Trivia / The Legend of Zelda

• Baby Name Trend Starter: The name "Zelda" had been out of vogue for decades by the time The Legend of Zelda came out. Now it's a fairly common name thanks to the perennial popularity of the series, with a particularly big spike in babies named Zelda after Breath of the Wild released. Robin Williams' daughter Zelda Williams is a famous example of someone named after the character. For the record, the character herself was named after a famous person, Zelda Fitzgerald.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: The famous "It's dangerous to go alone! Take this" line is often misquoted as "It's dangerous to go alone! Here, Take this".
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Shigeru Miyamoto considers the game to be his favorite Zelda game.
• Feelies: The game came with a poster-sized map which had the locations of most of the dungeons and could be used for taking notes. Much to the general annoyance of people who owned the original, this map has not been re-released with any of the remakes.
• Manual Misprint:
  • The North American manual states that Pols Voice "hates loud noise", referring to the fact that, in the Famicom version of the game, they can be killed by blowing into the microphone on the second controller, which isn't present on non-Japanese controllers. They're weak to arrows in this version instead. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening reconciled the difference by also making them weak to the Ocarina.
  • The manual claims that fairies released from defeated enemies will fully heal Link. However, this is only true for fairies found at springs (which don't require Link to fight any enemies), while the fairies randomly dropped by enemies only heal three hearts.
  • The manual describes the blue candle as "good for one screen only", while the red candle "can light up rooms for several screens". This could either be interpreted as the blue candle being consumed with each use, or the red candle lighting up multiple rooms at once with a single use, but neither interpretation is correct. The true distinction is that the blue candle can only be used once per screen, while the red candle can be used multiple times on a single screen.
  • The manual's maps of Level 1 and Level 2 show pictures of the correct corresponding Goriya colors (red in Level 1 and blue in Level 2), but the accompanying text blurbs mix up the colors, listing blue Goriyas in Level 1 and describing red Goriyas as stronger in Level 2.
  • The North American manual erroneously claims that using the whistle after fully completing the Triforce will warp Link to the entrance of Level-9. This is a heavily-botched interpretation of the Japanese manual, which correctly explains that the whistle will warp Link to the entrance of any dungeon he's completed.
• Tie-In Cereal: In 1989, the Nintendo Cereal System was released. It was made with 2 bags of cereal, one based on Super Mario Bros. and the other on The Legend of Zelda, and the box was made to look like a TV, the screen showing each game on each side.
• Urban Legend of Zelda: The game being one of, if not the, first to have a New Game Plus in the form of a second quest gave rise to rumors that one could access a third quest, usually after a ridiculous number of playthroughs, such as nine or eleven. A close examination of the ROM data reveals that there are only two quests in the game. A rather obvious clue to the falsity of the rumor is the line given at the closing credits of the second quest: "End of The Legend of Zelda".
• What Could Have Been:
  • Early design documents reveal that the game was originally going to be a Mario game, called Adventure Mario.
  • The game originally was going to be set in a more modern theme and Link would have the ability to travel to the future. The Triforce were also going to be computer chips instead of artifacts and Link's name was supposed to have meant a "link" between the present and the future. Today, Link's name is thought to refer to him being a link between the game and the player. Later games such as Skyward Sword and Breath of the Wild would end up making use of Science Fantasy elements, albeit with a more Magitek sort of look to them to keep them from seeming too out-of-place amidst the series' common visual stylings.
  • There was going to be Christianity in the Zelda mythos, but the idea was scrapped and the goddesses were used later on. However, the cross is still used as a design on Link's shield and on the Book of Magic, which is a Bible in the Japanese version.
  • The first old man in the game offered a choice between the weakest sword and the weakest boomerang earlier in development — far enough along that screenshots even exist of this version — rather than just the former as seen in the final version. His text matched this choice and Clyde "Tomato" Mandelin's first Legends of Localization book translates it as "It's dangerous to go alone. Take the weapon of your choosing."
  • At first, Koji Kondo wanted to use an 8-bit rendition of Maurice Ravel's Bolero as the Title Screen theme. However, the tune wasn't in the public domain back in 1986 yet, and Nintendo didn't want to pay the rights. So he modified the timing of the "Overworld" theme and used that instead. And the rest is history.
  • According to early screencaps, the Triforce was once called the "Power Triangle".
  • Ganon was originally designed with a vampire motif before being changed to the boar/pig wizard design he has in the final version. Silver Arrows being his weakness also played into the vampire motif since they are typically depicted as being vulnerable to silver based weaponry. It wasn't until The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time where Ganon's weakness was changed to the Light Arrows and Master Sword.
  • There were plans for a Game Boy Color port by Capcom before they decided to develop the Oracle duology.
  • The North American release was originally planned to feature a black cover, like most early NES games. Also it was simply called Legend of Zelda, without the The.

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