In 2019, Shesez, known for his YouTube series "Boundary Break", interviewed Kevin Bayliss, who was previously one of the animators and character designers for Donkey Kong Country. Bayliss mentioned during the interview that when Rare co-founder Tim Stamper and Nintendo tasked him to redesign Donkey Kong and "bring it up to date", Bayliss originally wanted DK's design to be "compact" similar to how NES characters were previously designed, and wanted the character to show up "nice and clearly." Bayliss later revealed that when designing Donkey Kong's new facial features, he used the same design as the Battletoads' eyes, believing that gorillas "look like they got this big brow". In a 2025 tweet, he expressed frustration that this design choice always made him look "annoyed". This response was made in support of a new, contentious redesign of Donkey Kong first introduced in the 2023 film The Super Mario Bros. Movie and later incorporated into Nintendo's games starting with Mario Kart World. Donkey Kong's creator Shigeru Miyamoto later stated in a 2025 IGN interview that the redesign was intended to make Donkey Kong more expressive, citing Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat as the starting point to the new direction they took his design.