The Legend of Zelda/WMG

WMG Pages for Specific Legend of Zelda Games
 * The Legend of Zelda CDI Games
 * Link's Awakening
 * Ocarina of Time
 * Majora's Mask
 * The Wind Waker
 * Twilight Princess
 * Skyward Sword
 * Spirit Tracks

Due to the enormity of this page, we also have the following pages for specific WMG discussion.
 * Timeline
 * Triforce
 * Single Link Theory (There is only one Link/Zelda/Ganon, reincarnated in each game.)
 * Sheik (Both Sheik the character and the ancient race)
 * Goddesses

Furthermore, due to size restrictions, additional WMG entries can go on the following page:
 * The Legend of Zelda/WMG/Additional WMG

There will be a fourth Four Swords game.
And it will be set in the "Link Wins - Child" timeline, falling between Twilight Princess and Four Swords Adventures, starring FSA!Link on his first quest to defeat Vaati. Evidence of this can be found in FSA's prologue.

The real reason Link can't talk . ..
Is because he's been subjected to all the Nightmare Fuel in existance. This includes only the best horror films in existance, terrifying animated films such as Watership Down and The Adventures of Mark Twain, every PSA in existance that involves death in some way, and Hyrulean nightmare fuel (Which as we know is far worse.)People in every carnation of his life know about his destiny as a hero and subject him to the year of nightmares (Described above) to take away any and all fears he may have of being a hero. These people probably include Links Uncle in Minish Cap, The Great Deku tree in Ocarina of Time, either Mayor Bo or Rusl in Twilight Princess, Links Grandma in Wind Waker and Probably Niko in Spirit tracks. Unforunatly one side affect of this is that the terror is so great that Link loses any and all ability to speak henceforth.Him waking up or otherwise being exposed to less frightening things (Such as Niko's woodcut show or Rusl's talk about Twilight) is him recovering from his ordeal. This is also why Link is the Hero of Courage; he's been exposed to so much nightmare fuel that nothing scares him anymore. Maybe suprises him of shocks him, but he can no longer be afraid.
 * Nice theory, but isn't the theory of courage that you have to overcome your own fear in the commission of a courageous act? Courage and fearlessness are mutually exclusive. If you're fearless, you can't be courageous. His triforce isn't the triforce of courage, in your theory, it's the triforce of numbness.
 * As of Skyward Sword, he talks.

Eiji Aonuma regrets splitting the timeline and is using Spirit Tracks to set up a retraction of this stance and restore a linear timeline view.
Evidence? The official acceptance of "New Hyrule." See, new Hyrule used to be a major component in linearist time line building as a way of Linking the SNES and NES games in an unexpected way, (taking place after Wind Waker.) Splitting the timeline eliminated the need for such complications.

However, Two Hyrules is back and as others have mentioned the map bears similarities to the Hyrule maps of LTTP and LOZ. Meaning those games, (and twilight princes) could now be set after spirit tracks. Why has he done this? Because, after thinking about it, he's changed his mind and wants a fully linear timeline.
 * I fully and completely doubt that, because of the fact that Twilight Princess was originally set to play in the TWW timeline (Aonuma once stated it was supposed to show the last days of ancient Hyrule before being flooded), before they moved it to the Majora's Mask timeline instead, in order to be able to have a (sort of) happy end. They wouldn't have done that if they were actually planning to move every single game into the Wind Waker timeline. Also, Spirit Tracks having a New Hyrule merely allows to set more games in the The Wind Waker timeline, but most definitely not all of them. Some just wouldn't fit.
 * Not to endorse the OP, but TWW's intro pretty unambiguously states that there were no Links between OoT TWW. I quote: "and The people believed that the Hero of Time would again come to save them. But the hero did not appear."
 * Objection! This is the same legend that has forgotten the name "Hyrule." It is equally likely that in the time it took for the legend to fade into obscurity, all the previous Heroes were amalgamated into a mythical (heh) Hero of Time. As a single timeline heretic, I must admit that the WW Master Sword chamber is MUCH more compelling than the prologue.
 * If that's true, then you'd think you'd hear King Daphnes talk about it, since he was kind of there when Hyrule was flooded and sealed beneath the sea. He expressed guilt for not being able to save his kingdom himself, and had a hero been there, he probably would've recognized said hero as such and not forget his services. However, on the other hand, since he didn't recall anything (if the hero even existed to begin with), we can assume that he really didn't appear due to complete erasure from the Adult Timeline or was Doomed by Canon before he could make an impact on Ganondorf's forces.
 * Let's not forget that every character that would have probably been able to remember the old legends accurately (The Great Deku Tree, the King of Red Lions, Ganondorf, maybe Valoo and Jabun) give no indication of that they know of any Link other than the one from Ocarina. Plus there's the fact that the Ganon back-stories of Twilight Princess and Wind Waker are inherently irreconcilable unless we either split the timeline or accept that Twilight Princess's Ganondorf was a completely separate individual from the one in Ocarina and Wind Waker. Also, there so far has been absolutely nothing either with regards to Word of God or in-game that has yet contradicted Aonuma's statement that the timeline got split, so the single timeline idea is out, at least until Nintendo chooses to contradict themselves once more (I'm looking at you, Imprisoning War).

The Word of God that said Ocarina Of Time happened first was lying.
Would support everyone saying that either Minish Cap or ALTTP happening before it.
 * Wasn't that announcement made before Minish Cap came out? I assumed they meant it was the first at the time, but they were free to make earlier ones later.
 * I'm pretty sure that statement was actually made before Ocarina had even come out.
 * Announcements aside, Ganon's Start of Darkness is pretty airtight evidence.
 * But Ganon isn't actually in Minish Cap (which is Vaati's Start of Darkness), so the theory still stands.
 * But Ganon IS in FSA, which occurs after FS (FSA mentions the Link you play as sealing Vaati before being called by Zelda), which possibly occurs roughly 50 yrs after MC. This is, of course, dependent on whether or not the Hero who sealed Vaati prior to FS was in fact the same Hero in MC.
 * I've always thought it was. I mean, come on, Vaati is taken down after the Four Sword is created. Sure, the game presents it as him dying (probably forgot that if it's a prequel to FS he needs to be sealed).
 * I thought so, too, but the FS legend doesn't mesh with MC. Plus there's the whole Palace of the Four Sword in the GBA version of LttP. Since I'm a single timeline heretic who takes great liberties with the WW legend anyway, I figure that MC actually predates the FS legend, which itself is post-LttP. MC may even predate the Triforce wars and the banishment of the Twili, since the Four Sword needs to have been placed within the Palace of the Four Sword in the Golden Land at some point.
 * If I read that right (and if I didn't, here's my theory) it's MC> everything else prior to LttP> FS> FSA> other games that happen later.
 * ALTTP can't happen before it, both because OOT was Ganondorf's Start of Darkness and because ALTTP's ending says that the "Master Sword sleeps again forever", precluding its use in future games.
 * The ending of ALTTP is mistaken.
 * Or, more likely, was using hyperbole. When it said "forever", it meant "a really long time".
 * Then Skyward Sword came.

At some point, the series is going to do a Chrono Cross and fuse the timelines split by Ocarina of Time into one.
I'm sorry, but it is very likely.
 * Some have postulated this was achieved by the Oracle series.
 * Please elaborate.
 * I'm guessing the theory is that since there are two ways of playing the Oracle games (you can play either one first and the other one will follow it) that each way of playing takes place in a different timeline and that since both ways end the same, that Hyrule's history ends up being the same from that point on.

Wind Waker/Phantom Hourglass Link became the first king of New Hyrule.
Well, Spirit Tracks never ruled any possibilities out. I guess Link chose not to be known throughout history as a hero or king. Sneaky move, Nintendo.
 * Spirit Tracks Link is another reincarnation.
 * So... basically saying that this IS possible...
 * No. Wind Waker itself disproves reincarnation.
 * How so? The King of Red Lions tells Jabun that Link isn't related to the Hero of Time in any way, but Ganondorf claims that he is the Hero of Time reborn; you'd think the guy we've been fighting against for half the series would know a thing or two about reincarnation. Am I forgetting something?
 * Spirit Tracks shows that the Lokomo can reincarnate, and Skyward Sword gives us as being respectively the reincarnations of  (the latter's parting words also seem to hint at  being eternally reincarnated as well). I'd say that reincarnation is pretty plausible.
 * Only the Zelda in Skyward Sword is a reincarnation. The rest merely have her blood. Spirit of the hero most likely refers to the "unbreakable spirit" mentioned earlier in the game as a must to be able to touch the Triforce without splitting. Hero's Shade disproves reincarnation, having the ghost of one Link still lingering while another is active. Ganon reincarnates in FSA, but that's it. Every other return is a resurrection.
 * Not necessarily. The Hero's Shade doesn't disprove reicarnation either since it could be a memory from Oo T!Link that resurfaced from some sort of hang up - considering he's from the child timeline where The Hero of Time didn't really exist. As for Ganon, it's irrelevant since  . The only problem with the reincarnation theory is WW because in the adult timeline there's "no Link", unless there's some time travel gimmick at work that makes it possible for Link's soul to still be in that timeline.

Byrne is either...
Either way, but he has to be related to those two. He has those long elvish ears, which WW stated was significant. That fact that his weapon is a hook shot also helps.
 * A Face Heel Turn version of WW/PH Link, or
 * The son of WW/PH Link and Tetra/Zelda.
 * Not likely as Byrne is a lokomo, a separate species.
 * Alternatively, Byrne was so uterly and shamefully defeated in a "nice friendship battle" between him and (adult) TWW Link, that he swore to become stronger than a person with the power of gods/spirits/whatever is big and mighty. This would make Byrne's whole motivation a Nice Job Breaking It, Hero. But we should be used to those from Link right now.

The Lokomo are not a separate species.
Many people seem to be getting the impression that they are. But I don't believe that is explicit in the dialogue. The game says they are a separate tribe, but tribes are social constructs, not racial ones. As such, it is possible for an outsider to join a tribe. And yes, I am putting this forward to help support the "Anjean is Tetra" theory, as far too many people seem to be throwing it out based on the "separate race" idea.

Spirit Tracks Link will meet a descendant of Aryll.
Depending on whether/when their shared ancestry is revealed, there may or may not be a heckuva squick.
 * I actually had a simmilar idea, which was even further encouraged by the inclusion of Alfonzo (Aka: Mr. "I look like Tetra's first mate and act a hell lot like him"). I had the idea that there will be a farm, simmilar to Lon Lon Ranch, featuring three sisters who resemble Malon, Ilia and Aryll respectively. Each of them would take care of another heard of Animals: The Malon-Expy would have cows, the Ilia-Expy would have horses and the Aryll-Expy chickens. Each of them has her own little mini-game involving their respective animals. (This would give Link a chance to ride Epona in the game, even if just in a limited area!)
 * One of the recruits at Hyrule Castle mentions that he wants to go back to his grandmother's farm. You never see this farm in the game, but hey, just maybe.

There is more than one Hyrule.
In the Adult!Link timeline after Ocarina of Time, Hyrule is eventually flooded, which leads to Wind Waker. WW-Link defeats Ganondorf and sets out with Tetra in search of a land where they can create a new Hyrule to compensate for the 'original' which is now permanently lost under the sea (Phantom Hourglass happens along the way). Spirit Tracks will feature this 'new Hyrule' in which princess Zelda attempts to rebuild the kingdom, with Link helping by exterminating the monster populations, charting new areas and setting up a transportation network.
 * This theory has been around for quite some time now. A hint towards it is, that Hyrule castle seems to be in two different kinds of terrain in each of the Oracle-games' intros. (leading some to believe, that each of them takes place in one of the two timelines). It would also explain why the geography of Ocarina of time/Twilight Princess/Wind Waker is so radically different from the geography in Original Zelda/Zelda2/A Link to the past.
 * The Links in both Oracle-games are one and the same, so both games are set in the same timeline. But yes, in many games Hyrule's geography is very different compared to others, which could be explained by this theory.
 * Couldn't it be that the Oracle games simply were the point where the timelines merged again? With very similar people? Wouldn't that explain, why the order you play the game in doesn't really matter (since it would happen parallel anyway?)
 * Depending on what timeline would prevail over the other, that would imply that either every game chronologically following Wind Waker never happened (because Hyrule 1 was never flooded and thus everything onwards is erased) or that everything chronologically following Twilight Princess never happened. And if both timelines somehow WERE succesfully merged without one deleting the other, we'd have two Princess Zeldas, two Links, two Master Swords, two Triforces of Courage and Wisdom and two Hyrules filled with clones (assuming Hyrule 1 isn't suddenly flooded in the fusion and everyone dies). Not to mention the huge mindfuck historians would face...
 * Be fair, it's possible that since they're the temporal equivalents of each other, the more important characters merged, or fused. the less important characters and resulting landscape, however, was damaged, fused improperly, or straight up obliterated, therefore accounting for the fewer people, and lower level tech and culture, despite the earlier game occurring later chronologically. This is possibly why Ganon is only defeated in the original game; he was using the dual universe mechanic to keep himself alive, as he couldn't be killed unless he was killed in both universes at the same time, having been there when they were split.
 * The Two-Hyrules-Theory has offically been confirmed now. Spirit Tracks even mentions the founding of New Hyrule.
 * I Knew It!.

In The Legend of Zelda a Link To T He Past, Zelda is Link's...

 * Sister.
 * Destiny.
 * Supported by this line from the GBA re-release of ALttP: "{Link}... you must rescue Princess Zelda. Our people are fated to do so." Then again, it is never explained who "our people" are.
 * The whole reason that Link can do the quest is that after his uncle dies, he is the last remaining descendant of the Knights of Hyrule who can fulfill the prophecy/legend. That's almost certainly the meaning of "our people".
 * Comical Third Option!
 * She's destined to be his sister. But Fate (or possibly The Lady) took a Comical Third Option and made him an orphan!
 * Father.
 * "...princess... protect her... with your life..." * croaks at a much less WMG-friendly point in the conversation*
 * MOTHER! * Cue extremely dramatic and also tragic background story involving time travel gone awry, loads and loads of confusion over where the next Zelda comes from, and speculation for Link being the new King of Hyrule, which also makes him his own father possibly!*
 * DINNER.
 * Density
 * Liege Lady, and he is duty-bound to help her in her time of need.
 * Daughter.
 * Hot Momma!

Link's hat is a Bag Of Holding.
It's how he holds all of that stuff without being encumbered. In his Soul Calibur and Super Smash Brothers appearances he is shown to be pulling his bombs, bow and arrow, and boomerang from that general area.
 * This Troper figured Midna held onto Link's arsenal in Twilight Princess, as seen after Link obtains both the sword and shield; she snaps her fingers and they break down into twilight particles to be saved until later.

Link gains abilities akin to those of Freelancer Wyoming from Red Vs. Blue after OoT
This explains why there are so many versions of the same story. Link goes back over and over again to get the story right. Something always goes partly wrong that we don't realize and he feels that he has to go back and fix everything over and over again.

Ganondorf's mother intentionally raised him to cheat the Gerudo prophecy for her own ends
It is stated that the Gerudo only have a male child once in a century, and he becomes their king. However, Ganondorf's biological mother is Twinrova (Navi describes Koume and Kotake as "Ganon's surrogate mother," and he's got the same skin tone); thus, he doesn't actually have any Gerudo blood in him at all. You'd think the Gerudo would have enough basic biology knowledge to know that Ganon has the same fifty-fifty shot of being a man as any other non-Gerudo, and such an event really shouldn't be that rare. Thus, I believe the Gerudo didn't know about the arrangement.

I think it worked out something like this: A Gerudo woman and her concubine are exiled from the tribe and sent into the desert. They wander around until they find the Spirit Temple, where Koume and Kotake approach them. The woman makes some sort of deal to have them merge into Twinrova form and get impregnated by the concubine (poor bastard). Nine months later, the exile returns with a Gerudo son. To the Gerudo's knowledge, no non-Gerudo could have possibly survived out there long enough to carry a child to term. Besides, the boy doesn't look Hylian at all. Indeed, he's marked as special by his green skin, and even demonstrates magical abilities. They take him to be the prophecied son of the Gerudo, and thus Ganon is born.
 * Look up the definition of "surrogate" some time. By the very definition, Twinrova is/are NOT Ganondorf's biological mother. And this editor was under the impression that Koume and Kotake were Gerudo (with magic powers) the whole time anyway. In fact, I don't even understand this theory at all, even supposing you didn't know any of that. Just sayin'.
 * For that matter, go replay Ocarina of Time. Green skin?

The games actually take place in parallel universes.
As a result of the events of Ocarina of Time, the Zelda timeline split into two parallel universes. In the first, Ganon's defeat at Link's hands results in a No Ontological Inertia situation in which Ganondorf was defeated and sealed before he ever touched the Triforce (though he still got the affinity of Power) -- therefore, adult Link's adventures never happened. In the other, time continued flowing after adult Link defeated Ganon in the future, but Link himself physically "vanished" when he returned to the other timeline. Majora's Mask, A Link to the Past, and Twilight Princess (and possibly the first two Zelda games for the NES) take place in the former timeline, while Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass take place in the latter. Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages happen simultaneously, one in each timeline, and cause the timelines to fuse again. A few creator interviews have stated that this is in fact the case. For lots of fun with this sort of thing, check out the following web page.
 * Hell, Word of God states that TP takes place over a century after the "child" ending of OoT.
 * Word of God holds that this is actually the case.
 * Okay, seriously, did Word of God actually confirm the part about the Oracle games, or did you just not notice that that part was in there when you wrote that? And if it did, where?
 * Word of God confirmed that Ocarina of Time split the timeline, with Majora's Mask and Twilight Princess going one way, and Wind Waker (and therefore Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks) the other. The rest are all still up for debate.
 * To be fair, Word of God doesn't always mesh with what actually happens in-game. After all, back before WW came out Word of God was that it took place a century after OoT, which isn't nearly enough time for people to completely forget the name "Hyrule," since Grandma would have either lived through the Flood or heard stories about it from her folks.
 * This was a misstranslation, due to the japanese language lacking plural. Eiji Aonuma meant to say hundreds, not hundred. Which could set the passed time up to possibly 1000 years.
 * It could be the slow merging of the timelines together is causing strange temporal overlaps, resulting in people recognizing you and your deeds from the other timeline.
 * That's the least meaningful Fan Wank ever.
 * Alternatively, what if the timeline didn't split, and the events of TP were just a footnote to Hyrule's history before the Great Flood? The Zora in TP could easily serve as an intermediate stage before they became the Rito as they appeared in WW, and the exterior of Hyrule Castle looks much as it would in TP. Also note that the Koroks in WW were planting Deku seeds to allow the forest to reclaim the sea, this would not only open the way for less sailing in PH, but allow Hyrule to be re-established after however long for Classic Zelda and Link to the Past.
 * It's established in the ending of PH that

Ganondorf and the giant blue pig man version of Ganon are from separate timelines
In one timeline Ganondorf is trapped in the sacred realm, and in the other he is free to go about his business but unable to act on his previous plans. This version of Ganondorf sought new ways to become powerful and ended up coming into possession of his signature trident (which happened in Four Swords Adventure, and was stated to be what turned him into his pig man form).

Note that recently he has been appearing as Ganondorf (ie. the version sealed in the sacred realm at the end of OoT) in all the games, the blue pig man and his powerful magic trident have been strangely absent. However despite not being the same, Ganondorf still has a connection to boars stylistically, giving him the illusion of being the Ganon we are familiar with. This means that the orignal Zelda games are all set after the child Link ending, while most of the new games are set after the adult Link ending.
 * I have to disagree. FSA Zelda calls him "an ancient demon reborn," and the inscription in the desert pyramid pretty much says that an ancient evil (presumably Ganon) had his spirit sealed away in the trident for some reason or another. We know that possessions are possible, so if the spirit was freed from the trident it'd likely take over the host body. Besides, in OoT Link was supposed to close the Door of Time, which coupled with the column of blue light suggest that he still opened the portal to the Sacred Realm in the past. There's no way Ganondorf would just let Link close the portal without claiming the Triforce first. The fact that Link still has Courage when he meets up with Zelda afterward means Ganondorf did actually claim Power, but was then unable to do anything with it because he can't get back to Hyrule.

Legends aren't accurate.
The issue with the creators' comments is that they disregard the timeline of some of the portable Zelda games. An alternate theory is that the story of Link, Zelda and Ganon is a literal legend, told around the world of Hyrule by different people at different times--Literary Agent Hypothesis for the win. Every version of the tale has a slightly different plot and window dressing but keeps the same basic elements; like the Arthurian legends of our own world. Playing each game is like listening to a different version of the tale, with the same characters, setting and overall plot, but a different story in the end. As said above though, the creators themselves have stated that this is not the case, making this one of the many theories that requires the creators to be flagrant liars.
 * According to one interview, Shigsy stated that this is what he intended for the series. The part about it being a Word of Mouth tale that changes with the telling, allowing the creators to do whatever the hell they wanted, without worrying about continuity, not the part about the creators being flagrant liars.
 * Funny thing is, this makes a pretty good explanation for all the reuse of monsters and items, particularly in the case of Four Sword Adventure (blatantly similar to A Link to the Past) and Oracle of Seasons (reuses a lot of bosses from the first Zelda, and even has the same eyeglass-shaped lake). In both cases, old legends were rewritten to fit into a newer age's mythos.
 * This reader's hypothesis is that OoT, MM, TP, WW and PH are all part of a single (albeit split) timeline, and that all the rest are part of at least one "another legend" storyline - hence the reused plot elements, characters, etc. Fans have succeeded into stringing most of the rest into a fairly sensible timeline - it's just hooking them into the OoT line that remains highly dubious.
 * Considering that OoT is an adaptation of LttP's imprisoning war, essentially rewriting it to fit in dungeons and a hero, this reader has always considered LttP and its confirmed sequels (LA, LoZ, and AoL) to exist in an alternate reality to the OoT related games, in which no hero emerged during OoT's story. Conversely, WW's backstory is a parallel to LttP, with the return of Ganon after his first defeat, but again no hero shows up, and problems ensue.
 * If no hero showed up, how would there even be any world fo the later games to take place in?
 * In A Link to the Past/Triforce of the Gods the backstory tells of the Imprisoning War/Seal War, where no hero was found to wield the Master Sword but the Knights of Hyrule managed to hold back Ganon long enough for the sages to close the door between the Light World and the Dark World, trapping Ganon in the Dark World. In the game itself he escapes using Aganahim (can't spell). Ocarina of Time was meant to be the Imprisoning War but didn't really match the details. This is one of the biggest issues with timeline theorists, trying to reconcile the different accounts. Miyamoto gutting the story from Four Swords Adventures didn't help either, supposedly it would have explained a lot but it just ended up adding to the mess. Alternate reality where the Hero of Time didn't exist isn't a bad explanation really.
 * Actually a pretty good explanation. Just think: many many hundreds of years ago, everything in Zelda happened, so many different versions of the story are bound to be told, with many different elements. The first game is the most primitive version of the story, probably why it's given the plain title of The Legend of Zelda. Other games emphasise different elements. The whistle in LOZ could be a corruption of the Ocarina in Zelda 64. And the fact Link uses a raft in a few stages could be the source of the sailing The Wind Waker. And how Link goes to all the dungeons collecting medallions? This might have been corrupted in the original legend into having Link collect pieces of the actual Triforce itself.
 * While I still hold to the idea that all the games take place in the same continuity (with the alternate timeline of Majora's Mask and Twilight Princess still present), I have considered the possibility of Wind Waker being a "what if" scenario" where Link doesn't appear during ALTTP and Ganon's plan to reenter the Light World via Agahnim's sacrifice of maidens succeeded, resulting in the Flood. The only issue to resolve here would be explaining the relocation of the Master Sword from the Lost Woods to Hyrule Castle.
 * OK, same author here. Forget my previous idea. Its pretty clear despite Never Say "Die" that Agahnim killed the King of Hyrule during his rise to power (we even see the King's skeleton in the opening cutscene). That would not work, as the King has to still be alive for the storyline to lead to The Wind Waker.
 * This all means that the Majora's Mask would have been... the scary bedtime story that grampa tells you after your parents have finished telling you the real legend. "But, Jimmy, you want to know what happened to the Hero of Time after he saved Hyrule? Well, you see, Navi flew away, and he was following her..."
 * Not necessarily. The theory really only applies to the Hyrule legends. The non-Hylian legends may or may not have happened as they have been described. Majora's Mask is in the same mould as Ocarina of Time, and since the latter is a quite reliable source, we can assume that most of what happens in Majora's Mask did happen the way it is portrayed, despite the lack of corroborating evidence. Just to draw on a perfectly sane Biblical comparison, the four accounts of Jesus' life contain numerous incidental variations, while only one of them (Luke's) is followed up by an account of what his disciples did after that. Like The Acts, Majora's Mask is the only version of events we have of the Termina legend, so we have no choice but to accept it as accurate and reliable.

On a similar note, it is possible that the LoZ series is "true", but it has become legend over time.

 * Basically, Ganon has come back and menaced Hyrule many times, and many times he has been defeated by a chosen hero. However, he is not always defeated by a person in a green tunic wielding the Master Sword. However, over time the storytellers have sort of decided to focus on the most famous tale: the image of Link that we know him as, wearing a green tunic and using the Master Sword. This accounts for the (sometimes small, sometimes large) differences in every Link's background: except for in one or two cases, they weren't Link, at least as we know him.

Link is a father and the legends are just bedtime stories for his kids.
Link told his kids the Legend of Zelda, named after his wife. The kids loved it, so the next night, he told them about the adventure of Link. The kids eventually got bored with these stories and insisted that he told them a new story. Unfortunantly, that's the only story Link knew, so he rehashed the plot for the rest of the stories while adding new characters, story elements, and plot devices. The story of the Ocarina of Time was the his kids' favorite story, so that's why it has the most stories connected to it.
 * So basically Link is a fantasy!version of Ted.

The Oocca are an alternate form of the Kokiri.
After the Great Deku tree died, they were incapable of preventing part or all of the forest from being clear-cut to create Ordon Village. They then abandoned the forest in shame and took on new forms to hide their failure.

The Hero's Spirit that Link (II) encounters throughout Twilight Princess is really Link (I) of Ocarina of Time (The Hero of Time)
After teaching Link (II) the his final technique, the spirit tells him that he was unable to pass on into the afterlife until he handed down his techniques. After Majora's Mask, Link(I)'s fate was never really explained, leaving the possibility that he never returned from Termina. The Hero's Spirit also mentions that he had accepted the call as the Hero. And did we mention that he's left handed (in the unflipped game), a physical trait that seems to be applied only to Link in the Zelda-verse? Let's not forget that the Spirit himself says, among other things: "Hero's Spirit:"A sword wields no strength unless the hand that holds it has courage...You may be destined to become the hero of legend...but your current power would disgrace the proud green of the hero's tunic you wear...Those are only for one who carries the blood of the hero...the one whose spirit is that of the sublime beast...Seek the sound that calls to the spirit of the beast to awaken me again...forgotten ways that do not leave our bloodline...You are already endowed with the strength required of the hero...Do you wish to master this final hidden skill, which can be earned only by the one true hero?...Go and do not falter, my child!""
 * Sorry, but Link does return to Hyrule after Majora's Mask. First of all, the Gorons of Twilight Princess had to have been given the Hero's Bow by Link, which he earned in Termina. He is also widely known as a hero throughout Hyrule by the time of Twilight Princess and the Hero's Clothes and the Zora Armor, both of which were explicitly stated in-game to have been made for Link, are in adult size. He is also seen in the Lost Woods at the end of Majora's Mask's credits, or at least whatever woods he was in duirng Majora's Mask's opening. So somehow he managed to get back from whatever hole he fell into when he got to Termina. That and, the Hero's Shade is an adult.
 * To add to this, consider the MM prologue: "In the land of Hyrule, there echoes a legend. A legend held dearly by the Royal Family that tells of a boy... A boy who, after battling evil and saving Hyrule, crept away from the land that had made him a legend... Done with the battles he once waged across time, he embarked on a journey. A secret and personal journey... A journey in search of a beloved and invaluable friend... A friend with whom he parted ways when he finally fulfilled his heroic destiny and took his place among legends..." The game is just a recounting of an old legend. Considering that the only other people to cross over between Hyrule and Termina shouldn't know about both the war and Navi, it stands to reason that Link himself must have returned to Hyrule to tell Zelda about his adventures.

Basically stating that he and Link are of the same bloodline, that they both possess the spirit of the sacred beast, that they are both "The Hero", and that Link's green tunic is that of "The Hero". "Hero's Spirit: "Although I accepted life as the hero, I could not convey the lessons of that life to those that came after. At last, I have eased my regrets.""
 * Further supported by the spirit referring to Link as "my son" after you learn the final technique from him. I do not think that Link is actually his son, but possibly a great grandchild (insert as many greats as needed).
 * He also refers to some techniques as being techniques of "our line." Interestingly, several of the moves taught to Link II are the same moves that Link (WW) has from the beginning of the game. Is he more in tune with his past lives at this point? Why does he not have to relearn the abilities?
 * So does that mean that Link really isn't a Main/Silent Protagonist?
 * No, he's still a silent protagonist. He only learns how to talk once he's the Older and Wiser mentor figure to his reincarnation/son/descendent/sweepstakes winner.
 * So, OoT Link's a viking now?
 * How the hell did everyone miss this?


 * Also, there's this (check out number 4). Adds a bit of a Tear Jerker element to it.
 * Confirmed by Hyrule Historia.

Six of the original seven sages died to become them.
Think for a moment about where each one was when Link "awakened" them. Saria ran unarmed into a monster-infested temple, with her last heard words being desperate cries for help. Darunia challenges Volvagia without the one weapon that could defeat him, and is never seen after entering Volvagia's chamber. Ruto immediately rushed into the Water Temple. Impa chased an undead monster into a mass grave. Nabooru took a direct hit from Koume and Kotake. Rauru was never shown out of the Sacred Realm in the first place. Notice how the only time you see these people after these events are when they appear in the not exactly material Sacred Realm, and notice that several of them regret not being able to fulfill promises such as marriage (Ruto) or...er, other activities (Nabooru). Why? Because they're dead. However, this isn't true of the Wind and Earth Sages in The Wind Waker.
 * With the way their last scenes (in reality) were portrayed, it seemed like this was heavily implied, if not outright stated.
 * But Twinrova outright said they still had use for Nabooru, they just teleported her.
 * No, they had a use for her and bound her into a magic circle. Link kills Nabooru in the Iron Knuckle fight, but Twinrova bound her soul into the floor so she couldn't become a Sage. Killing Twinrova freed her spirit.
 * What spirit? We see her body well alive.
 * Ah, but then she is spirited away, and the next time you see her, she's in the Temple of Time, just like the rest of the sages.
 * Uh, no. Twinrova had planned on brainwashing her again, and there's no point if she's dead.
 * Downfall Timeline gives us the obvious conclusion: All seven sages has Bloodlines, and far from all had procreated at this point. They didn't die.

There were already seven sages at the start of Ocarina of Time, but Ganondorf killed them.
They existed as the ethereal beings seen in Twilight Princess. During his rise to power, Ganondorf kills all of them. Since only the sages could seal him away, it only makes sense to do so. This is also why six new sages must be awakened in the future. Once Ganon is defeated and sealed away, the new sages live on in the future timeline. Back in the new timeline created once Link goes back in time permanently, he and Zelda warn the king of Ganondorf's treachery and the Gerudo is arrested, meaning the original sages are never killed. This is why they are the ones who attempt to execute him in Twilight Princess' flashback and not Saria, Darunia, Ruto, etc.

Kaepora Gaebora is really Rauru, the Light Sage
Repeated many times. It makes sense, though, doesn't it? Every other sage was someone that Link met as a child. The only character from Link's childhood left completely unaccounted for during his adulthood is Kaepora Gaebora; hence the speculation that they are one and the same. And Kaepoera Gaebora never does appear when Link is an adult, does he? After your initial trip to the Temple of Time, he only appears once more--in the Desert Colossus, when you return to the Spirit Temple as a child. (Right before you meet Nabooru the first time.)
 * Furthermore, one of the Sheikah rocks near the Forest Temple states that Kaepoera may be the reincarnation of a Sage...
 * I say no, since at no point does Rauru ask, "Did you get all of that?"
 * Actually... When you first enter the Chamber of Sages, and Rauru explains to you how seven years of Ganonrule have passed and how you must now go to cleanse the five temples, he ends that exposition scene by asking something akin to "Do you understand what your destiny is?". If you answer with "No"... he repeats it. Totally pulled a Kaepora Gaebora there.
 * Well, a minor correction: Kaepora Gaebora does appear in the Desert Colossus, but while Link was an adult. He's perched up on a nearby tree during the cutscene of Link playing the Requiem of Spirit with Sheik. That said, this is his only appearance during the adult portion of the game.
 * This is pretty doubtful, Kaepora pretty much says 'I didn't believe you exist' on the last meeting, why would he say this when Rauru should know he's already gotten his hand on the Master Sword and time travelled?
 * It seems more likely (and possibly implied) that Kaepora Gaebora is some sort of agent for Rauru in Hyrule, rather than outright being him. Rather like a benign version of Aghanim.
 * Confirmed in Hyrule Historia.

The Gerudo are victims of genocide.
After the events of Ocarina of Time, the Royal Family was a bit more vengeful than Zelda let on and exterminated the desert people for Ganondorf's crimes. In Twilight Princess, the presence of the Mirror of Twilight, which was stated as used to sentence criminals to their apparent death, in the heart of Gerudo ruins supports this. It also explains Midna's dislike of Zelda early in the game. Combine this with Ganon using Zant to attack the royal family as the first target and the vagueness in the history of the Great War referenced to in Ocarina of Time (who DID attack first?), and we have a real "Chicken or the Egg" scenario on our hands.
 * Not to mention that the entire Arbiter's Grounds is a horrifying suggestion of what might have happened. Examine the architecture, and you will see many areas that appear to be the remains of older Gerudo architecture (Spirit Temple as an example) but are covered over with slightly 'newer' Hylian-like architecture, like the theatricals/execution ring at the top of the whole thing. Even gerudo idols have been re-purposed. When you take into account that the Arbiter's grounds was a PRISON, and that for some reason they were keeping a DRAGON there chained in a pit... all of those bones lying around there had to come from somebody and it's more than a bit disturbing to realize that if your fridge logic's right, the gerudo weren't just slaughtered: they were taken and punished for their 'crimes' in a death prison built over their own holy Spirit Temple... The mirror of Twilight was probably only there to get it away from Hyrule major, it being a remote place for unpleasant things in hylian eyes.
 * This would also explain why the Gerudo desert is inaccessible by normal means of travel: the Hylian royal family tried to block it off so nobody would discover the truth.
 * Isn't this the same crap that led to the Sheikah building...oh no. Sweet Nayryu no. If we go with this, that would mean that...that...that the Arbiter's Grounds are the Shadow Temple of the Twilight Princess world?
 * Imprisoning all the Gerudo in the Arbiters Grounds seems both unfair (not all Gerudo sided with Ganondorf. Nabooru and her allies would have sided with Hyrule) and overkill (I think a grand total of THREE Gerudo know magic. Koume, Kotake, and Ganondorf. The Arbiters Grounds seem to have been designed to imprison various magical monsters. Unless Ganondorf had a large army, the castle dungeons could have dealt with the rest of the Gerudo).
 * The pre-battle dialogue with Zant positively reeks of this theory. Watch here. And in the cutscene after you defeat him, Midna says "...a lust for power burning in your pupils... Did you think we'd forget our ancestors lost their king to such greed?" Now think back to Ganondorf...

The time loop of Majora's Mask had horrible consequences.
(This can also work as an addition to the above genocide theory) While Link was living through the same three days over and over again in Termina, time was still advancing in Hyrule. And because Link would slow down time or skip ahead days and nights over and over, he had no idea that Hyrulian time was moving at a different speed. When he finally defeated Majora and returned to Hyrule, he found that the land he knew and loved was completely alien now. Hyrule had declined. The Gerudo and Kokiri were seemingly extinct, humans now lived in the forest and a colossal prison had been built on top of the ruined Sprit Temple. All the other races were alienated from each other. All of the friends Link had made, even the Princess Zelda he knew, were long dead. He was an adult spirit trapped in the body of a child displaced from his own time. As he grew up in this darker new Hyrule, he honed his skills should the Hero of Time ever be called upon again. But this new Hyrule had no use for an antiquated hero from an antiquated age, and so Link drifted into history, dying alone and filled with regret. It would not be for many years until his restless spirit would be awoken by a new darkness spreading across Hyrule. And then, when it seemed all hope was lost, he discovered the beginnings of a Hero within a youth much like himself, a young man descended from Link's own bloodline...
 * Alternatively, tying in to the theory that Majora's Mask is All Just a Dream, MM literally takes place during the seven years that OoT Link is lying dormant in the Temple of Time, possibly as a test to help him hone his abilities.

The Gerudo are semi-nomadic.
The reason no Gerudo appear in Twilight Princess is because they have moved on to greener... well, less utterly inhospitable pastures. They have a system of forts dotted throughout the desert which they move between to rest their foraging areas and farm plots, and they happened to not be in the area closest to Hyrule during the course of Twilight Princess. It's entirely possible the Arbiters' Grounds were once one of these checkpoints now abandoned by the Gerudo, probably because of a lack of food sources nearby.
 * Supported by FSA, in which the Gerudo settlement is made of vaguely teepee-like buildings.

The entire series is Nazi propaganda, Link in particular.
Blond hair? Check. Blue eyes? Check. Member of a superior master race that is a "pure" line of descent from superior ancestors, of which everyone else is a corruption? Ka-check- he IS a hylian among humans. With his dark skin, pronounced features, and beastial qualities, Ganondorf can only represent a racist villainous caricature of Africans.
 * Are you really calling Shigeru Miyamoto a Nazi sympathizer?
 * No, back when Shiggy was at the helm, Link had brown hair, black eyes, and everyone was Hylian. It was only after he left being in charge that the Nazi sympathizers turned it to their whims.
 * Um, the Gerudo are pretty blatantly caricatures of Middle-Eastern cultures. Still . ..
 * Perhaps somewhat more plausibly, the characters in the Legend of Zelda were deliberately designed by Nintendo to appear exotic and unusual in Japanese eyes. The game takes place in a fantasy setting after all, and didn't Square do this with Terra from FFVI's former name, Tina? Also, by this troper's examination, few if any Hylians, Gerudans, Sheikah, etc., have the "standard" Japanese phenotype of black hair, brown eyes, etc.
 * But seriously, WWII forever linked wartime Japan and Germany. It's completely feasible!
 * Actually, I was thinking about this same thing when I remembered nintendo had a game about wwII, called 1942. Also Italy was linked with the other two also. So we have an Italian plumber, made by the Japanese. hmm. coincidence? yeah porbably. lol

The Heroine of Light (from Ancient Stone Tablets) is Minus and by extension Haruhi Suzumiya
The universe seems determined to protect her (e.g. she gets infinite silver arrows and magic right before fighting Ganon). Ganon wants to steal her power indicating that it rivals the Triforce's power. She doesn't change form upon entering the Dark World. She's from another world and she goes back to her world despite it being apparent. Finally, she's a female in a male role not unlike when Minus became Victory Man.
 * What Zelda game are you talking about? I haven't heard of a Zelda game with stone tablets and a Heroine of Light.
 * BS The Legend of Zelda: Ancient Stone Tablets was only released in Japan (and no legal copies exist now). In it, you play as a boy or girl (called the Hero(ine) of Light) from another world who must save Hyrule from Ganon in Link's absence (presumably because he's busy waking the Wind Fish). As for the part in the spoiler tag, . This troper chose to use the Heroine of Light for this WMG because it works better that way, also the Hero of Light has a stupid looking hat.
 * But those games aren't part of the canon, last I checked...
 * BS The Legend of Zelda is basically a third and fourth quest for The Legend of Zelda (except you don't play as Link) and thus not canon. BS The Legend of Zelda: Triforce of the Gods is a port of A Link to the Past and is thus as canon as the SNES version of that game. Ancient Stone Tablets on the other hand tells a new story which doesn't contradict anything in the other Zelda games and thus there isn't any reason to exclude it.
 * That would be like saying that the CDi Zelda games are canon because nothing contradicts the rest of the series (speaking from an objective standpoint here). Also, if you have a wanna-be Zelda game that has the exact same subtitle as the Japanese name of the game, of course it's gonna be a port. Unless they're ignorant and/or plagarists (I fixed your grammar in the last sentence for you, by the way. Just so you know).
 * The BS Zelda games were made by Nintendo, the CDi games weren't BIG difference.
 * Wow, you jammed in the "X is Haruhi" WMG earlier then I would've thought. Don't worry folks, there's another down the line.

Bellum from Phantom Hourglass is a mental illness.
Alright, hear me out. Oh, and no spoiler tags, because You Should Know This By Now. In Link's Awakening, a god resembling a giant white whale dreams an entire island, and suffers nightmares which manifest on the island as monsters. Similarly, the Ocean King is a god resembling a giant whale which rules over what is, according to the end of the game, an alternative world. Bellum, a monster who attacks this world, drains the powers and memories of the Ocean King and the world's other inhabitants. My theory is that Bellum is a mental illness or brain disease of some kind, affecting the Ocean King's world in the same way the nightmares affected the Wind Fish's dream. Bellum's name is therefore derived from "cerebellum," and this is why part of its body resembles one evil-looking spinal cord dangling out of it, and why in its first appearance as a paper cut-out it resembles a neural network. The illness limits the Ocean King's power and his memories start to decay. Since the thoughts of a god are reality, so the state of a god's body and mind affects their creation.
 * Keep in mind that "bellum" is also Latin for "war," though.

Big Boss is a reincarnation of Link
Specifically The Hero of Time from Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. Link sneaks into Zelda's castle, the Gerudo compounds, and the Deku castle fairly effortlessly. He is a legendary warrior. Every woman he meets falls in love with him. Do I need to go on?
 * True, Link and Big Boss are both serious ChickMagnets. But this troper can't help wondering what sort of repercussions this theory, if it were true, would have on Super Smash Bros. Brawl...
 * Well, considering that the connection is between Big Boss and the Alpha Link, and the Links in Brawl were Beta and Omega, all it adds is a curiosity. Depending on how you look at it, Adult Link and Solid Snake are cousins, brothers, or reincarnated-father and son, the last one being in the vein of Soma Cruz and "Genya Arikado", a familial relationship with no easy-reference name. Toon is, at best, a distant relative-by-reincarnation, too far down the wheel-of-karma tree for the reincarnated-father aspect to be significant.

The gorons are causing the geography of Hyrule to shift between games
...by eating the veins of delicious rock. This causes land to shift down, and, via excretion, rise in places. Mountains dissapear due to goron overpopulation, and new ones form due to Biggoron death. Death Mountain is not a specific place, but a mistranslation of the word "volcano", or possibly a title for a dangerous mountain, in any case being the name given to whatever mountain the Gorons are in the process of devouring at the point in time of the game, resulting in all the hazards. Geographic features, like forests, the lake, and habitation, all shift around as the rising and falling land causes climate patterns and soil quality to shift (the lake moving due to slope and rising of the lakebed from under-the-bed gorons).
 * This means that they are the REAL reason that most of the world in "The Wind Waker" is underwater: The gorons ate up all the land ;)
 * I would hate to see what happens when those gorons die... * SPLASH*

Link's Awakening is the result of Link taking a lot of acid.
The official explanation of the plot is that Link managed to wash up on an island that's a dream of a giant whale. However, considering the telephones, evil Kirbys and Goombas, aforementioned giant floating magic whale, and various other stuff, cleary what actually happened is that Link dropped some acid. Honestly, it makes a lot more sense than somehow winding up on an island in someone's dream.
 * I thought the most common explanation was that LA was Link's hallucinations (or nightmares) as he succumbs to exposure on a piece of driftwood in the ocean, rather a nasty end for poor Link.
 * Uh, then how do you explain him WAKING UP and seeing THE FREAKING WIND FISH at the end? He's clearly still alive. Weather he survived after THAT can be debated.
 * A giant whale that goes flying away on silly little bird wings? That sounds like something produced by severe delirium, oh, and Marin turning into a seagull/angel/?.
 * In a series featuring giant pig monsters? Not that unusual.

All of the 3D games take place before all of the 2D games.
The existence of terrestrial Octoroks suggests that Hyrule was once an ocean.

Colin is Wind Waker Link in the Alternate Timeline
They both look alike and have heroic tendencies despite not being directly related to the Hero of Time. By the end of TP, Colin even has a sibling who could easily be Aryll. The reason he isn't leading adventures on his own is because he doesn't have to: we have TP Link for that. Colin was meant to be a backup in case no blood relatives of the Hero still lived, which definitely happens in Wind Waker but maybe not in Twilight Princess.
 * Supporting that theory, take a look at Hanch. He's an adult with longish brown hair, a funny mustache, and nonstandard eyes. He also acts heroic until faced with potential danger, at which point he runs off. If you run across an image of him, the resemblance to Linebeck (fashion sense notwithstanding) is stunning. Beth also has similarities to Tetra-- she mocks Colin at the beginning of the game along with all the other kids, but really warms up to him later on after he saves her.

Ciela is a descendant or reincarnation of Navi.
Yeah, I know, she's a spirit, but why shouldn't she also be the above? I mean, spirits are just fairies too, aren't they? My guess is, that Navi ascended to a higher plane of "Fairyhood" after the events of Ocarina of time, probably becoming a great fairy, which is why she had to leave Link, without an explanation. (Leading to Links journey, wich ultimatly ended in termina... where he probably met his demise after the end of the game, like a theory above states). So, OoT Link never managed to see Navi again--- Logically, WW Link must make up for that, or the karma of what-I'm-not-smart-enough-to-grasp or so, will be unstable... I mean, if Link's (OoT) journey leaded to another horrible, and Nightmare Fuel filled adventure, and he didn't even reach his goal in the end, what's the best solution to free his poor soul from his "I could never say goodbye" torment? Having his reincarnation visit ANOTHER world, full of NEW horrible, Nightmare Fuel filled adventures, where he finally get's the chance to say goodbye to the fairy! (Or to her reincarnation, whatever.) In other words: The unclear ending of Majoras Mask is the reason, why there's a Phantom hourglass in firstplace! Lesson: "It's all Navi's fault!"

Batman is a reincarnation or decendant of Link
One does not have to compare them for long to notice the similarities. Both are orphans, are men of few words, wear strange clothes while doing their hero work, are good at solving puzzles, and have a wide array of strange tools to help them along the way, most notably a boomerang and a Grappling Hook Gun. While the Hyrule family line was eventually ended, Link continued his lineage, continuing the chain of heroes. Eventually, the legends were lost or forgotten, and the new heroes were stopped being named Link, and sometime during all of this the lineage merged with the Wayne family tree. Bruce, while on his travels, somehow learns of his many ancestor's heroics, and that helps secretly insprires him to become Batman. He decides to not wear green and instead fashions his suit after Link's most difficult and also his most annoying enemies: Dark Link and Keese.
 * Link has a cape that turns into wings.
 * ...so Link is Meta Knight?! But what does this mean when Kirby dons a Link hat...
 * THE GODDAMN KEESEMAN

Ra's al Ghul is Ganondorf revived and/or reincarnated
Continuing the Batman theory; Ganondorf is brought back to life once again, this time in the form of Ra's al Ghul. He likes this form, and decides to create new goals for world domination to follow the changing times. He uses the Lazarus Pits so that he can retain this form and so that he doesn't have to wait so long for his return, and so he can continue to antagonize his constantly recurring foe.

The Wind Waker timeline becomes the DC Comics Universe, while the Twilight Princess timeline becomes the Marvel Universe
This makes Peter Parker the decendent or reincarnation of Twilight Princess Link. Recall the City in the Sky and tell me I'm wrong. I dare you.
 * Give me a Word of God that says that dungeon was based on Spider-Man. Then I'll acknowledge it.

The king of Hyrule is Emperor Wakamoto!
It's the only way to explain the sheer amount of children he's had in correlation to the above post! All Ganny did was make his claim to the throne.

Dark Link is the Hero's Shade
After losing to Link in the Water Temple Ganondorf cursed him just like he cursed Phantom Ganon. Before the events of Twilight Princess Dark Link realises that if Ganondorf dies he will be free and then he appears as a wolf to King Bulbin to lure him to Ordon so that Link has a reason to start him on the quest to kill Ganondorf. The reason he appears as a wolf is because as the shadow of the Hero of Time he can transform into the same shape as any of the Links but with red eyes and a different colour scheme. The first and only necessary technique he teaches Link is the one that is used to kill Ganondorf. Presumably after the defeat of Ganondorf he escapes the curse. Also note that his final words are "Go forth and do not falter, my child," He calls Link "my child" because as the shadow of Link they are related probably. The go forth and do not falter is just him wanting Ganondorf to be dead as soon as possible so he is telling Link to not do any side-quests until the death of Ganondorf. "Hero's Spirit: "Although I accepted life as the hero, I could not convey the lessons of that life to those that came after. At last, I have eased my regrets.""
 * Another line by that same character josses this:


 * Potentially de-jossed, as Dark Link could be the remnant of an erased timeline where Link became corrupted. The Goddesses decided to screw with time and erase that. However, Link was too strong, and he remained as a shadow. He decided that if he couldn't BE the hero, he would redeem himself by training the Hero of Time to face Ganondorf. Their encounters are Dark's attempts to HELP him, not destroy him. The Hero's Shade trains Link as well, so they could be one and the same...
 * Jossed by Hyrule Historia.

Link has at least one Alternate Reality counterpart, possibly more
I point your attention to Neku Sakuraba. The "Over The Top" set even mirrors the Triforce (though they mixed up the left hand and the right hand). This in turn would give his counterpart near-infinite counterparts, meaning that he already has at least, say, 40 assuming we count each "base" Link as an individual counterpart. Even without that, there are too many Link-like heroes to be a coincidence. Maybe his personality depends on the world he's in?
 * Duke Nukem Forever: A corrupted Link has to freeze the whole universe completely to defeat his foe. The timleine may never recover.
 * Isn't this "The Hero with a Thousand Faces"? Most of the games follow the model of these legends. This wiki has a good overview.

The next game will be a FPS of sorts involving crossbows.
Link's Crossbow Training. Go figure. Hopefully it'll use the Metroid Prime 3 engine, I love those controls.
 * That sounds AWESOME! Lets get on this idea... you could through bombs like grenades, and use the hookshot in first-person.. oh and it should definitely be grittily realistic.

The Zelda in a Link to the Past would often sneak her non-noble friends in and out of the castle at night
This explains why the non-hostile guards don't react when they see her following Link they think she's up to her usual hijinks.

Agahnim was possessed.
At the end of A Link to the Past, it's implied in-game that Agahnim was simply Ganon in disguise (he calls Agahnim "my alterego"), but the way Agahnim falls dead and Ganon's essence flies out of his body suggests to me that the wizard was once a normal man whom Ganon possessed. Maybe he was an innocent man who was entrapped by Ganon, or maybe he was wicked to begin with and intentionally let Ganon out of the Dark World. In addition, his pale skin brings to mind Zelda's appearance in Twilight Princess when she's possessed by Ganondorf.
 * Supported in the manga for ALttP (not the Nintendo Power comics), where he was an old friend of Link's father.

The bird on the Hyrulean Family Crest is not an eagle.
Or a hawk, or a falcon, or an owl, or anything noble like that. It is, in fact, a cucco, paying tribute to the mightiest beast in all of Hyrule. Buck-AAAWK!
 * So if Link blocks enough hits with a Hyrule Shield, a flock of Shields will appear out of nowhere and gank his opponent? Awesome.
 * What if it's a reference to the Oocca?
 * Maybe it's a reference to the birds in Skyward Sword: We've seen that bird symbol without a beak or the Triforce symbol accompanying it in a trailer (Link draws a heart on it with the motion plus and hearts come out of the shrine-thing its on), and a species of very strong birds is also introduced as a game mechanic a la the King of Red Lions.

Twinrova brainwashed Ganondorf before the events of Ocarina of Time
Warning: Huge amount of text, even when I broke it up into smaller chunks.

This originates from an old theory of mine that Twinrova brainwashed Ganondorf into plotting to rule Hyrule. You'll have to bear with me on this, as it will take some explaining. And there are alternate versions I have developed based on uncertancies I have about various points of time. And just to clear things up, when I say Twinrova, I am refering to Kotake and Koume at the same time. Their unifed form is a spell, or so I believe

Ganondorf was born, but after x amount of years (or even during childbirth), his mother died. His father's whereabouts I really don't know, as I have yet to focus on the subject of what Gerudo do with the guys they abduct (or if any actually come along willingly; for all we know, the Hylian men who claim they were prisoners or taken by force could be lying their arses off to avoid persecution from their own people... moreso if they were already engaged or married). But in any case, sooner or later (typically while he's young and thus easier to mislead), Twinrova meet him. Now, being that they claimed to be over seven-hundred years old in Ocarina of Time (but we must remember that one or both could be senile, but they ARE old hags at any rate), they must had planned out a portion of the events. In one version of the events, they were responsible for Ganondorf's mother's death.

Anyway, Twinrova are kind to him and console him on his loss. In fact, as he starts to warm up to them, they begin teaching him magic. Minor stuff, of course. They intend to teach him the GOOD stuff when they have him firmly in their clutches. Later, within a few years before he's old enough to properly lead his people, Twinrova have Ganondorf come to their home (location unknown, but I believe that they have made an actual livable home beneath the sands of the Gerudo Desert) where they'll teach him a powerful spell as a gift for his oncoming rule or alternatively his birthday. They first give him a drink that weakens his mental resistance and then unleash the mind-controlling spell. Over the next decade or two (or three; I forget if he had a certain age at the time), they train him and mould him into the fierce, powerhungry warlock that we all known and love. He believes that he's the one in command, but he's just a puppet king.

Of course, you might be wondering about how come he's not free from their magic as he reincarnated a lot of time. He is. However, he was under their spell for so long that his real personality is almost indistinguishable from the one he had when he stole the Triforce. However, there are moments when a psuedo-softer side of him is shown, such as in Wind Waker where he looks back and remembers the horrible desert winds and thinks that all he had done was for his people (note I said "thinks", as speech is a completely different thing).

Now that all that "exposition" is out of the way, I'll show you what led me to my initial thought that Twinrova had brainwashed Ganondorf.

First of all, remember that huge gem on his forehead? Yeah, the one that looked about as big as his fist. Very pretty, I know. Keep that in mind and remember Nabooru. When she was freed from being brainwashed by Twinrova into a loyal Iron Knuckle when the armor was broken off. I believe that Twinrova uses items to focus the mind-altering enchantment, which serves to keep the spell active even if the casters themselves died. The huge forehead-gem on Ganondorf is just such an item, although it is generally ignored by the Gerudo because everyone else has forehead gems (but not as huge as his).


 * Also supported in the Ocarina Of Time manga. Ingo and Nabooru are brainwashed in this way.

That initial connection led me to wondering about Ganondorf's past and if he was really the villain or if he was just another victim.


 * Twinrova was Ganondorf's surrogate mother. This would give him greater affection for her.

Marin was always a seagull
She just woke up.


 * I believe the above troper is referring to Zhuangzi (a Chinese philosopher of the 4th century B.C.) claiming in his book that he had a dream in which he was a butterfly, and after waking was not sure whether he was a man whom had dreamed he was a butterfly, or a butterfly whom had begun dreaming he was a man.
 * It does make a lot of sense. If the island is a dream and waking the Wind Fish ends the dream, she shouldn't be able to survive in any form... unless she also existed in the real world, like the only two other known LA characters to continue existing (Link and the Wind Fish itself.) One of the setting's many smart animals being drawn into the dream world makes more sense than Marin going from an imaginary girl to a real bird.

Kokiri society is more advanced and worldly than it appears.
First, we know that the Kokiri have pretty much no contact with the rest of Hyrule. They aren't familiar with this thing called a "castle" Link says he's going to, and they believe that if they ever leave the forest, they'll die. There are also consequences if outsiders come in, meaning that there's probably no contact/trade going on.

Now look in some of the Kokiri's homes. We have what looks like well-made glass and glazed pottery. In Saria's house, you see very finely-woven fabric, not rough knitted-looking things like you'd expect. The fence around the training ground seems to be made of cut metal.

In link's house, there's a big, steel axe. There's also a pile of hay and a pitchfork in there. And across from that? A meat cleaver.

Link in Ocarina of Time is A Kokiri-tarian.
They grow their own houses, and use bamboo-looking stuff for their fences, so what would he need the axe for? The same for the hay and pitchfork, since he only gets the cow partway through the game, with no warning. And why would he need the meat cleaver? He uses the axe and pitchfork to kill, dismember, and/or transport the bodies, and uses the butcher knife to... well, butcher them with a knife. The hay was originally used to keep the blood from caking on the floor, like sawdust in an old bar. Saria was obviously the Mrs. Lovett to his Sweeney Todd.

The four main Zelda console games (and to a greater extent their Links) represent the four temperaments
So far their are four main console Zelda games with distinct Links: Ocerina of Time (Majora's mask as well, since they are the same Link) Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, and the soon to be Skyward Sword. Giving it some thought one can see how the art styles, music, themes and charecters from each game represents, almost to the letter the four personality types. In order of appearance: Ocarina of Time/ Majora's Mask: Choleric. This game was made to dominate the world of Zelda, and it shows. There's much to be done in these games, which leaves a go-getting Link content from beginning to end. One goes through this game with passionand takes it seriously, as it's intended to be.

Wnd Waker: Phlegmatic. This game is far more relaxed than OoT, but never boring. The curious and observant can always find something new in this game, but every turn in the game makes sense and is logical. The Link of this universe, while just as Brave as other Links, needs no reward beyond knowing he has done well and knowing he can go even farther. One of the main themes of this game is letting go of the past, which is a cournerstone of the Phlegmatic's mindset.

Twilight Princess: Melancholic.You'll notice while playing this game it's much more serious than even Oot, to the point that it can almost be considered brooding. All the artistic elements of it are some of the finest according to fans: from the music to the graphics to the plot and even the charecter design. This is a game that stands on it's own and probably won't have a sequel. However, it doesn't need to, since the game gives one so much insight into Light and Darkness that it's enough for two or three games.

Which leaves for us:

Skyward Sword: Senguine. While we haven't seen much on the game yet what we do have suggests a lighter game than Oot or TP, however not at all boring! the charecters in this game will probably be very engaging and the sidequests short yet interesting, but the game is as par noted going to come in a little late.

Wind Waker was all an elaborate plan by The King Of Red Lions and Ganondorf to get rid of the Triforce and break the cycle
Following on in a way from the theory that the Godessess want Ganondorf to have the Triforce of Power. While in most games he's in he'd do anything to get the other pieces Wind Waker Ganondorf shows a lot more restraint, and before the final fight refuses to kill Link or Zelda to get the Triforce pieces that way. It's possible that after the great flood, the sealing away of the majority of his power he has a What Have I Done moment possibly when he realise that he doomed his own race in his bid for glory and a decent place to live. He's smart enough to realise that he's stuck in a cycle and the only thing that can stop him is Link with the Triforce of Courage which got shattered when Link went back at the end of OOT. So he conspires with the former King of Hyrule who's as fed up with the cycle as he is and they plan to reform the two missing shards in the hope of using the triforce to hit a great big reset button undoing the great flood and possibly the 7 years of evil rule. To do this Ganon has to be evil for evil's sake to encourage this: Kidnapping any girl who could possibly be Zelda.

It all goes well when WW Link takes out the Master Sword and Tetra is revealed to be Zelda, all Link has to do is re-unite the triforce of courage under the guidance of the King of Red Lions, but during this time The King decides that he can't trust Ganondorf, possibly by his off-screen handling of Zelda who was probably resisting capture, trying to break out of sunken Hyrule and decides to stab Ganondorf in the back by having Link re-awaken the Master Sword to its full potential so it can kill Ganondorf. When all this is revealed via Villainous Breakdown.

Beedle of Wind Waker is Link older, and traveling back in time
Beedle, of Beedle's Floating Ship Shop, is Link all grown up. He not only knows where Link is headed next, but gets there before he does and knows exactly what he's going to buy. Link would probably grow in power as he aged, and it makes sense to dye your hair and conceal your identity if you're going to be dealing with a past self.

Majora's Mask was made by the Twili
A tribe, using black magic made it, eh? And it's behaving a LOT like Zant. Oh, and don't forget that OTHER artefact of doom, which Link and Midna had to reasemble, which was said to be just as dangerous and had pretty simmilar markings to the Majoras Mask on it.
 * Except this implies that the Twili made the fused shadow. The way Midna speaks about it seems to indicate that it's older than they are.
 * Of course it is! Didn't you read the part about The Twili being descendants of the makers? They weren't Twili yet!
 * Not only are the markings similar, the Twili seem obsessed with masks in general. So much so that Midna wears link's sheild on her face when trying to figure out how human weapons work(and yes Midna even implies at the time that she thinks the sheild is a weapon). This implies that the Twili think of masks as weapons as essential battle gear. As such if they were to make some ultimate weapon, they would make a mask... IE Majora's mask.
 * Alternately, Majora's Mask and the Fused Shadow are the same object, except the appearance changed because of an Unreliable Narrator.
 * Unless both objects were made by different branches of the same tribe: Fused Shadow by the branch that tried to take over Hyrule and ended up becoming the Twili, Majora's Mask by a branch near Termina. Majora's Mask probably destroyed the tribe for shits and giggles, which is why they'd try to seal it away wherever the Happy Mask Salesman found it.

Majora's Mask, the Twili, AND Vaati are all related
While the connections between the former two are disscused above, nobody else mentioned that Majora's mask and Vaati's many forms share a near identical theme and aesthetic (the same purple and gold color scheme, and share that crazy eye of horus symbol ), not to mention that Vaati progress through forms in a manner similar to Majora, with his final form being called Vaati's wrath, much like Majora's final form.

Termina is the result of trying to prevent a time paradox, and the Twilight Realm is its future state
When Link was sent back in time in OOT, the flow of time itself was disrupted. In order to preserve the natural flow of time and prevent a split timeline, a second world (Termina) was created retroactively in order to "absorb" the extra timeline by being constantly destroyed over and over, playing out the same scenario with every repetition (perpetual "termination", if you will). However, when Link destroyed the Moon and saved Termina, this cycle was disrupted and the timeline split permanently. The reason why the Twilight Realm has a "dark and gloomy" feel to it is because it was created as a realm that was never meant to last, so it is constantly locked in a state being of just about to descend into oblivion, or "twilight".

A Link to the Past (And associated games) takes place in a third timeline split from Ocarina of Time where Ganondorf succeeds.
The common theory is that there is a split in the timeline from the events in Ocarina of Time, generally referred to as the Child Timeline (Where Link, following the events of OoT, warned the king of Hyrule about Ganondorf's treachery, resulting in Majora's Mask and The Wind Waker series.) and the Adult Timeline (Where events generally played out as presented in OoT, without Ganondorf being preemptively executed for his crimes but ultimately failing in his bid to secure the Triforce. Twilight Princess and sequels follow on from this.). The main problem is that the history in A Link to the Past doesn't mesh well with either timelines, the biggest difference is that, by ALttP, Ganon possesses the entire Triforce, not just the Triforce of Power. There's no mention of the Hero of Time, nor Princess Zelda's role in the defeat of Ganondorf, just the efforts of the Knights of Hyrule (Who appeared to be pretty ineffective as of Ocarina) and the Seven Wise Men (Which I'll use to clarify the differences between the original seven "Hylians" that sealed Ganondorf in the Sacred Realm, rather than the six/seven "Sages" of time, who were of different races). It's almost as if the events of Ocarina never actually happened, and until he was eventually sealed in the Golden Land it appeared that Ganondorf was very, very successful in his attempt to conquer Hyrule.

So the timeline split further. If the events of Ocarina played out, then Ganondorf did slay the Hero of Time to gain the Triforce of Courage, and also slew Princess Zelda for the Triforce of Wisdom. Ganondorf now had the complete Triforce in his possession, and with the Six Sages specifically being bound to the Hero of Time through which to exude their powers in the real world instantly became useless, so Ganondorf had no opposition from Rauru and his posse. Hyrule was, basically, conquered without Ganondorf having to even use the complete power of the Triforce.

So the remaining citizens of Hyrule finally dropped some major balls, realising that putting all your bets on some emotionally-unstable teen fond of dressing like a forest kid was a bad idea, and assembled a fighting force that could take on Ganondorf. They also had seven powerful wizards, the Seven Wise Men, that could seal the Golden Realm, and then took the fight to Ganondorf's front door. The Knights pushed back Ganondorf's forces, pushing him into the Sacred Realm, and the Seven Wise Men quickly sealed the pathway back into Hyrule. Ganondorf, angry at his loss, made the single wish that he could rule "the world", but the Triforce being a Literal Genie took that at face value and installed him as ruler of the Golden Land, corrupting the realm into the Dark World to match its new king.

In short, Ganondorf "wins" the battle of Ocarina (As opposed to "losing" it in the Adult Timeline and being preemptively slapped down in the Child Timeline), but eventually loses the war. The Hero and Sage of Time are dead, and their failure effectively covered up and forgotten by the true victors of this version of the Imprisoning War, namely the Knights and the Wise Men. Thematically, this timeline would be the Timeline of Power (Ganon's victory, through sheer force), while the other two timelines would be the Timeline of Courage (Where a young boy dares to accuse the ruler of a desert tribe that has just pledged loyalty to Hyrule) and the Timeline of Wisdom (Where all involved decide to allow events to proceed without any interruption).
 * Twilight Princess takes place after Majora's Mask. Wind Waker follows the defeat of Ganon at the end of Ocarina of Time. Confirmed by Word of God.
 * It would make more sense that A Link to the Past took place very early in the cronology of the world. Ocarina of Time would take place after it and the original game (which would be the first "incarnation" as there is no Master Sword in the first game). The Majora's Mask/Twilight Princess and Wind Waker timelines would take place even further after. Making the release order mostly coinciding with the in-game timeline.


 * Why would that make more sense? None of the games (that involve the Triforce) can come before Ocarina of Time, because in that game Ganon makes his original bid for the Triforce. In fact, at the time of its release it was a pretty explicit prequel to A Link to the Past, depicting the backstory events alluded to. My thought is that Nintendo execs simply figured that the latest generation of gamers didn't know anything about that "old" SNES game and felt free to drop it in favor of new sequels to OOT.


 * This theory could pan out, actually: with the timeline split into three instead of two, there's balance. If there's just two timelines, they could start folding in on each other what with all that Triforce-y power and general dimension-hopping going on. Of course, since the Power timeline is relatively small and stunted compared to the other, more dynamic ones, there clearly IS some leakage between the Wisdom (Adult) and Courage (Child) timelines: it would explain the Oracle games, at least.


 * Original WMG proposer here: Kotaku has released a translation of a page in the recently released 25th Anniversary art book. Apparently the timeline splits in three after Ocarina headed by three games: Majora's, Wind Waker, and Link to the Past. Destructoid has a better translation and a more detailed timeline, and the whole ALttP arc is in fact under a branch labelled "The Hero of Time is Defeated".


 * I would rather swap the Adult-Wisdom and Child-Courage associations. In the adult timeline Link (who is associated with the Triforce of Courage) wins the conflict by using his Courage to fight the much more powerful Ganondorf, while in the child timeline Zelda (who is associated with the Triforce of Wisdom) wins through the knowledge (i.e. Wisdom) she gives herself (by sending Link back in time) of Ganondorf's inevitable betrayal.

Alternately, A Link to the Past (And associated games) takes place in a third timeline split from Ocarina of Time as a result of all of Link's jumping back and forth seven years
The Two-Timeline theory is pretty much Word of God now. In the Adult Timeline, Ganondorf rules over Hyrule for seven years until a Hero appears as if from nowhere and seals him away. That's paraphrased from the first part of the prologue to The Wind Waker. In the Child Timeline that we know of, the that includes Majora's Mask and Twilight Princess, Ganondorf does not get the chance to rule for seven years and is instead imprisoned and executed.
 * We do not know how exactly his plan to rule was foiled, but we do know that he was in possession of the Triforce of Power. We also see the marking of the Triforce of Courage on Link's hand at the very end of the Ocarina of Time epilogue, when Child Link meets Child Zelda once again. Barring the idea of the Triforce jumping into their bodies as their Alternate Universe counterparts obtain them, Link must have been sent back in time to the point AFTER Ganondorf entered and exited the Sacred Realm to steal the Triforce.
 * When Link returns the Master Sword to the Pedestal of Time, he jumps back to the past. We do not know when in the past he returns to, but since his actions during this time are still present in Adult Link portions of the game, it is a fair assumption that he returns to the past slightly before he drew the Master Sword. Otherwise, he wouldn't be present to actually do it by virtue of being sealed in the Sacred Realm for seven years. That, or he returns to the past at a time just before Ganondorf makes his move and enters the Sacred Realm through the now-opened portal.
 * What if, through all this moving back and forth through time, Link manages to return to the past JUST as Ganondorf steps into the Sacred Realm. This would create a third branch of the timeline which states that Ganondorf enters the Sacred Realm, but the portal is shut before he could leave, trapping him there. Link simply walks away, confident that Ganondorf is no longer a threat to Hyrule.
 * This theory was inspired by something the second Crystal Maiden said in A Link to the Past. "The person who rediscovered the Golden Land [or Sacred Realm] was Ganondorf the evil thief. Luckily, he couldn't figure out how to return to the Light World..." This implies that the Ganondorf from A Link to the Past got trapped inside the Sacred Realm as soon as he entered it.

Tetra is not the actual Princess Zelda. She's Haruhi Suzumiya
She's a FEMALE pirate captian, who seemingly also happens to be a princess. She's bossy, has some rather weird idea's of "good plans" (Barrel+ Catapult+ Link=Victory WTF?) and gets pretty angry when she doesn't get what she wants. Oh and the way she threats Link. Pretty Kyon-like, huh?

My guess is that Haruhi played some Zelda (probably Ocarina of time) and started telling the brigade how great that game is and how they should make one of those themselves. Kyon objected ("Can you program? No? Neighter can I") and so she trapped him and herself in what she imagined to be the PERFECT sequel to the game. It was awesome.
 * Right, because Suzumiya came out before Wind Waker. Oh and you spelt "neither" wrong.

Rauru is Link's father
The other five sages in Ocarina of Time are all people from Link's past. Theoretically, Rauru should be someone that Link knew when he was younger, too. All we know of Link is that he is actually a Hylian, not a Kokiri, and that he arrived in the Kokiri Forest as a baby with his already gravely wounded mother. His father, on the other hand, is completely unknown. Although, based on how old Rauru looks, maybe grandfather is more likely...


 * To tie it in with the WMG of Link and Zelda being siblings, compare Rauru with King Daphnes in WW; Rauru might have been the King of Hyrule.
 * Actually The king is alive (but just offscreen) when Link meets Zelda. The manga has him killed in Ganondorf's coup.


 * Or it could also be that Rauru is Kaepora Gaebora, whom Link just happened to know as a child.

The Oocoo City is actually Elysia from Metroid Prime 3
'nuff said.
 * Guest starring Ridley as the boss. Yeah, I can actually see it now.

On that note...

The Metroid universe is actually a continuation of Zelda's
In a gender swap, Samus is the reincarnated Hero of Time. Some of the Lizalfos evolved into the space pirates, while others settled on Bryyo and became the Bryyonians. Elysia is actually Hyrule after some incident covered it in toxic gas, and the Cities in the Sky are the only things that survived. The Chozo are the evolved descendants of the Oocca, or possibly the Cucco. Ridley is the only remaining Dragon from Hyrule, and they keep resurrecting him in hopes they'll eventually be able to bring Dragon's out of extinction. Dark Aether is in the same dimension as Termina. Mother Brain could be a corrupted holder of the Triforce of Wisdom, and Kraid could be a permutation of Ganon's beast mode.
 * or Alternatively Ridley is Ganondorf in some distorted form. He has been known to change his form into a monstrous one, And by then he's gone through so many he has lost his original name., and it would fit the rivalry both of them had.
 * If another WMG about the three gods is correct, that would also make Alex Roivas a hero of time, due to Identical Grandson...

Tetra and WW Link are currently in the possesion of their Triforce-pieces.
We never saw the Triforce again, after it split up to flood Hyrule once and for all, so it may have gone back to Tetra and Link, since they are it's chosen holders. This also opens up the possibility that Ganon(dorf) is still alive, since Twilight Princess has shown how damn hard he is to kill with the Triforce of power on his hand. The Master Sword probably just put him into stasis, like it did with Hyrule. Also, the grafik of Phantom Hourglass stylizised Tetra's and Link's hands so much that it would be very hard to tell if they were having the symbols on them and Link seems to be a lot stronger in this game, than he was in Wind Waker, beating more temples in shorter time (But this could just be due to that stupid Triforce-shard-quest in WW...)

Farore, Oracle of Secrets, is a Kokiri
She looks a lot like one in her artwork and the Kokiri are a race often associated with the godess Farore and her attribute "courage". However, her looking like a Kokiri may have the same reason why Din is looking like a Gerudo and Nayru like a Pre-Ocarina of Time Great Fairy

Every one of the spirits from Phantom Hourglass has a secondary power/attribute, not just Ciela
To be more specific, I think the Leaf(power) can controll the seasons and Neri(wisdom) can jump through the ages. Yeah, this is a reference to the Oracle games. There was once a thrid Oracle game starring Farore planned, but it was cancelled. The game would have had a time-related feature as well. I guess it would have been stopping time, like Ciela can do. I think the three spirits and the Oracles are simmilar in more than justone way. The oracles are connected to, or may even be the goddesses Din, Nayru and Farore and the attributes of the spirits also mirror the godesses, therefor: Farore:Time freezing; Nayru%Neri:Time jumping; Din&Leaf:Season change. The reason why Neri and Leaf didn't use their powers to this extent was probably, that it would have taken to much energy and wasn't really necessary. The last Oracle games would have been called "Oracle of Infinity" (Farore was only given the "Secrets" title because of the Password system)

Just like Ocarina of Time's Zelda was one of the seven sages of the sacred realm, Wind Waker's Link is the third sage of the master sword.
He's using an instrument and the Master sword doesn't completly get back all of it's power until he finds the Triforce of courage and, therefore "awakens".


 * Last I checked, it was back at full power when Makar joined Medli in prayer for the Master Sword's power. How does it power up again when you get the Triforce Of Courage without saying so?
 * The triforce on the hilt lights up

Link is LITERALLY a Heroic Mime
TWW Link excepted (note that he's ostensibly not descended from OoT Link.) I don't ascribe to this myself, but I've run into it quite a bit on the 'net.
 * Nope, he speaks in Adventure of Link.
 * Possibly backed up in Twilight Princess, if the Hero's Shade is really OoT Link.

The Blue Girl is Zelda
Only instead of reincarnating as usual, her soul is somehow bound to the Master Sword.


 * Recently Jossed. Her name is Aderu (might be romanized as "Adelle" or "Adella"?).
 * Actually, it's Fi.

Not all the games are different stories
The ones that broadly follow the structure of Link to the Past are different corruptions of the same story, most likely Ocarina of Time or Twilight Princess. Other games may follow suit (Link's Awakenning and Majora's Mask have a numer of smiliarities, for instance) or be separate tales of their own.

The Dark World/Twilight Realm/Light Realm and possibly Termina are the same place
It begins as The Light Realm from Ocarina of Time. Ganondorf corrupts it other than the Light Temple, turning it into the Twilight Realm. After his defeat, the Gerudo are banished to the Twilight Realm, but not before the Happy Mask Salesman is able to buy Majora's Mask off of them. The Twili are the descendants of the Gerudo, shaped and twisted by the twilight realm, which is why both are matriarchical and tend to have red hair. It would also explain why the Twilight Realm is accessible from the Gerudos' former home in the desert

Termina, the world of the Ocean King and Koholint Island are one and the same
The Windfish is the united form of the four Giants from Majoras Mask. Also, the Wind Fish and the Ocean King are one and the same (which is supported by the fact that they are both whale-like gods).

Originally, the Wind Fish / Giants / Ocean King was supposed to stay asleep to keep the dream world of Termina existing, but after the Majora-incident, this dream world was, after all, infested by Majora's Mask's evil and it would latter manifest as Bellum from Phantom Hourglass, Aka The Nightmare from Link's Awakening. Note how Bellum's full title in Japanese is "Dream Demon Bellum". Also: Bellum's eyes look a lot like Majora's Mask's eyes. So--> Majora's Mask--> destoried--> essence becomes Bellum: Dream Demon = Nightmare.

First, the Ocean King / Wind Fish was able to hold everything pretty well together, so the evil power was "only" resulting in the flooding of Termina (simmilar to the flooding of Hyrule, only that it happened in both timelines here) but as time passed, the evil grew stronger and stronger and (in Timeline Number 1) consumed most of the dream world, until only Koholint Island was left and it wasn't possible to stop the evil anymore without giving up on what was left of that world. Because of the split-timeline, however, a sooner Link (aka Wind Waker Link) arrived in the dream world in Phantom Hourglass (Timeline Number 2) and could stop the process, before it was as advanced as in the other timeline in ''Links Awakening".

So, to sum it all up: The giants are becoming the Ocean King, who is latter known as the Wind Fish and Phantom Hourglass is basically Link, stopping the Ocean King's dream world from becoming Koholint Island in the second timeline as well.

Supporting this Theory: All three of this world have many characters, who are considered Expies of characters from the corresponding preccedor game even in-game. It is common for dream-dimensions in fiction, to have their population based upon people from "The real world". Then, there's the way Link is entering those worlds in all of the three games: In Majora's Mask, he get's a short sequence, that looks like childish-doodles on Speed, in Link's Awakening, he, well, awakens on the shore of Koholint Island. Phantom Hourglass unites aspects of both of this instances, by having Link wake up on a shore, after having a pretty acid-like vision of Tetra's light being swallowed by darkness. Another thing that is supporting this theory: The way the wind fish and the Ocean King tend to reward Link's helpers: Marin was wishing for wings, Linebeck was wishing for being able to travel the seas in his S.S.Linebeck. Neighter of them was wishing to see the "Real World". Yet, both of them suddenly turn up and get their wishes granted in Link's world, after the quests is completed: Marin flies away as angel/seagull and Linebeck's ship is spoted on the horizont by Link, after he and Tetra returned. The Wind Fish/Ocean King probably intentionally rewarded them both with "freedom from the boundaries of the dream world", additionally to granting their wishes.

The names Ganondorf, Link, and Zelda are cursed.
Every time someone named Link, Zelda, or Ganondorf appears, bad things happen. The logical conclusion is that one or all of these names are cursed. There are three possibilities.

Link is Cursed: In ancient history, a hero named Link failed his quest. The goddesses decreed that as punishment, anyone named Link would have to suffer trials. Ganondorf and Zelda are just along for the ride. Zelda is Cursed: Zelda is a descendant of a despotic tyrant who was also named Zelda. Once again, she is punished to suffer. Ganondorf is the executioner, and it's Link's job to make sure she doesn't suffer too much. Ganondorf is Cursed: Ganondorf is the avatar of a fourth Goddess who attempted to conquer the others and failed. He is cursed to relive is failure over and over again. (See the below WMG.)

The "Fierce Deity" is the personification of the future.
The Fierce Deity is shrouded in mystery. Plus, it is the last mask to be found in the game. If this is the OoT link, then it cannot be a past Link, because apparently he is the first Link. Many future Links wear different tunics, so this one is a comination of those. One of his attacks is to shoot a beam out of his sword. This is attack is commonly used by later Links. His fate might be to become a god-like being, hence his appearance. The Helix sword is an amalgation of all of his swords to be gotten in the future.

Link is not mute at all.
His text-boxes are absorbed by an evil force to keep Link from giving the player informations. Notice how most times, people seem to respond to things that Link has supposedly just "said". Like Zelda in Ocarina of Time, Tetra in Wind Waker, Romani in Majoras Mask, Marin in Link's Awakening...ect.
 * Possibly supported in The Adventure Of Link (possible mistranslation?) and Twilight Princess (Hero's Shade might not be OoT Link).
 * Multiple-choice-boxes are immune. Link says "I hate Ganondorf!" the first time he meets Nabooru in OOT, and declares himself to be "an ally of justice" while reasoning a thief in WW. Still, he does tend to give a simple "yes" or "no" most of the time.

Super Smash Bros. is the reason the timeline is so messed up.
Other crossovers such as Soul Calibur II or the first two Super Smash Bros. games simply plucked the characters out of their natural environments and had them fight. Super Smash Bros. Brawl, however, creates an amalgamation universe featuring all of the Nintendo franchises together. This is why Toon Link and TP Link are in the same game, even though they are from alternate realities, and why TP Link seems to have attributes of his predecessor from OOT. Likewise, the amalgamation universe survived for a while after the crossover, explaining such things as Link showing up in Tetris or Super Mario RPG. This universe was destroyed at the end of Super Mario Galaxy, rendering all of the universes separate again.

Super Smash Bros. is the reason the timeline split in the first place.
The legend at the beginning of WW says that the hero vanished and leaves it at that. What we're not told is that he vanished into the SSB world and couldn't return to stop Ganondorf's return.

Most Legend of Zelda games take place in Spira, sometime before the game but after the events in FFX's history.
All spoilers are for Final Fantasy X.

Before Wind Waker, the world was flooded, and  may or may not be on an oceanic world, but it is long ago in Spira's history, with plenty of time for Hyrule, a neighboring kingdom, to become magically flooded and the waters to spill over to the rest of the world. The reason Hyrule never really has an increase in technological level is because the goddesses want to. The WiiTV April Fools' commercial (which isn't actually a prank, but Nintendo hushed them up about it) shares the building style and potentially the now-lost technology of, and possibly takes place there before Link goes to Hyrule fleeing the Big Bad who later becomes/enables/is replaced by Ganondorf/Ganon. The MacGuffin is the artifact that will eventually become the Master Sword, which becomes depowered not after waiting, but rather after incarnating Link's soul- Steve, or (my preferred name) as suggested by another troper on the Just Bugs Me page, Reido, is a (possibly living) statue that houses the machinery: It crystallizes a soul and enables it to be "unfrozen" later in time- usually in a different body, but in rare cases like Ocarina of Time, the same body several years later. The first Link (likely with a different canon name, something with a similar meaning to "anchor") has a Pyrrhic Victory at the end of the game, just escaping the Big Bad at the cost of his life, and having fled to what would eventually be Hyrule, must himself use the device to keep the Big Bad from being able to take over the world by unfreezing each time he reincarnates or comes back into power. The Goddesses made the soul fragments into the shards of the Triforce (Power for Ganon-to-be and Courage for Link, no idea who Wisdom/Zelda are yet) before making Hyrule (the country, not the world, although they could easily have made the world in the first place).

Anyway, back to Spira: the world floods between OOT and WW,  becomes the archipelago of Spira, and meanwhile, the Legend of Zelda games are taking place, following the Wind Waker timeline. The Island Fish in Link's Awakening (no matter the timeline) is a version of Sin, hanging out in the ocean while, and Marin was an unsent, influencing Link's dream and allowign her to get her happy ending and manifest as a seagull instead of a fiend. Possibly, trying to find a way to escape beign bound by  , at least for a short time.

Link in Ocarina of Time is a lot older then he looks
There are a couple of things which led me to this conclusion.
 * The war Link's mother was trying to escape was supposed to be one that ended in the King of Hyrule uniting the kingdom. If this had happened recently, then where is the evidence of it. The only other race in the game that seems to show any antagonism is the Gerudo, and even with them it's not what one would expect from a people concured only 10 years ago. Yet all of the other kings, including Ganondorf on the surface at least, swear allegience to the King of Hyrule suggesting they are vassal states. Even if the war had only been with the Gerudo and the other races had been on friendly terms with Hyrule there's the problem of Ganondorf's relationship to Hyrule. Even if he had only been a teenager at the time he still would have likely been the Gerudo head of state. Yet at no point does he mention any anger over a lost war, and from what Zelda said it seems that her father showed no signs of doubting his loyalty. If Ganondorf had been defeated just 10 years earlier that kind of attitude would be beyond stupidity.
 * The Kokiri never mention anything about having seen Link grow up. Considering their own eternal childhoods watching somebody actually age would probably be bizarre to them, yet the only thing strange about Link that's ever mentioned is that he didn't have a fairy. This isn't a case of their having short memory spans either, as after Link's sever year time skip they still remembered him, even if they didn't recognize him. For Link to be old enough that nobody would remember his early childhood would probably take a long time, as it to would have to settle in their minds as the way things had always been.
 * So just how old was Link? Who knows? Given what life seemed to be like among the Kokiri it probably doesn't matter. However the bigger concern is how come Link didn't age despite his not being Kokiri. My best guess here is that whatever it is that the Great Deku Tree was able to replicate in some fashion the kind of condition that its "children" lived in and grant Link that while he was around, but either after its death or when Link left the forest the spell was broken and he began to age normally again. While I can't believe that I'm making this analogy, it's like in Hook with Peter. While he lived in Neverland he was eternally young, but once he moved back into the real world he became an ordinary person again and finally grew up.
 * One way around this is to say the Kokiri start out as infants, grow to the age of ten, and stop there; i.e. Link growing up would be rare and would mark him as really young, but as long as he didn't grow up past ten, the Kokiri wouldn't have noted the anomoly.

Kokiri that leave the forest begin to age, and that's why the GDT told them they would die
As a continuation of the above WMG, this troper adds that he speculated several years ago when playing OoT on the Zelda Collector's Disk for GCN that the actual reason the Kokiri will die if they leave the forest is that whatever magic keeps them young ceases functioning once they leave, meaning that eventually they will grow old and die.
 * Perhaps when Link's mother brought him to the Great Deku Tree, she convinced him to extend the magic to Link, so that while he would age to match the Kokiri, he would only "grow up" if he left the forest.
 * Or maybe anyone inside the forest stops aging naturally, and over time becomes a Kokiri and the reason no Kokiri ever points out the oddity of Link growing up, unlike the rest of them, is because all Kokiri are formerly Hylian children who escaped from the war. The Deku Tree blessed the forest so that no one in the forest would grow up.

The new Zelda game will contain a Shout-Out to Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series.
That is, if anyone with even a little creative control over writing or translation for the new Zelda game spends much time on the english-speaking Internet. The fans have decided to name the sword-person Steve, after all, until they get a real name.
 * Does Zelda behaving an awfully lot like Tea in Spirit Tracks count?
 * Please explain. How does she act like TÃ©a again?
 * Ehem... "Link and me defeated you through Friendship, because our Friendship allows us to do anything, since we are friendly friends, who work together!... Hey don't walk out on me, I haven't finished talking about Friendship yet!!"

The splitting of the timeline screwed around with Link's Reincarnation-cycle in the adult-timeline.
Reincarnation usually works like this: You live, you accomplish something, you die, you are reborn, repeat. However, that doesn't quite works out that well, when you are not killed, but erased from the timeline (like Zelda erased Link, when she sent him back to his youth). Having Link erased out of the timeline, instead of biting the dust the regular way means, that there's no soul the goddesses could have reincarnated. Which is why they chose to flood Hyrule, instead of sending another hero... They were lacking Hero-soul at the time, thanks to a certain princesses "good intentions...". When they finally managed to reincarnate Link again, he was only part of the hero he used to be and the triforce of courage didn't imedientally recognize him and split up. Notice how one of the triforce shard is at the coast of Outset Island. It probably somehow almost found it's way to it's owner... and missed by a few meters. It explains why Wind Waker Link is (in-game) considered by some to be the reincarnation of OoT Link and by some others not. Also, why he kept OoT Link's exeptional sword-skills (as Orca mentioned) but not the ability to speak ancient Hyrulean: The reincarnation was still screwed up and incomplete, resulting in an incomplete Link. The Triforce of Courage latter fixed the "damage", which is why Ganondorf is able to absolutly recognize him as good old' Link.

The Zelda universe is part of the Kingdom Hearts universe
Whenever Link kills an enemy, they leave behind a heart, which vanishes after a while. There are also fragments of hearts that seem to have been created by the land itself. Eventually, Link is going to absorb enough hearts to become a Kingdom Hearts completly.
 * There are also some more - excuse me- serious reasons why this theory could be correct. First, look at Sora's Drive-Form: Valor, Wisdom and Master. OK, Valor and Wisdom obviously correspond with Courage and Wisdom in Zelda Universe. Then, the Master Form is Power, which fits. Also, it's called "Master" Form and the term "Master" for something powerful is very common in the Zelda Universe. Some more evidence: The Master Sword. It has a choosen wielder and in The Wind Waker, Ganondorf claimed it had also simmilar functions to a key, being able to cast and release seals. It's power also seems to be that of holy light. Sounds a lot like a keyblade, huh? The keychain could be the yellow jewel, meaning that Link is also a choosen keyblade-wielder, like Sora. Also, all of the "Light and Darkness" and "I will bring an age of Darkness" talk and Large-Hamming of the Big Bads. Then, the fairies. When Sora calls on Tinkerbell, she acts simmilar to the Zelda fairies, restoring his life and disappearing and reviving him in case he dies. Also, she's green, like the Kokiri guardian fairies, and she is also supossed to a guardian fairy (of Peter Pan, who's story also bares a lot of resemblance to the Kokiri tribe.) Also, the elements of magic: For Ice, we have The Ice-arrows, for Fire we have Din's Inferno and the Fire-Arrows. Lightning is absent from Zelda, but the "Cure" spells have a counterpart in Fairy magic and there's enough wind magic in Zelda to cover "Aero". The Light Arrows, commonly used by Princess Zelda mirror the Light Powers the Kingdom Hearts universe's royality seems to have: The 7 princesses of hearts and Queen Minnie use simmilar beams of Light to fight. Heck, Zelda even may be a Princess of Hearts herself, she has all the needed qualities! There may be more simmilarities, but I think that's a nice start.
 * Freaky coincidence: There's about a month's difference between the releases of Spirit Tracks and Birth By Sleep. The former has collectable star fragments while the latter has the hunt for star fragments as a subplot. The star fragments in both games look almost identical.
 * Keeping going. Let's examine the two latest installments of the split timelines of Zelda: Spirit Tracks and Twilight Princess. In Twilight Princess, we see a world that is perpetually twilight. In Kingdom Hearts II, there is Twilight Town. Twilight Princess features the Shadow Beasts, which could have evolved into the KH Shadows. Darknuts could have become Soldier Heartless as well. Meanwhile, in Spirit Tracks...Byrne looks and acts almost exactly like Sa Ã¯x. Sa Ã¯x has pointy Hylian ears. Embrose the Lokomo has Axel's hair, and he is the Fire Lokomo. Steem the ice Lokomo plays a blue Shamisen that looks and sounds almost exactly like Demyx's blue Sitar.
 * Ergo, if the TP timeline continues, KH happens. If the WW timeline continues, Sa Ã¯x, Demyx, and Axel are born instead as the Lokomo Byrne, Steem, and Embrose.

The Zelda from "The Adventure of Link" is the same Zelda as in "The Minish Cap"
Placing the Minish Cap in the very beginning of the timeline(s). Evidence towards this: Minish Cap's Version of "Zelda's Lullaby" is actually a remixed version, using Zelda's Awakening-theme from The Adventure Of Link. She's the only other Zelda to use this theme in any way. Since Eiji Aonuma once stated, that there indeed is a firm timeline connecting the games and that they are recently trying to seed hints of it anywhere, this was probably meant to be one of those hint, making us realize that "The Minish Cap" is the true beginning of Link's and Zelda's story and legacy.
 * Shot down by Word of God. Ocarina happened before the rest of the series.
 * Nope. This statement was made way before Minish Cap was released and even then it just refered to beginning of the fight against Ganon, not to the creation of the Four Sword.

Wind Waker's Link is a squid monster.
In fact, his entire family line is composed of squid monsters, capable of shape-shifting into human form. At some point in the past, possibly after Link and his sister were born, their Grandma became fed up with the squid monster lifestyle, and stole away her two grandchildren to Outset Island, where she raised them to believe that they were normal humans like everyone else. Link, being the hey-let's-run-off-a-cliff dunce that he is, never realized his true powers as a squid monster. Aryll, because she's much more intelligent, started to get an idea, and that's why seagulls flocked around her in the same way that they do around other squid monsters. As for Grandma, she stays inside for the vast majority of the game because she doesn't want the seagulls flocking around her and making her remember the life she left behind.

And yes, this means that it's entirely possible Link was unknowingly killing his mother and father out there on the Great Ocean during the game.

The fairies, Ooccoo and Minish originated from the same realm.
Fairies are often described as being celestial and a "Fairy" realm is often mentioned and it is heavily hinted that the Great fairy springs (exspecial that of the Queen(s)) are actually portals to their own realm, which only they can use. The minish are mentioned in their backstory to have accended from the "Heavens" and same is true for the Ooccoo, we even see a celestial town of them. Conclusion: There's a giant realm somewhere in the skies of Hyrule, which is ruled by Fairies, Minish and Ooccoo.

The brother God, Oshus, created Termina/the great sea/the dream realm to trap and draw this evil away from Hyrule
As such, Oshus set himself as the great guardian of creation. He's appeared as Oshus, the wind fish and the four guardians. And as for the world he calls home?

Termina/the sea from Link's Awakening are a dream world alternate universe to hyrule
There's no way to get from one to the other in the four dimensional universe. They connect across a sort of "dream bridge" where in someone from hyrule must go into a dream/coma/trance to visit the other realm, and even then only with Oshus's help. That's not to say it's all just a dream, even if it appears so to observers. It's real, because some times things can cross over. One other thing: this realm does not suffer from the "split timeline" that hyrule does.

The games Majora's Mask, Link's Awakening, and Phantom Hourglass occure in that order.
Oshus rules his realm, mostly a great ocean, but having a couple of large islands that are home to Termina and the land from Links Awakening. In this sequence, the tell the story of the great evil that is Majora/Bellum gaining strength as Oshus battles to keep him at bay. The games represent moments when Majora's power becomes great enough that Oshus needs help, and sends for a Link to help him battle it. First was the great Hero of Time, whom Oshus/The guardians plucked to beat the stored evil in Majora's mask and save the skull kid. At this point,the evil is just trying to block oshus/the guardian and destroy the world with dropping the moon. The next two times, Majora/Bellum go after Oshus/The wind fish/the ocean king himself. The first, Link's awakening, Majora Bellum attacks the wind fishe's mind, causing monsters to appear on one island. The next, Majora/Bellum attacks his bocy, and causes more damage across the entire ocean, infact, being able to go into one of the Hyrule universes via the ghost ship. Oshus summoned the ALTTP link and WW link respectively to help him battle it. (it doesn't matter that those links are from different time lines, as the Termina universe is a whole other realm not subject to the split timeline.)

Contrary to popular belief, there was no dream apocalypes at the end of LA
Oh sure, at the time, and from Link's perspective, it looked like one, but the alternate reality continued on whether or not Link was dreaming. The wind fish/oshus went into hyrules's reality to thank link and send him off.

== Meanwhile, back in Hyrule, Ganon was meant to get the triforce of power, but he isn't using it the way the Goddesses intended, which was to help Link and Zelda to defeat Majora/Bellum once and for all ==

The sages in Twilight princess were right: Ganon was chosen by the Goddesses. He was meant to be the incarnation of power, joining with courage and wisdom to wield to full power of the Goddesses to defeat Majora/Bellum to save all creation. Ganon was corrupted however and only uses it to serve his own evil ends. Thus...

Oshus is loosing ground
Everytime Majora/Bellum gains power, it affects more and more of oshus's realm. In phantom hourglass, the ghost ship, (an extension of Bellum) even reached into the realm of hyrule. Time itself may be coming to a close, signalling a final confrontation with Majora/Bellum and the Goddesses, who will use there incarnations, Link, Zelda, and Ganon to battle the monster once and for all. So it remains to be seen: will Ganon team with the good guys and stop Majora from destroying all creation, or will he join it and destroy all reality?
 * BEST. FANFIC IDEA. EVER. Seriously, this would be a perfect way to get loads of different concepts from the Hyrulean mythology and dump them all together into this one epic story.

The Lost Woods was cursed in a war between the Kingdom of Ikana and the Garo warriors.
The Kingdom of Ikana was at war. The noble Garo warriors from Stone Tower Temple challenged the the rule of the king, Igos du Ikana. The Garo Masters saw Ikana as an unfit ruler, and chose to remove him. Ikana's most trusted general, Keeta, led his army of Stalfos Knights into battle against the Garo. The war continued for years, and it eventually became clear that Ikana was losing the war.

Keeta was running out of soldiers. With no other options, he turned to the children of the Kingdom. Child soldiers known as Stalchildren were used in the war, but they were not enough. Ikana sent Stalfos Knights and Stalchildren to travel through the forest to the south to Hyrule to ask for assistance. However, while they were in the forest, the Stalfos Knights were ambushed by Garo and completely wiped out. Some Stalchildren managed to escape, but they were quickly cut down in the fields on the way to the castle town. The Garo cursed the forest, which was the only road between Ikana and Hyrule, and made it so that anyone who tried to travel through the forest would lose their way and die. The forest would later be known as the Lost Woods.

The war in the Kingdom of Ikana never ended, and the entire kingdom was cursed so that the dead would rise from their graves and haunt the land. The Garo remained in the Kingdom, waiting at their posts ready to fight should the Stalfos return.

The fallen Stalfos Knights refused to give up, even in death. Although the woods were now cursed, they were originally part of the holy Kokiri Forest, and the Knights were reborn as fairies. The fairies went to the Kokiri people and made a pact. The fairies would protect the Kokiri from the Garo's curse, and the Kokiri would promise to one day free Ikana Canyon from the curse that now plagued it.

Eventually, Link, a Hylian boy raised by the Kokiri, would travel to Ikana Canyon and defeat the Garo Master at Stone Tower Temple. He would destroy Twinmold, the temple's guardian, and break the curse on the Kingdom of Ikana once and for all.


 * This would, of course, Discount the earlier theory that Termina is an Alternate Universe from the main "Hyrule-verse" Or it's perhaps a case of one discounting the other. If this one is true, then Termina CAN'T be an AU. But then, If Termina IS an AU, this theory isn't possible.
 * There is at least one passage between the two AUs. That's how the game was possible in the first place.

On the same note, the Gorman Brothers are descendents of the Garo.
Here is a quote from the Gorman Brothers.

"Seems some monstrous Garos appeared at Romani Ranch yesterday. And I heard the wagon carrying their milk was attacked. I tell you, that's a dangerous place... Seems like we're the only ones who have any milk left. Hyuh, hyuh."

Interesting. It was clearly aliens (hereon referred to as "Them", as Romani called them) that attacked the ranch, was it not? Why do the Gorman Brothers think it was Garos? They look nothing like Garos. Further case in point: How do the Gorman Brothers know what Garos are?

One must take note of this fact: The Gorman Brothers have the Garo's Mask. Think back to what the Garos say when they appear as you wear the Garo's Mask.

"Master, you called! ...!! What are you!?"

From this we can conclude that the Garo's Mask is used by Garo Masters to call upon their warriors. When the warriors realize, however, that Link is not a Master, they attack him.

Now let's put the facts together. The Gorman Brothers' message implies something. Their message is obviously meant to taunt Romani Ranch, showing that they attacked the milk wagon. However, they also note the invasion by "Them". This implies that the Gorman Brothers were also responsible for "Them" attacking. Another important note? They said that "They" were Garos, likely in disguise.

The Gorman Brothers both own Garo's Masks, as we know from their attack on the milk wagon. This means that they can summon the Garos. But the Garos immediately recognize Link for what he is while wearing the mask, so why not the Gorman Brothers? Why are the Gorman Brothers able to control the Garos?

Could it be perhaps that they truly are the Masters?

Either TWW!Link does have a partly reincarnated memory or Orca is related to the hero of time
In Twilight Princess, the hero's spirit claimed that the techniques he thought TP!Link do not leave the Link's bloodline. TWW!Link however is actually seen using most of these techniques in battle (eihter as reaction commands or when... killing Ganondorf), even though no other Link ever showed them to him. All he knows about sworplay comes persumably from Orca, so eihter he learned them directly from him, or he suddenly remembered them from the other Link's incarnations. (Simmilar to how every Link can do a spinning slash right from the beginning, except MC!Link, who had to learn it from a sword master first (another fact that hints at the theory of Minish Cap being the chronologically first game)).

Wind Waker Tingle is Ganondorf in disguise.
In order for Ganon's Evil Plan to succeed, he needs Link to find and bring the triforce of courage. The whole game is an attempt to capture Zelda, turn Link into someone capable of gathering the triforce shards, and then luring him to Ganondorf's castle so that the three triforce pieces could be joined together. Ganon, disguised as Tingle, helped Link by deciphering the triforce charts, while funding his own sinister operations through the exorbitant fees he charges for this service. This sounds implausible, but really, Tingle's searing evilness becomes obvious after a few seconds of interacting with him.
 * Alternatively, Tingle simply is the Zelda version of the anti-christ and needs no reason to sear evil.

Link used the Ocarina of Time to travel to the 1920s and write books under the pseudonym of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
It would explain why so many of Fitzgerald's books are dedicated to "Zelda".
 * Considering that Fitzgerald drove his wife Zelda mad and destroyed her spirit, this has BAD implications for the Zelda/Link pairing...
 * Maybe Fitzgerald was actually Ganon instead.

Aryll and Ilia are counterparts of each other.
Their roles and personalities are almost the same and they have pretty much the same age difference to Link. Since we don't know who Link's parents are, Ilia could, in theory, even be his little sister (or half-sister), just like Aryll. They are also both associated with animals (Seagulls for Aryll and Horses for Ilia), both have their own Leitmotif and are both blonde. Also, look at the 2 Link's faces, when they "talk" to Aryll or Ilia in cutscenes. They have this special "I'm so happy to see you today" look in their eyes, which differs greatly from their usual, heroic expressions. Both Links only have this look in their faces when they see Ilia or Aryll, on no other occasion.


 * Since there is no word about TP Link's parents at all, the only thing I can see that would allow Link to be Bo's son and Ilia to have round ears is that the mother had pointy ears, which Link inherited, short hair, which both inherited, and a fiery temper, which Ilia inherited. Link could have inherited Bo's fighting spirit.
 * You don't inherit short hair.

Gibdos and ReDeads perpetuate their species via infection.
The scientist in Ikana was subjected to this infection, and was slowly becoming one of them as per their MO. The hot ReDead-on-Link action we see? That's how they infect their victims.
 * Interesting, if true. Explains why they do that, though IDK why the Gibdos/ReDead Knights in TP didn't do that.
 * Now this Troper wants to see a Zelda version of Left 4 Dead.
 * Perhaps the Triforce of Courage protects Link from the transformation, kind of like how it protected him from a complete transformation while travelling in the Twilit Realm.

There are no fish in the great sea because Ganondorf killed them.
Everybody who played Twilight Princess knows, that Ganondorf's one weekness is, in fact, NOT the Master Sword, but that fancy fishing rod Colin made for Link. Clearly, Wind Waker Timeline Ganondorf wanted to eliminate the possibility of anyone facing him with a fishing-rod in his inventory, so he killed all the fish. Simple.
 * But not all the fish in Wind Waker are killed, so possibly... that debt the first one you meet mentioned was incurred because they asked for the king's protection... and maybe they weren't technically his responsibility to begin with? Unless there's something that actually states what that debt was all about...

Orca, the sword master from Wind Waker is Link.
It's been stated (possibly Word of God'd) that Link in WW isn't an incarnation of Link. He's just a punk kid who took up arms to save his sister. It's also been suggested that Link gets a few lives of downtime before the next adventure, or that he is born whenever Ganon rises. It's possible that Orca was Link in a down-life, or that he was born when Ganon first awoke, but Ganon got smart, and waited for him to age into a feeble old man before doing anything evil, not counting on someone taking the role of Link.
 * I don't know why people keep thinking that Toon Link (I'll go withe Brawl name) is not a "real", reincarnated Link. Because he is lacking the triforce of courage? That's just because Zelda made it split up by sending Ocarina Link back into his youth! (No barrer and no tomb to stay in = Triforce split) Also, the King of Red Lion's comments are always in the vain of "I believe--" or "You might not--". Might, believe... he was clearly completly unsure about what to think! On the other hand, we have Ganondorf, aka: "The one who was owned BIIIIIIG time by Link and wouldn't ever forget about the guy who threw his life into misery", clearly stating several times, that he waited for the hero to have his revenge. Why would he like to have revenge on a random kid who just happens to wear Links clothes?! DOES NOT COMPUTE! Also, he even USES the word "reincarnation" unlike everyone else in the game, who talked like thy assumed that the Hero of time would just "pop up" again one day, without much explanation. They were not waiting for an reincarnation, they didn't know that he has been erased from the timeline and thought he'd come back from his trip to "What do I know where"-land one day. Toon Link hit them as a surprise, so they were, naturally confused. Granted, he can't read or speak ancient hylian, but he was reincarnated from a guy who was ERASED from the face of the earth. You don't think that would leave some kind of damage? Like not retaining all the defining characteristics on the first go-through? Also, when he reassmbled the triforce, it immediately went into his body and the KORL stated: "You are the true hero!" Note: Not "a" true hero, but "the" true hero. The one and only! And if that's not enough: He's an almost instant master of all the sword techniques that are usually passed on to Link by his previous lifes. And Orca as Link... No. Exspecially because Orca got plenty of expies in Minish Cap. None of them are related to Link. That's pretty much semi-jossing this theory. OK, I am done.
 * Okay, I'll refrain from commenting on the spelling and grammatical errors for now (But I do feel compelled to point out that a temple is not the same as a tomb. It's the Temple of Time, not the Tomb of Time... which implies unfortunate things.) but there are a few flaws in this argument. First of all, Ganon's motivation in Wind Waker was to bring Hyrule back, not to take revenge on the hero-- I went through the game script and the only time he mentions waiting for Link was before the battle with Puppet Ganon, when he said (and this is a direct quotation) "I have been waiting for you, boy. For one like you... Yes... For the hero." Revenge is never mentioned, and Ganon goes out of his way to say that he won't kill Link in the scene before assembling the Triforce. It's implied that that was the only reason he needed Link and Zelda, since Zelda already possessed the Triforce of Wisdom and that the Triforce of Courage was scattered throughout the Great Sea. He could have collected all of the fragments, but the Triforce wouldn't have reformed, since it only did so after being presented to the Goddesses/Gods at the Tower of the Gods. (And the only reason it did that was because the Gods/Goddesses recognized Link to be a true hero, worthy of holding it-- something that definitely wouldn't have worked for Ganon.) It's another Nice Job Breaking It, Hero to add to Link's wonderful list, but Ganon was just using him the entire time-- first by retrieving the Master Sword, and then by assembling and bringing the Triforce of Courage to him. It's also been mentioned in several of the above WMGs that Ganon's "Yes, surely you are the Hero of Time, reborn..." line is a way of complimenting somebody on their skills in Japanese; it's likely that the translation team just didn't see the point in taking it out/finding the western equivalent. It makes sense that Ganon would say this, since-- early on-- he tells Link that he's weak; recognizing that he's gotten better is quite the compliment, and (until the wish on the Triforce goes bad) Ganon never actually wishes harm on the kids. He's actually quite civil. I'm not entirely sure what your "erased from existence" argument means, since OoT Link wasn't erased-- he just went to another land and didn't come back (hence the "he was separated from the elements that made him a hero" comment from the Great Fairy Queen). And finally, the King of Red Lions did say "The true hero" but, immediately afterwards, dubbed Link the "Hero of Winds", not the "Hero of Time"; it's entirely possible that he was referring to the true hero in their situation. There can be plenty of heroes-- even true heroes-- at any given time, but there was only one hero who could tackle the problem at hand, easily explaining the "the" in the line; so, by and by, there isn't evidence that says it's either way, but people like to believe that WW Link is separate from OoT Link, and it's ambiguous enough that it still makes perfect sense ... and I know I said that the King of Red Lions thing was the last-- but are you referring to the Blade Brothers as Orca's expies? How does that disprove anything? Just because one version of a character isn't related to another character, it doesn't mean that they're not related in another time/world/etc. Just look at Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask-- Malon has a father in Talon, but that doesn't mean that her Expy, Romani, is related to Talon's, the Clock Town Barkeeper. Likewise, Romani has a sister, Cremia, who never appears as a separate character from Malon. That doesn't mean that Malon, Romani and Cremia are all the same person/their own sisters, as your logic would have us believe.
 * Just to clarify, what the poster before the previous poster meant by the "OoT Link was erased from existance" statement was that director Eiji Aonuma has confirmed that OoT split the timeline in two, meaning that Zelda had to erase OoT Link from the "Adult" timeline in order to send him back to the "Child" timeline. He also confirmed that it's the "Adult" Timeline that leads into Wind Waker. Basically, the part of the WW prologue that states Oo T Link simply went to another land was actually either a corruption of the original legend, a metaphorical way of stating that he was sent back to his own time, or simply the result of Zelda and the sages choosing not to tell the whole story.

Link as seen in Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass grows up to become...Guybrush Threepwood!
Both Link and Guybrush are cute, blonde and clumsy, yet brave and noble, and both live in an Anachronism Stew populated by The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything. Plus Link's parents are absent without explanation, and Guybrush's parents are said to have abandoned him at a young age. Plus Guybrush mentions having a sister at at least one point in the series. Guybrush's ambitions to become a pirate could stem from getting sick of having to fight Ganon and aspiring to live a normal life.
 * This is just too funny to disagree with it.

Some prove that Minish Cap is to be placed very early in the timeline
It has to play before most of the games for a simple reason: Link's sword skills. In every other Zelda title, Links starts out with incredible skills and enough strength to crush harder objects (usually) and the ability to do a Spin Attack right away. Except Minish Cap, where he suddenly has to learn everything, from his basic spin-attack to his famous sword-beam. Meanwhile, The Wind Waker Link suddenly Ass Pulls the most amazing moves out of nowhere once he's told to improvise, once the A-button symbol lights up. and Twilight Princess Link gradually keeps learning the very same amazing moves and stunts by "mysterious encounters" (which could, according to a former WMG, just as well be metaphors for awakening memories of past lives) over the course of the game. And everytime Link gets some sword-training (except Minish Cap) people remark how talented he is and sometimes even mention that he was the one who came up with the Spin Attack and that they just reminded him. So Wind Waker and Twilight Princess have Link just access all the great sword-skills from his previous lives and even Link of Ocarina of Time, which is supposed to come very early, knows the Spin Attack right away. But poor, poor Minish Cap Link starts out with downright pathetic strength and has to learn from tutors (real ones, not just ghostly soldiers which may or may not be a past "him".) to get any usefull skills at all, despite growing up in a blacksmith's atelier, where swords are, well, made. This leads me to one conclusion: Minish Cap is where Link first got all his amazing sword skills. And he was so happy to learn them, that they burned very deeply into his mind and thus became the only thing he never loses over the course of reincarnations. (besides that silly hat Ezlo gave him) No matter how many times Link reincarnates, just put a sword into his hand and he'll start kicking ass like it was his purpose (which it is).
 * Again, shot down by Word of God. Ocarina happened first, says Miyamoto, or Aonuma, this troper can't remember which.
 * This statement was made five years before Minish Cap was released and it only refered to the struggle against Ganon. Was there any Ganon in Minish Cap? No? Well, looks like your "shot down" wouldn't apply after all.
 * Dont forget that Minish Cap is probably the only game where there was a time before monsters. Also, all the other Links wearing the funny hat could be a commemoration to Link wearing Elzo.(Probably the only game where Link was not wearing a hat at the beginning and the only game where there is a reason he is wearing a hat.
 * On the other hand, Ocarina of Time explains where the hat AND the tunic came from. So just as easily as one can say that The Minish Cap comes before Ocarina because it explains where the hat comes from, one can say that Ocarina comes first since it explains where Minish Cap!Link's green clothing comes from. That is to say, it's not much evidence at all.

Link is not directly controlling the Phantom-soldiers in Spirit Tracks, a spirit of some sort, who'll be allied to him, is.
That spirit will be Link's newest Exposition Fairy and bear great significance to the plot. He/she (I guess it will be female) will also have something to do with the letter that Link delievers to Princess Zelda in the beginning.
 * Confirmed, Princess Zelda is the spirit.

There will be a game showing the Hero Of Winds (TWW/PH Link) arriving in New Hyrule and sealing up Malladus.
Or not. Would be awesome, though. After all, we missed the event itself, leaving old Niko to look after the guy who finally gets to kill the beast.

Phantom Ganon is more important to Ganon's plans than just ego stroking.
Every time Ganon is killed or otherwise incapacitated, his consciousness and full powers are transferred to his Phantom. The Phantom thus becomes his new body and he continues his conquest anew. It's a slow process, though, which is why Ganon doesn't just get cracking immeadietly.
 * To connect this with the Spirit Tracks WMGs above: The Demon King is actual Phantom Ganon with Ganon's consciousness. Would explain the whole Phantom theme in a game that has no Bellum whatsoever in it. ...But that would also mean, that the Evil Chancellor wants to put Ganon into Zelda's body.... UGH.
 * In OoT, Phantom Ganon was "banished to the realm between dimensions." Thing is, Ganon was banished in a similar fashion. When the legends say that Ganon escaped the Sages' seal, they were half right: Ganon escaped by transferring to the banished Phantom and breaking out of that seal.

== The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II the Adventure of Link take place after The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks. == If you look closely, the Background used in the trailer for Spirit Tracks is a map. And it resembles the overworld Map of the original games a LOT. Meaning that the original Zelda did only happen because Hyrule(I) was flooded in the first place, leading into the founding of Hyrule(II). It also means that Ganondorf's forehead-stab did, in fact, NOT kill him permanently, but we knew that already.. The only question left is how the Background-story of Zelda II fits into this, since naming the princess "Zelda" was apparently already common practise before Ocarina of Time, meaning that the Sleeping Princess Zelda has been there ever since before the flood... how was she not drowned in her palace, along with the rest of Hyrule(I)?
 * That one's easy. They built her palace on a distant mountaintop to keep her away from evil sorcerers seeking her inherent power, in the land near what would become the second Hyrule.

Bongo Bongo is an evil Rayman
Two disembodied hands inexplicibly linked to a body? This is obviously Rayman mutated...or at least his evil counterpart.

The Wind Fish has time travel capabilities.
Koholint Island has telephones and crane games, neither of which are in Hyrule as seen in A Link to the Past. Since they can't have come to Koholint from Link's subconscious they must come from the Wind Fish, who had traveled back in time from a period where Hyrule had roughly the technological level of the 1960's. (Coming from then also explains how trippy Link's Awakening is.)

Actually, all Links and Zeldas look pretty much the same
Explaining the dozen identical looking Toon-Links and Toon-Zeldas standing out between all the other, vastly differently desinged Links and Zeldas: Actually, all Link and Zeldas look pretty much the same, apart from a few hair-style differences (and minor-clothing differences, of course). It's just the different Art-styles that make them look different. Toon Link, Young Link and the Link from the first game would probably look like Triplets, weren't it for the different art-styles of the games.

The events in Link's Awakening were not a dream at all.
At least they weren't Link's. In reality, Link was physically on the Island of Koholinth, but the island wasn't physically real (this leads to confusion). To make a long story short, the island was the Wind Fish's dream, as well as everyone on it (except for Link and the Wind Fish).
 * Or it could be that the events on Koholint mirrored events happening in reality. Or Link brought peace to the real Koholint via Windfish magic as the Windfish "summons" him into a magic dream as he could not get Link to phisically go to the island without using to much magic. The only reason the island will disappear is that it's a magic spell used to save the real one so... yeah. Link dies if he stays on the island too long because the Windfish would run out of magic and Link would get "lost" with the spell.

Alternately, The Link in Link's Awakening is a dream Link.
It is him dreaming in sync with the Wind Fish. Marin and Tarin are the dream versions of Malon and Talon. This also proves that Link's Awakening fits nowhere in the timeline.


 * What about the real Link, who wakes up on the wreckage?
 * Except it is stated in the manual that Link's Awakening takes place directly after A Link to the Past. Furthermore, Link is never dreaming. The island, the physical location Link washes up in, is the dream of the Wind Fish. As in, the dream, given flesh in the real world, is Koholint Island. For some reason, there's a lot of people that can't grasp this concept.

Every parallel universe to Hyrule, no matter if dreamt or real (they are possibly all the same anyway according to another WMG) is ahead of Hyrule's time by at least a centaury.

 * Let's take Links Awakening first: We don't know, how technologically advanced Hyrule was in A Link to The Past, due to the swallow story, but we know for sure that it didn't have any phones or crane-games, like Links Awakening does.
 * Next, Majoras Mask: Termina seems to be reeeeaaally ahead of Hyrule as well, featuring a working clock-tower, fireworks, Photographs (those wouldn't be invented in Hyrule until a few hundred years later, which equals after the great flood in the other timeline) and the complete set-up for a Pop-concert.
 * Except that somebody had to have a camera in OOT or the fisherman's photo in TP wouldn't be there.
 * OK, now let's take a look at Phantom Hourglass: While The Wind Waker had a few technological advancements from Ocarina of time, like the actual invention of the aforementioned Picto Box and the perfection of cannon technology (which, about the same time, came also up in the other timeline), it had no electricity or steam-technology yet. This would only come up after the great spirits imprisonment of the Demon King in the Spirit Tower (giving them the spirit tracks and thus the base for even coming up with the idea of inventing trains in the first place) - Enter Linebeck and his Steamboat Willie.
 * Next, Twilight Princess: The Twili are stuck in a parallel dimension. They somehow have mastered the ability to warp which seems to be lost at this point in Hyrule. Their architecture seems to be highly advanced as well. As well as the City in the Sky, which is just above Hyrule. They made a city that hangs in the sky with no means to support it and advanced architecture.

The fairy doll that the Fairy Queen crushed in Wind Waker?
Was a real fairy. Her life force went to Link's powerup, either because of displeasing the fairy queen, or worse, the fairy queen thinking, "eh, I've got five others anyway, and this thing is conveniently here now. Poof!"
 * Maybe it was Navi.
 * I meant a Great Fairy. And anyway, a much worse fate for Navi would be to have her life force run out at the end of OOT, if you hate her so much.
 * I don't hate Navi, I just like to go along with Memes and the like. Also, who says that Navi didn't leave to become a Great Fairy? Do you know what's behind the window she left through? A large, holy temple.

Hylians are on the extreme end of a spectrum and not a distinct species from humans.
In Hyrule, there are two subspecies of upright, tool-and-magic-using apes: short-eared Humans and long-eared Hylians. Interbreeding causes variations in ear length. As time goes on, more interbreeding takes place; it used to be that most Hyruleans were full-blooded Hylians, but by the time Twilight Princess or Wind Waker rolls around, there's been quite a lot of mixed marriages. This could also be why "human" and "Hylian" seem to be more interchangeable terms in games set later in the timeline.

The Shadow Temple is the Royal Family's Tomb
The title says it all. 1) The Sheikah are the guardians of the Royal family, and there would have had to have been a lot more dead royals than would fit in the "official" royal family's tomb. 2) The Shadow Temple is booby-trapped like freaking crazy, just as ancient cultures (i.e., Egyptians) would place traps in royal tombs to prevent grave-robbers from getting in there. 3) The talking walls allude to a great tragedy of the Sheikah at the hands of the Royal Family, and how the Shadow Temple is built from their bones (paraphrasing). Given the number of skulls in there, that would work, but let's take it one step further. The Sheikah built the tomb of the Royal family from the bodies of deceased Sheikah as a sort of proxy guard for the afterlife. Many ancient cultures would kill off the king's attendants so that they could serve him in the next world. Hell, with the Shadow Temple, it's more of a Choose Your Own Death. But, after the betrayal during the Great War, they set up the talking walls so that any Royal who went to pay tribute to the deceased would be reminded of exactly what the ancestors had done. 4) Ganon corrupted the Temples, so that would explain why the Shadow Temple turned from a royal tomb into the skull-lined killer sewer of evil we all know and fear.
 * And furthermore, it's the real Royal Family's Tomb. The one right below the entrance, where Flat and Sharp's ghosts live? That's just for tourists...
 * That actually makes some kind of sick, twisted sense, if we look at everything:

Of course, if we go with this logic, then that would suggest that all those ReDeads in there are the revived corpses of the Royal family. Meaning you're being face-raped by Zeldas of yore.

Ganondorf is not the same Ganondorf every time.
He is, in fact, the only male of the Gerudos, a race that only makes an in-game appearance once, in OoT, and then never again. However, unlike Link and Zelda, who only retain a small degree of memory from their past lives, Ganondorf remembers EVERY life he's gone through.
 * Given that the Gerudo seem to have died out by the time of most of the games, where is his mother coming from?
 * The Gerudo have been featured in four games. Oot, Majora's Mask (the pirates are obviously Gerudo, and if Termina's Gorons and Zoras are the same as Hyrule's why wouldn't the Gerudo be?), the Oracle Games (Koume and Kotake, but we met them in Ocarina), and Four Swords Adventures (which can pretty much be slotted into the timeline anywhere, so Hyrule's Gerudo could very well have appeared a second time).

The different Links have different names.
While all the Zeldas are specifically given the same name, and Ganon is supposed to be the same one every time, there's no evidence that the same applies to Link. While the player character is always referred to as Link outside of the games, in game the heroes of the past events are always referred to by titles like "Hero of Time" rather than by their names, like Zelda and Ganon are. And given that they recognize his traditional duds, if the Links had a traditional name, they'd recognize that as well.
 * Jossed by every single manual to a Zelda game in exitance. The boys' names are Link, it's the player who has the option to rename them. Also, note how also Ganon's name is almost never directly refered to in the legends of Hyrule. The historians of this kingdom just don't care about what the characters' actual names where, they just write the stuff down as awesome as possible.

The Cuccos are gods.
In Twilight Princess, so Ooccaa are said to be the closest race to the gods. They also look and act very similar to Cuccos. This would also explain the Disproportionate Retribution received when attacking Cuccos: it's because you are, in fact, attacking a god.


 * Funny thing about that is that in TP, abusing Cuccos lets you control them for a while.
 * Not for too long, though, and really, was it ever useful?

Spirit Tracks Linebeck is not a Legacy Character . He is the same Linebeck from Phantom Hourglass
Jolene did say that they hadn't met in 100 years. Given he's a Jack Sparrow Expy he might have gotten cursed with the Zelda equivalent of the Aztec gold curse.
 * I was thinking this too! Awesome! Squee!! OK, now we have at least THREE people in this game (Anjean, Niko, Linebeck), who should notice the clones of TWW Link and Tetra, who are recently cruising over the world map. I wonder if Link's resemblance to the hero of winds is gonna be Lampshaded, pointed out, or at least Handwaved by any of them.

ST Link is the grandson of Nico and Aryll.

 * This explains both why he lives with Nico and why he looks like WW Link in one fell swoop.

The next "hero" link on the WW side of the split will be of mixed rito heritage.
In the end of Wind Waker; Link, Tetra, Makar, Medli, and the pirates all embark on an expediton presumably to search for a place to found the new hyrule, as confirmed in Sirit Tracks. It's implied that one passes on carrying of the triforce to his or her offspring, most likely forst born. If this were true, then chances are link and tetra would decide not to begin a lineage together after reaching land. The only other female on the expedition was Medli, a rito who has been a possible shipping cantidate for link as well. Assuming natives don't interfere, and that a rito could cross breed with a hylian, it could be very possible for the lineage to have mixed rito heratige. Spirit Tracks takes place roughly one or two centuries after Wind Waker, leaving time for the lineage to continue. If a hero occurs between ST and WW, or he contains enough rito in his blood (assuming his ancestors that took more rito like traits tended to seek out others with rito traits.) to give him a disinct flavoring of rito. Perhaps enogh to enable limited flight.
 * This would mean that ST Link was part Rito as well and he doesn't look very Rito to me... Although he does seem to be slightly different from TWW Link (The look in is eyes is a lot more enthusiastic and yet calm in the artworks. He does appear to be a slightly more balanced personality than the permanently nervous TWW Link.) ...Wait a minute...where did ST Link pop up from anyway?! You're right, Zelda is Tetra's Great Granddaughter, so WHO THE HECK produced this clone and why isn't he being trained into becoming a royal knight, like his ancestor, if he's really decended from the Hero of Winds?! What in the name of the golden goddesses is he doing in the train-engineer-branche?! Why doesn't Niko seem to mind the swabby-clone in his village?! What the?!
 * It's possible that not all links are part of a lineage, just the "hero" links are. Supposedly, the green clothes in ST are supposedly uniform based off the clothes that the hero of winds, which is in turn based off from the hero of time. So it's very possible for the ST link to be just an unrelated brave guy. It's also possible for that link to be from a very human like part of the lineage, where the rito blood is very diluted.

We will see a female Link eventually
Ganon will have a Nice Job Breaking It, Herod or such.
 * Possibly this has already happened, and she was raised by the descendants of the Rito. Her name? Samus Aran.

Earth is in a possibly alternate timeline of post flooded Hyrule on the Wind Waker split. Old Hyrule is at the bottom of the seas just south of japan.
First off, the constellations in Wind Waker are the same as Earths, Such as Orion and Ursa Major. It appears many of the symbols from Hyrule became town emblems of several southern Japanese cities in the modern day. For instance, the island village of Aogashima has a town flag that looks like the inverted triforce insignia found on the doors of outset island, both of which are on the far south of the area of islands they are grouped with. At the end of Wind Waker, Link, Tetra, the sages, and the pirates embark on an expedition to found a new Hyrule on a large landmass. If they went north, they probably came across mainland Japan, and began colonizing it. Spirit tracks actually takes place in southern Japan. As for alternate timeline, due to the lack of modern historical or folk Hylian records, it's likely that Ganondorf never managed to free himself from the flooded Hyrule, and Japan was colonized by ordinary citizens who were unaware of the old legends. It might not be alternate, though, if the folk tales and records just faded with time, of if the area was struck with a catastrophe, setting technology back with the rest of the world and destroying the old records.

All the Zeldas and Links are cousins/siblings except the originals.
They look similar, and it's even lampshaded within a few games, and they're pretty close. They also know things about each others that others don't.

Gannon is the real Demon King
Unfortunately, like a certain other fellow, merely saying his name gives him power. That's why Nintnedo had to "change" his name for the rest of the series. Gannon Banned is how the foolish are stopped from inadvertantly helping this creature of pure evil from getting stonger.

Addtionally, this means that TSA is in fact the latest incarnation of Link. Why else do you think he can power through the games so quickly?

Wind Waker Link founded New Hyrule's Royal Guards.
Once reaching the new land, Link, Tetra and her pirate crew found what will become new Hyrule (with the help of the Lokomos). Wind Waker Link then personally trains soliders to guard the castle. He styled the uniforms to look somewhat like his own, hence why new recruits dress like Link's traditional garb.
 * Spirit Tracks is so far the game that best connects with it previous iteration after a generation jump, and shows the developers are becoming more conscious of the fans timeline building. As such, this point we assume very nearly self evident, even if not stated directly.

Once Tetra and her pirates found the new land that became new Hyrule, there was a mass immigration from The Great Sea, the World of the Ocean King and other areas.
It would be impossible for just Tetra, her band of Pirates, and Link to create and populate New Hyrule on their own. So once word went back to The Great Sea that there was a new land to inhabit, lots of people from The Great Sea and from the World of The Ocean King settled there. This would explain the presence of the Anouki Tribe, Gorons and Linebeck's descendants in Spirit Tracks.
 * Pretty much a given, as the Anoukis tell Link that just this was the case with their tribe. And the inhabitanta of Aboda village partly bear resemblances to the inhabitants of Windfall and Outset.

Niko is actually Spirit Tracks Link's legal guardian.
Because, really, how often do preteen orphans voluntarily become "roommates" with random centenarians? Maybe sometime after this Link's parents died (or however it is that he ended up alone), Niko adopted him, perhaps due to the boy's resemblance to a certain "old friend" of his.
 * For some reason, I can't stop imagining old Niko jump in cheer and shout "SWABBY!!" upon baby ST Link been born and shown to the village.

LTTP takes place in New Hyrule.
IIRC LTTP is already believed to be the last cronologically because of what happens to the master sword or something like that. The castle layout is a big LTTP nod.
 * Partly confirmed by the fact, that the split-timeline was invented in first time to explain the Chaos Architecture and that Eiji Aonuma stated, that he intends to clear the timeline up in the games bit by bit. Also, the original two Zelda games have to take place in New Hyrule as well: The Overworld maps are just amazingly simmilar. Forest, Dessert, Death Mountain and even the ocean... all in the same place and the coastline is shaped just the same!

Malladus is the source of the Trident
We know from Four Swords Adventure that Ganon became the Big Blue Pig when he obtained a magical Trident that had been used in rituals by the Evil Tribe, and tapped into demonic power. Now we see an ancient demon, implied by dates to go back to before the First Ganondorf in OoT. The obvious conclusion is that Malladus is the creature worshiped by the Evil Tribe, whose power they tapped into when they created, and who Ganon became the living avatar of once he obtained it. Thus, retroactively, Ganon has been Hijacked By Malladus in almost every appearance using that name.


 * This... would actually make sense, somewhat. Explains why Malladus looks a lot like him in the final battle of ST. Maybe when Ganon was revived in OoS/OoA, it was actually Malladus himself, confused into thinking he was Ganon from being part of Ganon for so long, that was revived in Ganon's transformed body by Twinrova?

The Picori and Fairies are the same species, just sexually dimorphic
We never see a male fairy aside from Tael (who comes from a paralell universe) or a female Picori. The logical conclusion is that these similar-sized creatures are the same species. To paraphrase The Dark Crystal "I don't have wings!" "Of course not, you're a boy!"

There will eventually be a Zelda game featuring Link with a gun.
Not the Wii one, though, since that seems to be finally telling the origin story for the Master Sword. But the ground has already been laid with steam-based Zelda games, cannons in several, and Link's Crossbow Training. Remember that Miyamoto's original concept for Ocarina of Time was Zelda done as an FPS. Link will get a gun eventually, probably done tastefully to maintain the medieval European theme, as in Fable 2 - a primitive but powerful weapon that needs reloading, and will no doubt include several magical varieties of ammunition.
 * Or...y'know...a crossbow...

Aforementioned game will be Steampunk.
Can you say Crazy Awesome?

TWW Link had his name deleted out of all history books after Tetra became queen
He didn't want his successor (whom he knew would pop up some day) to grow up with the pressure of having to live up to his "Hero of Winds" standarts, just like he himself had to live up to the "Hero of Time"'s standarts. So he told Tetra not to build any statues of him, paints any portraits and, most importantly, don't tell anybody of his achievements, so he would not pass on into the legends. Tetra however, couldn't just completly erase every memory of his heroics out of their new kingdom, so she made his garb the uniform of the royal guardians. She also somehow got a sudden ego boost, causing her to embed a massive stained-glass window of herself in the castle and give her new BFF a makeover to make her resemble herself, but that's a different story...

Link and Zelda have been sharing a Psychic connection ever since at least before Ocarina of Time.
In Ocarina of Time, Zelda and Link started having their nightmares of Ganon and each other around the same time and when Link told Zelda his name, she seemed to recognize it for some reason. Then, in Twilight Princess, Zelda stops talking for a short moment when she hears Link's name, in a simmilar fashion to her reaction in OoT. Same is true for Spirit Tracks, where she finally concludes, that it's a "nice name" after pausing a few seconds. Well, I don't know about you, but either "Link" does sound incredibly stupid in hylian language, or Zelda somehow always get's the feeling of having heard that name before. Also, Tetra's reaction when she saw the hero's clothes the first time. She never looked at anything as close as this again. Granted, she could have noticed that they look just like the drawing of the Hero of time, but it just fits nicely into the picture. Next, we get Phantom Hourglass, where we get this nightmarish sequence of Tetra screaming for help every time we load the game-file in a story-section involving the Temple of the Ocean King. It's save to assume that those are nightmares that Link is having while "sleeping" (read: while the game is not being played), so this hints at the dream-connection given in OoT again. Tetra latter states, that she was able to see everything Link did while she was petrified. Also, Zelda gave the very same statement in the end of Minish Cap. They were able to see Link's adventure, not anything else, again hinting at a Psychic connection. Then, in Spirit Tracks, what might be the ultimate proof occurs: Link can see Zelda's disembodied spirit, when nobody else can. It's never even remotely explained why, but we can guess the reasons are simmilar as the ones regarding the boy's name and the dream's they keep having of each other. Maybe their spirits are bound to each other, because of their role as protectors of Hyrule. (Zelda is the vessel of some of the greatest magical energies in Hyrule, namely the Lightforce and the Triforce of Wisdom; and Link, as Hero, is the protector the people of Hyrule and, of course, Princess Zelda) This strongly supports the Reincarnation-theory, even though it still doesn't explain why exactly those two people were chosen to return over and over again. It is, however, very much possible, since Reincarnation is now Canon in the Zelda-Universe: Anjean stated in the end of Spirit Tracks that strong and enduring spirits will always be reincarnated after some time, but they'll probably lose all of their memories. Link and Zelda fit perfectly in that picture, as the both are often decribed as incredibly strong people in various ways.
 * Skyward Sword outright has as a reincarnation of, and  hint at  being eternally reincarnated as well.

Bellum and Malladus are related, and there is a third great Demon of Air.
Bellum is a demon of the sea, and could thus be seen as opposition to Nayru. Maladus is a demon of the earth, and could be seen as an evil counterpart to Din. The next New Hyrule/Toon Link game (Spirit Plane?) will reveal the third of the brothers, a wind-based evil counterpart to Faore and detail the relationship between the three demons.
 * * Cough, Cough* .... Vaati...* Cough, Cough*
 * Not seeing it. Vaati just wields generic dark magic.
 * Uhm, I guess you only played Minish Cap, and not The Legend of Zelda Four Swords: Vaati`s title is Wind-Mage or Wind-Demon in the The Legend of Zelda Four Swords games.
 * but vaati isn't an actual demon; that term would be more a descriptive term. As a piccori would simply gained great magical power, he wouldn't seem to have any real reason to pick a fight with the goddesses.
 * Vaati is indeed a demon. A demon god, according to the Japanese script. Ganondorf became a demon, why would this be impossible for Vaati?
 * Might be an incarnation of one, hence his desire and why he became evil? Probably died with him in FSA.

Cole is the counterpart or descendant of the Happy Mask Salesman.
They've both got red hair, weird eyes, uncanny dispositions, and their expressions change to murderous WAY too quickly for comfort. As for the horns, it wouldn't surprise me if the Salesman had been a demon or some kind of otherworldly creature in disguise, or maybe messing around with all of those evil masks did something to his bloodline. Or maybe Cole was just power-hungry enough to make a Deal with the Devil, bringing about Malladus's return in exchange for demonic abilities?

Rupees are not gems, but rather, like various other items in the LoZ universe, condensed forms of natural/magical energies.
Think about it for a sec...you cut some grass, a Rupee appears. You break open a pumpkin, a Rupee appears. Kind of odd that it would be so easy to gather up money like that, and somehow the value of the Rupee never suffered from inflation. This is because they aren't just plain old precious minerals like rubies, diamonds, and gold nuggets. No, Rupees are simply a naturally-forming condensation of energies flowing throughout all things in the world, be it a patch of grass, a pumpkin, or a freshly-slain Moblin. The ancient Hyleans, and by proxy their descendants the Hyruleans, learned numerous ways to utilize these energies, such as crafting goods out of them (hence why merchants never run out of Bombs to sell to you no matter how many times you buy them; they use a part of the profits from the sale to craft new stock and replace it), or powering ancient artifacts (hence why the Magical Armor drains them, while the bow from the first game used them as ammo). This is also why the Rupoor, which is effectively a condensed void of these energies, is able to take money from you; it's effectively draining a battery (which is what your typical Hyrulean wallet would be.) These energies can also naturally condense into other forms, such as magical energy (the kind you use to cast Din's Fire or light a lantern) or life force (in small doses, capable of easing small amounts of fatigue; in larger amounts, enough to actually increase your vitality.) Sufficiently powerful artifacts could also augment these energies into other forms, such as the Four Sword transmuting them to form Force Gems.
 * This Troper basically thought up this idea when wondering why Rupees keep regenerating when you leave the area and come back to smash the same pots/cut grass/etcetera.

Link (The Wind Waker) died in the battle against Malladus. Link (Spirit Tracks) is a grandchild of his sister Aryll.
The only possible explanation why The Hero of Winds isn't known all around Hyrule and why Link (ST) doesn't seem to have any connection to the royal family, even though the last Link was close friends /in love with Queen Tetra.

Kasuto was the real name of Impa from Ocarina of Time.
Consider: in Zelda II the Adventure of Link, Old and New Kasuto are the only towns which do not share their name with a character from Ocarina of Time. Impa and Zelda are the only Sages who do not have towns named for them, Zelda for what I would think are fairly obvious reasons. We also know that Impa, like Link and Zelda, is a legacy character -- this is the name of the nursemaid and/or bodyguard of the princess in the original game, Zelda II, Ocarina of Time, and the Oracle games. It stands to reason, therefore, that "Impa" is not the character's actual name, but rather a title assigned to the princess's chief female attendant. The OOT Impa's real name was Kasuto, and so the towns in Zelda II are indeed all named for characters.
 * Alternately, Kasuto is the real name of Ocarina of Time's Zelda- Zelda itself merely being a regnal name for the princesses of Hyrule.

== The Spirit Tracks restored by collecting Rail Maps, playing Spirit Instruments, and clearing Temples are the only ones that existed just prior to the game. The ones restored by Force Gems vanished much earlier. == The places reached by Force Gem tracks seem to be abandoned stations that haven't seen humans in a long time. Also, most of the activation Warp Gates are located on Spirit Tracks, which is why no one's figured out how to use them before.

The upcoming Wii title will be set before Minish Cap.
The introduction of Minish Cap mentions the original wielder of the Picori blade, "The Hero of Men", who wore the same green tunic and holds the same "Hero of X" title as OoT and WW's protagonists. It could possibly be that the next Zelda tells the story of the original Hero, and the 'master sword creature' by Link's side in the promotional poster is actually the essence of the Four Sword. This theory has some problems, mainly that the next game looks to follow the same art direction as TP as opposed to WW/MC, and Link is shown wearing his hat. Still, if not the next title, Nintendo has certainly left hint of a future Zelda title with the Hero of Men.
 * Confirmed.

Twinrova was behind part of The Adventure of Link's plot.
Now, this is assuming the Oracle games are direct sequels to the original two games (which seems very likely so far). Twinrova, seeing as her plan in the Oracle games was to revive Ganon, and how the plan of Ganon's minions in Adventure of Link was the exact same thing, it seems likely that Twinrova was the unseen leader and organizer of the overworld monsters that hunted Link.

Byrne might return in a future installment
Because it's entirely possible that Byrne or at least an Expy might show up in a future Zelda game.
 * I was thinking of this too, since at the end Anjean says in a few hundred years or so (okay not that exactly, but something along those lines), which is more or less the time between each Zelda game. If this indeed does happen, the collective screams of fangirls from all over the world will be heard on Japan. Also, unlike Midna's return which is also wanted by fans, this actually has a chance of happening (honestly, considering how Twilight Princess ended, I don't see any way or reason she would be back at all rather than fan-pleasing)

Some of the Gerudo are eunuchs.
It's not that only one male is born every hundred years, but that only one male is allowed to be born every hundred years, the rest castrated at birth. The evidence against it is clear, but while male Gerudo certainly won't be sneaking off to Hyrule to find boyfriends, it's not inconceivable that similar physiques could develop. The most obvious evidence comes from the game's usual Hurricane of Puns - say "Gerudo" very quickly and you'll see.

Niko is ST Link's Grandfather, which is why they are living in the same house.
Otherwise, it would be very, VERY creepy. This is closely related to the "Link (The Wind Waker) died in the battle against Malladus. Link (Spirit Tracks) is a grandchild of his sister Aryll."-guess. I guess sometime after PH, after the pirates came to pick all the remaining Hylians up and move them to new Hyrule, Niko probably fell in love with Aryll and they married. (No, he was not that much older. Niko is actually often described as being only a few years older than TWW Link. And the woman being 7 years or so younger than the man is really not all that uncommon.) "Then why didn't Niko call TWW Link "Your granduncle", when he mentioned him to ST Link?", you may ask now. I now point upwards, towards the "TWW Link had his name deleted out of all history books after Tetra became queen"-guess. If this really was the case, it also explains why Niko didn't want to tell ST Link to much about that person. He was already breaking the rules of their promise to TWW Link by even mentioning him to ST Link at all.

Aderu is cursed.
Because that's kind of a tendency with Link's Exposition Fairy lately. (Oh yeah, about the name, it popped up on 2chan, aka "The greatest information leaking-system in mankinds history" some days ago.)

The new Zelda Wii game is a distant sequel to Majora's Mask.
According to these 2chan leaks, it's quite possible. The Hero of Time would still have the Ocarina of Time, so time travel is possible. The Master Sword does not exist in Termina, where the game would quite possibly (if only partly) take place. Oh, and finally, anyone remember a certain inkeeper whose marraige you have to save? Perhaps the boy they talk about is Anju and Kafei's son.
 * Further: Not only is it a distant Sequel to Majoras Mask, it also will serve as a bridge between it and Twilight Princess, clearing up, among other things, how and when exactly Ganondorf came to be (almost) executed.
 * Jossed. Skyward Sword Link is clearly a new character, and Ganondorf is not present.

Aderu will be wearing a mask, when Link first encounters her.
There are rumors that her face looking like the great fairy Queen is not her real face. She'll be wearing a Great Fairy Queen-Mask on their first encounter and only remove it when Link has gained her trust. She'll be Mind Blowingly Beautiful behind it.

Prince Komali's grandmother was killed by the great Valoo in his rage.
Even for someone who just failed to get his wings, Komali behaves incredibly Emo when you first encounter him in the game. He's also incredibly attached to Din's pearl, which previously belonged to his granny. Just a few minutes latter, we learn from Medli that his Grandma was her teacher and an attendant of Valoo as well. The same Valoo, who's now rampaging and destorying everything in his sight, because of that pesky, little crab-monster under his nest, who won't stop yanking his tail. My guess: Grandma Komali went up, tried to calm him down, got incinerated. Leaving her grandson even more upset than he already was and her pupil in despair. Hurray for the great sky spirit Valoo.

The three girls outside the STAR minigame are Ganon cultists
They sound exactly like the school girls squeeing over literal death incarnate, Ryoji Mochizuki.
 * They are disciples of Twinrova and preparing a ritual to revive Ganon in case Link kills him. After the end of TP, they carried out their evil plan and Hyrule fell to the power of Fangirls.

Tingle isn't a deluded man who thinks he's a fairy.
He's a deluded fairy who thinks he's a man who thinks he's a fairy. Really. How else does he stay alive, hardly having aged at all, from Majora's Mask to The Wind Waker?
 * Given that the only reasonable alternative is that the delusion is hereditary, which in turn implies that they successfully breed for several dozen generations, this is entirely possible. Also explains his supernatural mapmaking skills; he's actually a Map Fairy or something.
 * I always just figured he was a foundling, or otherwise adopted. It's not like the guy at the boat safari shop looked over fifty. But unusually (or preternaturally) long lifespans could account for it.
 * technically wasn't he cursed into being a type of supernatural being by uncle rupee? "tingle" apparently portained to anyone cursed by uncle rupee with an insatiable desire for rupees, eventually imprisoning them as his eternal servants once they'd gotten enough rupees for him?