Unlike The Super Mario Bros. Movie, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, thus far, has given no indication that it will feature Donkey Kong or the wider Kong family in any capacity. Nevertheless, the latest reveal has me enormously excited, because it appears that there's a small chance that it might actually utilize one of the most obscure pieces of Donkey Kong lore in its storyline.
No, I didn't mistake Fox McCloud being in the movie for Lanky Kong being in the movie (though, I mean, Chunky Kong was in the first one, so why not). The reason that I, and a subset of the Donkey Kong fan community at large, are delighted to see Fox in the movie is that Rare's games already connected the Donkey Kong universe (which I guess is also the Mario universe) to the world of Team Star Fox.
In 2002, Rare released Star Fox Adventures for the GameCube, and it was the final Rare Ltd. game to arrive on a Nintendo home console before Microsoft bought out the studio. The game is a very atypical Star Fox game that has fairly Zelda-esque gameplay and sees Fox on a mission to save Dinosaur Planet (which has broken apart), and along the way, Fox is accompanied by a little dinosaur called Tricky.
Now, even if you didn't know anything about the development of Star Fox Adventures, eagle-eyed fans would have noticed that Tricky shares the name with a similar dinosaur in Diddy Kong Racing - except, of course, that dinosaur in the earlier game is fully grown. "But so what?" you might say, "the fish enemies in Donkey Kong Country 3 are called Bazza and so are the living batteries in Banjo-Tooie, it doesn't mean they're the same thing."
Well, guess what? Before it was Star Fox Adventures, it was a different game called Dinosaur Planet that had no elements from the Star Fox universe and starred a character called Sabre. This fact is moderately well known, but what isn't is that it had another even earlier form. In its earliest known incarnation, it starred Diddy Kong Racing's Timber as a time-traveller, and from the sounds of it, he was still accompanied by young Tricky.
All of a sudden, Tricky's existence in Star Fox Adventure makes sense. The game started off as a Diddy Kong Racing spin-off where Timber went back in time. In that version, it made perfect sense for Tricky to be a kid after we previously met him as an adult. But then it ended up getting fiddled around with until most of the Diddy Kong Racing elements were gone, and only Tricky remained.
You'd be forgiven for thinking "Well, that's not Tricky anymore then" and, in fairness, some of the game's developers have indeed described SFA Tricky and DKR Tricky as being separate characters in the final form - but where's the fun in that? Especially when Rare seems to have embraced the idea since (at least in a tongue-in-cheek way).
The sequel, Star Fox Assault (which was developed by Namco, rather than Rare), also plays into the idea of the two of them being the same character, because even though the game is set only one year later, Tricky is now the same size as the Tricky in Diddy Kong Racing. Factor in that Tricky can change color, too, and every discrepancy between his appearances in the Star Fox series and in Diddy Kong Racing is reconciled.
Of course, you might want to ask, "Well, why would Tricky leave Sauria and go and live on Timber's Island?" But the games also give us an easy answer to that - Star Fox Assault sees Tricky's home world attacked by the Aparoid aliens, with many of his people hurt or killed by them, and their homes destroyed. The refugees are going to need somewhere to stay, right? So maybe they all travelled to the world of the Kongs and settled down to a life of peaceful seclusion on Timber's Island (until Wizpig came along, anyway). Credit to DK Vine for that fantastic explanation.
Although Nintendo has historically been quite coy when it comes to highlighting the connection between the Donkey Kong series and other Rare creations, Super Smash Bros. Brawl actually seemed to allude to it. It was only subtle, but it's interesting that the storyline had Diddy Kong teaming up with both Fox and Falco on their adventures. At the very least, it was a tip of the hat to them all having a little Rare connection.
Do I think that the specific Tricky connection will be explored in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie? Well, probably not, realistically - especially as, technically speaking, Microsoft owns Tricky as he appears in Diddy Kong Racing, while Nintendo owns his Star Fox variant, so they probably don't want to tie them together explicitly. Then again, if someone asked me whether I thought Chunky Kong would be in the Super Mario Bros. Movie before the trailers, I'd have said no too.
Whatever happens, I'm excited to see this movie. I hope that, just as Donkey Kong in The Super Mario Bros. Movie was the appetizer before Donkey Kong Bananza two years later, hopefully we'll see a new Star Fox game soon as well - one that follows the groundwork set by Rare in Star Fox Adventures.