According to Donkey Kong Country director Gregg Mayles in a discussion with YouTuber Jirard Khalil "The Completionist", Cranky's infamous line "I did this using one life! And I took less than an hour!" during the credits was the last remnant of a scrapped mode where the player would be able to play as Cranky Kong, who would be much slower and in general perform poorly in comparison to Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong. There is however an unused walking animation for Cranky left in the files of the SNES version of the game that would later be used in the GBA version after the player defeats a boss.

In the Game Boy Advance version, a number of Easter eggs referencing previous Rare titles can be found in Cranky's Hut:
• The mask of Mumbo Jumbo from the Banjo-Kazooie series can be seen sitting on a barrel in the foreground.
• The mounted head of Sabre Wulf, the main antagonist of the Sabreman series, can be found hanging near the door. He does not appear to be dead, as his eyes continue blinking despite being decapitated.
• Next to Sabre Wulf's mounted head is a picture frame showcasing a compressed image of artwork for the 2004 Game Boy Advance game Sabre Wulf.

The "starburst" effect that occurs when bouncing on enemies is usually meant to expand, but in the first two Donkey Kong Country games, they were mistakenly coded to contract instead. This issue was fixed in the third game and the subsequent re-releases of all three games on the Game Boy Advance.