Grunty the Witch



Gruntilda Winkybunion (sometimes called Grunty) is the main antagonist of the Banjo-Kazooie series. She is a wicked witch with magical spells capable of doing anything, even going as far as death. She also enjoys rhyming, which her three sisters seem to dislike. Grunty also keeps her spells in a book named Cheato, who doesn't enjoy Grunty's plan of becoming beautiful.

In Banjo-Kazooie, Grunty kidnaps Banjo's sister Tooty and plans to steal her beauty so she can be the most beautiful woman in all of Spiral Mountain.

Two months later in Grunty's Revenge she inhabits a robotic form of herself called Mecha-Grunty, and plots to prevent Banjo and Kazooie from ever meeting.

Two years later, in Banjo-Tooie her sisters Mingella and Blobbelda join her in an attempt to restore Grunty to her former body.

Banjo-Kazooie
In the first game, Gruntilda played the role of the stereotypical "evil witch". She spoke only in rhymes and was known for being extremely vain, which is odd considering how ugly she appears. She has a bad habit of picking her nose, as seen in the Banjo-Kazooie intro cutscene. Like most witches, she uses a broomstick for transportation.

When Dingpot revealed that Tooty, Banjo's sister, was the "prettiest and fairest in the land", Gruntilda became infuriated and kidnapped Tooty (however, the manual implies that Gruntilda was already planning on snatching a denizen from Spiral Mountain to steal their beauty to one-up her sister, Brentilda. According to the manual, she was actually deep-down glad that Tooty was prettier than her as it gave her an excuse to subject her as her first test specimen). She selfishly plotted to use a "Beauty Transfer Machine" to drain Tooty's youth and beauty and transfer it to her own ugly self, which would result in Grunty becoming pretty and thin and Tooty becoming ugly, fat and green. Banjo and his good friend Kazooie chased the witch through her massive lair, where she had created several worlds filled with her minions and various challenges to stop the duo.

As the pair progressed, Gruntilda shouted rhyming taunts and various insults in an attempt to keep the pair away. But with the help from various sources, including her nicer sister Brentilda who told Banjo and Kazooie interesting secrets regarding Gruntilda, the bear and bird duo were able to complete the worlds and reach Grunty's last challenge before rescuing Tooty: a twisted game show called Grunty's Furnace Fun. After the duo won the game show, Gruntilda ran away and Banjo and Kazooie rescued Tooty. Later, the bear and bird journeyed to the roof of Gruntilda's Lair and faced off in a battle with Grunty.

The Final BattleEdit
After taking enough damage, she uses a homing spell. Kazooie can protect Banjo from this by using the Golden Feathers. After, she starts to hover in place and throw fireballs. In a rare moment, she displays some intelligence when doing this because if the player tries to run away from the fireballs before she fires, Gruntilda will throw them into the player's path. After throwing four fireballs, she will take a short pause (the pause shortens every time she moves from one part of the tower to the next), leaving her vulnerable to three Eggs. Despite her comical nature, Gruntilda proved herself to be Banjo and Kazooie's strongest enemy. She spends most of the fight riding her broomstick. During the first phase, she flies down fast and tries to impale Banjo and Kazooie with the teeth on her broom. However, her broom starts to slow down after a few passes (two the first and second time around, three the third time around, and four the fourth time around), leaving her vulnerable to the Rat-a-tat Rap. After every successful attack from the player, Gruntilda will attack with an easily dodge-able fireball.

After repeating this process four times, she uses another homing spell which once again will be destroyed if Kazooie uses a Golden Feather. Then, Gruntilda flies high into the air to avoid being shot at, but fortunately Bottles comes to the duo's aid and creates a Flight Pad for them to use. Banjo and Kazooie can hit Gruntilda at any time with the Beak Bomb but it's best to attack her when she's not moving (again, the time she's not moving will shorten every time she's hit). Try not to attack her from above, otherwise you risk falling off the tower to your doom. Every time she's hit, she'll throw fireballs at you (one after the first hit, two after the second, three after the third, and four after the fourth).

After taking another four hits, Gruntilda will create a force field around her that Banjo and Kazooie cannot break through. At this point the Jinjosrealize the two of them are in need of their help and intervene by creating four statues around the area. After three eggs are shot into the statues, a Jinjo will fly into the air like a missile and break through Gruntilda's barrier. The witch, however, doesn't remain idle during this time and will continue to attack the pair with fireballs. Unfortunately, Banjo and Kazooie cannot take cover behind the Jinjo statues as Gruntilda's attacks fly through them.

After all four Jinjo missiles fire, Gruntilda's broomstick will break and she will fall to the edge of the tower. She is still standing, however, and her force field still renders her immune to any of Banjo and Kazooie's attacks. At this point a larger statue containing The Mighty Jinjonator appears. This statue has four holes that the player must shoot four eggs into each side. Like the smaller Jinjo statues, the statue provides no cover and Gruntilda's attacks will still pass through it. She is quite possibly at her most dangerous in this phase, partly because she will attack with several consecutive fireballs followed by a homing shot. After each homing shot she will take a short breather, allowing Banjo and Kazooie to shoot eggs into the holes. Once the Mighty Jinjonator is activated, he will attack Gruntilda and knock her off the tower.

Gruntilda falls off the tower and crashes into the ground. Seconds later, a large falling rock traps her beneath, sealing her first defeat. Banjo, Kazooie and Tooty take a vacation to celebrate, during which Gruntilda's minion Klungo spends two years attempting to remove the enormous boulder and save Gruntilda. Unfortunately, she remained alive and vowed her revenge upon the pair one day.

Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge
Klungo builds her a mechanical body, aptly called Mecha-Grunty, for her ghost to inhabit. Rather than fighting the duo as the main antagonist in a body of her own, she operates Mecha-Grunty and causes chaos by going twenty years back in time and kidnapping Kazooie. However, after Banjo's first battle with the robotic witch, Kazooie was freed and Mecha-Grunty fleed.

Their next battle involved fighting her up above the lighthouse and taking out her mechanical parts one at a time. After her second defeat, Grunty had enough and wanted Klungo to upgrade her up to supreme strength and battle the duo in her lair when it was under construction.

Facing them at the top of her lair, Mecha-Grunty charged at them, fired electric balls, ground pounded, and dropped airborne mines. Even with her body destroyed, she was not ready to give as she used her ghostly power to defeat the duo, which failed. She is beaten once more and returns to her body in the present, setting the events of Banjo-Tooie in motion.

Banjo-Tooie.
After two years had passed, Gruntilda was suddenly freed from her prison by the sudden appearance of her sisters Mingella and Blobbelda. Their evil spells levitate and destroy the rock that trapped Grunty and they discover that she had been degenerated into a skeleton. Furious at her new bony body, Gruntilda asked her sisters for help in restoring her. "Mingy" and "Blobby" had already planned for such an event, and the three prepared to leave Spiral Mountain.

After destroying Banjo's house, the trio of witches used the Hag 1 to reach Cauldron Keep on Isle o' Hags, where Mingella and Blobbelda revealed their B.O.B. machine. It was designed to suck the life out of anything captured in its beam; Gruntilda practiced this on King Jingaling for giving Banjo and Kazooie a Jiggy, reducing him to a zombie. It is also interesting to note that Gruntilda stopped speaking in rhyme at this point (her sisters found it "annoying"). Gruntilda then wanted to use B.O.B. on the whole island, but is informed that it will take time for it to charge up before that can happen.Before they did, when Mumbo had wandered out of Banjo's house to find the source of the ruckus caused when Mingella and Bloddelda entered with the Hag 1 digging machine, Grunty chased him and tried to kill him with magic spells. Seeing him enter Banjo's house, she prepares a bigger spell to destroy it and while Banjo, Kazooie and Mumbo escaped, Bottles stayed behind assuming Mumbo was lying and trying to win at their poker game, resulting in him being killed by the blast, which also ruined Banjo's house.

For the rest of the game, she stays in Cauldron Keep but will usually talk to Banjo and Kazooie whenever they enter a mini-game. They eventually meet her again in Cauldron Keep where she makes an attempt to destroy Banjo and Kazooie with another game show called Tower of Tragedy, this time competing against her two sisters in which the loser would have a 1-ton weight dropped on them. Her plan failed and she ended up killing her two sisters, but because of her temper, declares Banjo and Kazooie's win "invalid due to the faulty scoring equipment".

Not sure of what to do next, Gruntilda takes Kazooie's advice to "escape in a cowardly fashion like in Banjo-Kazooie", and she tells the duo she'll be at the top of the tower, though she of course boasts she will win this time. Sure enough, Banjo and Kazooie found Gruntilda in the Hag 1 waiting for them at the top of Cauldron Keep. Although she had more success the last time she attacked Banjo and Kazooie (she killed two of his allies, but were brought back by reversing the B.O.B.), Gruntilda's revenge plans failed and was defeated yet again, reduced to nothing more than a talking skull. Later, Banjo, Kazooie, Humba Wumba and Jamjars use her head as a ball in a game of "Kick Around" and she loses one of her eyes (again) in the process. She swore that she would get her revenge in Banjo-Threeie.

Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts
Nutty Acres

Grunty continues her role as an antagonist in this game as well, and has taken up her annoying rhyming once more. She makes her way back to Spiral Mountain, even though she is still a skull (probably why it took her eight years to get there). A now fattened Banjo and Kazooie challenge her to another showdown, but the Lord of Games pauses the battle and states they shall fight in true Banjo-Kazooie style, by collecting random useless objects. A fat Banjo and bodiless Grunty start to collect the thousands of badges L.O.G. put in front of them, but soon grows impatient of a skull and a fat bear with a fat bird in his backpack running around. He restores Banjo and Kazooie to fighting fit shape and gives them a Magical Wrench, while giving Grunty a robotic form of her original body with a jar for her head and a cat named Piddles. The three characters go to Showdown Town, where Gruntilda tries to stop Banjo and Kazooie from earning Jiggies and returning toSpiral Mountain and fight her once more. She appears in all the levels of the game. In Showdown Town, she treats the time off she has from attempting to beat the heroes as a vacation.

She appears in Act 3 and she is trying to steal the island's Loco Coco. She carries it away and Banjo must knock it out of her vehicle. This is not a difficult challenge as the coconut is not secured. Beating the challenge earns the bear and bird high grip wheels for the trolley in Showdown Town. Use the fulgore fist!

LOGBOX 720
Grunty attempts to send Piddles to contaminate the glubber tank (forcing Bottles to shut down the LOGBOX 720) but first offers a race in Act 3. When Banjo wins, Grunty must stop her plan. Grunty races in the water and Banjo on land and the race is several laps long. The prize for this victory are the floaters and a small propeller. After she is defeated, go down the pink pool to find two passages, one containing notes and the other nothing.

Banjoland
The witch tries to cause a ruckus in the museum with her new bouncing vehicle in Act 4. Banjo must destroy it before she gets away. Freezing her is a good strategy because she is hard to hit. The part earned here is the spring so the trolley can jump.Most of the  trapdoor towers  can be reached!

Jiggoseum
Grunty appears in two acts in this world. In Act 4, she flooded the stadium and Banjo must beat her challenge of knocking beach balls into the goal. Then he gets the scuba seat in Showdown Town. In Act 5, she tries to destroy the billiard balls with a laser, so Banjo must keep them safe. He gets a laser for his trolley if he wins.

Terrarium of Terror
Grunty attempts to destroy the foliage in Act 5 with her invisible flying vehicle. Banjo destroys the UFO and earns a horn. If the invisibility device is destroyed first, the challenge is easier. The device is a chameleon. It is easy to defeat her if you purchase the Clockwork Kazooie part from Humba's Shop

Spiral Mountain
Grunty's plan for Spiral Mountain is revealed. She plans to industrialize Spiral Mountain, turning it into Grunty Acres. Grunty unleashes her five strongest vehicles in her final challenge. The first is a monster truck that is very fast. Then she drives a boat in the lake. After that, she pilots another invisible vehicle, fortunately however, it cannot fly. Then she uses an immobile impenetrable fortress to attack. Finally, she pilots a very fast airborne broomstick. After this is defeated, Grunty tries to assault the heroes, but L.O.G. intervenes again and tells her she lost the challenge, Spiral Mountain and her freedom. As such, the witch is sent to work in the videogame factory, she is shown busily working in the factory while Piddles bosses her around, however, right before the game cuts to credits, she cackles and states it was a mistake to bring her here, plotting to create her own video game (implying that she intended to lose in order to gain access to LOG's factory, or perhaps realised after her loss that she could use this to his advantage). However, thanks to Nuts and Bolts not even being a very widely favered game as the original two games were (to fans mainly) and yet an exsample of Microsoft not handling Rareware very good, it brought the pitiful end to the Francise, and the characters fell into obscurity, including Grunty.

Role in the Thunder Guild.
Grunty ended up becoming an aimless wonder in the Video Game universe and a local trouble maker. It was doubtful for Microsoft to do the Banjo-Kazooie francise right, or the very least, Nintendo buying back Rareware, so Grunty ended up being a forgotten villain. However, that is when she was met with a disgusied Nega-Zeus, who offered her a chance to make a new name for herself in the villain community better then her former life as a litterall walking steriotype. She accept and became a near-high ranking member in The Guild of Thunder, and was told everything the Guild will be dedicated to do. In the main council, she is like the Oogie Boogie of the group, often taunting the other members particularly a cerain main villain of the sonic francise.