Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest introduces a purple variant of the animal buddy Squawks, known as Quawks, who reappears in its sequel, Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble! Quawks would later appear as an item in Donkey Kong Barrel Blast, and make a cameo appearance as a background element in the "DK Island & Emerald Rush" DLC for Donkey Kong Bananza. Rare themselves never seem to have given Quawks a name, and just referred to him as simply "Purple Squawks" in DKC2's Player's Guidebook, and Squawks' "purple cousin" in DKC3's Player's Guidebook. It was the Japanese-localized material for these games that would give him the コークス (Kōkusu) or "Quawks" moniker, and the Japanese-created Donkey Kong Barrel Blast years later would be the first time the name was used in English.

The game's subtitle "Diddy's Kong Quest" is a pun on the word "conquest". However, it is commonly misremembered by players as being the more grammatically correct "Diddy Kong's Quest", so much so that when the game was added to the Nintendo Switch Online service in 2020, Nintendo UK's official Twitter account felt the need to clarify the spelling. However, the game being called "Diddy Kong's Quest" is not a false memory. Prior to release, the subtitle used on an early title screen featured in some trailers and gaming magazines at the time was "Diddy Kong's Quest", even when the final subtitle of "Diddy's Kong Quest" was used in printed text.

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.

Instead of pressing Select to exit any stage you have already finished, it is possible to exit any stage before clearing it by pausing and using the following cheat code: Right+Y/Left+A/Up+B/Down+X. While some ROMhackers claimed to have been previously aware of the code, it appears that it did not become more widely known by players until it was rediscovered by a programmer going through the game's data in 2024. It's believed that this code was implemented during development to prevent softlocking and was never meant to be discovered by players.

The level theme for Donkey Kong Country 2's mine shaft stages wasn't included in the game's official soundtrack album, leaving it without an official name for several years. The Game Boy Advance remake, which includes an unlockable sound test, simply refers to the track as "Kannon's Klaim", which is the name of the first level the track plays in.

In 2000, the fan website DK Vine created their own unofficial name for the song, "Mining Melancholy", which appeared to have ended up becoming the accepted name for certain uploads of the track online. However, it wasn't until 2024 with the soundtrack's release on the Nintendo Music streaming service that the song finally received an official name: "Kannon's Klanking".

Wrinkly Kong's official art depicts her reading a book. The first page is an advertisement for the game reading:


The second page has a recipe for "Grammy's Worm Pie", which states:


This is a reference to the Earthworm Jim franchise, which previously took a jab at Donkey Kong Country in its Sega CD port of the game.

If the game detects 0KB of SRAM (normal carts have 2KB), an anti-piracy screen will trigger and prevent the game from playing. The game will present the same screen if a series of tests made to detect copying devices fails.

According to the game's composer, David Wise, an attempt was made to make the SNES emulate the sounds heard on the Roland CR78 used by Phil Collins for the song "In the Air Tonight". Most notably, the beginning of "Bayou Boogie" sounds strikingly similar to the beginning of "In the Air Tonight".

On page 18 of the manual, specifically the third bullet point, it states:


This is a nod to the infamous minus world glitch in Super Mario Bros.

When fighting Kaptain K. Rool, no death jingle plays if the player fails, and the boss theme simply continues. This is due to a programming bug that prevents the death jingle playing.

There is a sound clip in the game's data for when Diddy and Dixie transform inside an Animal Buddy Barrel. However, the clip is called too late in the game's coding and is on the same channel as the barrel breaking, and thus cannot be heard.

The colors of the Super Nintendo pads seen in the game's menu changes depending on the game's region. This is because North American Super Nintendo controllers have purple and lavender buttons, while European and Japanese controllers use red, blue, green, and yellow buttons.

Donkey Kong Country 2 was originally planned for the Virtual Boy, but scrapped after only 3 weeks of development due to the commercial failure of the console. Some work had been done on the title screen, and it's unknown if any of the design work was later used for the SNES version.

In the Monkey Museum, a poster of Thunder from Killer Instinct can be spotted in the background. Additionally, Cranky's cabin is represented on the map of the Krazy Kremland area as a tent with a neon sign reading "KI here", and has two Killer Instinct cabinets outside.

During the development of Donkey Kong Land, Nintendo tasked Rare to see what they could develop for the Virtual Boy, leading to the development of a port of Donkey Kong Country 2 using sprites from Donkey Kong Land. This happened just after the launch of the Virtual Boy and was only in the early planning stages for a matter of weeks before it was cancelled due to console's commercial and critical failure.

By using a Pro Action Replay, you can play an incomplete version of the level Web Woods.

At Cranky's Video Game Heroes, there are three ranks that a player can reach if they collect enough DK coins. The characters that have each rank by default are Mario, Yoshi, and Link. In the original SNES release of the game, there is a trash can in the bottom-right corner with a sign that says "No Hopers". Next to the trash can is Sonic the Hedgehog's speed shoes and Earthworm Jim's gun. The No Hopers section and these items are completely removed in the Game Boy Advance port of the game.

There is a scrapped Kremling character which has been dubbed by fans as "Mr. X". He appeared in Issue 76 of Nintendo Power but is nowhere in the game. He appears in the German instruction booklet where it reads, "Kennt ihn oder hat ihn irgendwo schon einmal gesehen", which translates into, "No one knows him or has seen him anywhere before."

In the GBA version, there is a new boss of K. Rool's Keep, called Kerozene, who can be found in the level "Stronghold Showdown." In the SNES version, there was only a cutscene in this location which gave you a Kremkoin before taking Donkey Kong away.