Nintendo's Creepy Problem With Pauline And Donkey Kong

When longtime Donkey Kong fans watched the Nintendo Direct video hyping up the July 2025 game Donkey Kong Bananza, they were treated to the news that DK would have a new sidekick in Odd Rock, a purple rock that has a mystery surrounding her.

But play through the game just long enough, and Odd Rock hatches into a 13-year-old version of Pauline, longtime friend of Donkey Kong, who usually appears as a voluptuous woman in her mid-20s, who is now a teenager, yet looks like a kindergartener with freckles.

Some fans went into full-blown denial, thinking that maybe this was "Pauline Jr." a fan-made daughter for Mario and Pauline. Some thought that maybe Pauline had a baby sister. But Nintendo confirmed that this child is in fact, the original Pauline, and that this game was a prequel to Super Mario Odyssey.

... Which is fine until you realize that Super Mario Odyssey exists in the same universe and timeline as the 80s arcade Donkey Kong games, takes place after Donkey Kong Country, and that this leaves a very confused fan base.

If Donkey Kong Bananza existed in it's own universe, nobody would have been bent out of shape about Pauline now being a child, but promotional material points to this being part of the canon, and that opens up a major question block over the entire franchise.

Back in the 1980s, Donkey Kong games were hot, but the story, a nod to 1930s storytelling, would likely upset people in a post-2020s world, where kidnapping and animal abuse are no longer treated as "silly fun" as it was back in the 80s.

If you played both Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. then you were familiar with the story. Mario (or as he was originally known, Jumpman) owned Donkey Kong as a pet, though some cabinets made him a zookeeper on the side. This story already hearkens some to the HBO Max docuseries Chimp Crazy, which showed why owning gorillas, apes, monkeys and chimps as pets is a cruel, dangerous and bad idea. In some games, DK was even used in a circus act to Mario's amusement. This Bowser-level cruelty is on par with the treatment animals like Kenzy faced.

One day, fed up with his poor treatment, DK broke free and kidnapped Mario's then-girlfriend Pauline (sometimes known as Lady or Paula) as punishment. New games would either have players take the role of Mario to rescue Pauline, or in Donkey Kong Jr. related games, have the player take on the role of DK's young son and help break DK out of the cramped cage Mario would put him in.

Pauline, Mario's girlfriend since childhood, was not a playable character, fluctuating between being a brunette in a red dress and a blonde woman in a pink dress, sort of as a prototype for Princess Peach. She was a passive damsel in distress, so tightly wound up into outdated and misogynistic tropes that in one of the games, the player is also expected to retrieve her parasol, purse and other fem-coded belongings before her rescue.

By the early 90s, Pauline had already been in countless remakes of the original arcade cabinet, with some games even featuring Donkey Kong Jr. aiding his father in her kidnapping. DK harbored romantic intent for his victim, but soon, Pauline would be temporarily phased out of the series in favor of Mario's new love interest, Princess Peach, who was also a damsel in distress, but by the mid-90s would become a playable character in her own right, able to fight monsters alongside Mario starting with the halfway point of Super Mario RPG: Legend Of The Seven Stars on SNES. Though even dumped by Mario, Pauline still would not consider DK as a replacement boyfriend.

For a short time, official comics from Nintendo started to show Pauline as a friend of DK's, and the narrative of her being complicit in her own kidnappings started popping up, likely as a way to quiet angry parents who were getting sick of her needing to be rescued and objectified with a torn-up dress.

Then in 1994, Donkey Kong Country hit the SNES and with it came a major change. DK was now the retired Cranky Kong, and as for his son? Well that depends.

Going forward, DKC 1, select other games and even the Illumination CGI blockbuster Super Mario Movie were clear that the "DK" you play as now is actually Donkey Kong Jr. all grown up, making him Cranky's son.

However in some games, Cranky calls him his grandson and implies that he is Jr's son and that he has raised him all alone, implying that Jr is no longer in the picture, either dead or just being a negligent father somewhere. This is further exacerbated by games where the newer DK is seen right next to Donkey Kong Jr.

This confusion stems from a miscommunication at Rare and later Nintendo, but for most fans, this current DK is Donkey Kong Jr. and therefore, Cranky's son. DK's mother is revealed to be Wrinkly Kong, who is still married to Cranky until her passing in Donkey Kong 64, yet she lives in a separate cave. This is likely due to the fact that Cranky during his time as the original Donkey Kong was romantically pursuing Pauline, intending to cheat on Wrinkly. Despite this, she still helps him.

After DKC and DK64, Pauline returns to the franchise as Mario's friend in several DS games, making it clear that they have long since broken up. Still, DK - again, the DKC version, meaning that this is Donkey Kong Jr. as an adult - starts kidnapping her just as his dad had done in the arcade games, and just like his dad, he is harboring romantic desires for Pauline while dating Candy Kong.

Between the implied bestialities, pension for cheating on the Kong at home in pursuit of Pauline and just the overall fatigue of players tired of the helpless damsel in distress routine, Nintendo went back to those comics and started pushing hard the narrative that Pauline was "part of the gag" of her kidnapping, in order to get Mario to do one or another thing. This turns a problematic story into something clumsy, weird and a mean-spirited, but considering that Mario started it by owning the now-Cranky Kong during the arcade days, few felt sympathy for the plumber.

By the time Super Mario Odyssey rolled onto the Nintendo Switch, Pauline's days as a damsel in distress were a distant memory, as her friendship with both Donkey Kong and Mario had reached a pleasant plateau. Here, she serves as a singer and as the mayor of her hometown of New Donk City. A line she says in the game about how being kidnapped by a Kong traumatized her puzzled fans as they tried to figure out if this meant Cranky Kong or the current DK.

According to Donkey Kong Bananza, it's neither. DK had to rescue her from Void Kong. And the story's placement couldn't be any weirder.

Bananza takes place before Super Mario Odyssey, as DK looks youthful, more like his old self as Donkey Kong Jr. than he does in DKC. But Cranky Kong, King K. Rool, Diddy and Dixie are all in the game, and Dixie references DKC 2.

But DKC exists after the Donkey Kong arcade cabinets. This is backed up by Cranky's self-awareness that he is a video game character and his non-stop complaining about the arcade being "better" than the SNES game as he was abusing his son in DKC 1.

This means that Pauline should already be an adult, and not a 13-year-old girl, as Bananza exists between DKC and Super Mario Odyssey. It's a midquel. It could have worked if young Pauline had been pulled from an earlier timeline, but the game solidifies it's spot as a direct prequel to Odyssey, with the ending showing that she will grow up into Mayor Pauline and that she is not from another timeline nor universe, but again, the game's timeline places this firmly after the Donkey Kong arcade cabinets. This version of Pauline shouldn't exist.

As if the continuity error isn't a big enough glitch to upset longtime gamers, there's also the added implications of Pauline's relationship to DK.

In Bananza, DK acts as a mentor to her. Some gamers even consider him to be fatherly. If this game only existed in it's own universe, that would have been sweet, but seeing as how it's meant to be a midquel within the main Mario and Donkey Kong universe, this implies that as she grows up, he develops a crush on her, and this now smacks of grooming for a title where he has kidnapped her multiple times. This turns DK into a whole different type of predator, far worse than anything seen before, and most gamers found themselves creeped out by the prospect.

Still, even gamers in full cringe mode bought Bananza anyway for it's fun mechanics, just as their parents and grandparents played Donkey Kong and DKC before them, looking past the obviously creepy problems with Pauline's trafficking in order to enjoy games sold to kids ages 6+.

Pauline's character has evolved since the 1980s. It's time Nintendo evolves with her.