Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Not so much the scripts than they are the music track titles. The most notable of these are the Jungle theme from the original and the Mine theme from the second. The "DK Jamz" album swaps the titles of the Map and Jungle themes around with the former being "Simian Segue" and the latter being "DK Island Swing". This was fixed in the GBA release. The Mine theme was a Cut Song from the second game's soundtrack, with a bootlegged version calling it "Mining Melancholy". However, this title is Word of Dante at best. The GBA version finally gave it an official title as "Kannon's Klaim".
Career Resurrection: Inasmuch as this trope can apply to a video game character rather than a real life person. Before the series came out, Donkey Kong was arguably seen more as part of video game history rather than a viable character anymore. It revived Donkey Kong as a character and made him one of of Nintendo's most beloved mascots.
After it was revealed that King K. Rool was coming into Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Gregg Mayles (albeit somewhat jokingly) said that he wished that he "spent a bit more than five minutes coming up with his slightly rubbish name."
If this DK Vine article is any indication, Rare themselves were not fond of the redone backgrounds in the GBA ports, with Paul Rahme outright describing them as being horrendously washed out.
It was obviously based on Super Mario World, but it does have its own original elements, like a frontal rolling attack, minecart rides, and secrets hidden in the walls. Though some still slam it for being a Mario clone.
It was also Nintendo's response to the Sega Genesisversion ofAladdin. That game used cutting-edge technology to transform 2D animation into video game sprites and was a major Killer App for the Genesis, so Nintendo and Rare fired back with a platformer that transformed 3D animation into sprites.
Keep Circulating the Tapes: The original DKC trilogy was removed from the American and European Wii Virtual Console services in 2019 and the Wii U Virtual Console services four years later, meaning the only way to get copies of the game is finding either the original SNES cartridges or the GBA remakes. Fortunately, the trilogy would eventually move to Nintendo Switch Online beginning in July 2020.
Market-Based Title: In Japanese, the SNES trilogy was known as Super Donkey Kong. Since the Retro-developed games weren't produced for the Super Famicom, their Japanese titles instead were the same as the English titles, only with the word "Country" dropped (so they were called Donkey Kong Returns and Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze, respectively).
Shrug of God: When asked what the "K." in K. Rool's name stood for, Gregg Mayles, one of his creators, said that it was just something added to make him seem more important (and that K. Rool might have added it himself), and said that in hindsight, it could have meant something like "Kremling" or even "Keith" (concept art called him "Krudd").
Beam Me Up, Scotty!: A slight example. Donkey Kong's infamous line is commonly misheard and quoted as "I'll shower you with coconut cream pie". The actual line uses the plural form, "pies".
Blooper: In their debut appearance in "Booty and the Beast", Kutlass speaks with a deep voice while Green Croc's voice is high-pitched. Oddly enough, starting with their next appearance in "The Legend of the Crystal Coconut", the two have their voices swapped and remain that way for most of the first season. Though in "Ape-Nesia", alongside a short flashback from "Booty and the Beast" with Kutlass, there's a short scene where they revert back to their original voices, less than a minute after they were speaking in their standard yet incorrect voices. If you've watched "The Legend of the Crystal Coconut" VHS tape, you may assume that the swapped voices were how they were supposed to sound from the beginning. Their sole appearance in season 2, "The Kongo Bongo Festival of Lights", finally reverts the duo back ot using their original voices.
Celebrity Voice Actor: The Japanese dub featured television personality Becky as Dixie Kong and rapper Banana Ice as Funky Kong.
In the Japanese dub, Kōichi Yamadera and Mika Kanai, who voiced DK and Candy, were married in real life (they have since divorced, though).
In the Latin American Spanish dub, Luis Alfonso Mendoza (Funky and Kutlass) and Lourdes Adame (Dixie and Kiddy) were married at the time of production. They have since died.
Creator's Pest: The show's most prolific writer, Erika Strobel, wrote in an online post that she hated Candy Kong, saying "her weird design made me cringe" and "she looked like a burn victim".
The French version of the first season primarily used voice actors from the Quebec area, with the only exceptions being Franck Capillery (Donkey Kong), Hervé Grull (Diddy), and Emmanuel Curtil (Funky) recording their dialogues in their native France.
Voice actors from the Greater Vancouver and Greater Toronto areas were used for the English version.
Directed by Cast Member: In the Latin American Spanish dub, Eduardo Tejedo voiced Junior the Giant Klaptrap and also served as the ADR director.
International Coproduction: The season was produced by Canadian-based Nelvana and French company Medialab. The second season swaps out the latter with Taiwanese companies Wang Film Productions (through their Chinese Hong Gaung division) and CGCG Inc. Canadian media company WIC Communications (later absorbed into Canwest, parent of Global Television Network, itself now sister to Nelvana with the merger of Shaw Media and Corus Entertainment) also served as co-producer.
In the English version, Donkey Kong's singing voice is provided by Sterling Jarvis instead of Richard Yearwood.
In the Latin American Spanish dub:
Cranky Kong was initially voiced by Ismael Castro. In episode 27, Cranky's singing voice was provided by Arturo Mercado, who eventually took over for Castro starting with episode 29.
While the late Lourdes Adame provided Dixie Kong's speaking voice, the character's songs were performed by Maggie Vera.
In the French dub of the first season, Diddy was originally voiced by Hervé Grull. For the second season, Grull was replaced by Lucile Boulanger.
For the French dub's second season, voice production was moved from both France and Quebec to just France. As a result, a majority of the characters were recast with French actors. Franck Capillery and Emmanuel Curtil retained their roles (DK and Funky respectively), however, due to being native to France.
King K. Rool was voiced by the late Len Carlson in the pilot episode "Bad Hair Day", and then by Benedict Campbell for the rest of the show's run. Carlson would later be cast as Krusha.
In the Latin Spanish dub, Cranky Kong and Bluster Kong were originally voiced by Ismael Castro and Juan Alfonso Carralero, respectively. Beginning with episode 29, they were replaced by Arturo Mercado (who provided Cranky's singing voice in episode 27) and Mario Filio.
The series had a VHS tape from Paramount advertised as a direct-to-video movie, title; Donkey Kong Country: The Legend of the Crystal Coconut. The "direct-to-video movie" was actually four episodes from the first season of the show (Legend of the Crystal Coconut,Bug-A-Boogie,Ape-Nesia and Booty and the Beast), spliced together with newly-edited scenes and dialogue. While it mostly puts the episodes in order, the order in which the last episode, Booty and the Beast (which was the first of the episodes in terms of production order), is placed, however, leaves a gigantic Plot Hole in the "movie." In the third act (Ape-Nesia), there's a scene where Diddy tries to help an amnesiac DK jog his memory, with a flashback to where they were taken hostage on Kaptain Skurvy's pirate ship. However, during the final act (Booty and the Beast), which DK himself says happened sometime afterwards, the same flashback plays out in reality. To compensate for this, Legend of the Crystal Coconut is Re-Cut so that the song "Pirate's Scorn" occurs as a flashback within that episode, rather than at the beginning of Booty and the Beast.
Meanwhile, the episodes themselves were significantly out of order from their production codes when aired on television. Most egregiously, "Just Kidding" was aired as the finale while "Message In A Bottle Show" wound up the first episode of Season 2.
In the Latin American Spanish dub, the late Luis Alfonso Mendoza voiced Funky and Kutlass while his brother Ricardo Mendoza voiced Polly Roger.
In the Swedish dub, Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong were voiced by brothers Niclas and Linus Wahlgren respectively.
Rereleased for Free: Retro Rerun, a Youtube channel Nelvana owns, features every episode for the show to watch for free. It can also be watched for free on Tubi.
Unspecified Role Credit: The ending credits list the principal voice actors and not which characters they voiced.
According to writer Erika Strobel, the reason for Nelvana's collaboration with Medialab was because the latter fired the original writers for coming up with scripts that were racist, sexist, and inappropriate for a children's show. Since they already storyboarded 10 of those episodes, Nelvana had to write around them.
The unaired pilot episode (which is an alternate version of the first episode "Bad Hair Day") had different voice actors for almost all the characters including Donkey Kong as you can see in this Medialab promotional tech demo for the show at 1:30. There are also some environment elements that looked kinda different like Cranky Kong's treehouse.
is any indication, Rare themselves were not fond of the redone backgrounds in the GBA ports, with Paul Rahme outright describing them as being horrendously washed out.