" (a clear reference to The Son of Kong), starring a giant gorilla, which is brought into the real world by the supervillain Tuskernini.
• The DuckTales (1987) episode "The Ducky Horror Picture Show" featured a Monster Mash including a giant gorilla named Ping Pong who carries a giant paddleball. The ape climbs Scrooge's Money Bin with Mrs. Beakley in his hand.
• In the DuckTales (2017) episode "The Lost Cargo of Kit Cloudkicker", the Stone of What Was is an artifact on a tropical island that fuses regular creatures, turning the island into an Isle of Giant Horrors. One of them is a combination of a gorilla and a rhinoceros (essentially, a more monstrous, King Kong-like version of Rhinokey) that aggressively charges at Kit and the Ducks.
• The Great Grape Ape is a friendly, purple giant gorilla. People are terrified of him anyway.
• The Hair Bear Bunch enters Bananas, the zoo gorilla, in a wrestling contest offering a $500 prize. His ring name is King Klong.
• Henry's Cat: In the episode "The Lost World", Henry's Cat imagines himself as a Tarzan-esque Nature Hero defending the eponymous Lost World's denizens, the largest and fiercest of which is a gigantic blue gorilla that the narrator calls "King Kongo" (though when the name appears on screen, it's spelled as "King Konga" instead). Rum Baa Baa plays a Carl Denham-esque role in the episode, trying to capture King Kongo to exhibit him in a theatre. In the climax of the episode, King Kongo climbs a giant inflatable skyscraper while Rum Baa Baa fights him in a plane.
• Miraculous Ladybug: The Monster of the Week in the episode "Gorizilla". Adrien's bodyguard the Gorilla^note French slang for bodyguard is turned into a giant blue gorilla with super smell who is determined to find Adrien.
• The very first example is the Walter Lantz cartoon "King Klunk", released only six months after the original King Kong. In this cartoon, Pooch the Pup and his girlfriend Coonhound go on an expedition to film the giant Killer Gorilla King Klunk. From that point, the short follows all the most important beats of the original film: a Human Sacrifice by a tribe of Hollywood Natives, a Behemoth Battle against a dinosaur, Klunk getting captured and taken to the USA, and a dogfight climax on top of a skyscraper — all of them peppered with over-the-top cartoon gags.
• In the Primal (2019) episode "Rage of the Ape-Men", the eponymous ape-men hold a tournament where large Killer Gorilla warriors fight each other to death. Their champion becomes an example of this trope after earning the right to drink from a potion that increases his size, strength and bloodlust, and engaging in a battle with the Tyrannosaurus rex Fang.
• A few episodes of Rugrats feature Thorg, a giant purple ape that acts as King Kong Expy counterpart to their mainstay Notzilla Reptar.
• The Simpsons: The middle segment of "Treehouse of Horror III" is "King Homer," a parody of the original 1933 film with the giant ape possessing Homer's head shape and lazy personality.
• Thundarr the Barbarian encounters Simius and his fellow man-apes as they unearth various pieces of a Giant Mecha termed "the Mighty One." Despite efforts by Thundarr and his party to allay them, the man-apes succeed in reassembling a giant robot primate and use it as a weapon against the dwarf villagers. The locale is suggestive of old Hollywood, including derelict soundstages, meaning the man-apes have rebuilt an actual movie prop King Kong.
• King Klong was also a giant gorilla Dick Dastardly employs to use against the other racers in the Wacky Races episode "Real Gone Ape."

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