The Kong Nobody Talks About Anymore
Donkey Kong Bananza is drawing massive attention as the series’ boldest 3D outing in years, with DK tearing through destructible environments and rediscovering what makes the franchise feel alive. But for a specific corner of the fanbase, the excitement comes wrapped in a particular kind of grief. Lanky Kong – the gangly, accordion-playing, cartoonishly proportioned Kong from Donkey Kong 64 – is nowhere in Bananza. Not a cameo. Not a poster in the background. Not even a throwaway line.
That absence stings more than it sounds. DK64 fans have spent over two decades watching Lanky get quietly erased from the franchise’s memory, and Bananza is shaping up to be another entry that treats him as though he never existed. For a character who had a fully voiced theme song, a dedicated moveset, and a fanbase that genuinely loves his absurdist design, the silence is hard to ignore.
What Lanky Actually Meant to DK64
Donkey Kong 64 was built around the idea that each Kong was irreplaceable. You needed every single one of them to complete the game – their unique abilities locked behind specific doors and puzzles that only they could open. Lanky was not the funny optional character you could skip. He was mandatory. His handstand speed boost, his inflate ability, and his Grape Shooter were core mechanics in a game that demanded you use every tool in your arsenal. He wasn’t comic relief bolted onto the side – he was structurally built into the experience.
That design philosophy gave DK64 players a genuine attachment to the full roster. When Lanky does something ridiculous, like walking on his hands faster than DK can run upright, the game earns the laugh while also making you depend on him. That combination of absurdity and utility is exactly what Rare was doing at its peak. Players who grew up with DK64 didn’t just tolerate Lanky – they rooted for him. And watching Bananza construct an entirely new adventure without even acknowledging he exists is a reminder of how thoroughly that era of the franchise has been set aside.
A Pattern Fans Have Noticed for Years
Lanky’s absence from Bananza is not an isolated incident – it’s the latest data point in a long pattern. Since Rare’s separation from Nintendo, the DK roster has steadily contracted. Chunky Kong, Tiny Kong in her original form, and Lanky in particular have been cycling in and out of the franchise’s memory with no consistency and no explanation. The Kongs who survived are the ones who fit neatly into existing archetypes: DK as the lead, Diddy as the sidekick, Dixie as the fan favorite, Funky as the cool-guy bonus. Lanky doesn’t fit any of those slots.
He’s too strange. His design looks like a rubber-limbed fever dream, his personality is pure chaos, and his abilities in DK64 were deliberately weird in ways that don’t translate easily into a modern action platformer. Nintendo has never seemed sure what to do with characters like that post-Rare, so the default answer has apparently been to do nothing at all.
The frustration in the DK64 community isn’t really about demanding Lanky get a starring role. Most fans are realistic about that. What stings is the absence of any acknowledgment – no Easter egg, no brief visual nod, no moment that says the developers remembered these characters existed. Bananza is going deep on DK lore with Pauline’s involvement and new world-building, which makes the complete omission of the DK64 Kongs feel less like an oversight and more like a deliberate editorial choice. That possibility is what’s drawing the most pointed reactions online.
This isn’t entirely new territory for the fanbase. Diddy Kong’s absence from co-op play in Bananza already has longtime fans divided, and the DK64 crowd is watching all of it add up into a larger picture – one where the Rare-era characters are being quietly phased out rather than honored.
The Irony of DK64’s Legacy
The irony is that Donkey Kong 64 is having something of a cultural moment. The game spent years as a punching bag – the poster child for collectathon bloat, the game that “killed” the genre according to a certain generation of game critics. But that reputation has softened considerably. A growing number of players revisiting it have found it more charming, more ambitious, and more genuinely fun than its reputation suggested. The DK Rap alone has gone from cringe meme to beloved ironic anthem to something people now quote with actual affection.
Lanky is part of that reclamation. His theme – a wheezebox accordion number where the game literally tells you he has no style and no grace – became a template for how video game characters could be endearingly bad at existing. Fans who came to DK64 after its reputation softened often find Lanky to be a highlight rather than a low point. So the timing of Bananza’s complete silence on the DK64 roster is particularly awkward.
What Bananza’s Silence Signals Going Forward
Bananza appears to be charting a specific creative identity for the DK franchise – one grounded in the original arcade era, the SNES trilogy, and whatever new mythology Nintendo is building around Pauline and the Bananza world itself. That’s a legitimate creative direction. But it also draws a very clear line, and the Kongs on the other side of that line are the ones who came from Rare’s N64 era.
For DK64 fans, the question now is whether Bananza’s success cements this direction permanently. If the game sells well and is praised for its focused roster and forward-facing lore – which early indicators strongly suggest it will be – Nintendo has very little commercial reason to revisit Lanky, Chunky, or the rest of the 64 crew. Success will validate the exclusion, at least from a business standpoint.
Lanky Kong has a fully rendered 3D model collecting digital dust somewhere. He has a theme song. He has a moveset. He has fans who have kept his name alive for more than 25 years on pure goodwill. The gap between that and total invisibility in Bananza is the specific thing that’s bothering DK64 players the most – not the game’s quality, which they’re largely excited about, but the quiet confirmation that Rare’s era of the franchise may be done being referenced at all.
