The video game characters we love often grow to be iconic, and enduring fixtures in pop culture over time. What can be less embedded in our collective consciousness, on the other hand, are the often murky, surprising, serious and downright bizarre origins of these characters. In this video, GamingBolt looks at the 15 origin stories for well known video game characters.
Spoiler warning.
DONKEY KONG
While Donkey Kong is now an extremely popular character in the video games industry, both in his capacity as a Mario antagonist and the star of his own games as well, his origin story is less well known. His first appearance was in the arcade game Donkey Kong (as was Mario’s too), and as per the game’s story, Donkey Kong is actually Mario’s pet gorilla. The reasons he kidnaps Pauline is because he’s treated unkindly by his owner, giving a whole new perspective to what is usually associated with the dynamic between these two characters.
