Nintendo reveals its Kong Dong in court documents

You know Nintendo, and how one of its cornerstone characters is Donkey Kong, who's starred in the DK rap in addition to some video games? Well, it turns out that a bunch of names were proposed for him before the company settled on the iconic monkey moniker we all know him by. One of these was "Kong Dong".

Stop laughing, this is a serious matter. A poor video game character could have ended up having to go by that for its entire virtual life. Millions of young people could have grown up talking openly about their love of dong, creating millions of hilariously awkward scenarios for their already depressed and overworked parents to try and diffuse out of a desperate fear their their spawn might be bullied for the heinous act of saying something that sounds interesting. Actually, I've come around on it. They should have called him Kong Dong.

Where did this dong revelation come from? Well, some old court documents from the 80s originally uncovered by gaming historian Norman Caruso back in 2020, which are now experiencing a resurgence in attention (thanks, Eurogamer), because, well, people like sniggering at the word dong.

The docs are from some legal wranglings between Nintendo and Universal over the idea of DK's name potentially taking a bit too much inspiration from King Kong, which the film lads held the rights to. Naturally, since the former simian has kept the name, the judge ended up concluding that the two were different enough to let Nintendo keep on keeping on.

However, not before Nintendo had to whip out a big long list of alternative names it had considered for DK, which included: Funny Kong, Kong the Kong, Jack Kong, Funky Kong, Bill Kong, Steel Kong, Giant Kong, Big Kong, Kong Down, Mr Kong, Custom Kong, Kong Chase, Kong Boy, Kong Man, Kong Fighter, Wild Kong, Rookie Kong, and Kong Holiday. Oh and obviously, Kong Dong.

Personally, I think Custom Kong and Kong Down were worth a go, since the former sounds like he's hosting a series of Pimp My Ride, and the latter sounds like what you'd shout if - god forbid - Donkey Kong was assassinated by a sniper.

How do you feel now you've learned about Nintendo's old, forgotten dong? Let us know below?