This shit blew my motherfucking mind.  I need this thing to come out and to get a scan of it so I can get all the details, but damn, serious business.

So it’s like this - Ocarina is this huge pivotal moment in the whole Zelda timeline because if Link gets his ass kicked in OoT (doesn’t get the Master Sword, doesn’t save Zelda, doesn’t become the Hero of Time) he dies and future incarnations (LttP Link / Original Series Link) have to contend with Ganon in what I am only now learning is a fucking POST APOCALYPTIC Hyrule!  How cool is that?  That puts this whole different spin on things, like - Ganon manages to get the Triforce but gets trapped in the Dark World so, sure, things are pretty idyllic for a while but then Aghanim comes along and, in a really cool sort of Dark Power / Cultist diad, gets sucked into Ganon’s plot from ANOTHER DIMENSION!  From there, shit just gets worse.  

You ever wonder why Hyrule in Legend of Zelda (NES) is full of monsters and ghosts and people have to fucking hide out in caves?  NOW YOU KNOW?

Majora’s Mask / Twilight Princess is the world where Link, it seems, beats Ganon but gets to go back to being a kid, right?  So he never technically becomes the hero of time, right, he’s just a kid.  But Ganon gets beat ANYWAY, because he beat him in the future.  MIND BLOWN.

In the Wind Waker timeline, Link becomes the hero, kills Ganon and is venerated over hundreds of years as the legendary Hero of Time and turns into a part of the legends and mythologies of Hyrule.  This one is the timeline I fully thought was post-apocalypse, but it turns out it’s just WAY THE FUCK IN THE FUTURE.  So so cool.

tinycartridge:

The Legend of Zelda series’ timeline revealed in Hyrule Historia (25th anniversary art book), according to reports posted online and mapped here by Kotaku.

Apparently the story splits into three branches:

“Note that the ‘split’ is due to Ocarina’s time differences and assumptions based on the different ways that story could have ended and branched off from his two ages.

The Link to the Past split is Link failing, the Majora’s split is Link defeating Ganon and branching off from his boyhood, and the Wind Waker split is Link defeating Ganon and branching from his older years.”

I don’t even follow the Zelda timeline conspiracy theories, but I’m sure plenty of minds are being blown today.

Buy: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

Find: Nintendo DS/3DS release dates, discounts, & more

See also: More Legend of Zelda posts

[Via zzun, Kotaku, and Josh Dunbar]

(via ironswan)