King Harkinian: "Zelda, I wonder what the Triforce tastes like."
Zelda: "You've got to be kidding."
Zelda: "You've got to be kidding."
— "Link Tries Ritual Head Separation"
A YouTube Poop series created by iteachvader, chronicling the humorous misadventures of King Harkinian, as he runs the Kingdom of Hyrule with Link, Zelda, Gwonam, and other characters in the Legend of Zelda CD-i video games.
The series expands upon the existing cast and setting of the video games, adding new characters (including crossing over with other media such as Star Wars, I. M. Meen, and Ace Attorney), and giving new personalities to existing characters. Most episodes are under two minutes in length, focusing on a short situation or gag, while longer special episodes build upon an overarching storyline throughout the series.
Adventures in Hyrule had its original run last for over five years, airing 74 episodes across six seasons, before coming to an end in September 2017. A few additional episodes have been released starting in 2022. Most of the series can be watched on YouTube here
. iteachvader also maintains a wiki containing character information and episode transcripts.
This series provides examples of:
- Accidental Hero: King Harkinian in "Gwonam Buys an X-Wing on eBay". When Harkinian steals Gwonam's new X-Wing and flies it into space out of excitement, he winds up flying inside the Death Star and blowing it up with the help of Gwonam.
- Aliens Speaking English: Doubly subverted in "Trouble in the Ison Corridor". When an impatient King Harkinian asks a disembodied voice speaking in an alien language (represented with Elder Futhark runes) to speak in English, it shouts 'Ugh, for God's sake!' before sending Harkinian's ship to a lava planet.
- Art Evolution: The first few episodes still retain the series' high quality sentence-mixing, but with little-to-no other editing. Later episodes, on the other hand, include proper character movement (though this is limited to the original video games' animations), much more prominent and professional editing, and even an original soundtrack.
- Art Shift: The "Harkinian Goes to Court" series of episodes have a noticeable lack of sentence-mixed dialog, instead using text dialog boxes typical of Ace Attorney games.
- As Long as It Sounds Foreign: The Hyrulese language is mostly just garbled-up snippets of character dialog, with a few references such as 'Doofenshmirtz' and 'Obi-wan' mixed in.
- Cool Starship: The ships that Gwonam buys, which all come from Star Wars. There's also I.M. Meen's Star Destroyer.
- Dark and Troubled Past: King Harkinian's sister was kidnapped by I.M. Meen years ago, never to be seen again.
- Darker and Edgier:
- "Eye for an Eye", which delves into King Harkinian's past, revealing that I.M. Meen took his sister away from him.
- To an extent, "Trials of a New Era" also. King Harkinian goes to a mountain to find inner peace, following the events of "Harkinian Goes to Court". When Gwonam comes to talk sense into him, he remarks that he can't go back and face Zelda after all he's done. He ends up turning himself in to the police, and spending an indefinite amount of time in prison.
- Deliberate VHS Quality: Used in "Hyrule Visits 1993" to represent the time period.
- The Ditz: Link and King Harkinian (though the latter not as much as the former).
- Early-Installment Weirdness: In earlier episodes, King Harkinian was an avid brony, and Link was a homosexual - they also feature more nonsensical plots and Fourth Wall-breaking. iteachvader has since denounced these early episodes as products of his old sense of humor.
- Gone Horribly Right: Gwonam successfully manages to repel the planet that King Harkinian crashed into the Earth in "When Gwonam's Rage Breaks." Unfortunately, he ends up taking a sizeable chunk of the Earth itself along with it.
- Heel–Face Turn: Ganon turns good in "Trials of a New Era." Gwonam is hesitant to befriend him at first, but only does so when Zelda threatens him. By the end, Gwonam decides to go to the mini-mall.Ganon: I like you, Zelda! I shall join you!
- Jerkass:
- All of the characters can be jerky at times, but King Harkinian takes the cake. He is a ruthless and unfair leader who abuses his power for selfish reasons, heavily taxes the people under his rule, and has a generally short-tempered and immature personality. You'd wonder why he is still in power after all these years... until you find out that he can wield incredible arcane powers, and could use them to cause untold destruction if he were ever confronted about his deeds.
- Namowg could also be considered one, from what little has been shown of him.
- Medium Awareness: When King Harkinian inadvertently uses the Ace Attorney-style dialog box to communicate in "King Wars: The Lost Tape" (which was already used throughout "Harkinian Goes to Court"), Gwonam grabs the dialog box and uses it to slap Harkinian in the face, snapping him out of it.
- Multi-Part Episode: "Harkinian Goes to Court," released in three installments over a period of almost three years.
- No-Respect Guy: Gwonam. King Harkinian always takes his stuff without permission, gets frequently threatened by others, and rarely does anybody listen to him.
- Not-So-Harmless Villain: King Harkinian might often be too incompetent to cause any real trouble for people other than himself, but you do not want to get him riled up.
- Only Sane Man: Gwonam is probably the closest this series has to sanity. Zelda herself occasionally fits this role as well, but there's a significant emphasis on "occasionally."
- Pre-Mortem One-Liner: In "Eye for an Eye", Harkinian has nightmares about Meen, but while suffering in those nightmares, he hears Gwonam's voice telling him he must defeat Meen, as it is his destiny. Harkinian then remembers that Meen killed his sister, and then uses his powers to destroy him, but not before saying what might be the most badass YTP quote EVER: "Scrub the floors in hell, you monster!" Even if it was a dream, it was still amazing to hear this.
- Robot Me: Mecha-Link, created by King Harkinian. It's mostly useless and faulty though, due to him being bad at programming. It eventually meets the real Link, who is overjoyed that he can now leave the castle to join Ganon's forces.
- Running Gag: Quite a few:
- Hyrule Castle collapsing, normally due to the incompetency of one of the characters.
- Characters being teleported into/out of outer space by Gwonam.
- Link spacing out with a carefree expression on his face, usually accompanied by cheerful background music.
- Gwonam's starfighters getting stolen by King Harkinian.
- Gwonam breaking through a window while flying out of the castle (and refusing to acknowledge it).
- Self-Restraint: In the finale, King Harkinian turns himself into the police, and allows himself to be incarcerated, finally realizing how corrupt a ruler he has always been.
- Significant Anagram: Namowg's name is "Gwonam" with the letters rearranged (though this is fitting, considering he is Gwonam's brother).
- Villain Protagonist: Harkinian, to some extent. He is a spiteful ruler who overtaxes his subjects and treats his closest friends like trash.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Link's fate or general whereabouts are left unanswered following the "Harkinian Goes to Court" trilogy. This will likely be answered in the iteachvader's latest production, "King Wars: The Missing Link".
- "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: "Trials of a New Era", the final episode, details what happened to (almost) all of the characters after the events of the "Harkinian Goes to Court" saga. Zelda, for example, has inherited the throne from her father, who has gone out into the mountains in order to find his inner peace before he decides to turn himself out of guilt for everything that he's done. Ganon has also apparently pulled a Heel–Face Turn.
