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Gruntilda
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| Game(s) | Banjo-Kazooie Banjo-Tooie Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge Banjo-Pilot Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts Super Smash Bros. Ultimate | ||
| World(s) | Spiral Mountain Gruntilda's Lair Cauldron Keep Showdown Town Nutty Acres LOGBOX 720 Banjoland Jiggoseum Terrarium of Terror | ||
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- “Dingpot, Dingpot by the bench, who is the nicest looking wench?”
- —Gruntilda, Banjo-Kazooie
Gruntilda Winkybunion, often named Grunty or Gruntilda for short, is a wicked witch and the main antagonist of the Banjo-Kazooie series, starting with the titular Banjo-Kazooie. In the games, Gruntilda often causes trouble for Banjo and Kazooie. Grunty frequently speaks in rhymes, and she has the ability to use powerful, magical spells. Gruntilda has a good sister, Brentilda, and two sisters, Blobbelda and Mingella, who are evil like her. Gruntilda has a different appearance in nearly every Banjo-Kazooie game.
Game appearances
Banjo-Kazooie
In Banjo-Kazooie, Gruntilda played the role of the stereotypical "evil witch". She spoke only in rhymes and was known for being extremely vain, which is odd considering how ugly she appears. She has a bad habit of picking her nose, as seen in the Banjo-Kazooie intro cutscene. Like most witches, she uses a broomstick for transportation.
When Dingpot revealed that Tooty, Banjo's sister, was the "prettiest and fairest in the land", Gruntilda became infuriated and kidnapped Tooty (however, the manual implies that Gruntilda was already planning on snatching a denizen from Spiral Mountain to steal their beauty to one-up her sister, Brentilda. According to the manual, she was actually deep-down glad that Tooty was prettier than her as it gave her an excuse to subject her as her first test specimen). She plotted to use a "Beauty Transfer Machine" to drain Tooty's youth and beauty and transfer it to herself, which would result in Grunty becoming pretty and thin and Tooty becoming ugly, fat and green. Banjo and Kazooie chased the witch through her Gruntilda's Lair, where she had created several worlds filled with her minions and various challenges to stop the duo. She also kidnapped several Jinjos and placed five of them throughout each level.
As the pair progressed, Gruntilda shouted rhyming taunts and various insults in an attempt to keep the pair away. But with the help from various sources, including her nicer sister Brentilda who told Banjo and Kazooie interesting secrets regarding Gruntilda, the bear and bird duo were able to complete the worlds and reach Grunty's last challenge before rescuing Tooty: a twisted game show called Grunty's Furnace Fun. After the duo won the game show, Gruntilda ran away and Banjo and Kazooie rescued Tooty. Later, the bear and bird journeyed to the roof of Gruntilda's Lair and faced off in a battle with Grunty.
The Final Battle
Despite her comical nature, Gruntilda proved herself to be Banjo and Kazooie's strongest enemy. She spends most of the fight riding her broomstick. During the first phase, she flies down fast and tries to impale Banjo and Kazooie with the teeth on her broom. However, her broom starts to slow down after a few passes (two the first and second time around, three the third time around, and four the fourth time around), leaving her vulnerable to the Rat-a-tat Rap. After every successful attack from the player, Gruntilda will attack with an easily dodge-able fireball.
After taking enough damage, she uses a homing spell. Kazooie can protect Banjo from this by using the Golden Feathers. After, she starts to hover in place and throw fireballs. In a rare moment, she displays some intelligence when doing this because if the player tries to run away from the fireballs before she fires, Gruntilda will throw them into the player's path. After throwing four fireballs, she will take a short pause (the pause shortens every time she moves from one part of the tower to the next), leaving her vulnerable to three Eggs.
After repeating this process four times, she uses another homing spell which once again will be destroyed if Kazooie uses a Golden Feather. Then, Gruntilda flies high into the air to avoid being shot at, but fortunately Bottles comes to the duo's aid and creates a Flight Pad for them to use. Banjo and Kazooie can hit Gruntilda at any time with the Beak Bomb but it's best to attack her when she's not moving (again, the time she's not moving will shorten every time she's hit). Try not to attack her from above, otherwise you risk falling off the tower to your doom. Every time she's hit, she'll throw fireballs at you (one after the first hit, two after the second, three after the third, and four after the fourth).
After taking another four hits, Gruntilda will create a force field around her that Banjo and Kazooie cannot break through. At this point the Jinjos realize the two of them are in need of their help and intervene by creating four statues around the area. After three eggs are shot into the statues, a Jinjo will fly into the air like a missile and break through Gruntilda's barrier. The witch, however, doesn't remain idle during this time and will continue to attack the pair with fireballs. Unfortunately, Banjo and Kazooie cannot take cover behind the Jinjo statues as Gruntilda's attacks fly through them.
After all four Jinjo missiles fire, Gruntilda's broomstick will break and she will fall to the edge of the tower. She is still standing, however, and her force field still renders her immune to any of Banjo and Kazooie's attacks. At this point a larger statue containing The Mighty Jinjonator appears. This statue has four holes that the player must shoot four eggs into each side. Like the smaller Jinjo statues, the statue provides no cover and Gruntilda's attacks will still pass through it. She is quite possibly at her most dangerous in this phase, partly because she will attack with several consecutive fireballs followed by a homing shot. After each homing shot she will take a short breather, allowing Banjo and Kazooie to shoot eggs into the holes. Once the Mighty Jinjonator is activated, he will attack Gruntilda and knock her off the tower.
Gruntilda falls off the tower and crashes into the ground. Seconds later, a large falling rock traps her beneath, sealing her first defeat. Banjo, Kazooie and Tooty take a vacation to celebrate, during which Gruntilda's minion Klungo spends two years attempting to remove the enormous boulder and save Gruntilda. Unfortunately, she remained alive and vowed her revenge upon the pair one day.
Banjo-Tooie
In Banjo-Tooie, Gruntilda was freed from her prison by the sudden appearance of her sisters Mingella and Blobbelda. Their evil spells levitate and destroy the rock that trapped Grunty and they discover that she had been degenerated into a skeleton. Furious at her new bony body, Gruntilda asked her sisters for help in restoring her. "Mingy" and "Blobby" had already planned for such an event, and the three prepared to leave Spiral Mountain.
Before they did, when Mumbo had wandered out of Banjo's house to find the source of the ruckus caused when Mingella and Bloddelda entered with the Hag 1 digging machine, Grunty chased him and tried to kill him with magic spells. Seeing him enter Banjo's house, she prepares a bigger spell to destroy it and while Banjo, Kazooie and Mumbo escaped, Bottles stayed behind assuming Mumbo was lying and trying to win at their poker game, resulting in him being killed by the blast, which also ruined Banjo's house.
After destroying Banjo's house, the trio of witches used the Hag 1 to reach Cauldron Keep on Isle o' Hags, where Mingella and Blobbelda revealed their B.O.B. machine. It was designed to suck the life out of anything captured in its beam; Gruntilda practiced this on King Jingaling for giving Banjo and Kazooie a Jiggy, reducing him to a zombie. From this point onward in the game, Gruntilda stopped rhyming, due to her sisters deeming it annoying. Gruntilda then wanted to use B.O.B. on the whole island, but is informed that it will take time for it to charge up before that can happen.
For the rest of the game, she stays in Cauldron Keep but will usually talk to Banjo and Kazooie whenever they enter a mini-game. They eventually meet her again in Cauldron Keep where she makes an attempt to destroy Banjo and Kazooie with another game show called Tower of Tragedy, this time competing against her two sisters in which the loser would have a 1-ton weight dropped on them. Her plan failed and she ended up killing her two sisters, but because of her temper, declares Banjo and Kazooie's win "invalid due to the faulty scoring equipment".
Unsure of what to do next, Gruntilda takes Kazooie's advice to "escape in a cowardly fashion like in Banjo-Kazooie", and she tells the duo she'll be at the top of the tower, though she of course boasts she will win this time. Sure enough, Banjo and Kazooie found Gruntilda in the Hag 1 waiting for them at the top of Cauldron Keep. Although she had more success the last time she attacked Banjo and Kazooie (she killed two of her allies, but were brought back by reversing the B.O.B.), Gruntilda's revenge plans failed and was defeated yet again, reduced to nothing more than a talking skull. Later, Banjo, Kazooie, Humba Wumba and Jamjars use her head as a ball in a game of "Kick Around" and she loses one of her eyes (again) in the process. She swore that she would get her revenge in Banjo-Threeie.
Gruntilda is also a playable character in the multiplayer games Targitzan's Temple Shootout, Ordnance Storage Shootout and Clinker's Cavern Shootout. In these games, Gruntilda is the tank character with her health at a whopping 16 honeycombs, enabling her to endure four Grenade Eggs; however, it comes at the cost of being the largest target and moving the slowest.
Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge
- “Although you've smashed my mecha-suit, don't think you've given me the boot. Now I've trapped you on my tower, I'll crush you with my ghostly power!”
- —Mecha-Grunty, Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge
In Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge, two months after Grunty fell under a boulder, Klungo builds her a mechanical body, aptly called Mecha-Grunty, for her ghost to inhabit. In her new body, Mecha-Grunty kidnaps Kazooie and travels back in time, to try and prevent them from ever meeting. After Banjo's first battle with Mecha-Grunty at Breegull Beach, Kazooie was freed.
Their next battle involved fighting her up above the lighthouse and taking out her mechanical parts one at a time. After her second defeat, Grunty had enough and wanted Klungo to upgrade her up to supreme strength and battle the duo in her lair when it was under construction.
Facing them at the top of her lair, Mecha-Grunty charged at them, fired electric balls, ground pounded, and dropped airborne mines. Even with her body destroyed, she was not ready to give as she used her ghostly power to defeat the duo, which failed. She is beaten once more and returns to her body in the present.
Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts
In Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, Gruntilda returns as the main antagonist. She talks in rhymes again like the first game.
Eight years after the events of Banjo-Tooie, Grunty manages to return to Spiral Mountain, still in the form of a skull. Banjo and Kazooie become overweight over time from eating junk food and playing video games. They challenge her to another showdown, but the Lord of Games pauses the battle and arranges an event where they collect random objects placed around the map. Seconds after L.O.G. starts the event, he gets impatient and decides on a different event. He restores Banjo and Kazooie's physique and gives the Magic Wrench to them. L.O.G. then gives Grunty an artificial body, with a jar to contain her head, and a sidekick who is a cat named Piddles. The three characters go to Showdown Town, where Gruntilda tries to stop Banjo and Kazooie from earning Jiggies and returning to Spiral Mountain to fight her again. Gruntilda appears in at least one act of every level in the game. In Showdown Town, Gruntilda treats her time off as a break from fighting Banjo and Kazooie. One of Grunty's idle animations shows her putting on sunglasses.
Nutty Acres
She appears in Act 3 and she is trying to steal the island's Loco Coco. She carries it away and Banjo must knock it out of her vehicle. This is not a difficult challenge as the coconut is not secured. Beating the challenge earns the bear and bird high grip wheels for the trolley in Showdown Town.
LOGBOX 720
Grunty attempts to send Piddles to contaminate the glubber tank (forcing Bottles to shut down the LOGBOX 720) but first offers a race in Act 3. When Banjo wins, Grunty must stop her plan. Grunty races in the water and Banjo on land and the race is several laps long. The prize for this victory are the floaters and a small propeller. After she is defeated, go down the pink pool to find two passages, one containing notes and the other nothing.
Banjoland
The witch tries to cause a ruckus in the museum with her new bouncing vehicle in Act 4. Banjo must destroy it before she gets away. Freezing her is a good strategy because she is hard to hit. The part earned here is the spring so the trolley can jump.Most of the trapdoor towers can be reached!
Jiggoseum
Grunty appears in two acts in this world. In Act 4, she flooded the stadium and Banjo must beat her challenge of knocking beach balls into the goal. Then he gets the scuba seat in Showdown Town. In Act 5, she tries to destroy the billiard balls with a laser, so Banjo must keep them safe. He gets a laser for his trolley if he wins.
Terrarium of Terror
Grunty attempts to destroy the foliage in Act 5 with her invisible flying vehicle. Banjo destroys the UFO and earns a horn. If the invisibility device is destroyed first, the challenge is easier.The device is a chameleon. It is easy to defeat her if you purchase the Clockwork Kazooie part from Humba's Shop
Spiral Mountain
Grunty's plan for Spiral Mountain is revealed. She plans to industrialize Spiral Mountain, turning it into Grunty Acres. Grunty unleashes her five strongest vehicles in her final challenge. The first is a monster truck that is very fast. Then she drives a boat in the lake. After that, she pilots another invisible vehicle, fortunately however, it cannot fly. Then she uses an immobile impenetrable fortress to attack. Finally, she pilots a very fast airborne broomstick. After this is defeated, Grunty tries to assault the heroes, but L.O.G. intervenes again and tells her she lost the challenge, Spiral Mountain and her freedom. As such, the witch is sent to work in the videogame factory, she is shown busily working in the factory while Piddles bosses her around, however, right before the game cuts to credits, she cackles and states it was a mistake to bring her here, plotting to create her own video game (implying that she intended to lose in order to gain access to LOG's factory, or perhaps realised after her loss that she could use this to her advantage).
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
Gruntilda cameos on the Spiral Mountain DLC stage. She swoops in on her broomstick when the camera rests with her lair in the background. Her appearance is based on her original deisgn from Banjo-Kazooie.
General information
Physical appearance
Gruntilda's general appearance is not that different from witches in general—she has green skin, green eyes, black hair, a long chin, and a long nose (with some warts). She wears a black robe with a dark red interior, a purple striped scarf, Mary Janes shoes with stockings that match her scarf, and a witch hat. Gruntilda has asymmetric eyes, with her right eye being fairly normal while her left eye is in a perpetual squint. Gruntilda is obese, and in one of her lair taunts in the first game, Grunty implied that it was caused from overeating.
In the Game Over sequence for Banjo-Kazooie, Gruntilda's appearance after using the Beauty Transfer Machine shows her as significantly slimmed down, being given a petite yet busty appearance, with her dress shrinking to a great extent. She wears matching dress shoes with no socks. Her nose and chin are significantly smaller. Her eye color was changed to red and are rendered symmetrical.
In Banjo-Tooie, Gruntilda's appearance was changed, largely to reflect how she was trapped under a boulder for two years. Aside from being a skeleton, Gruntilda retains most of her normal appearance. Her robes are tattered and were changed to blue with purple interior. Gruntilda's witch hat is slightly bent. Grunty retains her obese shape, and her rib cage suggests that she is "big-boned".
In Nuts & Bolts, L.O.G. gave a new body to Grunty. It is based on her general appearance, with the largest difference being a glass tank on top that contains her skull. A witch hat is the lid of the glass tank. There is a small, yellow-striped tube on the back of the glass tank that connects to the main body. Grunty's shoes look different, and her robe has some purple stitches and a slight silk frill near the lower part.
Personality
Gruntilda is similar to witches in other works of fiction. She resembles the Template:W from Template:W. Gruntilda's use of a cauldron and her two wicked sisters, Mingella and Blobbelda, resemble the wicked witches from Template:W's Template:W. Aside from witches, Grunty shares traits with the Template:W in Template:W, namely her main motive to steal Tooty's beauty. Grunty's first line parodies Evil Queen famous line, "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?". In the ending for Banjo-Kazooie, Grunty has the same fate as the Evil Queen in the Disney adaptation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, as both of them fall to their doom and get crushed by a boulder.
Like the rest of the characters in the Banjo-Kazooie series, Gruntilda has a very comical personality and often breaks the fourth wall. Gruntilda is intelligent and has a sarcastic wit but is overconfident, believing that Banjo and Kazooie cannot overcome her challenges. Grunty mostly speaks in rhymes, except for most of Banjo-Tooie (because her sisters get annoyed at her for rhyming) and in Banjo-Pilot.
Despite her poor hygiene, Gruntilda has some distaste for Banjo going through Loggo in Mad Monster Mansion, demanding that he wash his hands immediately, while expressing disbelief that Banjo actually went down there. Based on her attempt at denying that her last name was Winkybunion after she inadvertently admitted it was her last name and her demanding, despite planning to kill Banjo and Kazooie anyway, that they not tell anyone that was her last name or else she'll sue them, she did not like her last name at all.
In Banjo-Tooie, Grunty's selfish nature is the most evident, like when she used B.O.B. to drain the life force from characters such as King Jingaling, to try and restore her general appearance. Throughout the game, Grunty is considerably more evil, as she is responsible for the death of others such as her sisters during the Tower of Tragedy event, or by carelessly riding the HAG 1 through Jinjo Village and crashing into the gray Jinjo house, killing every gray Jinjos inside. Grunty also constantly beats her loyal servant Klungo, to the point where he decided switch sides with Banjo and Kazooie. In Grunty's Revenge, Grunty's plots are more comparable to Banjo-Tooie than the first game—she kidnaps Kazooie and travels back in time, trying to change history so that Banjo and Kazooie would not meet and to have control over Spiral Mountain.
Grunty has a love for quiz shows, and she hosts one in the first two games and Grunty's Revenge. In the final boss battle of Banjo-Tooie, Grunty is shown to have some degree of honor, because if Banjo and Kazooie answer her quiz questions correctly, she uses a slow-moving spell. Grunty still gets mad if Banjo and Kazooie correctly answer a question but feels bound to her word to go easy on them if they do.
In Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, unlike the first two games, Gruntilda does not value upgrading her personal appearance and appears to be fond her new mechanical body. She is shown to be smart enough to use potential setbacks and turn them into victories on her part, such as in the ending, where despite her being forced to work at L.O.G.'s Videogame Factory, she claimed to have access to the resources to make her own game despite being forced to work at LOG's factory when she lost to Banjo and Kazooie.
Powers and abilities
In the final boss battle of Banjo-Kazooie, Grunty is shown to have various magical powers, such as the ability to cast fireballs, homing spells, and generate a powerful force field. In Banjo-Tooie, her spells are lethal enough to kill others upon contact. In Grunty's Revenge, aside from using Mecha Grunty, Grunty could split her soul into three to confuse her opponents. In Nuts & Bolts, L.O.G. removed Grunty's ability to use magical powers as a stipulation for participating in his contest.
Grunty is capable of producing technology. It was implied that the Beauty Transfer Machine from Banjo-Kazooie was developed by her. In Banjo-Tooie, Grunty was shown to be piloting the Hag 1 (although it was implied that she frequently consulted a manual in that case), and had modified her podium in the Tower of Tragedy as a means to escape, in the event that Banjo wins. In Nuts & Bolts, her inability to use magic is compensated by her designing mechanical robots, such as Gruntbots, and various vehicles to compete against Banjo and Kazooie.
In Banjo-Kazooie, Gruntilda has the ability to delete the save file. This only occurs if Banjo and Kazooie use too many cheat codes in the Sandcastle.
Quotes
Gallery
Banjo-Kazooie artwork
Banjo-Tooie artwork
Banjo-Pilot sprite
Names in other languages
| Language | Name | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Japanese | グランチルダ | Guranchiruda |
| Spanish | Gruñona (B-K) Juanetes (B-T) Guiñajuanetes (Grunty's Revenge) Winkybunion (Nuts & Bolts) |
Grumpy Bunions Winkbunions - |
Trivia
- According to Gregg Mayles, Gruntilda is based on Grotbags from the British television show Template:W.[1]
- Gruntilda has been nicknamed "Winky" and "Wart Brain" by Kazooie.
- Gruntilda's last spell before being knocked over by the Jinjonator was originally supposed to hit Banjo and Kazooie and turn them into a frog, resulting in Mumbo Jumbo trying to restore them to normal. It was cut out of the final version due to time constraints.
- In the Japanese versions of the first game, instead of showing her to be rhyming in her dialogue, she is instead given a stereotypical (and exaggerated) old woman's drone.
