Every so often, while knee-deep in our videogames, Gibby and I–usually Gibby–will pose some overlooked possibility or point out something in the games that less observant players might’ve missed. Yesterday, to celebrate my receiving Banjo-Tooie in the mail, the two of us spent all day with the Banjo series and two very, very likely theories were raised. One of these concerned something that Banjo fans have been waiting for and pondering over since the series’ inception: Mumbo Jumbo’s true face.

 The official backstory states that Mumbo is Gruntilda’s former instructor, who introduced her to the magic arts. Gruntilda being Gruntilda, she went rogue and turned to the art of dark magic. She laid a curse on Mumbo that caused his face to twist and form into a “horrifying” (though I don’t know anyone who thinks so) skull mask that can only come off when the witch is defeated. Well, a lot of people have whined about “THE WITCH WAS DEFEATED WHY ISN’T THE SKULL GONE???” without realizing that if the witch just refuses to die, to the point that her disembodied, skeletal head spends ten years climbing up a mountain to be put in a jar and attached to a body, she’s not defeated. She’s not dead yet. (I myself do NOT consider Nuts n Bolts canon, but I am obligated to include it because most people do. -_- How dare they take apart Clanker?!) Of course, this is often overlooked by fans who see the skull as Mumbo’s iconic characteristic; they don’t really think about what he’d be like without the skull because they’re too used to seeing him with the skull. 

However, this has not stopped the mystery of Mumbo’s true face from being a widely-discussed and speculated topic among fans. Keeping the skull there has only added to the mystery–in the story for the very first game, we were all promised that we would get to see Mumbo’s face when the witch was defeated. As far as we knew back at the time of the first game, the witch HAD been defeated (her little “I’ll be back in Banjo-Tooie” quip notwithstanding. It could’ve just been a Famous Last Word, for all we knew). The little “Mumbo’s beach party” scene came and went and Mumbo still donned his mask. Banjo-Tooie was announced, with Mumbo as a main character, and he still donned the mask. We played Banjo-Tooie, we defeated the now-zombified witch a second time. We never got to see Mumbo’s face. Speculations have risen from “he’s a stereotypical witch doctor under there” (it wouldn’t be the first time the Banjo series played into ethnic stereotype) to “he’s a Jinjo”—to the unfortunately-widely-overlooked theory that “he’s a Grublin.” It’s very unfortunate that this speculation is so overlooked in favor of the Jinjo possibility, because this possibility is so likely that it is practically confirmed.

Let’s take a look at Mumbo again. You already saw him up there but hey, you can’t have too much Mumbo, right? Here he is.

Let’s take a look at Mumbo’s iconic physical characteristics: skull (duh), pink skin, grass skirt tied with a red string, large blue eyes, and three red feathers sticking out of the top of his skull. Then there are the characteristics that people tend to overlook, eyelids the color of his skin (well, if someone’s eyelids WEREN’T the color of their skin I’d assume they were painted), reptilian-like scales (here’s a zoomed in picture of his skin texture for reference. This is the farthest I could zoom without it being too blurry), a yellow belly, and a huge-ass mouth. The mouth of his dialogue animation drops nearly to the top of his chest when he talks (see any video involving any Mumbo scene if you want to know what I’m talking about), but if you’re too lazy to go look, here’s a picture that emphasizes his huge mouth.

 

Now let’s take a look at the Grublins. The game features three different styles of Grublins, most likely to represent Grublin ethnicity. We’re going to zero in on the very first style of Grublin you encounter in the game, which is only encountered in Mumbo’s Mountain.

 

This is a Mumbo’s Mountain Grublin. Now, let’s take a look at the physical traits: pointy ears, large blue eyes, eyelids the color of their skin (like I said, that’s pretty mandatory), grass skirt, red feathers sticking out of the top of its head, yellow belly, reptilian look, large mouth. Where have you seen these traits before? Oh yeah, this guy (everything but the pointy ears of course):

 

Okay, so the nitpickers among you are probably saying, “But Grublins don’t have fingers and toes!”  Well, Grublins only appeared in Banjo-Kazooie. This was the N64 in 1998, and model capabilities were low. You see fingers on larger models like Napper the ghost, but not on smaller things like Grublins, Banjo, or…hey, Mumbo.

 This is a picture of Mumbo in Banjo-Kazooie. No fingers. No toes. Banjo-Tooie allowed for better graphics and better modeling, and Mumbo got his fingers then (still no toes). Grublins, however, only ever appeared in Banjo-Kazooie. If they put a Grublin in Tooie, then perhaps it would have fingers or even toes. But they didn’t, so they don’t.

(To the right is a beta Grublin)  

It is literally impossible for Mumbo to be anything but a Grublin. We can rule out the Jinjo possibility by taking a simple look at the physical traits again: first of all, Mumbo is far too tall to be a Jinjo. Though he is considered short in-game, he is not short enough to be a Jinjo. Look at how tiny they are.

Even better, here’s Mumbo AND a Jinjo in the same shot!

 In addition to that, look at the skin texture. Where’s the yellow belly on our Jinjos? And Jinjos are less reptilian and more mammalian in appearance—more likely to have fur than scales, though we’ve never seen and probably never will see a Jinjo’s skin texture indepth in a game. 

Mumbo would have  to be a Pink Jinjo. Meaning he would have to have a WHITE stomach. 

When you have a character who has all the same physical characteristics of another in any other game, of course you’ll assume that the two characters are biologically related, either in a familial way if it’s a human, or a species way if it’s an animal or creature. Every humanoid character in the game with green skin (Blackeye doesn’t count!) has been related to Gruntilda. Yet we can look at Grublins and see that they share every single physical trait of Mumbo minus one, and we can’t say “You know, Mumbo must be a Grublin?” Well, the reason for this is a combination of the lack of official confirmation and the lack of care about an enemy we only see once, and whose sole purpose is to annoy us into killing it the one time we do see it. We’re not focusing on what color its eyes are and what color its belly is and what it has on the top of its head. We’re focusing on getting it out of our fucking way by bringing its bitch ass down with a forward roll to the chest.  And that’s all we see of it in the entire game. We can point out the few similarities between Mumbo and the Jinjos and build something off of that because Jinjos are recurring characters that we get a lot more exposure to and a lot more of an opportunity to analyze them physically. We are less likely to do the same with Grublins because they exist as a one-time nuisance, and nothing else.

The Banjo-Kazooie Wiki mentions the possibility of Mumbo being a Grublin only once, and says that fact is debatable. Well, I hope someone from the BK Wiki sees this, because we’ve observed it, we’ve debated it, and we’ve come to the logical conclusion. Will we ever get the official confirmation of Mumbo’s species from Rareware? Probably not. But do we really need offical confirmation to draw a clear conclusion based on what we already have? No, not at all.