King K. Rool, sometimes shortened to simply K. Rool, who has gone by many aliases, is the malevolent king of the Kremlings, and the main antagonist in the Donkey Kong franchise, as well as the arch-enemy of Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, and their allies. King K. Rool has repeatedly tried to steal the Kongs' banana hoard. It has been suggested that he takes the hoard in order to starve the Kongs, in addition to simply liking bananas. He has even kidnapped members of the Kong family on various occasions.
King K. Rool makes his first appearance in Donkey Kong Country as the game's main antagonist and the seventh and final boss. K. Rool and the Kremling Krew come to Donkey Kong Island to steal Donkey Kong's banana hoard; they encountered little resistance, as the only person guarding them was Donkey Kong's friend, Diddy Kong whom they trap in a DK Barrel. Later, Cranky tells Donkey Kong that his hoard was stolen, and Donkey Kong starts his adventure.
Finally, Donkey Kong and the released Diddy Kong to reach K. Rool's ship, the Gangplank Galleon, where they face him in battle. K. Rool's attacks involves running into the Kongs and throwing his crown at them as a boomerang. While his crown is off his head, he can be stomped. If he is hit four times, he begins to drop cannonballs from the sky. These are slow and predictable, but require careful movement to avoid. When K. Rool is hit three more times, the fake "kredits" show up on the screen with the various Kremlings in place of actual developers.
After the fake credits are done, King K. Rool gets up and tries to stomp on the Kongs by jumping, first making long jumps, then long and short jumps, the long, short, and very long jumps. After being jumped on three more times, King K. Rool is ultimately defeated for real. The cast of the game appear as the real credits roll in DK's Treehouse or Gangplank Galleon in the Game Boy Advance remake. K. Rool also appears after the credits of the remake, where he forces Donkey, Diddy, Candy and Cranky Kong off the ship by threatening to blow up Kong Island with his onboard cannons, with Cranky calling it a "cheap stunt". This sets up the story for the sequel, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest.
In Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest, K. Rool, under the alias of Kaptain K. Rool kidnaps and stows him away in Crocodile Isle, demanding the banana hoard as a ransom. After discovering that Donkey Kong has been kidnapped, Diddy Kong and his girlfriend, Dixie Kong, rush off to save him from Kaptain K. Rool. The Kongs eventually find Donkey Kong tied up in Stronghold Showdown, located at the end of K. Rool's Keep, but before they can rescue Donkey Kong, K. Rool pulls him up into his airship, the Flying Krock; in the Game Boy Advance remake, Donkey Kong does not appear there, and K. Rool instead a massive Kremling, Kerozene, to battle Diddy and Dixie.
In the final world, also named The Flying Krock, Diddy and Dixie engage in a boss fight against K. Rool in K. Rool Duel. The first time that Diddy and Dixie enter the boss level, they briefly witness K. Rool whacking Donkey Kong with his blunderbuss and shooting kannonballs at him; the battle then starts. For the entire battle, K. Rool uses his blunderbuss to fire kannonballs, including spiked ones at the Kongs. He also uses it to release exhaust gas and travel back and forth quickly. During the last phase of the battle, K. Rool turns invisible and shoots out various poisonous gases; the blue gas freezes Diddy and Dixie, the red gas makes them move slowly, and the purple gas reverses the D-Pad controls, Kaptain K. Rool takes damage when the Kongs throw a kannonball into his blunderbuss, and is defeated after nine hits.
After his defeat, K. Rool tries to stand back up, but Donkey Kong breaks free from his ropes and uppercuts him out of the Flying Krock. K. Rool falls all the way down into Krem Quay. where he is chomped on by sharks. He recovers from the shark bites and swims ashore to the Lost World. In the Game Boy Advance version, Kaptain K. Rool is shown to be covered in seaweed in the following scene.
When Diddy and Dixie collect every Kremkoin, Klubba permits them to access an ancient Kremling Palace, Krocodile Kore, where the Kongs fight K. Rool a second time. In the rematch, K. Rool fires numerous kannonballs in succession. When he shoots out a barrel, the Kongs must jump onto it to reveal a kannonball, which they must throw into K. Rool's blunderbuss. Unlike the previous battle, K. Rool is only defeated from one hit. Instead of backfiring, the gun explodes, flinging K. Rool into a geyser that acts as a power source to Crocodile Isle. K. Rool gets stuck in the geyser, which continues building up energy until it explodes.
At the end of the game, right after the Lost World explodes, the entire Crocodile Isle sinks underwater. A ship sails away from the island's remains, and an ominous laugh can be heard as it sails over the horizon, suggesting that K. Rool survived the explosion. In the Game Boy Advance version, K. Rool instead curses the Kongs, vowing to return while sailing away before Funky Kong bombs the ship in his Gyrocopter, after which he vows revenge.
According to Wrinkly Kong, K. Rool is enrolled as a student at Kong Kollege, and she tells Diddy and Dixie that, should they encounter K. Rool, they should remind him to do his homework. According to the Player's Guide, K. Rool is not a skilled sailor despite being a pirate, and he is responsible for multiple shipwrecks such as the one in Krem Quay.
In Super Smash Bros. Brawl, King K. Rool's trophy states that Kaptain K. Rool is actually King K. Rool's brother. However, this is regarded as either a mistake by Nintendo, or a tongue-in-cheek joke in the vein of the Mr. L reference in Paper Luigi's trophy.
In Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble, King K. Rool is seemingly replaced by the robot K.A.O.S. as the Kremling Krew's leader. When Dixie and Kiddy enter Kastle Kaos near the end of their adventure, they battle KAOS a second time. Some time in the battle, a red curtain lifts, revealing K. Rool to have made KAOS as a puppet leader. This time, K. Rool goes under the alias of Baron K. Roolenstein. When Baron K. Roolenstein confesses his plans of using KAOS for world domination, he says, "[...] and I'd have gotten away with it... ...if it wasn't for you meddling kids," which is based on a line from the Scooby-Doo franchise. After being revealed, K. Rool replaces KAOS to fight Dixie and Kiddy, using a variety of gadgets to assist him.
During the battle, K. Rool has a helicopter pack on his back to fly. He uses a remote control to send blasts of electricity. To attack K. Rool, Dixie and Kiddy must pull down on a specific pipe from the ceiling, causing a barrel to appear, and then throw it at K. Rool's helicopter pack. It deals more damage if K. Rool is electrocuted by his own electric beams after being hit by multiple barrels. When K. Rool is defeated, KAOS crashes on the ground, freeing Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong.
In Krematoa, if Dixie and Kiddy collect all five cogs and give them to Boomer, his machine awakens a volcano, causing the Knautilus to rise to the surface. Inside the Knautilus is where Dixie and Kiddy battle K. Rool a second time. In this battle, K. Rool remains in the back of his vessel for some time and occasionally enters the front, where the Kongs are at. He attacks using electric beams and a fireball launching cannon. In order to hurt K. Rool, Dixie and Kiddy must throw several Steel Kegs at his helicopter pack either directly, or through the use of a chute in the ceiling, depending on his position. After ten hits, K. Rool is defeated as he loses control of his helicopter pack as he spins out of control in the Knautilus.
If the Kongs manage to free the Banana Bird Queen, a short cutscene shows K. Rool attempting to flee from the Northern Kremisphere in a Hover Craft. As revenge for being imprisoned, the Banana Queen flies after K. Rool and drops an egg onto him, thus trapping him. K. Rool's eyes peek out the eggshell, perplexed.
King K. Rool returns in Donkey Kong 64, where he appears on a large mechanical island. He plans to blow up Donkey Kong Island with a new weapon called the Blast-o-Matic. However, his new and improved Crocodile Isle ends up crashing due to the incompetence of the ship's drivers. When Crocodile Isle is about to crash, K. Rool sitting in his throne wobbles in shock. In an attempt to distract Donkey Kong while he has the Blast-O-Matic repaired, K. Rool has Diddy Kong, Tiny Kong, Lanky Kong, and Chunky Kong imprisoned, and Donkey Kong's Golden Banana Hoard stolen.
K. Rool appears in several cutscenes with his unnamed pet Klaptrap, whom he strokes similarly to the way the James Bond villain, Blofeld strokes his cat, being an obvious parody. Also similar to Blofeld, K. Rool largely has his face obscured in the early cutscenes. He also breathes and speaks in a manner similar to Darth Vader from Star Wars. He is much larger in this game than all other games; as huge as Chunky Kong when he steps into his Hunky Chunky Barrel. Throughout the game, he watches the Kongs' progress and chastises his own minions' failures. A scene shows K. Rool demanding that nobody leaves the Blast-o-Matic until it is repaired, going as far as sending a large red Klaptrap to attack a fleeing Kasplat (albeit offscreen).
Eventually, K. Rool's henchmen succeed in repairing the Blast-o-Matic, just as the Kongs break into Hideout Helm, and K. Rool demands that the weapon be fired, despite the warnings that if it is not fully tested, it could explode. After the Kongs permanently shut down King K. Rool's mechanical island and the Blast-o-Matic, he tries to escape in a large airship. The ship ends up being knocked to the ground and destroyed by a recently released K. Lumsy. Venturing inside the crashed vessel, the Kongs find a boxing arena filled with spectators and King K. Rool, as his boxer alias King Krusha K. Rool, ready to battle.
After Chunky Kong delivers the seemingly final blow to K. Rool, a cutscene is shown in which K. Rool gets back up after the fight. He is about to attack Chunky from behind, but is distracted by Candy Kong. He ends up being blasted over the horizon by Funky Kong. When he lands, it is in his dungeon, where he meets a very unhappy K. Lumsy who proceeds to beat King K. Rool in retaliation for locking him up before being sent flying again by the giant.
K. Rool's laugh uses a pitched-down version of the "Evil Laugh" stock sound effect from the Cartoon Trax Volume 1 album, which was previously used for Baron Samedi in Rare's GoldenEye 007. The unaltered laugh is used for Kloaks and Krocs in the Game Boy Advance remakes of Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest and Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!, respectively.
K. Rool's Kaptain persona also makes a cameo and is referenced in Donkey Kong 64. Portraits of him can be found in some of Gloomy Galleon's sunken ships, several log cabins in Crystal Caves, and in Creepy Castle's Museum; additionally, inside the sunken ship off to a corner, there is a book entitled "Kaptain K. Rool's Log Book".
Even though he is absent in Donkey Kong Country Returns and Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D alongside the rest of the Kremlings, he and his usual role was indirectly alluded to by Cranky Kong, where the latter, in reference to the Kremlings' absence and the theft of the banana hoard being done by another party, said to Donkey Kong "who hasn't stolen [his] bananas at this point?". Similarly, his species, alongside that of the Kremlings, was also referenced by Cranky Kong dismissing Donkey Kong with "See you later, alligator" before chuckling to himself.
K. Rool is once again absent in this game, but in the "Grassland Groove" level, an area in the background displays a rock formation resembling K. Rool's head, along with a shape of Banana Bunches resembling his crown.
In the Legacy of Chris Thorndyke,
He is initially voiced by Fred Tatasciore while Chris Sutherland from Donkey Kong 64 is his understudy in the English dub and he is reprised by Toshihide Tsuchiya in the Japanese dub.
THEMES[]
- K. Rool's Theme (Donkey Kong 64) - Theme of King K. Rool
- Crocodle Cacophony (Super Smash Bros. Ultimate) - Vs. King K. Rool, Tiki Tong, Cactus King, and Lord Fredrik, the Snowmad King