Trivia / The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: While King Bulblin is the Trope Namer for "I Fight for the Strongest Side!", the quote itself is actually a bit different; it is "I follow the strongest side!".
• Cancellation: In Japan, the GameCube version of the game was cancelled... for on-the-shelf retail, at least. It was officially sold via Nintendo's online store, although rumor has it that Nintendo almost entirely cancelled it like other late GameCube titles that were converted for Wii release such as Super Paper Mario. The Wii U remake is based more closely on the GameCube version, technically making it the first time it was ever sold new at Japanese retailers.
• Creator Backlash: A minor case as he doesn't dislike the game nor think it's bad by any means, but Shigeru Miyamoto claimed that for Twilight Princess, "it felt like there was something missing." In context, he was discussing the game alongside Super Mario Galaxy as examples of Nintendo being simultaneously "able to do some things that were very new and were very unique" but also feeling "somewhat conservative in terms of how far we branched out with design," implying that he wished Twilight Princess pushed the envelope in being more adventurous and "different" than what they reached for the final product.
• Creator's Favorite:
  • Eiji Aonuma had admitted to Telma being his favorite character in the game, to the point he wishes that the character got her own amiibo for the HD release alongside Wolf Link and Midna.
  • If Hyrule Historia is any indication, this was the reason that Malo got his own shop.
• Defictionalization: To celebrate the release of Twilight Princess HD, Nintendo of America shared a recipe for the soup Link inadvertently helps Yeto make at Snowpeak Ruins (minus a Reekfish equivalent), and encouraged players to make a batch.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Series producer Eiji Aonuma considers Twilight Princess to be one of his top three favorite games in the series according to an interview with GameInformer, since it was the first time he had attempted to outdo Ocarina of Time.^note His other two favorite titles are The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
• Development Gag:
  • The Wii U Updated Re-release's Hero Mode flips the overworld around horizontally, a reference to how the Wii port did the same thing to accommodate for a primarily right-handed gaming audience using motion controls.
  • Despite a magic meter not being in the final game, it was still possible to make Green Chu Jelly in the Wii version of the game, though the game wouldn't acknowledge it if you did so. In the HD re-release for the Wii U, rather than remove this entirely, it was kept and now has flavor text that will acknowledge its uselessness.
• Dummied Out:
  • The game was supposed to use the traditional magic meter, but it was scrapped. Evidence of this still remains; the back of the game box shows a green meter in the screenshots and the game itself has some Green ChuChus (which spawn via an oversight in the Wii version of the game), which would restore your magic (in theory). Since there is no magic system, drinking them has the same effect as drinking water, a.k.a. nothing.
  • Also, on some copies of the game disc, one can find a few different enemies that were removed — including a golem made of Gorons.
• Flip-Flop of God: Link's age in this game. Aonuma has at times indicated that he's only 16; furthermore, Link is designed to be around the age of his "Adult" counterpart from Ocarina of Time, which can be 16, 17, or even 19 depending on which source from Nintendo you're talking about; furthermore, certain lines from developer Kobayashi in ''Hyrule Historia'' imply that Link is slightly older in ''Twilight Princess'' than in ''Skyward Sword''.
• God Never Said That: Sheik's design in Super Smash Bros. Brawl was created by the Twilight Princess art team as a hypothetical appearance. However, many people took this to believe Sheik was intended to appear in Twilight Princess, but nothing has ever supported this.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The only time this game was digitally available was the HD remaster on the Wii U eShop which has since shut down. The only way to play this game now is to own a physical copy. The Wii version is the more affordable version of the game, costing only 20 dollars or less while the Gamecube and Wii U versions prices are sky high, costing at about 150 dollars or more.
• Killer App: Like Ocarina of Time before it, Twilight Princess was heavily hyped as one of the greatest games of all time, and became one of the best-selling games in the series and helped introduce many newcomers to Zelda; in fact, it was sold with 3 out of 4 Wii systems at launch.
• The Original Darrin: After being replaced by Hikari Tachibana from The Wind Waker to The Minish Cap, Jun Mizusawa returns to voice the story's main Zelda.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Akira Sasanuma voices the story's main Link, with Nobuyuki Hiyama stepping down from the role and instead voicing the Hero's Shade.
  • Hironori Miyata replaces Takashi Nagasako as the voice of Ganondorf.
• Post-Script Season: Twilight Princess acts as this for the "Hero of Time Saga". Its predecessor Wind Waker neatly wrapped up the saga by showing the consequences of the Hero of Time's adventures in the future and having a Central Theme of letting go of the past. Twilight Princess itself would originate as a direct sequel to Wind Waker, but then-scarce fan support for the latter would lead it to be retooled early on to an alternate Distant Finale to the saga, showing the consequences of the Hero of Time being sent back to the past in the timeline leading to Majora's Mask.
• Referenced by...: Princess Kenny's outfit in South Park: The Stick of Truth is a Whole Costume Reference to Zelda's outfit in this game.
• Role Reprise: Jun Mizusawa returns to voice Zelda eight years after she last voiced her in Ocarina of Time.
• Refitted for Sequel: The idea of blowing into special grass to summon Epona was first thought up for Ocarina of Time, but was deemed redundant due to the titular instrument.
• Shrug of God: Even Eiji Aonuma himself doesn't know the meaning of Zant's scene at the end of the game, as the leader of the team that created the cutscenes was known for being a bit of a lone wolf. Nevertheless, he had immense faith in him and didn't say anything about the scene itself, even though he didn't understand it.
• Swan Song: The GameCube version, as it was the last game on the system published by Nintendo, the last game released for it in Japan, and came out weeks after it came out on its successor.
• Throw It In!: Ordon Village was developed for the E3 2006 demo and wasn't originally meant to be in the actual game, but Shigeru Miyamoto put it in the game with a three-day prologue to introduce the game's mechanics.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The Zelda team originally planned to create a sequel to the The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, but declining sales of the series led to it being scrapped in favor of creating a more realistic "American Zelda" that would instead be a sequel to Ocarina of Time, in order to better appeal to the market where the franchise was still at its healthiest.
  • The story was originally going to take place a few decades after the events of the N64 installments, to allow for several character cameos. This was scrapped, with Twilight Princess becoming a more distant sequel taking place over a century later, though some references to now-deceased Ocarina characters exist in the final game.
  • Koji Kondo planned on there being more music done with a live orchestra, presumably the same amount that Super Mario Galaxy ended up having. He had to put such plans aside because he ran into problems with Variable Mix among other things.
  • The Twilight Realm was originally going to be a Deliberately Monochrome world.
  • There was also originally going to be a magic meter, as can be seen on the Wii version's box. Unused Midna dialogue suggests that magic would be required to transform into Wolf Link and back. As a leftover of this, Green Chu Jelly can still be created in the Wii version if a Blue Chu and a Yellow Chu merge, but it is useless and lacks even an item description and Item Get! text; it returns in HD as a Development Gag, where it does get some flavor text directly acknowledging the item's lack of use.
  • The companion game, Link's Crossbow Training, was meant to be a direct sequel akin to Majora's Mask. However, Miyamoto wasn't interested in the story ideas the developers had, so he mandated it a simple spin-off to take advantage of the Wii Zapper, much to the developer team's disappointment.
  • Link was originally going to be able to ride the goats he herds. Word of God is that, while not an implemented feature, Link does still know how to do this in-canon.
  • The trailer shows Link battling what appears to be a Moblin enemy that carries a large hammer, but it does not appear in the final game.
  • At one point in development, Impaz was intended to be a Gender Flip incarnation of Impa called "Old Man Impa".
  • This video features early concept designs for Midna. Early screenshots also show her hair as green and red-orange rather than a lighter orange throughout. The character was also a later addition in the game's development, only being created after Miyamoto said someone should be riding Wolf Link to make the model look less boring.
• Word of God: The reason for Zant's change in personality when he's confronted is that he was given more characterization later in development.
  Yoshiyuki Oyama: This is kind of a tangent, but Zant received a lot more characterization in the end, and that's why we had the last boss battle against Zant end on a bit of comical note.