The Legend Of Zelda Breath Of The Wild / Tropes N to T

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Tropes 0 to C | Tropes D to G | Tropes H to M | N-T | Tropes U to Z

N

• "Near and Dear" Baby Naming: Upon the completion of the "Medicinal Molduga" sidequest, Malena is so grateful that she rewards Link with 300 rupees (the highest amount available in the game) and promises to name a child after him if she has one.
• Necessary Drawback:
  • The soldier's armor set gives some of the best physical defense of any armor in the game; it also makes a tremendous amount of noise, making stealth nearly impossible. By contrast, the barbarian armor sends Link's physical attack to its maximum level and the stealth set makes him move in near-total silence — but the first mainly consists of leather wraps and war paint and the second is made of thin cloth, and both provide little physical protection.
  • Two-handed weapons deal tremendous amounts of damage and can easily send enemies flying with their blows, but their greater weight makes using them slow and awkward and leaves Link open to counterattacks. By contrast, spears strike quickly and have good range, making them useful for delivering rapid flurries of strikes with which to keep enemies off-balance, but deal very little damage per blow. One-handed swords occupy a middle ground.
• Neglectful Precursors: Ten thousand years ago the Sheikah built an army of nigh-unstoppable, semi-autonomous robots and buried them underground, but forgot to install antivirus, an emergency shut off feature, or proper instructions. In fact, they were so confident that Calamity Ganon wouldn't have figured out the robots, that they installed five giant auto-deployment systems far beneath Hyrule Castle that would automatically emerge if Calamity Ganon ever came out; in other words, Hyrule wasted its time in digging up the smaller robots, but also didn't damn itself much more by doing so.
• Nerf: Parrying has been downgraded from Skyward Sword. The number of active frames has been decreased from its previous incarnation, forcing you to parry at about the exact instant when the attack should hit. While you can still reflect projectiles and block attacks without damaging your shield, the window which the parry opens for a counterattack is decreased. Also, while the only drawback from a missed parry in Skyward Sword was a bit of shield damage, in this game, a missed parry damages your shield a great deal (usually breaking it) or costs you the full brunt of an attack.
• Never Got to Say Goodbye:
  • In Princess Zelda's last journal entry - which is written on the same day that Calamity Ganon returned - she mentions that she hasn't seen her father since their last argument. Unfortunately, she never sees her father again because King Rhoam is killed by Calamity Ganon.
  • King Rhoam's last journal entry shows that he regretted treating his child harshly and resolves to treat her kindly from then on. He never gets that chance. He passes on as a ghost before Zelda is rescued.
  • Also, while Link actually got to speak to them one last time while in their spirit forms, Zelda never got to see or speak with the four Champions after they died. Especially sad when it comes to Urbosa, as Zelda clearly saw her as a Cool Big Sis and the two were very close before The Calamity hit. Along with Rhoam, their spirits passed without meeting with Zelda after her rescue. Fortunately, they at least appear to feel fulfilled and able to move on, now that they have accomplished their missions against the Calamity Ganon.
• Never Trust a Trailer:
  • A pretty subtle example with the Nintendo Switch Presentation trailer. While there's no content that's actually missing from the final game, the cutscenes are subtly edited together so that it becomes impossible to distinguish which are from the present day and which ones are flashbacks from 100 years ago that Link remembers during his Quest for Identity.
  • The first trailer for "The Champions' Ballad" that was revealed at E3 2017 has Kass saying "There is an ancient verse passed down in this region called the Champions' Ballad." The final DLC actually involves you helping Kass complete that song that his mentor left unfinished; what little that had been composed already was less than a century old.
• Newbie Immunity: Link needs at least thirteen permanent hearts to pull the Master Sword from its pedestal. If Link does not have enough hearts the first time the player tries to do this, the Great Deku Tree will abruptly stop him at 1/4 of a heart and restore him to full health, but warns that he will not stop him a second time. Sure enough, if the player tries again with less hearts than required, they will get a Non-Standard Game Over.
• Nice Day, Deadly Night: During the night, multiple types of enemies of varying levels of strength will spawn randomly throughout the map. Thus, when journeying at night, Link will periodically be beset by skeletal Stal versions of regular enemies that emerge from the ground, swarms of batlike Keese, and Yiga Clan assassins. Downplayed in that Stal enemies and Keese are extremely weak and Yiga footsoldiers, while quick and annoying, aren't very strong either; their main threat comes from impending Link's progress, making fights against stronger foes more difficult, and gradually wearing down Link's health and weapons through their constant onslaughts. However, night also brings the stronger Yiga blademasters and rouses the large, powerful Stalnoxes that rest inertly in the ground during the day. Traveling by night is generally fairly dangerous in the early game and more trouble than it's worth later on, hence the game providing the ability to skip ahead to dawn at campfires.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Kilton, an off-beat merchant who only shows up at night and is a huge monster fanboy who squees over various beasts. He will buy monster body parts from Link in exchange for "mon", and allow Link to purchase various monster-themed gear, including Dark Link's outfit.
• Night of the Living Mooks: Many Stal variants are featured in the game, such as those based on Moblins, Lizalfos and Bokoblins; they start appearing on many parts of Hyrule during night. There's even one based on the Hinox boss (Stalnox).
• No "Arc" in "Archery": Averted for the most case; arrows drop fast in this game, making gravity compensation a huge part of the sniping process. The Ancient Bow, however, plays it completely straight, as do the Bow of Light and Twilight Bow. Justified by the former being Magitek, and the latter two both being magic. You can play it (mostly) straight for yourself if you use a Phrenic Bow, which, in addition to allowing you quite the zoom-in, also eliminates most of the arc. The Golden Bow also shoots arrows that take longer to drop off.
• No Body Left Behind:
  • Apart from enemies as per usual for the series, animals killed by Link will have their bodies disappear in a puff of smoke, leaving behind pieces of meat for him to consume right away or cook later.
  • Enemies and animals turning into harvestable materials upon death can be seen as the game simplifying what actually happens. However, this trope is subverted on Death Mountain: even if an enemy is resistant to the extreme heat while alive, the monster parts they leave behind will catch fire from it and eventually burn away to nothing.
  • The Monks in the shrines disintegrate into green particles, clothes and all, after Link has solved their puzzles and obtained their soul orb. Likely, they have fulfilled their duty and are now ready to move on.
  • Downplayed with Yiga Clan enemies, who do not appear to die when defeated and instead teleport away, leaving behind their weapon, Rupees, and bananas.
  • Subverted with horses, who ragdoll onto the ground upon death. In a game where every other creature disappears, seeing your once-companion in a lifeless state like this is rather disquieting.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Both in response to petitions and in tribute to them, both Satoru Iwata and Robin Williams' likeness can be found in the game in the form of Botrick and Dayto◊, respectively. Botrick has Iwata's glasses and center-parted hairstyle, and Dayto has Williams' facial features.
• Nocturnal Mooks: Skeletal versions of Bokoblins, Moblins, and Lizalfos show up at night, and the bones of Stalnoxes, which lie dormant during daylight, reanimate once the sun sets.
• No Doubt the Years Have Changed Me: When Link meets with Impa at Kakariko Village after his century-long slumber, she states her hope that he still recognizes her despite her being much older now. Turns out Link has totally lost his memories and doesn't remember Impa whatsoever; it's never made clear whether or not he would have recognized her with his memories intact. Similar scenes play out between Link and several Zora characters he was Childhood Friends with before the Great Calamity.
• No Fair Cheating:
  • Don't bother trying to Save Scum rare occurrences like the dragons' appearances, the descent of a Star Fragment, or the appearance of the Lord of the Mountain — saving while they're around and reloading will cause them to despawn. You can, however, save shortly before they appear and reload from there safely.
  • Normally a large fire will cause an updraft you can use to shoot up into the air. Try it inside a shrine with a pile of Firewood, however, and you won't get the updraft, as this would make many shrines very cheesable. For that matter you can't use Revali's Gale (or any other Champion powers) inside shrines either.
  • Puzzles that involve conducting electricity to a point usually require more than just striking the object with an electrical weapon, Shock Arrow, or Yellow Chuchu Jelly. Could be Hand Waved that the target needs a continuous current to it to activate, not a quick burst.
  • The Yiga Clan Hideout is open into the mountains at the rear of the area. If you feel like climbing the mountains to try and skip the hideout and go straight to the boss room, you'll find yourself out of luck — the boss doesn't spawn unless you go through the shrine the normal way, and the door into the shrine (normally moved with Magnesis) can't be opened to run through it backwards.
  • In the shrine quest involving the test of your endurance to heat and flame, trying to cheat with heat/fire resistant clothing will have the Gorons call you out for cheating and disqualify you. However, nothing is stopping you from using heat and flame resistant potions or just simply healing yourself to endure the test.
  • In spite of being mobile dungeons that walk or fly about the map, Divine Beasts are sealed-off from the rest of the world for all practical purposes — they can only be accessed at the appropriate point in their quests and only entered by where you can teleport into them — so you can only get so creative with how you tackle them. If you try to get around some puzzles by flying on top of Vah Ruta, you will be thrown off and have to start again at the proper entrance.
  • Some shrines are hidden inside giant mazes in the corners of Hyrule. This is a subverted example — while you can' just climb up to the rooftops of the mazes and drop down to the shrines, as the shrines are sealed with ceilings, literally nothing keeps you from walking around the edge of that roof until you find the entrance of the inner chamber, then drop down to it and bypass almost all of the maze. However, as the mazes contain several spots with decent loot, many players consider this skip not worthwhile.
• No-Gear Level:
  • The monk on Eventide Island's shrine wants to test Link's ability to survive in the wilderness, and so confiscates his equipment and inventory until he can solve the island's puzzles and will also give his items back should the player decide to give up. Link can still cast runes with his Sheikah Slate, but he has to forage food and find weapons in order to survive against the island's foes, which include several Moblins and a Hinox.
  • The DLC Trial of the Sword involves Link entering into a dungeon with three separate sections that in total contain 45-floors, that each get longer and more challenging as you progress. To prove he's truly worthy of the Master Sword's true power he's been stripped of all his items and Champion's blessings to test his resourcefulness by using only items he can find throughout each section.
• No Hero Discount: While most people don't even realize you are the hero of legend, there are a few places, like Kakariko Village and Zora's Domain, who know outright who you are and how dire the situation is but will still charge you full price for their goods and services. Also played straight with Robbie from Akkala Ancient Tech Lab, who was part of the original team created to defeat Ganon. He owns a machine that can turn Guardian parts in Ancient Gear, the best armor and weapons in the game, but specifically rewired the machine that creates the gear to charge Link an exorbitant amount of money. He even admits outright he's doing this because the lab's been cut off from government funding for a century and no one else is willing to invest in the lab, so he figures he may as well extort the Rupees from the hero.
• No Hugging, No Kissing: This comes close to bucking the trend:
  • Mipha who was not only Link's childhood friend, but she also loved him so deeply that she crafted a special armor made for his size and planned to give it to him as a marriage proposal. It is not shown whether or not Link was also in love and the answer can never be explored due to Mipha being killed by Waterblight Ganon.
  • This was the first game to confirm in words that the series titular princess, Princess Zelda, had some romantic feelings for Link. She's revealed to have rejected the advances of Kass's unnamed teacher on account of "only having eyes for her appointed knight", and it's stated that her sealing power was awakened through her love and need to protect Link. It's even implied that she was going to ask the Great Deku Tree to pass on her Love Confession to Link once he returned for the Master Sword—though the Great Deku Tree cut her off to tell her it would sound better coming from her instead. However, much like with Mipha, his feelings are never confirmed and it's left open-ended whether or not the two of them ever become a couple after the end, meaning the trope is still very much in effect... at least in the Western translations. The original Japanese makes it clear that Link is aware of both girls crushing on him, and that he reciprocates Zelda's affections.
• Non-Dubbed Grunts: Changing the voiceover language will also change the Voice Grunting to match, but only for characters that have fully-voiced lines in cutscenes. Anyone else retains their Japanese voice grunts in all versions.
• Non-Indicative Name:
  • Over at the eastern end of the map is a peninsula called Talus Plateau. The miniboss it contains is not a Stone Talus, but a Blue Hinox.
  • The Fruitcake you can cook isn't an actual fruitcake in the traditional sense. It's more like a layer cake that has mixed fruits sandwiched between two pastry discs.
  • On a meta note, the game itself falls under this trope. Nearly every Zelda game besides the first is named after a plot-important object (Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, The Wind Waker, etc.) or relevant event (Link's Awakening, A Link Between Worlds, Twilight Princess, etc.). But Breath of the Wild does not have any particularly specific meaning, and it only gets name-dropped in the Champions Ballad DLC.
• Non-Lethal Bottomless Pits: Falling down bottomless pits (such as those in the Shrines), being submerged in the occasional Grimy Water, or running out of stamina in normal water will have you respawn on the last bit of stable dry land you stood on, losing 1 heart of health. Since Falling Damage can be a flat-out One-Hit Kill in this game, and so can many enemy attacks early on, losing only one heart is downright merciful in comparison. This game also bucks the long-standing tradition of having Link first respawn, then die instantly upon losing all health to a pit; if the fall or drowning is lethal, the game over screen will immediately display instead.
• Non-Lethal K.O.:
  • NPCs can be attacked by monsters, and if they take enough damage, they'll fall unconscious but will wake up minutes later. The only downside to not saving an NPC in time is you losing out on a reward.
  • Yiga Clan enemies don't die when defeated. Instead, they use a teleportation spell to retreat, leaving their weapons and loot behind. Averted when you use Ancient Arrows, however, in which case they evaporate like any enemy that's neither a boss nor Ancient.
• Non-Mammal Mammaries: Zora and Rito women, despite being fish and bird people respectively, have noticeable breasts. At a stretch, some Zora are modeled after cetaceans (whales, dolphins, etc), which are mammals.
• Non-Standard Game Over: Trying to pull the Master Sword out of its pedestal if Link doesn't have at least 13 normal hearts will kill him on any attempt after the first. Downplayed in that there is no unique cutscene, dialogue, or anything similar that happens as a result of dying this way. Link simply ragdolls as if he were fatally hit by an enemy attack.
• Noob Cave: The entire Great Plateau is designed to serve in this capacity. The first four shrines teach you how to use your magic runes, while the actual plateau teaches you all the methods you have to traverse the game world, heal yourself, and fight enemies. It also teaches you that you can and will walk into random enemies that can One-Hit KO you. Just to drive the point home, you also literally start the game in a cave; it has no enemies, but escaping the cave requires you to learn the basic concepts of climbing walls (not a typical element of Zelda games) and activating ancient consoles with your Sheikah Slate. Lampshaded with the Japanese name, Hajimari no Daichi (The Beginning Plateau).
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: The people you invite to the newly established Tarrey Town mostly weren't very notable in their original homes but are indispensable in their small yet booming new town. This is most explicit with Greyson, who states that he wanted to leave his old job at the Goron Mines for Tarrey Town because he felt more appreciated for his mining skills in the latter than the former.
• North Is Cold, South Is Hot: The southwest of the map is the Gerudo Desert, with the rest of the south being a long, tropical jungle parallel to a wide beach. The northwest has the Hebra region, which is the coldest area in the game, and the northeast has the autumnal, temperate Akkala. The sun and moon are always to the north, though, which would place Hyrule in the southern hemisphere.
• No-Sell:
  • Lynels are immune to being frozen, electrocuted (save for Urbosa's Fury, which just stuns them instead of disarming them), or set on fire. They are also highly resistant to being stunned from explosions, though several bomb arrows to the face in quick succession will do the trick.
  • Certain articles of clothing/armor can allow Link to do this. For example, the Thunder Helm makes him immune to the effects of electricity (in ALL its forms: electric weapons, currents in some puzzles, and natural lightning bolts).
• No Sidepaths, No Exploration, No Freedom: The game mostly averts this, as the executive team wanted to re-think how the game was played. Instead of the traditional linear route, the player is allowed to venture across Hyrule in any direction possible. Before that however, Link will be temporarily stuck on the Great Plateau and must complete the required tutorial shrines in order to gain access to the rest of Hyrule.
• Nostalgia Level: Lon Lon Ranch from Ocarina of Time appears as well as several locations from Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword, all in ruin.
• Not Completely Useless:
  • The humble torch is pretty useless as a weapon, but unlike other wooden weapons, it doesn't lose durability from being lit, making it great for fire puzzles or simply carrying flames to keep yourself warm.
  • The Korok Leaf is also not ideal for direct combat, but its gusts can blow smaller enemies off balance. Perfect for if there happens to be a dropoff behind them. It’s also the only tool at your disposal that’s capable of reliably steering a raft.
• Not Quite Flight:
  • After receiving the Paraglider, Link can use it to glide through the air (at least, so long as he has enough stamina to retain his grip on it). He can catch updrafts to gain height with it, such as from open flames or from the use of the Revali's Gale power.
  • It's possible to fly upward indefinitely (until Link hits the Invisible Wall high in the sky) by sandwiching a platform between Link and a large metal object and using Magnesis.
  • Wizzrobes prance around in the air, leaving a ripple effect wherever they hop. They stay firmly a couple meter above the ground when doing this and don't go any higher or lower unless you stun them and bring them to the ground.
• Not Rare Over There: Diamonds are frequently referred to as an extremely rare material, although Ledo the Zora mason in Zora's Domain is willing to trade unlimited diamonds for 10 easily-attainable Luminous Stones in exchange.
• Not the Fall That Kills You…: Zigzagged. At face value, it's played more realistically than every other game; whereas fall damage in those would take out 3 hearts at worst, it can scale all the way up to 30 hearts here, enough to instantly kill you at any point. However, you also get the Paraglider at the end of the tutorial, which brings any fall to an immediate midair stop without any consequences.
• Not the Intended Use: The Stasis Rune freezes objects (and enemies once upgraded) where hitting them builds up kinetic energy and sends them flying and gives you a few free hits on enemies. Objects that can be stasised glow bright yellow, making them easily stand out in your surroundings. So the rune instead can be used for item hunting like plants or food, or looking for treasure chests that are underwater or buried in the ground. It also assists with some Korok seeds, helping you locate the missing boulder for a rock formation puzzle or better noticing the Korok containers hanging off of branches or sitting in holes in trees. It indicates if there are enemies in the area, such as Lizalfos hiding through camouflage or if that suspicious pile of rocks is a Talus or not.
• Nothing but Skin and Bones: The Sheikah Shrine Monks, who have spent 10,000 years meditating in their chambers to give Link their Spirit Orbs, are portrayed this way. What with Sheikah culture having a fantasy Japan inspiration, they are based on real-life Sokushinbutsu monks, who starved themselves to death while meditating and underwent self-mummification.
• Notice This: Items which can be picked up twinkle intermittently. Weapons with an enhancement (increased power or durability, for example) sparkle to a greater degree, and emit an Audible Gleam if Link is close to them.

• NPC Roadblock: A few shrines involve NPCs situated in front them in a way that you cannot access their panels, such as a Goron that refuses to move until you prove your worth in his climbing minigame and a Gerudo that has passed out on the panel itself and won't perk up until you get her a drink, which also happens to involve a minigame.
• Number Obsession: There's a character in Gerudo Canyon Stable known as Pirou who has a strange obsession with number 55. He tells Link that he used to win races thanks to Rushrooms 55 years ago, but age took a toll on his vigor; he also rewards Link with a Diamond if the latter gives him 55 Rushrooms, but it has to be exactly 55 Rushrooms (no more, no less) and Pirou will proceed to count them one by one to be sure. Considering that he had begun to eat Rushrooms since he was five years old, so it's likely that his obsession with number 55 arose from his Rushroom addiction.

O

• Object-Shaped Landmass: Inverted - The Skull Lake is a large lake in the Akkala region, which is shaped like a humanoid skull with no lower jaw and two round islands in the middle for eye sockets.
• Obvious Rule Patch:
  • To avoid players bypassing all navigational challenges of the game by invoking troll physics◊, Magnesis will immediately cut itself off if the item you're manipulating comes in contact with Link. But if you sandwich a second item in between, you're fine.
  • You can't leave the Great Plateau without the paraglider. As in, if you somehow manage to get down without dying of fall damage, Link will just "void out" and warp back as though he had fallen into a Bottomless Pit.
  • The walls inside Sheikah shrines and the Divine Beasts are just so smooth that Link cannot climb them. This is, of course, to prevent Link from completely cheesing each shrine and Beast by bypassing puzzles, but it's very clear that this trope is in effect when the Sheikah walls (including grates!) are the only unclimbable surfaces in the entire game, save for certain statues of the Goddess.
  • Anche, the Gerudo guard of the Northern Icehouse, goes to bed before night falls in the desert. This is to prevent the player from cheesing the ice-transporting portion of "The Perfect Drink", since the desert gets cold at night and would remove the threat of the ice block melting.
• Oculothorax: The Keese are reimagined as being essentially gigantic orange eyes with eyelids, ears and wings.
• Offscreen Teleportation:
  • There are Moblins guarding the path between Gortram Cliff and Gorko Tunnel, where your objective is to carry a Rock Roast past them. If you kill the Moblins that are there, then grab the Rock Roast, more Moblins will inexplicably be standing where the previous ones were.
  • If you teleport from the place where you found the relevant NPC to Tarrey Town, you will find said NPC there. They're not supposed to be able to teleport.
  • If you teleport from any of Kass's shrines to another, you will still find him there, playing his accordion. Granted, he's a bird, but can he really fly faster than teleportation?
• Older Is Better: Played extremely straight: The technology and weapons left behind by the ancient Sheikah tribe put everything from the modern era to shame. Said weapons include laser blades in the form of swords, spears, axes, and chainsaws, bows that can make arrows shot from it fly straight like bullets, and shields that can reflect Guardian beams without the need for skill. Speaking of which, said ancient weaponry are by and large the only tools Link can get his hands on that can make Guardians break before they do.
• Old Save Bonus: After completing the Cave of Shadows in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD, the Wolf Link amiibo can be used to spawn in a Wolf Link Assist Character here. In addition, the recorded number of Hearts that you cleared the Cave of Shadows with will transfer over as Breath of the Wild Wolf Link's own maximum Hearts.^* You can still use the amiibo without the data, but Wolf Link will only have three Hearts
• Ominous Obsidian Ooze: Malice is a black tar-like substance that infects and consumes everything it touches. It spawns from Calamity Ganon, an boar-like demon consumed by its hatred for Hyrule for the numerous defeats it had suffered over the eons, and can only be destroyed by shooting at the demon eyes that emerge from the tar. It's also potent and sentient enough to possess robots and even create harbingers of evil known as Blight Ganons.
• One Extra Member: One legend known to the Gerudo is the Seven Heroines of Gerudo, and indeed to the east of Gerudo Desert, you can find ruins where the statues of the seven are located. However, there actually is an eighth heroine, whose statue is instead located up the Gerudo highlands far from the other seven.
• One-Hit Kill:
  • Ancient Arrows instantly vaporize any non-boss, non-Guardian enemy, but takes their drops with it. Shooting a Guardian in the eye with an Ancient Arrow instantly reduces its health to 0.
  • Yiga Blademasters are able to do this to you with direct sword strikes, but only at their hideout. The kill will even ignore fairies and Mipha's Grace; this is also why it's strongly advised to not be spotted at all in their Hideout. To even things up for you, any Sneakstrike against a Blademaster during this section will destroy them in one hit as well, even if you're using something that barely qualifies as a weapon, such as a Korok leaf.
  • The Champions' Ballad DLC adds the One Hit Obliterator, a four-pronged wand decorated with Zigzag Paper Tassels. It saps Link down to ¼ of a heart, but when fully charged can kill any enemy in one hit... which is why it can't be used after the trial involving it.
  • By abusing Good Bad Bugs, the player can pull one on the Final Boss. Because the developers forgot to turn off enemy hurtboxes during cutscenes, if the player shoots an arrow where Ganon will be in the cutscene where he shows up, he will take damage from said arrow every single frame. By the time you regain control, you don't. Calamity Ganon has already reached 0 HP and will play through his Phase Change (because he has lost over half his health) and death cutscenes (because his HP has reached zero) on the first frame after the previous cutscene finished.
  • Attacking a Fire or Ice Lizalfos/Wizzrobes with the opposite element such as via elemental arrows or weapons will vaporise them instantly.
  • A direct hit from cannon in Death Mountain can instantly kill Link, however this is only possible if Link wants to test it on himself.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: The One-Hit Obliterator in the Champions' Ballad DLC gives Link ¼ of a heart so anything will kill him in one hit, and not even fairy magic or consumption of items will save him.
• One-Hit Polykill: It's not uncommon for Link to take out multiple enemies with a single sword swing or bomb arrow.
• One Size Fits All: All the weapons enemies use are scaled to their size. Even if a weapon is small or huge, they'll magically change to a size suitable for Link once dropped, and any weapons an enemy picks up will also change to fit their size.
• One-Time Dungeon: The interiors of the Divine Beasts cannot be revisited once you fully clear them, unlike shrines. You are given one last opportunity to explore them after defeating the boss of each one, though. The Heart Containers found within are placed just outside them should you not pick them up before finishing the dungeon.
• Only Mostly Dead: Whether Link was this or just in a recovering coma is arguable. But the Horse God can resurrect horses that died, even Epona or the Royal Stallion.
• Only One Save File: For each Nintendo Switch profile, there can only be one manual save file and five Autosaves that overwrite in oldest to newest order, for each difficulty: Normal Mode and Master Mode. However, nothing is stopping a player from making a new Switch profile on the console to have one new save file of each difficulty, so this is a play on this trope, where functionally, there's only one fully player-controlled save, but with proper manipulation, there can be 3 different timelines per profile, each with one "current" and one "previous" state saved.
• Only the Chosen May Pilot: This is implied to be the case with the Divine Beasts. They're four gigantic animal-shaped mechas that were built in ancient times as a defense against Ganon, with representatives of each major race—Zora, Goron, Rito, and Gerudo—known as "Champions" chosen to pilot them. When the Divine Beasts are unearthed again, it's remarked that certain members of those races felt an inexplicable pull toward them: for example, Mipha, the Zora Princess and a mild-mannered White Mage, became vibrantly animated and even fiery as soon as she saw Vah Ruta, the Divine Beast of her people. It's downplayed in that the chosen Champions needed to be taught to use the Beasts, but their general connection to them leans toward this trope.
• Only the Chosen May Ride: The Giant Horse (a dark, aggressive horse that is hinted to be a descendant of Ganondorf's stallion) is described like this. And it is very difficult to tame and ride, yet Link can prove his worth to do so (which is also necessary to complete a sidequest).
• Only the Chosen May Wield: The Master Sword can only be pulled out of its stone pedestal by the chosen hero of Hyrule. Even then, in order for the player to extract the sword, you will need a lengthy health gauge of at least 13 hearts, since Link's hearts gradually drain as he pulls on the sword.
• Ontological Mystery: Link wakes up in a strange cave with no knowledge of how he got there or why he's being guided to specific locations. He has the option to hunt around and find out what's afoot.
• Opening the Sandbox: Done in two stages. After a brief tutorial in the Shrine of Resurrection, the player is immediately thrown into Great Plateau, a sandbox that's big and wide-open but still much smaller than the rest of the game. After Link decides where to jump from the Plateau into Hyrule, the rest of the map is opened up with no restrictions.
• "Open!" Says Me: In many The Legend of Zelda games, Link can open chests with a single swift kick. If he tries it while bare-footed in this game though, he will wince in pain.
• Optional Boss: In the Champions' Ballad DLC, the monk residing in the 5th Divine Beast, Maz Koshia, fights you and uses various techniques and weapons you have seen before, such as the Guardian's lasers, ice arrows, shock arrows, summoning giant spiky metallic balls like Master Kohga did, and so on.
• Optional Stealth:
  • Breath of the Wild adds a stealth mechanic where you can sneak up on enemies to do more damage, or even to rob their camps blind with them none the wiser. The game lets you know if you're too loud with a waveform indicator showing all the sounds Link is making.
  • The game intends for you to be stealthy when infiltrating the Yiga clan's hideout. You won't get a Game Over if you're caught, but the patrolling sentries are so powerful that fighting them is practically a death sentence unless you have really good equipment. The official player's guide mentions that with luck, skill, or cheesing your way into areas with better equipment, fighting them is technically an option, but stealth is the better way to go.
  • If you play the game in the most likely order, you'll end up needing to scavenge Shock Arrows from a Lynel's camp pretty early on. While it's always the weakest variety, it's quite possible that at this point in the game you will not have the power to face it in combat. Luckily, the environment is positively littered with arrows stuck in trees and things, so you can collect as many as you need without even getting the Lynel's attention.
• Orange/Blue Contrast: Orange and blue are used extensively throughout the game to indicate incomplete (orange) and complete (blue) objectives. It also appears in Ancient technology and shrines.
• Orchestral Bombing: Much of the soundtrack is quiet and understated to fit the theme of you wandering a huge, mostly empty world all on your own. Whenever you're in combat (particularly with a boss monster), trying to shut down a Divine Beast, or especially storming Hyrule Castle, things get much more rousing.
• Overhead Interaction Indicator: There's a white arrow that turns orange when locked on.
• Oxygen Meter: Like in The Wind Waker, Link cannot swim underwater, so instead of a conventional oxygen meter he can only stay afloat while the standard Sprint Meter lasts.

P

• Painfully Slow Projectile:
  • The beams from Decayed Guardians or a Lynel's fire blasts can be avoided by just walking. Vah Medoh's turrets are pretty terrible too, as well as inaccurate. You can avoid them by just canceling your glide, and sometimes the turret misses when you're standing still.
  • The cryonis constructs fired by Vah Ruta and Waterblight Ganon are big and slow-moving. They make up for it with numbers.
• Painful Rhyme: One of Bolson's jingles tries to rhyme "saw" with "job", or more accurately, "jaw... b".
• Palette Swap:
  • The monsters come in red (green for the Lizalfos), blue, black, and silver (with the DLC-exclusive Master Mode adding gold) and get progressively stronger along that spectrum, with their eyes also getting progressively redder.
  • Pebblits and Taluses come in purely aesthetic color variants depending on where they're found — most are the same light grey as most common rocks, but others are dark gray, sandstone-red, or mossy green, and one Talus found in the Zora's Domain area is blue like the local rocks.
  • Most of the dogs found around stables are colored like border collies, but a few are a uniform dark grey or light tan instead.
  • Most of the small ambient critters, such as pigeons, sparrows, lizards and various insects, have several recolors each found in different areas of Hyrule.
• Palmtree Panic: The south, southeast and east coasts. Enemies have camps in these areas, including a large wooden construction in the beach of the Faron region. The Sand Boots come in handy, too. The largest destinations in them are Lurelin Village and Eventide Island (the latter doubles as a No-Gear Level, as it features a Shrine Quest where Link has to complete a task without any of his weapons or equipment save the Sheikah Slate).
• Paper-Thin Disguise
  • The monster masks you can buy from Fang and Bone, which are sloppily sewn together, leave Link's real face exposed in most cases, and obviously don't do much to alter the rest of his body (beyond changing his idle stance). Fortunately, Bokoblins, Moblins, and Lizalfos are all too stupid to catch on unless you blatantly attack one in front of the others. Not so much for Lynels, who will pick up on it the moment you do something as innocuous as pulling out the camera.
  • Subverted with the Gerudo clothes. Despite the name, you are not pretending to be an actual Gerudo. As one guard bluntly points out if try to claim you are one, Link is too short, too light skinned, and lacks the muscles of a Gerudo. He can also only pass for a Hylian woman in front of Gerudo who don't look too closely and haven't met a man before either. Quite a few Gerudo see right through the disguise.
• Parental Hypocrisy: Kodah questions her daughter's choice in men after she hooks up with a Hylian, but notes that she isn't really in any position to criticize given that she was in love with Link when they were children.
• Parting-Words Regret: This turns up between King Rhoam and his daughter Zelda. Rhoam had frequently scolded Zelda for her inability to unlock the Royalty Super Power that could defeat Calamity Ganon. He also becomes a Fantasy-Forbidding Father, scolding her researching the ancient Guardians on one of her few days off while having nothing to show in her efforts to awaken that power. On Zelda's 17th birthday, when she plans to pray on Mount Lanayru in one last attempt to get that power, both their diaries note that they have not spoken to each other since the latter incident but plan to make up after Zelda returns, with Rhoam, in particular, admitting that he has been too harsh on her lately. Ganon ends up emerging and killing everyone in Hyrule Castle, including Rhoam, that very day.
• Pass Through the Rings:
  • Some of the Koroks hidden across Hyrule require you to pass through a series of green rings quickly enough, activated when you stand on a wooden pad marked with the drawing of a leaf, to find them so they give you their Seeds.
  • Four of the Sheikah Shrines in the Champions' Ballad DLC require Link to pass through a series of hologram-made rings (drawn with Sheikan-based inscriptions), each time under a brief time limit so they don't disappear. The way you go through the rings varies depending on the case: For the ones in Gerudo Desert, you have to ride a Sand Seal; for the ones in Hebra Mountains, you have to surf with a shield (one which is durable enough so it doesn't shatter before the task is complete); for the ones in Zora's River, you have to swim fast with an armor suited for this purpose; and for the ones in Death Mountain, you have to fly with the Paraglider from a high spot.
• Past-Life Memories: Implied. Link's reward for completing all 120 shrines is a set of clothes resembling his iconic green outfit featured as his main look in every Zelda game except for this one. The description for each piece specifically mentions how familiar and comfortable it seems...
• Pastoral Science Fiction: The game is a Science Fantasy example, albeit one with a heavier emphasis on the "Pastoral" and "Fantasy" than the "Science." This Hyrule became predominantly a post-apocalyptic wilderness when possessed Magitek robots, originally built in the distant past by Hyrule's more technologically ancestors, slaughtered a massive chunk of the kingdom's inhabitants. The places Link visits in the game's present tend to have a tranquil, agrarian feel to them, but there are still sci-fi elements like the aforementioned robots, high-tech Shrines where Link must solve puzzles, and a handful of Sheikah scientists who can give Link high-tech equipment and abilities.
• Pelts of the Barbarian: Link can wear a Barbarian armor set with animal skins and a horned monster skull for a helmet, with each piece increasing attack power.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling: Hyrule Castle itself serves as this, containing many Silver Lizalfos carrying gemstones which can be sold for a high profit, as well as all four types of special arrows other than Ancient Arrows, many weapon caches filled with endgame-quality gear, a dining hall with almost every major ingredient in the game, and the highest concentration of Guardians of any area. Judicious use of the Stealth Set and one powerful weapon such as an Edge of Duality can result in the player walking out with thousands of Rupees in jewelry, hundreds of Ancient parts, dozens of elemental arrows and Bomb Arrows, and more than enough top-tier weaponry to last until the next Blood Moon resets the place to allow Link to ransack it all over again.
• Penultimate Weapon:
  • The Bow of Light you can acquire during the fight with Dark Beast Ganon. This doubles as the only means of damaging Ganon in this fight, if you didn't get the Master Sword, didn't hoard Ancient Arrows, and don't have the right kind of amiibo; thus, it's also an Emergency Weapon.
  • Royal Guard weapons are invariably the strongest of their weapon type, but they can only be found in Hyrule Castle, where they must be taken from Black Moblins or Lizalfos who will gladly use them against Link. Their durability is on par with Spiked Boko Gear, but they're quite serviceable when whittling down a larger enemy (such as Calamity Ganon), and a few have the rare distinction of being tradable for stuff you can sell.
• Percussive Maintenance: Link's solution to being on the wrong side of a treasure box when trying to open it? Kick it. Strangely, the chests all yield.
• Permadeath: The horses Link can ride can be killed, and they don't come back unless you discover and unlock the Horse God.
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • You're not allowed back into the Divine Beasts after clearing them, so make sure to open every chest before doing so. Having said this, chests in the Divine Beasts never contain anything you can't acquire elsewhere, with easy-to-reach chests usually containing supplies to save the player a trip out of the dungeon to restock on something necessary (such as Arrows), and hard-to-reach chests usually containing powerful gear, rupees, or desirable materials (such as Sapphires or Guardian parts).
  • While most weapons/bows/shields can be respawned via Blood Moon, there are nine that can be permanently lost. They are:
    • The Forest Dweller's Sword and the Kite Shield (there are a limited number of each in the game; once those are destroyed/sold, there's no getting a replacement).
    • The Lynel Crusher, Lynel Spear, Mighty Lynel Crusher, and Mighty Lynel Spear (after you kill enough enemies all the Lynels in the game - aside from three specific ones - will turn Silver and the lower tiered Lynel weapons are rendered unavailable, save for the Lynel Sword, Shield, and Bow, which will always drop from the Lynel on Ploymus Mountain).
    • The Mighty Lynel Sword, Mighty Lynel Shield, and Mighty Lynel Bow cannot be acquired via normal means after all the Lynels turn silver (since the one Blue-maned Lynel that remains - the one in the Hyrule Castle gatehouse - doesn't normally drop its equipment); however, a glitch has been discovered that allows that Lynel to be looted (since it always has a sword/shield set-up, this cannot be used to get the Mighty Lynel Spear or Crusher).
  • In Master Mode only, once the world level gets high enough, there will not be any Blue-maned Lynels remaining in Hyrule. If you want a picture for your Compendium and didn't get one before that, it'll have to be purchased from Symin. This is the only monster type that completely disappears from the game; there's always at least one of every other type somewhere in the world.
  • Normally, if you try to get the Thunder Helm with a full armor inventory (which you'd basically have to try and do intentionally), the game will act like you haven't completed all the necessary quests even if you have. However, it's possible for this failsafe to fail and the game will try to give you the Thunder Helm anyway. It won't appear in your inventory, and there's no getting it back. If you don't reload to a prior save, you'll never get the Thunder Helm. Oddly, if you're in this situation when you try to get the Zora Armor, there will be dialogue for that situation telling you to come back when you have an empty slot.
  • Once all the memories have been retrieved and completing the Capture Memories quest, the normal ending will be inaccessible unless reloading the last save containing that quest.
• Perpetual Motion Machine: The Divine Beasts other than Link's appear to be these, with various extraneous functions separate from their Ganon-blasting purpose that seemingly defy physics, serving as means to vent their constantly-building power. Unfortunately, these functions have become far more useful to Calamity Ganon than to anyone else.
• Perpetual Storm:
  • The Thundra Plains and a portion of the Faron region have non-stop thunderstorms, the former of which can be seen many miles away. Both areas have hidden Shrines, with the latter needing to be unlocked by using the lightning itself. The storms stop once you access the Shrines. There's also the entire Lanayru region, which is under constant rainfall being generated by Divine Beast Vah Ruta; the Zora wish to neutralize it out of fear that it would cause a devastating flood.
  • Portions of the Gerudo Desert are also perpetuated by sandstorms, most of which can be dispelled by clearing shrines located somewhere inside each of them. One of them, however, is being stirred up by the movements of Divine Beast Vah Naboris, complete with Dramatic Thunder, and runs the risk of engulfing the nearby Gerudo Town unless it's stopped.
• Photo Memento: A memory at the end of The Champions' Ballad DLC has Link and the other Champions formally sworn in, followed by Purah taking a group photo with the Sheikah Slate. Kass passes a copy of the photo he found on to Link, who can display it in his house.
• Photo Mode: After doing a quest for Purah, the Sheikah Slate gets upgraded with more camera functions, including the ability to have Link pose while in third-person view, and a new Recollection Sidequest. This doesn't pause the game however, so you have to be careful.
• Pig Man: The recurring Bokoblin enemies have this design in this game, with piglike noses, large ears, and grunting vocalizations.
• Pilgrimage: The flashbacks show Princess Zelda traveling to the shrines of the goddesses in the hopes of awakening the divine power that is her birthright.
• Pillar of Light: The game lets you place one beacon each of six colors around the map that manifest as this.
• Piñata Enemy:
  • Yiga Clan enemies are the only enemies that carry rupees, though it's still a much larger amount of rupees than you would find in other contexts. This is because they're the only human enemies you face, and thus the only ones with a good reason for carrying money.
  • While the Blupees aren't actually monsters, you can still hit them over and over with arrows or a spear for rupees until they run off.
  • If you're looking for something more immediately useful, Hinoxes carry multiple powerful weapons each (frequently including top-tier generic weapons like Royal Broadswords), sleep when not provoked (which makes it easier for sneaky players to steal said weapons), are fairly simple to bring down via kiting (especially if you target their huge, obvious weak point with a bow to stun them), and drop large quantities of food (often pre-roasted) on death. Unfortunately, Stalnox are not quite so simple or lucrative to farm, since they don't sleep and don't drop food items.
  • Taluses and Pebblits drop gems after you beat them. Just be careful when hunting for them, as they're basically rocks piled into a humanoid shape very capable of camouflaging into the scenery.
• Pixellation: Played for Laughs. If you try to cook using incompatible ingredients, the resulting "Dubious Food" is apparently so disgusting it has to be pixellated out.
• Player Death Is Dramatic: Notable in that the game does use Ragdoll Physics, but more realistically. Instead of having his entire body go limp immediately upon death, Link does fall to the ground tensed up from pain (if he's in midair, or hit by an attack strong enough to send him flying) or loses his strength and collapses (if on the ground) before dying, as it would happen in real life.
• Play Every Day:
  • You can summon the Wolf Link helper from the amiibo once per day. If he dies, you'll have to wait until the next day to re-summon him.
  • Other amiibo can give once-a-day equipment/material drops.
• Playing Possum: There are numerous old battlefields where the decayed husks of Guardians can be found and looted. Some of these Decayed Guardians are still alive and can still shoot at Link with their laser turrets. Even worse, sometimes fully intact Guardian Stalkers (distinguished by still having their legs) will be sitting among the Decayed Guardians waiting for Link to pass by before chasing him.
• Please Put Some Clothes On:
  • The Character Customization aspect that gives Link a variety of possible outfits. Running around in nothing but boxers tends to get this reaction from NPCs. Paya, Impa's teenaged granddaughter with a nervous crush on Link, will become deeply embarrassed and asks him to cover himself.
  • In the Goron city, if you are not wearing any fire protection suit, the shop keeper will freak out and tell you to put on a suit. Of course, in this instance it is not out of modesty but because Link is literally on fire.
• Plot Coupon: The four Divine Beasts (and, by extension, the sacred skills given to Link by their former Champions), as well as the 12 captured memories. In a twist, however, thanks to the game's nonlinear structure you can actually skip collecting these. After the introductory level, it's entirely possible to head straight to the final dungeon and take out the Big Bad. Doing so requires tremendous skill and good equipment though so the game actively encourages you to seek these out first.
• Point of No Return: Used very sparingly, as part of the game's freeform nature. Dungeons can be left at any point if you need supplies or a change of pace. Even certain setpieces you'd expect to have to commit to can be abandoned — in particular, before assaulting Vah Naboris, your partner makes a point of telling Link to bail if he gets hurt, and she'll meet him at the staging area when he's ready for another try. However, you can't return to a dungeon after finishing it, and after entering the Sanctum of Hyrule Castle you can neither leave nor save until you defeat Ganon and finish the story.
• Points of Light Setting: The game's version of Hyrule is set in the wake of a fantasy apocalypse that almost completely destroyed it a hundred years in the past. The extensive ruins found throughout it show that it was fairly densely populated before this, but in modern Hyrule civilization is limited to seven isolated villages — three effectively human ones and the four other species' base towns — and a handful of roadside stables. Outside of these, the world consist entirely of vast stretches of wilderness littered with the broken shells of villages and sites of ancient magic, and travel between the surviving towns is difficult and dangerous — numerous monsters live in the ruins of Hyrule, often making their encampments in the remnants of towns, along major roads or even right outside the surviving settlements, while central Hyrule is so infested with the powerful, deadly Guardians — Magitek robots that were the ones to destroy Hyrule to begin with — that nobody lives or goes there anymore. Link, of course, is going to spend his quest hoofing it through this wilderness, fighting monsters, living off the land and uncovering a great many wondrous and secret things.
• Post-Final Boss: Calamity Ganon is more or less the actual final boss. The Dark Beast Ganon fight that follows is the denouement, since you're given an 11th-Hour Superpower that takes a set number of hits to take him down, and he only has one attack, a Wave-Motion Gun Breath Weapon that can One-Hit Kill you but isn't particularly difficult to avoid.
• Potion-Brewing Mechanic: The game lets you use the same stew pots you use to cook to create "elixirs" by mixing at least one small critter (like a frog or a butterfly) and one monster part.
• Power Crystal: The Circlet items use gemstones imbued with certain elements in order to create certain effects, such as the Ruby Circlet increasing cold resistance due to rubies having the power of fire, and Sapphire Circlets heat resistance due to sapphires having the power of ice.
• Powers as Programs: A nearly literal example; the Sheikah Slate acts like a tablet computer with magic powers, as it can download programs called Runes from Trial Dungeons.
• The Power of Love: Mipha tells Zelda that when she uses her healing magic, she thinks of — well, Calamity Ganon attacks before she can say who it is, but it's heavily implied to be Link, who she's in love with. In a later memory, it's Zelda's love for Link and desperation to save him when he's in mortal danger that unlocks her powers.
• Power Up Letdown:
  • Hearts are capped at 30, including extra hearts. That means you can't get extra hearts if they are already maxed. This can be annoying if you like to use the sword beam, which only works at full hearts. Strangely, you can still benefit from extra stamina even if it's already maxed.
  • As you progress weapons you find can be equipped with modifiers that boost the stats of the weapon. One of these modifiers is 'Long Throw', which simply increases the distance at which you can throw the weapon. There are many problems with this: Weapons can only have a single modifier, so Long Throw fills that spot that could go to something more useful, most weapons aren't made with throwing in mind, with the exception of Boomerangs you must retrieve weapons you throw making it a poor offensive option in a sustained fight, and in the few cases where throwing range is relevant you already have a Bow to provide much more sustained damage over long ranges. The big mark against Long Throw however is that the game consideres it a 'strong' modifier, meaning that it replaces the much more universally useful 'Critical Hit' buff that the game only considers weak.
• Power Up Mount: Instead of a single horse, you can sneak up on wild horses in the overworld and ride them. Each horse has its own stats ^note the best possible builds you can keep being above average stats with maxed stamina, maxed out speed with average stamina and below average strength, and maxed out strength and stamina but only average speed, and up to five of them can be saved at stables that allow you to summon your horses. In particular there are three 'legendary' horses corresponding to the three Triforce holders:
  • The White Horse, descended from Zelda's white horse with above average strength and average speed but has maximum stamina.
  • The Giant Horse, implied to be descended from Ganondorf's Black Gerudo Stallion with max strength and a unique case of unlimited stamina, but below average speed.
  • Epona (amiibo only), Link's legendary horse with perfectly balanced above average stats all around.
• Precision-Guided Boomerang: Averted. Unlike previous games where boomerangs magically travel to their selected targets then back to you, they are instead treated as melee weapons like swords, spears, and axes and are throwable as such. Each boomerang has a fixed path that it will travel in after it is thrown, and if it hits an enemy, it will travel back to you. If it hits a wall, it will immediately fall to the ground and will have to be retrieved manually. Finally, you have to press the A button to catch it, and if you mistime it, it damages you.
• Precursors:
  • The ancient Sheikah were a Magitek-based advanced civilization whose shrines can be found across Hyrule, but who were forced to give up their technology.
  • There are ancient Hylian ruins with architectural cues from Skyward Sword — examples include the Lanayru Promenade and the Forgotten Temple — which are shown as having already been ruined in the hundred-years-ago period, and which use different architectural motifs from the more recent Hylian ruins they typically dwarf.
  • The Zonai are another ancient civilization whose name is even a pun on the Japanese word for mystery, and who left crumbling stonework ruins dotting Hyrule's landscape — most of which happen to contain Sheikah shrines. Very little is known about them aside from what was revealed in the Breath of the Wild – Creating a Champion databook: they were Triforce worshippers who viewed dragons as the symbol of courage, owls as the symbol of wisdom, and boars as the symbol of power, with the Springs of Courage, Wisdom, and Power also being sacred to them.
• Pressure Plate: There are some switches that requires an object to hold it down and larger switches needs heavier and larger objects to stay active.
• Prized Possession Giveaway: The Thunder Helm is a valued piece of equipment that Riju, current matriarch of the Gerudo Town, inherited from Urbosa; it is a cultural treasure of the Gerudo tribe and is capable of allowing its wearer to gain control of lightning. Link retrieves it after it's stolen by the Yiga Clan, and then Riju uses it to help Link gain access to the Divine Beast Vah Naboris. After Link frees the Divine Beast from Calamity Ganon's influence, he can ask Riju to have the Helm, and she replies that she can only give it to him after he helps her people solve their respective problems. Once Link does so, she deems him worthy of the sacred object and grants it to him.
• Product Delivery Ordeal:
  • There's a sidequest called The Perfect Drink, which takes place in Gerudo Desert. Link finds a dehydrating Gerudo named Pokki next to a Shrine, and to help her he has to bring some Noble Pursuit drink to her. The problem is that the drink's supply in the bar of Gerudo Town is running out, and Link needs to bring some ice from a storage north of the desert to Furosa (the bartender) so she can replenish it. Link goes to the storage, where another Gerudo (Anche) instructs Link to take a large block of ice and transport it to where Furosa is, but she warns him that the extreme heat of the desert will gradually melt it. Thus, Link has to travel between the shadows of the ruins and pillars along the way to mitigate the block's shrinking (the ice storage is closed during night, so the idea of waiting until after sunset to grab the ice block is ruled out). There are also Fire Lizalfos that must be defeated, to prevent their fire attacks from near-instantly melting the block. Once Furosa receives the ice block and prepares new Noble Pursuit supply, Link can go to the Shrine where Pokki is and give the drink to her so she returns to the town, allowing Link to finally enter the Shrine.
  • A sidequest called Special Delivery involves a young Zora girl called Finley located in the Bank of Wishes who wants to send a letter to a human friend called Sasan in Mercay Island, and to this end, she encases the letter within a wooden cylinder and drops it to the river so it goes downstream to its destination. She asks Link to keep an eye on the cylinder while it moves along with the water and make sure nothing happens to it. The cylinder is not only susceptible to physical attacks but also fire, so Link has to kill any enemy who threatens its integrity; for extra difficulty, if Link strays too far from it or vice versa, it will be lost and will have to repeat the sidequest. The letter will also disappear if a Blood Moon occurs (this is due to technical reasons), so it's recommended to do this during day or at least after the most recent Blood Moon. When the letter arrives to Sasan, he shows his gratitude to Link, who can then meet both at Zora's Domain to receive his reward.
• Product Placement: One of the chests that appears if you bought the Season Pass contains a Nintendo Switch T-Shirt.
• Progressive Instrumentation: Each Divine Beast has its own introductory theme as you enter it for the first time, which changes completely the moment Link activates the Beast's first terminal. From then on each terminal activated gradually adds a new layer to the lingering dungeon theme until all five terminals are activated, and from then the song's tempo is bumped up to increase the tension before entering the boss room.
• Prolonged Prologue: You're limited to the Great Plateau until you complete all four shrines and get the parasail from the Old Man, but you're free to explore the whole plateau and do the shrines in any order you please.
• Prolonged Video Game Sequel: Breath of the Wild is larger than all the other previous Zelda titles combined. While it only has five dungeons in its base content, the world is enormous to the point that the starting area is as large as the Twilight Princess map, and there are tons of sidequests, over a hundred mini-dungeons and an endless list of collectibles. The following DLCs added even more content, including two dungeons (Trial of the Sword and Final Trial).
• Prophetic Name: Isha the Gerudo jeweler's real name is actually Jewel. She thought it would sound strange if she went by her real name, so she went with an alias.
• Pulling Themselves Together: Severed limbs of Stal creatures will try to crawl back to their owners, and similarly they'll stumble around looking for lost heads. They'll even replace lost appendages with those belonging to their fallen comrades. The Stal arm continues wriggling indefinitely after its owner is dispatched, even while Link is wielding them.
• Punched Across the Room:
  • Some monster attacks can send Link sailing an impressive distance. One free trip to the moon, just piss off the nearest Molduga.
  • Kilton's Spring-Loaded Hammer does piddly damage but can send monsters flying on the fourth hit in a series of strikes.
• Pungeon Master:
  • Sayge, the owner of the Kochi Dye Shop in Hateno Village, provides a lot of literal color commentary.
  • Pondo, the Snow Bowling guy, peppers his dialogue with snow and ice puns. He's quite the snowoff in that regard.
  • Patricia, Riju's pet sand seal, is apparently one. However, the guard who translates her words of wisdom spares you the "painful seal puns". It's not hard to figure out what the pun was going to be.
  • Link himself becomes one when he meets a merchant who rents sand seals. His dialogue options are "Are you sealious?" "How do I set seal?" and "Let's seal the deal!" The merchant has a pained response to any of these.
• Punny Name:
  • Most ingredients are named with a descriptive prefix in front of a word for a normal item, like "hearty radish", but some names are punny alterations of the normal term, like "armoranth" (amaranth).
  • A girl who thinks Guardians are cool and cute and has fallen in love with an Ancient Sphere and named it Roscoe is fittingly named 'Loone'.
  • The type of Yiga who disguise themselves as travelers wield kama known as "vicious sickles" (vicious cycle).
• Purple Is Powerful:
  • Silver enemies, the strongest kind in the base game, have purple markings all over their body, which is noted in some of their Hyrule Compendium bios.
  • The Royal weapons are some of the strongest generic weapons in the game, and are purple and gold in color.
• Puzzle Pan: Compared to most previous games, Breath of the Wild is rather light on it due to the effort to distance itself from the handholding of its immediate predecessors. To compensate, puzzle elements are generally in plain view with no need to move the camera around.

Q

• Quest Giver: There are many quest givers. The most notorious example being the old man Great Plateau whose questline is unavoidable. Though some players try.
• Quicksand Sucks: A variant occurs with bottomless bogs, patches of sucking mud encountered throughout Hyrule. Link will sink steadily the moment he enters them; he can cross them safely if he hurries, but staying in one for more than a few seconds will see him sucked down below the surface. Notably, objects that normally float when dropped in water, such as wooden weapons and monsters parts, will also sink instantly in this substance; however, amphibious enemies such as lizalfos and water octoroks can swim and float in it just fine.

R

• Racing Minigame:
  • In Gerudo Desert, there are Sand Seals used for easy navigation across the sandy wasteland. Southeast of Gerudo Town, there's a contest where Link can race through a course with a Sand Seal; if he manages to pass through all the designated arches under a certain time limit, he'll win the race and unlock one of the Ancient Shrines.
  • There's a man in Hyrule Ridge who can challenge Link in a race on foot towards a hill. Link will be disqualified if he uses a horse or the Master Cycle, so it's recommended to use a food or drink that restores (or, if possible, even extends) the stamina meter in order to reduce the instances of stopping to wait until it refills.
• Ragdoll Physics: Both Link and enemies have ragdoll physics which kick into effect after a particularly hard hit or upon death.
• Rage Quit: After Calamity Ganon loses its chance for a proper reincarnation, it transforms into Dark Beast Ganon and has to be stopped from rampaging across the world.
• Railroading: Downplayed. While Breath of the Wild doesn't require the player to do anything besides defeating Calamity Ganon to win and the main quests can be done in any order (or skipped entirely), it greatly encourages them to go to the Lanayru region as the first Divine Beast destination. It's the closest to Kakariko town (likely the first town the player visits as they're directly sent there) and there's several Zora around the area looking for Hylians and pointing you in the direction of Prince Sidon. Likewise, unlike other Zelda games, getting the Master Sword is entirely optional and can be done even before entering any of the Divine Beasts, provided the player visits a total of 40 Sheikah Shrines and exchanges those 40 Spirit Orbs to 10 Heart Containers.
• Rainbow Pimp Gear: While wearing a full armor set will usually confer a set bonus, there's nothing stopping a player from equipping Link with gear from different sets together for multiple minor stat buffs, with Link's appearance ranging from just-as-fashionable to downright questionable. Bonus points if the player dyes each gear different colors for the full rainbow pimp experience.
• Random Loot Exchanger: Rock Octoroks inhale a large volume of air before spitting a projectile, and will swallow whatever loose objects are in their range when doing so. Normally, these are simply spat out in lieu of the default magma bomb; however, if the swallowed item is a rusty weapon — one of the weakest, least durable weapon types in the game — the Octorok will crunch off the rust and spit it back out as a clean version of itself. The resulting item can be of either the low-tier but still better Traveler's archetype (50% chance), Soldier's archetype (35%), Knight's archetype (10%), or the very high-quality Royal archetype (5%).
• Random Number God:
  • When harvesting wood as a lumberjack, no matter how tall or thick the tree is, it will yield only one or three bundles of wood.
  • When you cook a meal with compatible ingredients, there's a small chance of getting a lucky jingle which indicates the creation of a special meal that recovers more hearts than usual. If Link cooks during the half-hour leading up to a Blood Moon, the bonus is guaranteed.
  • Creatures and monsters that are not bound by predetermined locations and paths will spawn in at random intervals.
  • Breaking an Ore Deposit will yield a random quality and quantity of minerals. You can be unlucky enough to get just one Flint from a Luminous Ore Deposit. And even a Rare Ore Deposit isn't guaranteed to yield any rare minerals.
  • Rock Octoroks can be used to clean Rusted Weapons and Shields to produce a better item. Although this is not guaranteed: You could end up getting a Traveler's Sword instead of a Soldier's Broadsword.
  • A Shooting Star will spawn in at night at a random location that's far from your current position. Bad luck can cause the star fragment to appear in a place where it gets lost easily such as a cliff into a long drop or a downhill slope into a body of water.
  • The contents of most of the amiibo drops are randomized… and that includes the amiibo that grant bonus outfits (which have a 10-20% chance of appearing). You could get two parts of the Hero of Twilight Set for two straight days, only to get a bundle of bomb arrows on the third instead.
• Rare Random Drop:
  • Zelda-related Amiibos have specific items and outfits related to their games. Most are slightly less powerful than end-game equipment, though the Twilight Bow with near-infinite range will always have uses. Whether you get these drops is randomly determined, but the weapons are more likely the farther you are into the game.
  • Unless you're lucky enough to get one from an Amiibo drop, the Star Fragments depend on you being able to notice the occasional and very uncommon shooting star that actually falls and strikes the earth, and then you have to successfully track it down and gather it up before it disappears with the sunrise. This makes upgrading the classic tunics quite a chore, as you'll need 9 Star Fragments to fully upgrade each set.
• Rasputinian Death: Almost immediately after his Mechanical Abomination form emerges from his cocoon, the Divine Beasts fire their powerful lasers at him. Link then duels against him using all manner of melee weapons, arrows, and the Bequeathed Powers of the Champions. He then reforms into his Dark Beast form on Hyrule Field, where Link rides a horse while shooting Light Arrows at weak points Zelda generates. This all allows Zelda to be freed from within Ganon and deal the finishing blow by destroying him with her sealing magic. And then Tears of the Kingdom reveals that wasn't even the actual Ganon!
• Razor Wind: The Yiga Blademasters have this ability with their Windcleaver swords. And you can too, if you manage to get your hands off these swords yourself. Unfortunately, summoning razor winds on your own costs the sword's durability on each swing, even if you're not hitting anything.
• Readings Are Off the Scale: The thermometer on the HUD is calibrated for normal atmospheric temperatures. In extremely hot regions, like Death Mountain, it is consistently maxed out, and if Link isn't wearing adequate protective clothing, will even catch fire. Likewise, if Link gets frozen solid, the thermometer gets completely encased in ice. Also, opening the map while on Death Mountain has the temperature indication reading a red "Error".
• Reality Is Unrealistic:
  • For a place set After the End, Hyrule sure is green and chock-full of wildlife, isn't it? Actually, if the ghost town of Pripyat is to be believed, this is actually a little more like what a world After the End would be like - especially with nothing like sewage or radiation to poison the environment.
  • Despite the artwork on the cover, a lot of the time Link might actually use a belt quiver instead of keeping it slung on his back. That wouldn't work - the arrows would fall right out, wouldn't they? Well, actually, on the battlefield the belt quiver was often preferred because it was easier to grab them.
• Real-Time Weapon Change: The game allows you to pause the game and instantly change your weapons and runes by holding left/right or up respectively on the directional pad and using the right analog stick to select.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: The tribe chiefs are very willing to give the amnesiac Link a chance and work against their peoples' prejudices to help save the world. Particularly the Gerudo chief, who susses out Link's crossdressing disguise almost immediately, but stops her bodyguard kicking their only hope against the Divine Beast out of the city. By the same token, she agrees to assign him a trial to make sure Link's claims are legit.
• Reclaimed by Nature: Calamity Ganon's nigh-apocalyptic attack on Hyrule 100 years prior to the game happened while Hyrule already in a state of decay. In the present, Link finds towers, shrines, weapons, and other ruins abandoned, overrun by monsters or animals, and taken over by nature, with civilization surviving in little pockets.
• Recollection Sidequest: At the start of the game, Link comes back to life (a hundred years after he had died fighting Ganon) with a massive case of retrograde amnesia. When the camera function on his Sheikah slate is restored, he finds some old pictures snapped by Princess Zelda herself shortly before Ganon's return, and is prompted to visit the places where they were taken. Doing so unlocks cinematic flashbacks of Zelda and Link's time together, allowing a glimpse into their relationship and the princess' personality. Finding all memories unlocks a secret post-credits epilogue scene with Link and Zelda.
• Recurring Boss: Justified with the overworld bosses (Hinox, Stalnox, Talus and Molduga), as there happen to be multiple specimens of them across the massive overworld of Hyrule, thus being frequent species of monsters instead of unique entities; an NPC even keeps track of how many of them you've defeated (counting jointly the Hinoxes and Stalnoxes in their case). This also applies to the Guardian Scout minibosses that guard the Shrines based on Tests of Strength, coming in up to three variations depending on the test's difficulty. Lastly, with The Champions' Ballad DLC, the Divine Beast bosses are fought a second time each.
• Red Herring:
  • A seemingly dead end room in the Yiga Clan hideout contains a bow, pots that can be smashed to receive arrows, and barrels that have what look like targets painted on them. Shooting the targets does nothing, and the actual puzzle solution is entirely different.
  • In the Kakariko Village side quest involving the stolen heirloom guarded by Paya and Impa, you're tasked with finding the thief. You can encounter an old lady acting suspicious when questioned about the crime. She even admits to having a link to the item in question. Follow her, and you'll find out that she was swiping Swift Carrots to satisfy her urges to snack on them. The real thief is located elsewhere.
  • The various lanterns across Hateno Village do nothing when lit with blue flame, though they appear to remain lit forever and serve as additional sources for the stuff. Several of them lead you down incorrect paths back from the Ancient Furnace to the Ancient Tech Lab, including one that's right across a river you're just barely incapable of jumping across, but all can be lit from the same Furnace if you so choose.
• Red Live Lobster: Ironshell crabs naturally have bright red shells with orange claws. This is averted for the other two crab varieties in the game, the teal razorclaw crabs and silvery bright-eyed crabs.
• Red Sky, Take Warning: The sky turns a bloody red every few days on the stroke of midnight, when Calamity Ganon uses his power to revive all the monsters you killed. The event is called a "Blood Moon" because the moon turns blood red, and in the 15 in-game minutes (15 real-life seconds) before midnight the sky starts becoming filled with red sparks as a warning to the player.
• Reforged Blade:
  • The Master Sword repairs itself over time after being placed back in its pedestal. The sword also reforges itself with energy if you beat it to the point of breaking.
  • If one of the Champion weapons is broken, it can be remade by a specialized blacksmith.
  • Let a rusty normal weapon or rusty shield get sucked up by a Rock Octorok, and they'll spit it back at you good as new.
• Regularly Scheduled Evil: Every 10,000 years, the monstrous Calamity Ganon returns to lay waste to Hyrule and must be defeated by a hero with a legendary evil-destroying sword and sealed away by a princess of the royal line wielding the hereditary holy magic. A century before the game begins, the King of Hyrule began preparations for Calamity Ganon's reemergence by excavating the ancient Magitek arsenal used to fight him in the previous cycle; unfortunately, Ganon was too smart to be beaten the same way twice, and a Near-Villain Victory occurred.
• Replay Mode: The memory sequences Link gathers during his quest are recorded in his Sheikah Slate, so it's possible to view them again through a subscreen in the Minus pause menu. This includes the extra memory sequences from the second DLC.
• Rescue Reversal: Link is Zelda's appointed knight, which makes him her personal bodyguard. Yet, in the final memory cutscene, Zelda's concern for his well-being caused her long dormant power to awaken and disable an entire field of Guardians. She then has Link taken to the Shrine of Resurrection, while she left the Master Sword in the Great Deku Tree's care, before heading to Hyrule Castle to face Calamity Ganon on her own.
• Rescue Romance: It's implied that after Link rescues Zelda from a trio of attacking Yiga ninjas, she starts to warm up to him and possibly even develop feelings for him. Mipha's diary in the "Champions' Ballad" DLC also shows that she fell in love with Link after he protected her from a Lynel.
• Resignations Not Accepted: A side-quest involves finding out Dorian, one of the guards in Kakariko Village, used to be a member of the Yiga Clan, a clan of assassins and bandits out to kill Link. He tried to leave the organization, but they tracked him down, killed his wife, and threatened his children in order to get him to work as a double agent. When he steals the key to a Sheikah shrine, he is told "You Have Outlived Your Usefulness" since he was in fact marked for death when he left the organization. Then Link saves him and they wisely back off.
• Respawning Enemies: Surprisingly enough, for the first time in the entire Zelda-series, this is justified in-game. Mooks will stay dead for a few in-game days, and respawn when the Blood Moon rises.
• Rest-and-Resupply Stop: There are stables all across Hyrule, which also serve as inns, and Beedle can usually be found nearby.
• Resting Recovery: Sleeping in a bed functions similarly to in Skyward Sword, being a way to restore health as well as pass the time. While beds are found all across Hyrule, Link is typically only able to plop down and use ones that don't explicitly belong to anyone else, unless he's given permission first. Inns and stables advertise beds that can be rented for the night, charging more for select soft beds that bestow bonus hearts and stamina.
• Ret-Canon:
  • The Flurry Rush attack is basically the Triforce Slash, Link's Final Smash in Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U.
  • The Master Cycle from the Mario Kart 8 DLC is brought into Breath of the Wild as the Master Cycle Zero.
• Reverse Escort Mission: Before entering Divine Beast Vah Naboris, it must first be stopped from shooting lightning and stomping around. Riju wears a helmet that protects her from lightning, and she's able to extend its effect a few meters out. While sand seal-surfing toward Naboris, Link has to follow Riju closely enough to remain within the lightning-proof radius.
• Revisiting the Roots: One of the central objectives of the game's development as stated by Aonuma and Miyamoto is to eschew the tighter, story-driven, and sequential nature that the series slowly embraced and instead revisit the idea of unguided, free exploration that the original game was designed around. Aonuma has stated that he has desired to do this for a long time, but couldn't achieve a satisfactory result with Nintendo's hardware until the Wii U.
• Reviving Enemy: Any stal enemies act like this, at least until you destroy their skulls.
• Rewarding Vandalism: This trope is so ingrained in the series that it was considered a big deal when this one mostly averted it. There are some crates to smash (usually with semi-logical contents) and ore chunks to mine, but smashing pots usually won't get you any useful items in this game. Cutting grass won't grant you the usual rewards either, though it does sometimes expose bugs (or Fairies if you're injured) for you to catch. Chopping down trees (or blowing them up) does let you gather wood, which you can use to start your own fires and to turn in (in large quantities) for a major sidequest.
• Ribcage Ridge:
  • The Leviathan skeletons scattered throughout the world act as a down-scaled version of this. Also, there are giant rib bones throughout the Gerudo Desert, on Death Mountain and around the area where a shrine is revealed by using the orbs taken from three Hinox.
  • There are also inexplicably huge ribcages jutting out of the ground near the three Hinox brothers of Mount Taran, all over Death Mountain, and everywhere in the Gerudo Desert.
• Rings of Death: The Yiga Footsoldiers sometimes wield these. The design indicates that it's a more powerful version of the Sinister Scythe that is more typical for them.
• Rip Van Winkle: Link wakes up after a century-long slumber. He was put in such a state because he was in front of death's doors when Calamity Ganon ravaged Hyrule and the corrupted Guardians attempted to kill him. He wakes up fully recovered, but without his memories.
• Robinsonade: Played with in the "Stranded on Eventide" quest. When you reach Eventide Island you're stripped of your entire inventory, including the clothes off your back. You're forced to scavenge for new weapons and armor in order to survive the many enemies found on the island and collect three large orbs in order to complete the trial and reclaim your things. Truth is you can leave at any time, but if you do so or wind up dead then your progress on the island is reset and you'll have to start from the beginning (and if you end up losing one of the orbs in the ocean or quicksand you'll probably have to).
• Robosexuals Are Creeps:
  • The Sheikah scientist Robbie built himself an intelligent robot assistant named Cherry, who was named after his first love. However, his wife Jerrin grew upset about the attention he gave the machine, so he dropped the name and reprogrammed it to be less articulate. He still occasionally slips up and calls it Cherry, though.
  • At the south coast of Hyrule, a woman named Loone can be found snuggling with a Sheikah orb she's named Roscoe, who she speaks to as if it were a lover. However, if Link brings her pictures of Guardians, the mechanical menaces of Hyrule too dangerous for most people to approach, Loone will be so enamored by them that she'll ditch the orb and act like she never cared about it. Subverted, however, if Link lures over a real Guardian, to which she'll scream and run for her life (without Roscoe).
• Rock of Limitless Water: The top of Gerudo Town's palace has a large boulder suspended over it, which dispenses water constantly into a series of canals. The water disappears when it reaches the wells at the ends of these canals instead of flooding them.
• Rock Beats Laser: For a very literal example, it's possible to make a Guardian Stalker attack a Talus. Since the Talus's weak point is on its back, the Guardian's laser can't damage it, and the Talus's boulder barrage will eventually win out. Flying Guardian drones can be easily destroyed by dropping objects, such as rocks, onto their copter blades from above, or simply smacking a large metallic crate or even treasure chests against them. Laser blasts will vaporize shields, but somehow a perfect parry will reflect the beam without damaging your shield, even if the shield in question is a flimsy chunk of wood, such as a wooden pot lid. Link courageously (audaciously?) doing that with said mere pot lid against a pre-Calamity Guardian Stalker that went berserk was what piqued the attention of King Rhoam on the young warrior prodigy.
• Rock Monster:
  • The Stone Talus is a creature made up of various round boulders.
  • Peblits are a smaller version of the Talus, and also have variants of magma and ice, but only one hit from the appropriate weapon, a Remote Bomb, or just picking up and throwing them is needed to destroy them.
• Romance Sidequest: Very lightly played with. The game sets up two main plot-relevant possible love-interests, Princess Mipha of the Zora, and Princess Zelda of the Hylians. Both have feelings for Link, and it's implied both girls use him as an emotional anchor to help summon their powers. His feelings remain ambiguous, but in some very rare instances, players are given some dialogue options that could lean Link's feelings in the direction of either girl—options such as telling King Dorephan that he and Mipha are now "united" after accepting her zora armor, or admitting to Teba that saving Princess Zelda is Link's motivation for his mission. However, there also nothing stopping Link from implying he is in love with neither or both, and the dialogue options don't change any cutscenes or dialogue with either girl.
• RPG Elements: The game introduces a lot more elements from traditional role-playing games like equipping more powerful weapons and armor, scavenging for food and supplies, enemy health bars, and cooking new items. The game even has a sort of "experience" system where after obtaining Spirit Orbs from Shrines, you can cash in four of them for an extra Heart or a Stamina upgrade. The game also has a greater emphasis on damage numbers than previous games, as enemies can have HP as high as 5000.

S

• Safely Secluded Science Center: Robbie and Purah's laboratory used to be near Hyrule Castle. However, after Calamity Ganon attacked and turned the castle into a malevolent fortress, the two scientists moved to further areas and separated so Ganon's forces couldn't kill them both at once. Purah built her new lab near the peaceful Hateno Village, while Robbie built his in the remote and underpopulated hills of Akkala.
• Samurai Ponytail: Link's hairstyle changes according to his clothes, and he wears his hair in a ponytail when wearing the Stealth Armor headpiece, which is part of the clothing set traditionally worn by the Sheikah people.
• Sand Is Water: On top of the Molduga enemy that acts as a fast Sand Worm in the Gerudo Desert, there are also Sand Seals, walrus-like beasts of burden that swim through sand like it is water.
• Savage Setpiece:
  • The Hinox are giant trolls who are always sleeping when you come across them. They'll only attack you if you wake them up, and it's pretty easy to avoid doing so if you're careful. In fact, if you're really careful, you can climb on top of them and steal their loot without stirring them.
  • Being both highly skilled and territorial, Lynels have a much wider aggro range and a much higher chance of spotting a stealthy Link. They take a few seconds longer to aggro than most enemies once they see you, but don't let the standard "?" awareness indicator fool you. Their body language and the way they threateningly reach for their weapons demonstrate that they can see you perfectly well. They're warning you to leave their territory NOW or face a Curb-Stomp Battle. And while they tend to spawn in the middle of obvious routes between plot-important locations, Lynels also have very specific fixed spawnpoints and a player willing to sidetrack a bit will never need to engage with one.
• Savage Wolves: Small groups of wolves are among the creatures that Link can encounter roaming the wilds of Hyrule. They're not among Calamity Ganon's monsters, but unlike most other wildlife (but much like bears) they're hostile to Link — when one spots him, it will howl to alert its pack and they will then try to circle and flank Link and take him down with hit-and-run tactics. They're not especially strong, however, and when one dies the surviving ones will cut their losses and run for the hills.
• Save Scumming: The game encourages open-ended Trial-and-Error Gameplay, including through this method, by granting the player five autosave slots for them to fall back on if the current situation isn't going so well or they accidentally activated a story encounter earlier than they preferred. Inversely, Master Mode only gives you one autosave slot to restrict save scumming.
• Scaling the Summit: Unlike previous games, Link can climb most things, including mountains, buildings, and trees. This is limited by the stamina gauge, meaning players need to plan a route before climbing, or else Link will lose his grip.
• Scary Stinging Swarm: Beehives often spawn hanging from trees in temperate and tropical areas. The honey is a useful cooking ingredient, but coming too close to the beehive will anger the bees and cause them to attack Link. This can also be done by knocking down the hive from a distance, which will case the swarm to attack the nearest living thing; sniping down beehives with an arrow is an excellent way of scattering hapless enemies.
• Scenery Gorn: The ruins of Hyrule Castle and Castle Town, which are covered with pools of Malice and swarming with Guardians.
• Scenery Porn: As seen in the page image. To see it animated, here's the 2014 E3 trailer. Suffice to say, Hyrule has never looked better. The E3 2016 reveal trailer took it a step further and showed various vistas and locales along with the different interactions the player could do to it (such as chopping a tree to get across a chasm, rolling boulders on enemies, and spreading wildfires).
• Schizo Tech: Link's arsenal includes various weapons obtained from monsters, food to replenish health, clothing, and... a tablet computer. And among the monsters in this iteration of Hyrule, there are Starfish Robots with powerful laser weapons roaming the world. This technology is the remnants of a highly advanced Sheikah civilization, which thrived until they were banished from Hyrule. The DLC takes this up to eleven by giving Link a motorcycle.
• Schmuck Bait:
  • You can lay your own out. During a thunderstorm fight, lay out a higher-tier metal weapon for an enemy to swipe up... and wait for the lightning to do the rest.
  • In an example aimed at the player, Toruma Dunes has a shrine quest involving walking around to light four torches. Unfortunately for anyone who just gets going with it, there's also a Molduga living there.
  • The Champion's Ballad DLC includes another one during the One-Hit Obliterator section, in which the player is challenged to deal with four enemy camps and four shrines while wielding a weapon that makes everything including Link a One-Hit-Point Wonder. The last shrine is a Major Test of Strength, a fight against a single Guardian Scout IV which is a pitiful challenge to put before Link with the Obliterator in hand. Then just as the player's guard drops, the floor opens up and Link gets dropped into a maze crawling with Guardians, including a room with four of them at once and hardly any cover.
• Scratch Damage: If your current armor exceeds the power of an enemy's attack, it will still inflict one quarter-heart of damage, and it will still knock you over as if you were naked. Guardian beams have a much higher "scratch damage" of two hearts (and even reducing it to that is hard), so they never stop being a threat.
• Sealed Badass in a Can: Link... eventually, on the Badass part. In the years leading up to the Age of Calamity, he was a warrior prodigy, deemed by the Master Sword to be worthy to wield it, and appointed as Princess Zelda's personal knight. One memory shows him metaphorically Atop a Mountain of Corpses of baddies (several of which were Silver Lynels), with Zelda chiding him over acting like he's invincible when his injuries after that throwdown were minor. In the game itself, he's majorly out of practice because he had to be sealed in the Shrine of Resurrection after sustaining mortal injuries defending Zelda after everything went horribly wrong during the Age of Calamity, and much of the game is spent getting him back up to strength.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: An old man Link meets early in the game reveals that 100 years prior, Ganon — now called the "Calamity Ganon" — attempted to conquer Hyrule, but was sealed away inside Hyrule Castle. However, it has only grown more powerful over the years and has begun spreading its evil influence across the ruined remnants of Hyrule.
• Sealed Evil in a Duel: Zelda is the only thing keeping Ganon trapped in Hyrule Castle, their ongoing battle preventing him from destroying the world.
• Sea of Sand: The Gerudo Desert is essentially a giant sandpit filling the southwest corner of the map, with a few rocky formations or weathered ruins poking out here and there. The sand is a not insignificant obstacle to travel, as Link will be slowed down by sinking into the loose sand unless he wears special sand boots, putting him at a distinct disadvantage to the lizalfos and moldugas that swim through the sand like water. Other than that, the only inhabited areas in the desert are Gerudo Town and Kara Kara Bazaar, built over the two largest oases in the desert.
• Second Hour Superpower: The four Sheikah Slate runes (Bombs, Cryonis, Magnisis, and Stasis) are acquired throughout the Great Plateau. Completing each Sheikah rune shine is required for getting the Paraglider, which itself is required to get down from the Great Plateau without dying.
• Secret Expanded Epilogue: There's a version of the ending that adds a bit more at the end. You get it by beating all the main story quests (excluding the ones added by the Champion's Ballad DLC), completing all the main dungeons, and getting Link's memories back.
• Secret-Keeper: Several NPCs in Gerudo Town either know immediately that Link is a man in disguise, or will eventually see through his disguise, including the shop keeper in the Gerudo Secret Club, a lonely, elderly, Gerudo, and Jules, a young Hylian visiting the town. All of them voluntarily keep quiet, which prevents Link from being immediately thrown out of town and allowing him to encounter the Gerudo chief Riju and complete his mission. Also, after completing the mission in the Yiga clan's hideout, Barta, a Gerudo guard who was being held captive there, will escape thanks to Link's actions. If Link was dressed as a man in the Yiga hideout, Barta will recognize him in Gerudo town despite him being disguised as a woman, but will not turn him in, explaining that she feels she owes him.
• Selective Magnetism:
  • The Magnesis rune will only move the one metallic object you have aimed it at. Justified in this case, as the rune is activated through an advanced Magitek tablet that can presumably detect exactly what object it is supposed to affect.
  • The metallic infrastructure of Goron City is not affected by Magnesis. This is either because it's a non-magnetic metal, or because most magnetic materials lose that feature when above a certain temperature.
• Self-Botched Catchphrase: After you defeat Master Kohga and recover the Thunder Helm, Yiga disguised as banana salesmen, in place of their usual "For the boss!", will exclaim "For the banana!" before correcting themselves.
• Self-Deprecation: The DLC includes a Tingle costume set. Wearing it makes people react to Link with fear and disgust.^note Because even the creators know that, despite being popular in Japan, Tingle is HATED with a passion by the west.
• Self-Duplication: Monk Maz Koshia, the final boss of The Champions' Ballad DLC, will being to split himself into nine copies in the second phase of his battle. Each of these copies can damage Link, although only one of them is the true Monk — the others go down in one hit. If all the copies are destroyed, Maz Koshia can summon more later.
• Self-Healing Phlebotinum: Unlike other weapons, if the Master Sword loses all durability it becomes inert for ten minutes, then reappears as good as new.
• Sequel Hook: In the best ending, Zelda states that Ganon is gone "for now", suggesting doubt that Hyrule has seen the last of him.
• Sequel Logo in Ruins: The logo features the same font as the franchise logo but is more weathered-looking, signifying the After the End setting. Furthermore, the logo also depicts the Master Sword lodged through the "Z" much like in the logo for A Link to the Past, except it is chipped and rusting much like it is briefly in-game.
• Sequence Breaking: Usually the game changes dialogue to recognize this.
  • Early on, if you avoid the Old Man (King Rhoam) and do the cold shrine on the Plateau without his help, he'll give you clothing that gives minor resistance to cold.
  • If you light Purah's blue flame furnace before talking to her, she'll abandon her initial gag of pretending to be a little girl and get right to business, while lighting Robbie's blue flame furnace early will lead to him recognising Link immediately, with no need to see his scars.
  • If you avoid Prince Sidon all the way to the Zora Throne Room; he'll apologize but explain that they can't see visitors now because they're trying to find the Hylian. He'll then do a double-take and realize that Link is said Hylian.
  • Some shrine quests actually cause their associated shrine to appear, but others just lead you to a hidden or out-of-the way shrine that's already on the map somewhere. It's entirely possible to find and complete these shrines without activating the quest at all. The player can still obtain the quests later, and they are immediately marked as completed if you do.
• Sequential Boss: The Blight Ganons all have two phases, with the second phase seeing them adding new attacks to their strategies and in one instance altering the Boss Room. The Final Boss uses two layers of this: not only is the initial Calamity Ganon fight split into two phases much like the Blight Ganons, it also precedes the Dark Beast Ganon fight. Also, if you go after Calamity Ganon before defeating all the Blight Ganons, you'll need to fight each one you haven't faced yet before getting to the Calamity. So, if you don't fight any of them, that's four boss fights in a row before the Final Boss.
• Set a Mook to Kill a Mook:
  • While most monsters are not hostile to each other, Taluses and Guardians will attack each other when they meet. This doesn't happen easily, however, as they aren't found in each other's vicinity and Taluses don't leave their spawning areas, but Guardians can be lured into following Link into a Talus' territory and instigating a battle in this manner.
  • Enemies are immune to friendly fire from each other's melee attacks, but not from ranged attacks. Thus, it's possible to position yourself so as to make the Mooks you're fighting absorb the arrow fire of the archers sniping at you, and when an enemy tries to throw a rock or barrel at you it's quite possible for them to miss and hit and injure or kill another foe.
  • Shooting down a beehive causes its residents to attack the closest living thing. By default, this is usually Link — but with careful sniping it's fairly easy to knock a hive down from a distance and send the bees swarming after an enemy instead. The bees won't typically do enough damage to kill a foe, but will still send monsters fleeing in panic (which is useful for both scaring sentries away from their posts and scattering groups of enemies) and can also help soften a foe by taking off a chunk of their health.
• Set Bonus: Certain Armors gives a set bonus effect when you wear all parts. Most need you to upgrade them twice by the Great Fairies beforehand. Similarly, combining multiple food types with the same buff (such as the "mighty" prefix) will yield a stronger result than using multiple items of the same type.
• Shield Bash:
  • Lynel shields, because they have blades built into their rims, will damage foes when parrying blows.
  • Like in Skyward Sword, shields can be used to parry projectiles, but it requires perfect timing. They can even reflect Guardian laser beams.
  • Keeses attack by headbutting Link (being fifty percent head), so a parry will wreck them for free.
• Shield-Bearing Mook: There are enemies that will use shields liberally to block your attacks. You can wait for them to drop their guard or you can also use a heavy weapon like an axe or claymore to knock them off balance or, if the weapon's attack stat is higher than the shield's defense, knock it out of their hands. Shocking enemies with the Shock Arrows will force them to drop their weapons and shield as well.
• Shield Surf: Link can use his shield to slide down mountainsides. However, doing so wears down a shield's durability very quickly unless done on soft snow or sand. Link also surfs on his shield when riding a sand seal across the Gerudo Desert, and thus during the fight against Vah Naboris.
• Shifting Sand Land: The southwestern section of Hyrule is comprised of the Gerudo desert, to which the Gerudo race has returned for the first time since Ocarina of Time. During the day, the environment becomes very hot, requiring you to prepare accordingly (whether via heat-reducing elixirs or equipment). At night, however, the temperature drops dramatically, requiring you to account for that if you're taking long treks through the wastelands. Walking across the sand is also less optimal than across grass or dirt, so it's recommended to wear Sand Boots (or even ride a Sand Seal) to go faster.
• Shipper on Deck:
  • It seems nearly everyone in Hyrule would be quite happy if Link decided to settle down with their daughter/sister/grandaughter/surrogate daughter. King Dorphan and Sidon are pretty enthused by Mipha's romantic intentions for Link despite the Interspecies Romance, and consider him family already. Impa is passively supportive of her grandaughter Paya's crush on him and takes care to talk her up in front of him. Urbosa is likewise openly encouraging about Link and Zelda growing closer and teasingly alludes to her support of them potientially shacking up as a couple.
  • Funnily enough, Paya herself is also supportive of Link/Zelda, despite her own infatuation with Link.
  • Link himself can act as The Matchmaker to a couple of npcs in a couple of sidequests.
• Ship Tease: Between Link and Zelda. Their relationship is fleshed out in this game; the backstory reveals that they didn't start off on the best of terms but eventually grew close. Paya, Impa's granddaughter, privately wonders if Link is in love with Zelda, and considers the pairing an excellent match despite having a crush on him herself. A sidequest reveals that Zelda is actually in love with Link. Kass tells the story tells of how a poet was in love with her, but she couldn't accept their feelings as she was in love with Link. Her love for Link is also what activates her powers (the Triforce); the developers made jokes and hinted at this several times. Even more so in the Japanese version, where the journal entries of the Adventure Log are written by Link himself. The sub-text heavily implies that Link reciprocates Zelda's feelings, especially later in the game. This was completely removed in the Western localizations.
• Shop Fodder: Unlike previous games, there is very little liquid cash just lying around in the field. Most of your rupees will come from selling items, and the vast majority (other than weapons and certain pieces of armor) can be sold anywhere. However, basically every item has some use in crafting, so this tension provides incentive for turning in sidequests for some extra income. Special mention to the various precious stones—while they can be crafted into jewelry in Gerudo Town, they are fairly expensive to enhance, and none of them carries unique effects. Better to find other equipment (which will likely confer Set Bonuses as well, unlike the headgear-only jewelry) and sell off the stones—unless the gems are needed to upgrade particular armor sets to maximum potential (for example, the Snowquill Armor requires a total of fifteen Rubies to reach Level Four defense). Diamonds are unique here, since they can be used to craft new Champions' weapons, preventing them from being Too Awesome to Use. The real shop fodder is the extremely common and conspicuous Luminous Stones; their only use is crafting the Radiant Set, and beyond that can be sold for a bit of cash or converted to diamonds at a rate of ten-to-one in Zora's Domain. This is a financial loss, but it provides an easy source of diamonds for Champions' weapons.
• Shout-Out:
  • Eiji Aonuma has stated that the game's art style takes inspiration from Japanese animation, though unlike The Wind Waker (which took cues from the old-school era) this game portrays its world in a gouache-inspired style that is more reminiscent of Studio Ghibli's filmography. This is most obvious in Kakariko village, which looks straight out of a Hayao Miyazaki film, and Impa bears a striking resemblance to Yubaba from Spirited Away. It's also very apparent with Vah Medoh's design, as the ancient airship covered in overgrowth carries a strong Castle in the Sky vibe to it. Not to mention Link's glider, default blue outfit and the post-apocalyptic setting littered with the wreckage of ancient killer robots is one big love letter to Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.
  • In the E3 2016 build, line of Sheikah text that appears when new rune abilities are downloaded into the Sheikah Slate translates to "NOW LOADING, DO NOT TURN OFF, ALL YOUR BASE ARE", with the "BELONG TO US" being cut off.^note In the final build, the text was changed to "MASTER USING IT AND YOU CAN HAVE THIS", referencing the quote from the Old Man when obtaining the White Sword in the first game.
  • The North American/Japanese box art alludes to Caspar David Friedrich's "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog".
  • One of the shields available to Link is a Sheikah artifact known as the Shield of the Mind's Eye.
  • If you step into the "lane", This is Snow-Bowling! There are rules!".
  • One of the Shrine Quests takes place around a "Mount Taran".
  • The Radiant gear set has Link in a mask much like that of a Lucha Libre, complete with a championship gold belt. At night it glows over your body like a skeleton and has the added bonus of making undead not attack you. Very reminiscent of El Santo and the countless cheesy movies where he battled vampires, mummies and more.
  • The Fire Rod shoots fireballs that repeatedly bounce off the ground, similar to Mario with a Fire Flower.
  • The fact that there's a sidequest involving two Goron named "Fugo" and "Rohan" seems too coincidental to not be a reference to Panacotta Fugo and Rohan Kishibe. For added points, Rohan is said to be a "Famous Goron Artist".
  • One of the DLC trials involves hunting down a larger, tougher Molduga known as the Molduking, which attacks by aggressively swimming towards anything in its territory and breaching (like all Moldugas do), but is distinguished by its extreme resilience, a number of lances and weapons stuck in its hide from previous attempts to kill it, and a white coloration as opposed to the usual dark brown.
  • The Master Sword glows blue in the presence of certain enemies.
  • Windblight Ganon's little flying attack organisms (AKA the spikes on its back) act a lot like the Nu Gundam's Fin Funnels, even forming an energy pyramid at one point (albeit for offense instead of defense.)
    • This may also double as a Xenogears reference due to Elly's gear Vierge using the same attack as inspiration.
  • When Vah Naboris (a massive quadrupedal robot) is on a rampage in the Gerudo desert, one civilian's idea to stop it is to tie its legs together.
  • The Voo Lota Shrine requires Link to climb up an extremely long ladder at the beginning.
  • One piece of promotional art◊ for the Champion's Ballad DLC depicting Link on the Master Cycle Zero has him recreating the famous AKIRA slide.
• Shown Their Work:
  • The Yiga Clan is a group of radical Sheikah defectors who also operate as ninjas. While they do use the stereotypical flair that ninjas are known for and frequently spawn in full gear on the overworld to attack, you'll also encounter them while they are disguised as generic NPCs like a traveler or merchant, which can cause many players to be caught by surprise. This is a trait that real life ninjas actually used to assassinate their targets since no one would suspect a peddler or a peasant.
  • Lightning strikes during storms can set fire to nearby trees and grass if struck. The same goes for Guardian lasers.
  • The desert region is very hot by day, which will sap Link's health unless he has protection from the heat. There's a certain set of clothes Link can obtain, which looks like something a person living in a real life desert would wear to beat the heat, and the clothes in the game give a bonus of heat resistance when the whole set is worn. Not only that, but going to the desert at night causes Link to feel chilly, just like how real life deserts can get extremely cold.
  • Death Mountain has a lot of lava everywhere, which makes the area very hot naturally. However, if Link gets too close to the lava, he'll actually catch on fire, which completely avoids the Convection, Schmonvection trope that most video games employ; it'll even set fire to his wooden gear, and immediately set off Bomb Arrows he tries firing. Not only that, but if Link sails in the air over the Death Mountain region, he'll actually burn up due to the air rising from the lava being dangerously hot.
  • The Heat Resistance required for Eldin and the Heat Resistance required for the Gerudo Desert are different. In Eldin, the atmosphere is being ignited by the close proximity to lava, so the "Flame Guard" type prevents that sort of conduction and convection. In Gerudo, the atmosphere is thin enough (due to low humidity) that the Sun is what's superheating Link, so the standard Heat Resistance protects against its radiation.
  • The gaits of the various animals, from scuttling lizards to striding herons to horses' shifts from walk to trot to canter to gallop, are amazingly realistic recreations of true animal locomotion. Even Vah Naboris's gait is the pace of a real camel - alternating between both left legs and both right legs - rather than mimicking the horses' walk.
• Sidequest: The game has a lot of them, with varying types of rewards such as food, armor, rupees, weapons, or even access to a shrine. Technically, one could count the entire game as a sidequest, since nothing is stopping you from rushing to the Final Boss as soon as you leave the Great Plateau. Even getting the Master Sword is completely optional, though it is required in order to see the full ending.
• Significant Anagram: The monk inhabiting the Magnesis Trial shrine is named Oman Au, which is an anagram of Aonuma (the game's producer). Some other monk names are also anagrams of developer names, with some people claiming it's the case for all of them.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Largely the reason for Link's status as a Chick Magnet; Mipha, Paya, and Zelda are each attracted specifically to his kindness and heroicism. Zelda in particular warms up to him after he protects her from Yiga assassins despite how cold she'd been to him previously.
• Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer: Princess Zelda never appeared in footage until the Game Awards footage, though it wouldn't be revealed to be her until the January 2017 Switch presentation. Though her voice was heard in the E3 trailer.
• Situational Sword: The Master Sword has an above average power of 30 at all times, and whenever it "breaks", it regenerates in just ten minutes. However, when put up against foes under the direct control of the Calamity, or Calamity Ganon itself, its strength DOUBLES and it gains a massive durability boost, which can make taking out the Blight Ganons trivial. In DLC, completing the Trial of the Sword averts this by enhancing the Master Sword, giving it a permanent strength stat of 60 and high durability.
• Sleepy Enemy:
  • During the nighttime, Bokoblins and Moblins lie down and go to sleep, remaining like that until dawn unless woken by noises, which allows Link to sneak around their camps and take them out in their sleep or steal their weapons. If woken, they'll remain awake and hostile as long as Link is in their field of sight; if he leaves their field of vision for long enough before dawn breaks, they'll give up looking after a while and return to sleep.
  • Hinoxes are large cyclopes found sleeping day and night in isolated spots in the wilderness. They're sound enough sleepers that, with some care, Link can climb right on top of their recumbent bodies to steal the weapons strung on their rope necklaces. They will turn hostile if awoken by repeated loud noises or an attack but, if they lose track of Link, they will simply head back to their spots, stretch, lie down and go right back to sleep.
• Sliding Scale of Content Density vs. Width: The game takes a much Wider approach to its design compared to the previous 3D Zelda games, especially the immediately preceding Skyward Sword.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The Hebra region, as well as the Gerudo Highlands. Indeed, travelling to any mountainous region above a certain altitude will cause Link's temperature gauge to drop, and he'll need to wrap up warmly or eat hot food to avoid losing health.
• Snowy Sleigh Bells: The song playing during the ice bowling minigame owes much of its wintery, Christmas-y feel to the sleigh bells that rhythm it.
• Soft Reboot: This game acts as the point in which the three branching timelines for the Zelda series post-Ocarina of Time converge, which combined with the fall of Hyrule allows later Zelda games to start from a relatively blank slate. It's still part of the same overall continuity, but is set up to no longer have the baggage of needing to set itself into an ultra-specific point in a predetermined series of events.
• Softer and Slower Cover: To emphasize the After the End version of Hyrule you explore, many classic Zelda songs such as the Main Theme, Zelda's Lullaby, the Temple of Time, etc., have been remixed into very slow and quiet piano pieces. Much like the ruins of Hyrule itself, the songs are so bare and skeletal that it can be somewhat difficult to recognize what they once were.
• So Near, Yet So Far: Played with. Hyrule Castle is one of the first things the player sees upon getting out into the main game world, and it's also one of the closest landmarks relative to that starting position. But once you complete the introductory Great Plateau sequence, you can in fact run straight to the castle and fight the Final Boss without doing any other story quests if you want. Granted, not only will this be an absurdly difficult thing to do, you will also miss out on all the plot explaining who Link is, what his relationship with Zelda was like, who the Champions were, etc. And you'll also miss the Golden Ending (although you can come back for it after defeating Ganon once, an approach favored by casual veterans).
• Spikes of Doom:
  • Tangles of vines with spikes as long as Link's arms are found across the overworld, typically blocking the path to something Link need — Korok Seed spots and treasure chests are common, and some Shrines and Towers are also overgrown with this stuff. They can't be broken with bombs or weapons and will harm Link on contact, but are also withered and dry and can be easily burned away if Link has access to fire.
  • There are spiky setpieces in many of the Shrines, requiring Link to tackle them with care, typically by finding a moveable object that can be used as a bridge. In particular, the DLC features a Shrine that is filled with them, and at that point Link has to overcome them without being hit due to him being a One-Hit-Point Wonder as long as he has the Obliterator in his hands.
• Spontaneous Skeet Shooting: While wandering around, Link can occasionally find spots where acorns are being tossed from trees in an arc or balloons appear. Engaging in a little target practice earns him a Korok Seed.
• Sprint Meter: The stamina gauge from The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword returns. It can even be upgraded.
• Starfish Robots: Guardians, walking or flying artillery that resemble a strange mix between an Octorok and a Beamos or a drone (or, outside of Zelda, a cross between Jomon pottery and the Omnidroid, an RC drone, or an anti-air gun, depending on the form), roam the world, posing a great threat to Link. Some can even be found in the starting area, though thankfully most of them are dead or at least legless.
• Stat Overflow:
  • Sleeping in a soft bed will not only revitalize you, but also grant you one yellow heart above your normal red hearts. Once lost, you can no longer regain it.
  • Certain "hearty" and "enduring" food items can temporarily grant a few extra hearts and stamina wheels respectively in addition to fully restoring the respective gauges.
  • Mipha's Grace replenishes all your hearts and gives you up to five extra hearts once you run out of hearts.
• Status Effects: The game has thee effects assigned to the Fire, Ice, Lightning trio. Fire burns, lightning stuns (along with causing you to drop your weapons), and ice freezes for a period of time based on the temperature of the area.
• Stealing the Credit: Downplayed on the Stealing part in the sidequest "Road to Respect", where a Goron asks you to go defeat a Igneo Talus in his place. Once you do, he offers to buy your achievement for 100 Rupees, plus you get to keep any of the valuable gems from defeating said Igneo Talus. So it's more of "Sold The Credit".
• Stealth Escort Mission: One Shrine quest has you following a Korok as he makes a pilgrimage to the shrine, but the catch is you can't let him see you. He gets attacked by beasts of the woods multiple times and you can't be seen if you kill them.
• Stealth Pun:
  • While Breath of the Wild may refer to either the wind or the game's emphasis on the wilderness, Breath also sounds like the word "breadth", in reference to Hyrule's massive size.
  • The Lord of the Mountain is heavily indicated by flavour text to be the reincarnation of Satoru Iwata. Supporting this is the fact that the Lord has four eyes. Iwata wore glasses, thus making him a "four-eyes".
  • The reward for getting all the Korok Seeds can also be seen as a crappy reward. And Hestu clearly gives a shit about you getting all the seeds.
• Sticks to the Back: Zig-zagged. Swords (both one-handed and two-handed) usually have either scabbards or straps, and spears sometimes have straps, but bows, shields, axes, hammers, maces, clubs and guardian/ancient weapons all stick to Link with no visible method of attachment.
• The Stinger: In the best ending which plays after the credits, Zelda notes that Ganon's defeat is only temporary, and thus won't be the last time Hyrule sees him. That said, she, along with Link, vows to work together with the rest of Hyrule to restore it to its former glory.
• Stock Food Depictions:
  • The food items that Link can gather in the wilds include shiny red apples, horn-shaped red peppers, clusters of bright yellow bananas, slender orange carrots, and various kinds of Cartoon Meat. Purchasable items include bright orange carving pumpkins and sticks of yellow butter. Palm fruit (coconuts) are an exception, as unlike typical depictions they're shown still within their green husks.
  • Cooked meals include triangular slices of flaky golden apple pie.
• Stock Sound Effects: The Blight Ganons use the same shrieking roar sound effect as the Cleric Beast from Bloodborne, as does Calamity Ganon if it's blasted by the Divine Beasts.
• Stolen Good, Returned Better: A strange variation; if you hurl a rusty weapon or shield at a Rock Octorok while it inhales, the Octorok will suck it up, crunch it around a little in its mouth, and then spit it out as a clean equivalent piece of gear, as if it ate the rust right off of it. Other gear is spat out as the same item, but also at full durability.
• Storming the Castle: The final dungeon is Hyrule Castle, where Calamity Ganon is, and Link must go in alone against the many enemies that inhabit the castle.
• Story Breadcrumbs: Along with the main plot, the game's backstory is pieced together in various ways. Namely, along with Link's various memories, there are also NPCs that knew him from 100 years ago (such as his other Zora-born Childhood Friend, Kodah).
• Strength Equals Worthiness:
  • Several monks' Shrine Quests make Link deal with dangerous situations to gain access to their shrines, which are just rooms where the monk rewards you for the outside challenge. Some of the Shrine Trials are literally called "Minor/Modest/Major Test of Strength", where Link has to defeat a Guardian Scout model II, model III or model IV respectively.
  • The Champions' Ballad DLC has the monk in the 5th Divine Beast testing you in combat to see if you are worthy of controlling the Master Cycle Zero.
  • The Trial of the Sword DLC puts Link through several rooms full of monsters, with no gear besides what he can scavenge within them. The purpose is to prove himself worthy of wielding the Master Sword at full power, which it normally enters only around Ganon-infected machines.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Explosions are much bigger than they are from previous games.
• Suddenly Voiced: This is the first main-series game^note Hyrule Warriors tested the waters of this trope with a Narrator, and most people would like to pretend that the Zelda CD-i games never existed to include comprehensible voice-overs (not counting Link's "Come on!" or Beedle's "Thank You!" in Wind Waker, which are more like sound effects). While Link remains a Silent Protagonist (or at best a Terse Talker from the tone of the conversation responses he might have), and characters still speak in the traditional text boxes, major cutscenes include full voice acting for the main cast, including Zelda herself.
• Sufficiently Advanced Bamboo Technology: The Sheikah Slate and the shrines where you use the Slate all have the appearance of plain stone with Tron Lines. The Slate essentially behaves like a modern tablet computer — you can 'download' maps to it at shrines and use it to execute certain abilities.
• Summon Magic: By way of technology — equipping a horse with the DLC Ancient Saddle will allow Link to teleport it Sheikah-style to his side whenever he whistles.
• Sundial Waypoint: Kass's riddle-songs reveal how to use this trope to locate a shrine near one of the Towers, as well as a sunken treasure chest, based on the direction in which a shadow is cast at a specific time of day. Two other Rito jointly provide clues for how to raise yet another shrine, based on when a gap in a shadow passes over its trigger-point.
• Super Drowning Skills: Bokoblins and Moblins cannot take to deep water very well. Bokoblins will die instantly if they fall in while Moblins will struggle for a few seconds before perishing. Because of this weakness, a viable tactic is to knock them into a river or the ocean. This can backfire somewhat with silver or gold ones — they still drown instantly, but the gems they drop sink, most likely making them unreachable. Surprisingly, Hinoxes are an aversion: It's possible to knock them off cliffs into the water where they will be able to swim much faster than you might expect, though they will drown after about a minute and will prioritize trying to kill you over swimming to shore.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: On meeting Link, Tula says that, on Sidon's orders, she has been searching for a Hylian non-stop and that she "certainly wasn't just floating around and splashing in the water for fun!"
• The Swarm:
  • Keese sometimes come in big groups. They will, however, fly away if Link kills a few of them.
  • Small swarms of bees attack anything nearby if their hive is destroyed. They're fairly slow and weak, though, and weapons can be used to discombobulate them.
• Swamps Are Evil: The Bottomless Swamp is an area of quicksand-like bogs that will suck down anything that walks into them, interspersed with giant stone skulls half-buried in the mire and dry areas covered by either stands of dead trees or large pools of seething Malice. The only living things there are a collection of monsters living in the largest stone skull and a giant flock of crows constantly wheeling overhead.
• Sword Beam: In addition to the series' classic full-health sword beam you can execute by "throwing" the Master Sword, we now also have the Windcleaver, usually dropped by defeated Yiga Blademaster, which fires a sword beam for its charged attack as opposed to Spin Attack all other swords have.
• Sword of Plot Advancement: Notably averted with the Master Sword. In every previous game where the Master Sword appears, Link must acquire it at some point in order to defeat Ganon. Here, however, the sword is merely a useful accessory with unusual mechanics. Moreover, while a main quest related to the sword does exist, the game doesn't go to any lengths to lead the player to it, instead providing clues in the form of various Non Player Characters who mention the sword in passing, with some giving information toward its location. Ultimately, it's entirely possible to complete the game without ever learning the sword exists.
• Symmetric Effect: The One-Hit Obliterator turns Link into a One-Hit-Point Wonder, but also allows him to One-Hit Kill any enemies with his melee attacks.
• Synchronized Swarming: When a swarm of bees is turned hostile, it forms itself into an X shape and flies towards Link. It will temporarily scatter if struck, but will quickly return to formation if it wasn't enough to defeat it.

T

• Take That, Audience!: The reward for the Herculean effort of collecting all 900 Korok Seeds is a joke at your expense for taking 100% Completion to an unreasonable extreme. Your "prize" is Hestu's Gift, which "smells pretty bad" and looks like a golden turd. Apparently all 900 seeds were actually Korok droppings all along.
• Take Your Time: Even though the game makes known several times that Calamity Ganon is soon going to regain his full power and destroy what is left of Hyrule, the player is free to spend dozens of hours exploring Hyrule and doing sidequests. Zelda's power won't fail until you arrive at the final boss area. The Old Man even encourages the exploration aspect, and it's one of the key aspects of the game design.
• Team Shot: Completing the main quest of the "Champions' Ballad", Kass gives you the group photo of the Champions. Link can hang it in his house on the upper bedroom wall.
• Teaser Equipment: Early on in the game, you can find an armor shop in almost every settlement in Hyrule. But even the least expensive piece from an armor set can cost several hundred rupees at a point when you'll be lucky to find red 20 rupee gems. Even in the mid- to late-game, when these armor sets are more affordable, the Ancient Armor set and various Ancient weapons sold at the Akkala Ancient Tech Lab can be this, as they not only cost lots of rupees but also require you to have components dropped by Guardians.
• Temple of Doom:
  • The Forgotten Temple at the bottom of Tanagar Canyon is filled with Decayed Guardians that will come to life as soon as Link draws near.
  • Certain shrines can contain dangerous traps such as bottomless pits, fields of spikes or swinging, spiked metal balls, or have Guardian Scouts patrolling within.
• Tennis Boss: Link can knock back any laser beam, from Mooks and bosses alike, but he has to use his shield. It still qualifies for the trope for two reasons: if you don't time it right, said laser beam will destroy your shield^note with two exceptions: the Hylian Shield and the Ancient Shield (and possibly kill you as well); but if you do time it right, you can pull it off with a pot lid. Particularly noteworthy is that this is how Link killed a rogue Guardian in the backstory. Even Skywatcher Guardians, which many believe to be unparriable due to the normally impossible angle, aren't exempt from this, so long as you climb to their flying height before aggravating them.
  • You can do so with regular Bokoblins here; if you time it right, you can bat away their rock projectiles.
  • Also possible with the rocks of Octoroks, although they can be reflected by simply holding out a shield. Parrying them does conserve shield durability, however.
  • Subverted with Fireblight Ganon. When it enters his second phase, it will protect itself with an invincible barrier and begin charging a very dense fireball. If you hit the fireball point-blank, it will explode, but if you bat it back with a Perfect Guard, the fireball will explode on the boss, breaking the barrier and stunning it.
  • Also subverted and played straight with Waterblight Ganon. When he raises the water level in its' second phase, he gains an attack where it pelts you with Cryonis ice blocks. You're supposed to shatter the blocks with Cryonis or intercept them with an arrow, but you can freeze them with Stasis and send them barreling back towards Waterblight Ganon, knocking him out of the air and stunning them; he also has the Sheikah laser attack shared by all five major dungeon bosses, which can be parried like normal.
  • As per tradition, Calamity Ganon itself treats you to this. It puts up an impenetrable shield in the second phase that none of your weapons can pierce (not even the Ancient Arrows). There's only a few ways to bypass such, such as executing a perfect sidestep when it uses its melee attacks to enter Flurry Rush, or reflect its Frickin' Laser Beams or fireball attack it shares with Fireblight Ganon with the shield parry. Or fire off Urbosa's Fury or Daruk's Protection. It also very briefly lowers the shield for a split second each time it's about to attack, so it's possible to fire a barrage of arrows at his head if you time it so they connect just as he's about to fire his laser at you and his body darkens.
• Test of Pain:
  • In the quest "Test of Will", Link is challenged by three Goron brothers to sit on a super-heated rock without leaving a designated area or passing out from the heat. If he can endure the heat of the rock for long enough, he is rewarded with access to Joloo Nah Shrine.
  • In order to demonstrate that he is worthy of wielding the Master Sword, Link must allow the sword to drain some of the life energy from his body. If he attempts to claim the sword with less than 13 full Heart Containers, the sword will kill him before he can claim it.
• Testosterone Poisoning: The gorons running the Gut Check Challenge mini-game up near the Eldin/Akkala border demonstrate a satirical overdose of machismo, acting like a cross between bombastic pro wrestlers and over-enthusiastic crossfitters.
• Thematic Sequel Logo Change: Just as the game harkens back to the first game's non-linear structure, its Japanese logo harkens back to the pre-Ocarina of Time games' logos, where the Japanese title of the series is at the forefront instead of the English translation. The international logo shows the Master Sword in the 'Z' much like A Link to the Past, but with chips and patches of rust; the rest of the logo is chipped, and a lone Silent Princess flower grows on it.
• Theme Naming: Has this in spades:
  • The Divine Beasts' names are corruptions of the names of sages from Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker: Darunia, Ruto, Nabooru, and Medli. They're even piloted by someone of the same race as the sage. Vah Ruta and Vah Naboris are explicitly mentioned as being named after Ruto and Nabooru, so the same is likely true of the other two as well.
  • Enforced by the Bolson Construction Company, whose company policy says that they only hire people whose names end in "son".
  • Several Sheikah are also named after fruit, which may explain the offshoot Yiga's obsession with bananas (hinted in the DLC to be a Sheikah trait as well).
  • NPCs in Hateno generally derive their names from plants.
  • The Zora's names' take on a more musical theme. While a bit more obscure in English, The Royal Zora family consisting of Dorephan, Mipha, and Sidon (named 'Shido' in Japanese), when combined with the word Zora, matches so closely to the solfège scale that it's likely intentional. Spelled out in full, Do-re-phan (ドレファン), Mi-pha (fa) (ミファー), Zo (so)-ra (ゾーラ), Si (ti)-don (シド).
  • One side quest has you meet up with Sesami who got separated from his friends Canolo, Flaxel, Palme, and Oliff, all based on cooking oil.
  • There are a bunch of shrines that pit Link against a Guardian, all called "A __ Test of Strength." The blank is filled in with an adjective starting with M (in increasing difficulty: Minor, Modest, Major).
  • Most Gerudo names are based on some form of cosmetics or makeup, which seems appropriate for an all-female race.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: If you really want to, you can waste Urbosa's Fury or special weapons on low-level threats and wild animals. This can mess with their drops, espcially if fire weapons or Bomb Arrows are involved. Plus there's the whole Too Awesome to Use aspect of said weapons.
• This Is My Side: At the Hateno Ancient Tech Lab, Purah and Symin have very different working habits as Purah's side of the lab is unkept and disorganized while Symin's is neat and tidy; it got so bad that Purah drew chalk lines on the ground splitting the lab into parts. Yes, that's "lines", plural. The lines show that the lab was split roughly in half, but on two occasions, Purah redrew the line to make her side bigger.
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: The Stasis rune tends to fall into this trope outside of shrine puzzles. While Cryonis, Magnesis, and Remote Bombs can be used in most circumstances, Stasis is really only useful for the very specific puzzles designed for it while inside Shrines. Most of the large rocks or obstacles that can be moved via freezing them with Stasis and then overloading them with kinetic energy are just as easily manipulated with Octo Balloons, which spares your weapon durability. And even in combat, the upgraded Stasis+ rune can halt enemies in their tracks... but the window is small, and the spell only works on one enemy at a time, followed by a recharge period.
• Throw Down the Bomblet:
  • The Remote Bomb runes allow Link to create a spherical or cubical bomb that can be detonated remotely. There's an infinite supply of them, but there's a recharge time for each use.
  • By scattering some elemental Chu Jellies around a bomb, the jellies are set off by the bomb and any enemies inside the blast radius may suffer elemental damage as well as explosive damage.
• Throne Room Throwdown: If Link defers from clearing a Divine Beast (or several) before heading to Hyrule Castle, he will battle its respective Blight Ganon in the castle's throne room. Calamity Ganon itself is sealed in that room, but this trope is instead averted for it because upon emerging it shatters the floor and sends it and Link to a deeper pit beneath the castle for their duel.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Most of your weapons can be thrown at enemies to do critical hits. However, hitting an enemy this way will immediately break the weapon, meaning it's best to do this with weapons that are about to break anyway. Boomerangs (which function like short swords) won't break if used this way, but have to be manually caught on the return trip. The Master Sword is the only bladed weapon that cannot be thrown, but if Link has all of his hearts full, he can throw beams from it.
• Thriving Ghost Town: Actually averted by many of the towns and cities Link visits, especially Hateno Village, which has many more residential homes than it does businesses and stores. Some of them lean more into this trope than others, though, particularly Lurelin Village and Zora's Domain.
• Thunderbolt Iron: Whatever it is that ancient technology is made of, star fragments are clearly a part of it as they are needed for fully upgrading the ancient gear.
• Tiered by Name: The equipment that enemies use comes in various quality tiers containing multiple weapon types each, which are distinguished from each other by the prefix added to their names:
  • Bokoblin and Moblin weapons start with basic gear, then moves into "Spiked Bokoblin/Moblin" gear augmented with spikes of bone, and culminates in "Dragonbone Bokoblin/Moblin" gear strengthened with fossils.
  • Lizalfos gear is the most inconsistent — it starts with the simple "Lizal" tier, but the two afterwards don't have unifying name themes, instead using ad hoc adjectives as befits the specific weapons (i.e., Lizal Spear -> Enhanced Lizal Spear -> Forked Lizal Spear).
  • Lynel weapons start with basic "Lynel" equipment, move to "Mighty Lynel" equipment, and finish with "Savage Lynel" gear.
  • Guardian equipment is marked by the simplest naming system, as its ranks as "Guardian", "Guardian+", and "Guardian++".
• Time Abyss: This is the first game in the Zelda franchise to actually tell us how much time has passed between Ganon’s previous resurrection and the most recent one. It’s 10,000 years. And this is at the other end of the timeline that started with the founding of Hyrule. This means that the Kingdom has existed continuously at this point for an absolute minimum of 80,000 years.
• Time Stands Still: Stasis causes an object to be frozen in time temporarily. Objects affected by Stasis store kinetic energy, meaning multiple weak blows dealt to an object in Stasis will be combined into a single, powerful blow, allowing heavy objects to be moved once they unfreeze. Getting Stasis+ from Purah relatively early in the main story chain lets you do this to monsters as well, albeit for a shorter duration.
• Title Drop: In the "The Champions' Ballad" DLC:
  Kass: Let not the sound leave horses riled. Breathe in the breath of the wild.
• Toggling Setpiece Puzzle: The four Divine Beasts have a very advanced design that allows the carrier of the Sheikah Slate to alter the placement or position of major parts, or even the position of the Beast as a whole, in order to solve puzzles of this type. In all cases, this can be done by accessing the map menu, and mastering this usage is the only way to access and activate all terminals that allow Link to regain control of the Beasts, freeing it from Calamity Ganon's influence.
  • Vah Naboris: Link can move the large cylinders inside the big central room, which not only opens certain sideway exits while blocking others but also controls the upper circuitry. Certain doors and mechanisms will only trigger when you arrange the cylinders in the way that connects the wires properly, allowing the green-colored electric charge to reach the required areas.
  • Vah Medoh: Link can toggle the angle of the Beast's wings, though both at the same time and not individually. This allows the young hero to move certain gizmos inside that are too heavy to push manually, as well as allow wind to activate mechanisms when they're positioned at certain angles.
  • Vah Ruta: Link can adjust the angle and height of the Beast's elephant-like trunk, which is permanently expelling water, so he can bring said element onto specific parts and make the aimed gizmos move or operate as soon as they receive it.
  • Vah Rudania: The toggle command is the simplest in terms of execution, but also the most significant in its outcome. The Beast, due to its lizard-like shape, can either stay positioned in the pool of magma at the heart of Death Mountain or cling onto one of the claw-like rock peaks surrounding that center. Shifting into the latter position will make the whole dungeon tilt itself 90 degrees, thus rearranging certain objects due to gravity and allowing Link to use the walls as floors and vice versa, granting access to parts that would be unreachable from the default position. However, there will also be parts that can only be reached when what you're walking onto is the floor, so you'll have to know when to make the Beast revert to the basic position.
  • The Final Trial dungeon, accessed during the climax of the Champions' Ballad DLC, allows Link to toggle the direction of all moving setpieces (clockwise or counterclockwise), which becomes important as several individual mechanisms will only work when the moving setpieces are rotating in either direction. This also influences how Link deals with the four elements (each previously present in one of the Divine Beasts), thus also invoking All the Worlds Are a Stage.
• Toilet Humor: If you go through the bother of collecting all 900 Korok seeds, Hestu will give you "Hestu's Gift", which is a gleaming mound of Korok poop, which the game points out "smells pretty bad". Considering the Korok Seed's text description comments on its aroma and it's shaped vaguely like droppings itself, all Korok seeds may actually be Korok poop.
• Too Awesome to Use:
  • Better weapons and equipment can fall into this for some, especially rare ones found in chests. Ancient Arrows can can One-Hit Kill most non-boss enemies, up to and including Guardians. However, they are extremely rare to find, and to make them, the player needs to gather ancient materials which only drop from the aforementioned Guardians. It should also be noted that using an Ancient Arrow against anything except a Guardian or a boss also destroys its loot, so you don't get anything by killing enemies this way, making you want to use the arrows even less.
  • Fortunately, not the case with Champion's Weapons, which can be reforged. All they need is one diamond, a certain lesser weapon of the same kind, and five of some common material like flint or wood.
• Too Dumb to Fool: Bokoblins, Moblins, and Lizalfos can be fooled when Link wears the correct headgear to disguise himself. However, he should steer clear from Chuchus and Keese, as their simple, animalistic aggression will blow his cover. This makes mixed monster camps harder to trick if those two types of monsters are around.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • It's possible for a Yiga Blademaster to appear before you during a thunderstorm, and he will get struck by lightning, defeating him instantly and giving you Mighty Bananas and a Windcleaver with no effort on your part. Similarly, enemies in Death Mountain can be armed with bomb arrows, which—because of the superheated air—explode in their faces when they attempt to shoot at you.
  • A Hylian couple, Tye and Sorelia, will always stay in the same general area searching for silent princess flowers. They're being menaced by Bokoblins, but you can kill the monsters and rescue them — but they don't learn a thing or change their patterns. Every time a blood moon appears, they'll be menaced by Bokoblins again, no matter how many times you rescue them.
• Took a Level in Badass: Several staple enemies of the series have got an upgrade.
  • Octoroks are now extremely good at Leading The Target and can hit Link with precision from very long distances. They give you time to prepare, though, since it won't be until after their third shot that they start doing this.
  • Hinox were originally just normal Mooks in earlier games, and were only slightly larger than Link or other enemies. Here, they're gigantic and act as Miniboss-level enemies.
  • While Lynels were always among the strongest basic enemies in the games they appeared in, here they are Bosses In Mook Clothing who can use bows (complete with special arrows that can hit you even if it should logically be impossible), shields, and blades in addition to breathing fire, and taking them on unprepared is suicide. Their strongest variant has more health than the final boss!
• Towering Flower: Skull Lake is filled with giant purple flowers growing just beneath the surface of the water. They vary in size, but even the smallest ones have petals comfortably as long as Link is tall. The same flowers can be found near Malanya's spring.
• Trademark Favorite Food: All members of the Yiga Clan are banana fanatics, favoring the attack-boosting "Mighty Bananas" specifically (since they're the only banana item in the game). They drop bananas when defeated, and in the stealth section of their hideout, you can throw bananas to lure them out of your way. (Bringing some with you for this purpose is unnecessary, thanks to the enormous pile of bananas stashed in an upper section of their hideout.) This is apparently inherited from the ancient Sheikah they broke off from, as the monk Maz Koshia in the DLC will also be distracted by Mighty Bananas (only once, though) if you drop them in the fight against him.
• Tragic Mistake: This drives the entire plot. King Rhoam decided to follow the same plan that defeated Ganon 10,000 years ago to the absolute letter, including the use of the Divine Beasts and Guardians. Unfortunately, Ganon was ready for this, causing the Great Calamity.
• Translation with an Agenda: The English localization for the controversial "Special Delivery" quest portrays Finley and Sasan's relationship as reciprocally romantic, something lacking in the Japanese version; and inserts entire sentences of dialogue in an attempt to justify the romance as being OK on the grounds of Finley (a Zora child) being older than Sasan (an adult Hylian) — resulting in many players and critics being taken aback by the implications.
• The Trees Have Faces: The trees of the Lost Woods have wide, leering faces formed by jagged eye- and mouth-like openings in their hollow trunks. This comes into play in one of the three Korok trials, where Link must follow a precise path and leaving it will warp him back to the beginning; the correct path is found by following the "hungry trees", which have large iron nuggets jammed into their "mouths". At the end of the same trial, Link must also "feed" one such tree by placing a shield into its mouth.
• Trick Arrow: Ice, Fire, Bomb, and Shock arrows are available as ammo, as well as Ancient Arrows, which do massive damage to Guardians and act as a Disintegrator Ray to all organic non-boss enemies.
• Trick Shot Puzzle: There are two variants of this. Either the projectile is spherical and you have to hit a button at the right time/make ice pillars in the right place/move the platform just right to bounce it, or the projectile is one you have to use Stasis on and hit with delayed momentum to send it flying the right way.
• Tron Lines: Everything built by the ancient Sheikah 10,000 years ago has these. Bonus points for even being the exact same colors as the Trope Namer, though the usage is different. Orange is simply deactivated instead of "evil", and blue is just active instead of "good". Magenta is not part of the original tech's function, so if you see magenta lines on anything it means it has been taken over by Calamity Ganon.
• Truce Zone: Monsters do not aggro near towns or stables, due to various protections on them. For example, all stables are protected by Malanya, so enemies turn away or remain peaceful near them.

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