Headscratchers / The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening

New entries on the bottom.

Ending

• Okay, let's talk about the ending of this game. Why does the Wind Fish just leave Link behind?! Link just went through loads of dangerous battles to save the Wind Fish from endless sleep, and had to cause Dream Apocalypse in the process... the Wind Fish even says that the island will continue to exist in Link's memories, so why not give him a ride home so he can tell people about it?! Stupid inconsiderate whale.
  • Give the guy a break, he just woke up. Are you rational and intelligent when you wake up? The way I see it, Windfish is halfway to [presumably] Zora's Domain when he remembers he left The Hero out in the ocean, at which point he figures that if Link was gonna drown he woulda done so already, so too late to go back.
  • We don't know he left him in the middle of the ocean. For all we know, Link woke up near an island or something.
  • The manga adaptation actually does end with Link grabbing some driftwood and paddling away towards the horizon.
  • Maybe the WMG about how the game was Link's dream, not the Wind Fish's, is actually supported by this ending?
  • The camera's only on them for a about a minute, and the Wind Fish flies by at both the beginning and the end of that, not seeming to go very far away. Who's to say that, moments after the "camera" cuts out, the Wind Fish doesn't swoop down and offer Link a ride to the shore?
  • When Link awakens in the Switch version, we also see that the water around him is littered with the remains of his destroyed ship, including a few barrels. And after a cut, we're shown that he's tied a few beams together to form a makeshift raft and has one of the barrels sitting next to him, which probably contains some form of provisions, before he looks up and notices the Wind Fish flying by. Even if the Wind Fish and Marin neglected to help him get to shore again, for some reason, it's likely he knows enough to have a chance of survival on his own, or else he wouldn't have been sailing by himself in the first place.

Marin's ears

• Are Marin's ears the pointy elf kind, or are they more human-like? All the official art of her has her hair covering it, so it's hard to tell. And consider that with differing art styles, the length of a Hylian's ears can vary, so just saying they're round because if they were elf ears, they'd be longer is not the end of the discussion.
  • Presumably she just has shorter pointed ears, given how Marin is supposed to be a Zelda Expy and Zelda does have pointed ears.
  • Even in the manga where there's a lot of art of Marin, her hair is always covering her ears. Apparently, it's part of her character design. Nonetheless, all of the other natives of Koholint Island have rounded ears, so presumably Marin would as well.
  • It could be that Marin's hair covers her ears precisely to make it difficult to tell that her ears are rounded, so that she'd have a closer resemblance to Zelda.
  • In the Switch remake Marin's ears are now visible all the time, and they're shown to be round.

Marin as a seagull

• Why does Marin want to be a seagull of all birds? Seagulls make horrible-sounding squawks, right?
  • But the point is that they can fly across the sea, which is Marin's dream.
  • But I thought seagulls only went out to sea to die.
  • You might think the squawks they make are horrible-sounding, but that's your opinion. Marin evidently thinks otherwise, seeing as she refers to their calls as "singing". Not to mention, seagulls are probably the only birds she knows, and all she sees them do is fly out over the sea. Of course she would wish to be one of them.
  • And Marin's wish isn't specifically to become a seagull; it's to be able to fly so that she can leave the island. She tells Link that if she were a seagull, she'd go flying around the world and sing to people, but becoming a seagull isn't the actual wish she made. In the 1993 release of the game, the secret ending even has her appear as a winged human girl, not a seagull like the DX and Switch versions have her has.

Shopkeeper

• We all know the infamous shopkeeper, who kills you with his super lightning spell, if you steal? Why isn't he the one saving the day? Couldn't he just walk into all the dungeons and fry every monster inside making it easy?
  • Because he's not real. Link is. So, apparently, is Prince Richard (although it could be argued that he is meant to be a reference to Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru, rather than a literal appearance by the character, in which case the above would not be true).
  • Well, he only does that if you steal. Perhaps he just doesn't care about saving the day because the monsters aren't stealing from him, so as long as they don't bother him specifically he's not going to do anything about them.
  • A major part of the characterization of the islanders is that they don't really know what's going on and that they're blissfully ignorant of Link's quest and the island's true nature.
  • Maybe the lightning attack isn't effective on all enemies. Aren't there items in this game that damage some enemies but can't damage others?
  • Also, pray tell, just what is it that needs saving, exactly? The only time the Nightmares bother anyone besides Link is in an attempt to stop Link from waking the Wind Fish. Otherwise, the normal island residents don't have a ton to worry about. The most anyone has to say is that the heightened presence of monsters makes venturing outside the village dangerous, but most of them don't show a desire to leave the village anyway.

Dying

• A rather minor one, but since it's all a dream, there's no way Link can actually die during his quest, is there?
  • Your Mind Makes It Real?
  • Maybe, since the monsters were created or controlled by the Nightmares, Link being killed results in the monsters being able to inhabit Link's mind and use his powers for evil in the real world.
  • Alternately, this is the only Zelda game that has an in-game justification to continues — since Link doesn't actually die, the dream just "jumps back" to a point where he was still alive and continues forward as if nothing happened.
  • Even if he can't die in the dream, he can certainly remain caught in it long enough for his physical body to starve or drown. If the monsters can keep him in the dream long enough, he's dead and the Wind Fish will never be freed.
  • "THE WIND FISH SLUMBERS LONG...THE HERO'S LIFE, GONE..." This issue is touched upon by one of the owl statues in the game — even if the island was created through the Wind Fish's dreams, as long as Link remains inside it, anything and everything that happens is just as real as the rest of the world. In short, the Wind Fish could sleep for 100 years or more, but there's nothing to stop Link from aging away and dying in that time.
  • I believe that message means that the longer Link remains in the dream, the more likely his body is to run into some sort of deadly risk, the most obvious one being falling off the bit of driftwood and drowning or being caught in another storm, so he should wake from the dream and reclaim control of his body before that can happen. I don't think it refers to Link being felled by a monster during gameplay.
  • The Hyrule Encyclopedia goes with the theory that Koholint was a physical place that was actually brought temporarily into existence by the Wind Fish's dream. If that were the case him being able to die would be perfectly plausible.

Hyrule geography

• Hyrule in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is a landlocked valley surrounded on all sides by impassable mountains. Where did Link board the ship in the intro?
  • He climbed over the mountains. Just because A Link to the Past shows them to be impassable in-game doesn't mean it's impossible to pass them in-story.

Children

• Say two people, Marin and Link (rhetorically speaking) had a child. Since Link is from the real world and Marin is a part of the Wind Fish's dream... would the child they had together disappear along with the rest of the island or continue existing in the real world, like Link?
  • They'd probably disappear, given it would be the dream making the baby happen. Or they'd become a seagull, if that's what happened to Marin at the end. It's kinda vague.
    • Or maybe a Rito?

Trading

• In the trading sequence, the woman that you give the Yoshi doll to says her baby's been asking for one. But... he's very clearly a baby, how is he asking for anything specific?
  • Maybe the kid pointed to it while the mother was walking by.
  • Or perhaps he is old enough to form simple words, and communicated what he wanted to his mother this way.

Why only her?

• Why is Marin the only one on the island who wonders and desires to explore what lies beyond it? Whenever Link asks anyone else about it, it's always "Whoa, OUTSIDE the island? What do you mean, OUTSIDE? Whoa! The whole idea just makes my head hurt!" Did the Wind Fish dream up Marin as an especially special someone amidst the other people on Koholint? Was it because she was the one who found Link on the shore? Or is she just the only curious person on the island?
• Considering Marin's resemblance to Zelda, it's possible that Marin actually comes from Link's dream rather than the Wind Fish's. She doesn't really belong on Koholint Island at all, even though everyone else presumes she does. Also notice that she always refers to Tarin by his first name rather than as "dad" or "father".
  • It's also possible she represents some aspect of the Wind Fish's mind that, while not quite having the lucid dream experience that the Owl has, nevertheless intuitively knows there's something beyond the familiar world and wants to go there. Basically, while the Owl is the part of the Wind Fish that thinks, as a matter of logic or ethics or necessity, that they should wake up, Marin is the part that, on a much more emotional level, *wants* to wake up.
  • All things considered, her resemblance to Zelda is passing at best. Given that her hair and skin are different tones that Zelda's, I think Link mistaking her for Zelda would be grogginess (or a concussion) rather than an actual striking similarity. But if she was from Link's dream rather than the Wind Fish's, it seems like other people knowing her would be hard to explain. Even though the island only exists within the Wind Fish's dream, it doesn't seem likely that the Wind Fish has only been asleep for a few moments when Link wakes up in Marin's home.
    • Not necessarily. First off, Princess Zelda in the Oracle games does resemble Marin, to the point that they share the same sprite. And if she’s supposed to be the same Princess from A Link to the Past, that just means they retconned her design. And the island’s geography alone gives us hints that Link’s effects on the dream have already merged with the Wind Fish’s, since the layout is the same as A Link to the Past’s overworld: village and forest to the west, castle in the center with cemetery northwest of it, small house on a hill south of the castle, large body of water in the southeast, and mountains with waterfalls up in the north.

The Storm

• How did Link survive the violent storm in the prologue? Or dreaming days, maybe even weeks away, in the real world? He's seen in the ending half-submerged in the ocean, tied to what's left of the ship's mast. The prospects aren't looking good there, unless the Wind Fish dreams at a different rate of time, Link would soon die of starvation, dehydration or hypothermia.
  • The specifics aren't terribly clear. The developers did state at one point that the Wind Fish's dreaming brought Koholint into the real world, but that does clash with the ending, in which Link is still tied to the mast like he was during the intro. So it could be something like Phantom Hourglass, where the events of the dream moved slower through time than those of the real world. (Kind of like how dreams in real life work.)
    • Given the statement below about if he had been swallowed or something, Link was ejected from the island by a column of water before the island disappeared. The only thing that would be in that general area would be the flotsam from the wreck. I think that the Wind Fish made sure he landed close enough, or even pushed Link onto it, before he woke up.
• The symbolism of the ending's events was a little peculiar in that Koholint disappeared before the "celestial area" where Link held an audience with the deity's consciousness, he was later ejected out through a column of water. Was he blown out through a spout? Was he not just in the Wind Fish's dream, but also cryptically inside the whale god the entire time? Would the survival rates be higher or lower?

Pro vs. champ

• In the Switch remake, once you've won all of the figurines at the Trendy Game, the proprietor acknowledges you as a "champ" and offers you a discount on the playing price in the future. That's all well and good, but that version also keeps the scene where he kicks Marin out of the shop after she "wins" him as a prize in the game, as he says she's too much of a pro and that pros aren't allowed in. Where's the logic in getting kicked out if you're a "pro", but getting celebrated and rewarded for being a "champ", exactly?
  • I guess we're supposed to assume that calling her a "pro" means he's calling her out on cheating/hacking (grabbing him requires moving the crane in a way it's usually not able to go). Link has won a lot, but he's done it honestly.

The Nature of the Wind Fish's Dream

• Is Koholint Island a physical place created by the Wind Fish Reality Warper style, and Link drifts ashore normally after being struck by lightning? Or is the real Link adrift and unconscious, entering the Wind Fish's otherwise normal dream a la Inception? The former scenario is much more tragic, as it implies the Nightmares and other islanders are self aware beings that will vanish into oblivion when the Wind Fish wakes up. However, the last few dungeon bosses say that Link is a part of the Wind Fish's dream, sort of implying the latter. There are a few other lines of dialogue that muddy the waters. When Link (presumably) asks one of the kids in Mabe Village when the kid arrived on the island, the kid can't grasp the concept and gets a headache when trying to think about it. However, One of Old Man Urira's (the aforementioned kid's grandfather) hints implies that Urira remembers his childhood on the island. How can the grandfather have past memories while his grandson doesn't? If the Inception interpretation is correct, then the islanders are merely philosophical zombies: beings that appear externally to possess consciousness, but actually have no subjective experience.
  • The game itself seems to go with the interpretation that the island was in a separate, "dream world", since when Link awakens, he's still tied to the mast like he was during the intro, implying that the lightning strike was what summoned him into the dream.
    • Actually, the ending implies that the island was a part of the real world. During the final Ballad performance where the island fades away, it’s only the island itself that disappears, not of the water or the sky surrounding it. As to how Link ended up back among his ship’s wreckage, the Wind Fish could’ve dropped him off there to ensure he didn’t drown before he regained consciousness.
  • As for the inconsistency of certain characters' memories, that's probably just a byproduct of the whole island being a dream. The four kids don't have memories to think back on because the Wind Fish's psyche happened not to give them any, but Old Man Ulrira is supposed to be wise and all-knowing with regard to the island and its mysteries, so the dream gives him more of a experienced backstory so as not to contradict that.

Miscellaneous

• In the tower, you break four pillars on one floor... And cause the floor above to collapse on itself (probably because it's All Just a Dream).
  • The pillars are actually holding the center section even higher, but that still begs the question of why it didn't fall all the way to the floor Link is on since nothing's holding it up.
• If the enemies from other Nintendo games are there because of the big twist, how do they exist in Hyrule? Several of them appear in A Link to the Past and The Minish Cap. And then, they also exist in Holodrum and Labrynna.
  • Simple, they aren't there because of the twist, that's just a fan theory. A Link to the Past also had its fair share of Mario enemies (Chain Chomps and Pokeys, both enemies that also show up here), before Link's Awakening's idea was even conceived.
  • Anyway, them being there because of the twist ties into the fact that some of them also exist in the real world, in that Link's supposed to be dreaming about enemies he's encountered before, just like how he dreams of characters based on those he's interacted with in the Oracle games.
• Link holds Marin above his head when she follows him for awhile... Wait a minute. He's looking up her skirt!

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