15 Best Kronk Quotes You Will Love
The Emperor’s New Groove is a somewhat underrated Disney classic filled with memorable moments and characters. Few of them are as humorous and oddly charming as Yzma’s ineffective henchman Kronk, with his fondness for baking spinach puffs and speaking to squirrels! So let’s have some fun and analyze some of the best Kronk quotes from the movie!
The Best Kronk Quotes
Yzma: “I practically raised him!”
Kronk: “Yeah, you’d think he would’ve turned out better.”
One of the earliest hints that the bumbling henchman isn’t as dumb as he seems comes in the form of this quip. Yzma is smashing stones in the shape of Kuzco’s head and ranting about the emperor’s recent choice to fire her.
Kronk’s response to her saying she practically raised Kuzco might be taken as an earnest attempt to compliment his boss, but it’s received by the viewer as witty commentary on Yzma’s parenting skills.
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“Oh right, the poison. The poison for Kuzco. The poison chosen specially to kill Kuzco. Kuzco’s poison. That poison?”
One of Kronk’s most iconic quotes from the movie, in which he lists off a variety of ways to refer to the poison that he’s supposed to put in Kuzco’s drink. Here, we see him struggling to focus on the plan when he’s busy following his real passion—cooking up a delightful dinner to host the unsuspecting victim.
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Kuzco: “Do you smell something burning?”
Kronk: “My spinach puffs!”
Kronk’s spinach puffs are one of his proudest creations, as we can see here when he abandons the spiked drinks in order to rescue the platter from the oven. This leads to a mishap where he can no longer remember which drink he poisoned, but on the bright side, he did manage to rescue the spinach puffs.
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“You know in my defense, your poisons all look alike. You might think about relabeling some of them.”
As Yzma berates her henchman for using essence of llama to poison Kuzco, rather than something more deadly, we see Kronk stand up for himself. He’s not willing to take too much from his boss, especially since her llama label did look like a skull until she flipped it up with her thumb.
This is also a nifty bit of foreshadowing for the end of the movie, when we’ll get a comedic scene of Kuzco trying a variety of the identical-looking potions to try and turn himself back into a human.
Devil Kronk: “Reason number two, look what I can do.”
Kronk: “What does that have to do with anything?”
Angel Kronk: “No, no. He’s got a point.”
Of Kronk’s many comedic moments, my favorites may well be his conversations with the devil and angel versions of himself. In this conversation, he’s trying to decide whether he can really let Kuzco fall over the cliff or if he should rescue him from the water. His inner conscience appears in the form of mini Kronks dressed as an angel and devil respectively.
Much like Kronk isn’t a very good henchman, his inner voices aren’t the best at their jobs, either. Here, the devil tries to convince him to let Kuzco die by performing a handstand. Rather than argue to let Kuzco live, the angel agrees that the handstand is an impressive point in devil Kronk’s favor.
Yzma: He can’t come back!
Kronk: Yeah that would be kind of awkward, especially after that lovely eulogy.
Kronk lives life on the bright side and doesn’t let things get him down, as we see here during the scene when he admits to Yzma that Kuzco may not be dead. He gives her a heads up, just in case Kuzco comes back, and Yzma is naturally outraged. Rather than fret, he simply admits that would be “awkward” really underselling the consequences of his actions.
Clearly, being a henchman is more of a day job than a passion for him, and he isn’t willing to get too worked up over his mistakes. Not a bad reminder for those of us who tend towards perfectionism.
“One more for exotic bird bingo! I am loving this.”
Another classic moment of comedy and lighthearted joy from Kronk. While Yzma is running from bugs and being generally disgruntled by the jungle, Kronk takes a moment to appreciate a unique bird he’s just spotted. He pulls out a sheet of paper and marks off this latest discovery, because apparently he’s been keeping track throughout their quest to find and get rid of Kuzco.
Waitress: You got all that, honey?
Kronk: Three oinkers wearing pants, plate of hot air, basket of Grandma’s breakfast and change the bull to a gill, got it.
Here, we have another moment where Kronk gets to show off his culinary skills. Kuzco and Pacha have stopped at a restaurant to grab a bite, and it just so happens that their pursuers have decided to eat here, as well.
After inadvertently causing the restaurant’s current cook to quit, Kronk finds himself alone in the kitchen when the waitress comes in with a string of complicated-sounding orders. A moment of contemplation later, however, Kronk rambles off nicknames for all the dishes and starts getting to business. Clearly, he can roll with the punches when it comes to cooking, even if he isn’t the best with evil plots.
“You got a point. Nobody really seems to care that he’s gone, do they?”
As Kuzco prepares to abandon Pacha and take himself back to the palace, he happens across Yzma and Kronk discussing their plan to get rid of him. Kronk’s reflection that no one particularly misses their old emperor leads us to a pivotal moment of character development for Kuzco, where he finally begins to realize he’s been a selfish jerk.
“Oh yeah, it’s all coming together.”
While sleeping under a comically tiny tent, Kronk wakes with the sudden realization that the peasant he recognized at the diner was the same one who left the city with Kuzco on his cart. Following this rare flash of insight, he proudly remarks that he’s put everything together before going to inform Yzma of what he’s realized.
This quote is a great one to pull out whenever things are going your way and is sure to get a chuckle from anyone who recognizes the reference.
“Break it down? Are you kidding me? This is hand-carved mahogany.”
Pacha’s wife stalls Yzma and Kronk by “accidentally” locking them in a small room when she removes the doorknob. Upon Yzma’s request that he break down the door, Kronk initially refuses due to the quality woodworking, which he noticed because of course he did. If his cooking career doesn’t work out, perhaps Kronk has a future in interior design.
Kuzco: How did you beat us here?
Yzma: Kronk, how did we?
Kronk: Well you got me. By all accounts, it doesn’t make sense.
Following a chase scene in which Pacha and Kuzco appear to beat their foes to the palace by a long shot, Yzma suddenly appears holding the very vial that Kuzco needs to turn back into a human.
Rather than attempt to explain how the two managed to get back first, the filmmakers grab another opportunity for comedy instead. Kronk simply agrees with what the viewer is likely thinking—it makes no sense for them to have gotten back first. This works so much better than a convoluted explanation.
“That’s it. She’s going down.”
This line is technically spoken by the devilish version of Kronk’s inner voice. Yzma has never been particularly kind to her henchman, but in their final confrontation with Kuzco and Pacha, she really lays into him. She even goes so far as to confess she never liked Kronk’s prized spinach puffs.
That, naturally, is the final straw that leads Kronk to turn on Yzma. He attempts to smash her with a chandelier for daring to be as rude about his spinach puffs as she has been about his job performance.
“What are the odds of that trapdoor leading me out here?”
Yzma is ultimately defeated by her own henchman, albeit more by mistake. He suddenly opens a palace window, smashing her at a crucial moment when she is about to drink the last of the human potion and claim her victory.
Once again, Kronk seems self-aware of his role in the film, remarking on just how unlikely it is that he would manage to show up in the perfect place at the perfect time.
“My acorn is missing…Did you eat the acorn? … You owe me a new acorn.”
We learn early in the film that Kronk was a Junior Chipmunk scout and learned to speak many languages, including squirrel. In this hilarious final scene of the movie, we see Kronk with a squirrel on his arm, teaching a group of Junior Chipmunks how to speak squirrel. He recites some key essential phrases about acorns while the kids chant back to him in squirrel, including a disgruntled Yzma still stuck as a tiny kitten.
Despite the fact that Roger Ebert once wrote that The Emperor’s New Groove is a “goofy slapstick cartoon, with the attention span of Donald Duck,” it still remains one of Disney’s most underrated classics. I hope that some of these best Kronk quotes have proved that much of that hilarity comes from a would-be villain who’s just a bit too soft for the day job.
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This article was written by Amanda and edited by Michael.
