This page explains in detail the interactions between the Donkey Kong series and The Muppets series.
Muppets Babies episode It's Only Pretendo[]
September 15, 1990
Mario
The Muppets
Muppet Babies - Season 6 Episode 12 - It's Only Pretendo
The full episode.
The first episode of season seven (eighty-fifth episode in total) of the Muppet Babies TV show is about the babies playing "Pretendo" games and imagine themselves as characters in them.
During the first part of the episode, Gonzo imagines himself in a Donkey Kong-like setting and imagines to be "Super Bario Weirdo", fighting a dragon named King Copacabana in place of Donkey Kong. Later in the episode Piggy takes King Copacabana's place in this imaginary game, and then she imagines to be a ninja in the game. Later both her and Gonzo are seen again in the same enviroment during the song. Elevators based on the ones from Donkey Kong also make appearances in various imaginary games. Additionally, as Gonzo is searching trough his games, he names three of them as Super Bario Brothers, Son of Super Bario Brothers and Second Cousin of Super Bario Brothers. While these are references to the Mario series, the second one may be a reference to Donkey Kong Jr.
Most notably, though, actual gameplay footage of Donkey Kong is shown at a certain point, meaning that Gonzo was polaying the actual game, and later footage from Donkey Kong Jr. is shown as Piggy plays.
License[]
Jim Henson Productions, that created Muppets Babies, held no right over Nintendo games, in fact they changed the name of the console to "Pretendo". The episode only features minor references to the Donkey Kong series.