Is Nintendo Retconning Pauline's Origin Story
So with the new game Donkey Kong Banzana having a teenage Pauline in it, many people are going around claiming Nintendo is retconning Pauline's backstory. Is this the case?
The answer is highly unlikely. Many people who are trying to claim that Nintendo is retconning are using very flimsy reasoning, all while ignoring the fact we know nothing about what is going on in Donkey Kong Banzana.
So first off several people are claiming that Nintendo does care about the lore or consistency. Which I have already shown to be false in many of my previous posts. They are also ignoring this is the Odyssey team who is making this, you know the ones who made abundantly clear Pauline in Super Mario Odyssey was kidnapped by DK Snr. during the events of DKA. All while tying the events of said game into the beginnings of New Donk City.
But the second problem with assuming it's a retcon is that we have dialogue from the game where Cranky reconfirms he is the original Donkey Kong from DKA and gave Mario trouble. This is important because the events of DKA are reliant on Cranky Kong kidnapping Pauline to get a rise out of Mario, and without that happening the events of DKA wouldn't have happened.
Now people try to reference the few times Nintendo has done retcons and say Nintendo is not opposed to breaking the lore. Now the problem with this is many people as they always do, ignore the fact a retcon is meant to create an inconsistency and not create one.
The first ones people mention aren't retcons but misunderstandings of the things such as Baby Rosalina. The second one is the Mario being an Italian American from Brooklyn. The thing is this was never stated in games, and was only an idea that Nintendo had. Some people reference the Koopaling retcon which is a retcon, but it's not that big of a retcon because they were never stated to be Bowser's kids in game. In the end, all this to say people are overblowing the few retcons that exist and don't understand why they worked. They worked because they didn't contradict anything that was stated in games or stated in official canon material at all.
Now how about some possible explanations on what is going on in Donkey Kong Banzana. The first one is this is a time traveling Pauline brought from the past to the future. There is a precedent for this being something that can happen as seen many times. The second one is this a Pauline from another universe pulled into the prime universe. The third one is this a doppelganger or clone situation which, through things like magic. The fourth one is either Void Kong or the female Kong deaged Pauline and trapped her inside of Oddrock. The Fifth one is this is a relative of Pauline or even her daughter who shares the same name as Pauline. We have seen this type of stuff happen before with all 3 DKs, Bowser and his son, and even how most of Bowser's troops share the same name.
