That little detail about Link's shield in Wind Waker potentially tying The Hero of Winds to Hero of Minish earned a like and subscribe

I'm a lifelong Zelda fan and lore-junkie, and "Nintendo doesn't care THAT MUCH about the story, which is why their story is shaped like a fork" is an A+ line. Got a solid cackle outta me. But yeah, the lore is messy, the timeline especially. But it adds up far more than it doesn't, overall. And so many character and story beats are made stronger for the game's interconnectedness, like tracking Dorf's different arcs across timelines. For example; the humbled, contemplative man in WW who's tasted defeat at the height of his power, juxtaposed against the arrogant, vengeful conqueror in TP who was blindsided by "nobodies" before his schemes got off the ground. Both still villainous, both still Ganondorf, but each molded in different ways from the same person (OoT Dorf) by time and circumstance. It makes for a fascinating character study to see how someone does and doesn't change depending on where their life takes them.

this video may be the start of my Zelda hyperfixation

I have been obsessed with think about Zelda for the last week, and i find most videos on the subject extremely frustrating. They almost all start with some claim that the timeline is confusing, or too complicated or that no one likes it. I have understood and appreciated the timeline since i was 13 years old. Seeing you delve into the fact that things have been consistent all along was immensely satisfting. The video was also INCREDIBLY well done and edited. Thank you!!

While I don't agree with the final part of the video on TotK, this is the best video on the Zelda timeline yet. I've been saying for a while how the timeline is so easy to understand once you do two things: 1. Consider timeline placement at time of a game's release and you'll see OoT being a prequel to ALttP is explained. 2. Consider the Capcom stuff hard to place, including Four Swords Adventure even if it wasn't developed by Capcom.

So, I recommend "The Zelda Timeline Explained in 15 minutes" by Zeltik, who proposes that BOTW-TOTK are so far off in the future from the rest of the timeline that it does not matter to which timeline you connect it. Most importantly for the people who think the "Founding of Hyrule" and the "Imprisoning war" to be lore contradictory, well there also he proposes a simple solution. Who said Hyrule only had 1 founding ? Hyrule has been wrecked and destroyed or declining in every single timeline. There’s even New Hyrule in Spirit Tracks so it’s not like the name would just be lost to time either. Kingdoms have been lost and recreated and lost again in our own history so it makes perfect sense for it to be the case here. I believe that Rauru and Sophia's Hyrule is one founded long after the events of OoT. The Ganon they seal is simply a new incarnation of it that spawns hundred or thousands of years after the timelines.

Thanks for putting this together, needing to argue with Zelda Timeline deniers has been rough for decades now, maybe this will be much easier for them to digest than the same thing in text form

When people comment in theorizing threads/forums with "there isn't a timeline" or "it was made up with no effort because Nintendo doesn't care", they do so for one reason only: they want to shut down discussion. The comments are always visceral, bitter, and defensive. They get mad that people are even talking about the Zelda timeline, which is so stupid. If you aren't into theorizing, that's fine, but that doesn't mean you get to spoil the fun for everyone else who does enjoy it. It doesn't affect you.

Bro how does this only have 37 views, this vid has great editing and is well written! Keep up the good work man!

I like timelines. They make me appreciate the universe, the characters, the landmarks and the prophecies/plot points better

You can't be too upset at people who thought that it was all a retelling of the same Story but in different cultures,hence all of the variations in locations and characters,after all it is the LEGEND of zelda.

I made a twitter thread a while back that basically said the exact same thing but I deleted it when it came off as really convoluted, so I really appreciate someone taking the time to take that information and put it in a more viewer friendly format.

there is so much effort in this video, it's almost unbelievable that I found it with only 23 views. Looking forward to future video's of this Channel, keep up the good work! Edit: man i really need to change my tag, i comment so rarely that i forgot what it was xD

You've explained the situation very well. I think what has happened among Zelda fans is that there was so much of people forcing their ideas about why the timeline was important, that others started to push back with an equally inaccurate explanation for why it doesn't matter ("Nintendo made it up to appease fans"). When in actuality neither extreme is true, and there's elements of both: Nintendo _has_ always considered the timeline, they just don't _prioritize_ it. And it's up to you whether you want to care about it. I'll also add, in this video you used the old Fandom Zelda wiki, which is outdated and no longer maintained (and also just a bad site). Not only do I recommend the independent Zelda Wiki, where most editors have moved, but I recently did a major overhaul of that specific article on timeline quotes to be less speculative, cite its sources properly, and add the significant amount of info that has come since. I hope for it to be of use for discussions like this.

Fantastic video! We literally share the same thoughts. I have this cool theory that Skyward Sword caused the timeline split that lead to TotK and Botw but honestly seeing how Nintendo treated the lore of the past 2 games doesn't make me want to even talk about it. It feels like I am trying to headcanon stuff for myself knowing full well that Nintendo didn't even think about any of this for a second. They couldn't even keep the story consistent between Botw and it's direct sequel so it is super discouraging to talk about continuity nowadays.

its also quite upsetting how Totk directly recferences scenes and events from past games but then turns around and says, but this is not the same one as before. like the scene of ganondorf knelling to the king of hyrule. It couldve been so cool for that to be the same scene we saw in Oot. or the imprisoning war being a major part of the story, but not that imprisoning war, like if youre going to seperate the story completly then do that, tell a better story

Every Zelda fan who cares about the timeline should bookmark this video and use it as a answer to any naysayer. And yes, there's the issue with Eiji Aonuma and Hidemaru Fujibayashi's attitude with the whole issue feels dishonest. But not only because they seem to have lost interest in connecting older games together, they seem to have lost interest with even the simplest form of continuity. "Tears of the Kingdom" not having any clear connections with games previous to "Breath of the Wild" is one thing. But "Tears of the Kingdom" barely functioning as a narrative sequel to "Breath of the Wild"? That's a much, MUCH bigger pill to swallow. And that's the thing. I don't know if Aonuma and co. regret having a timeline or not. But the answer to that question is kind of irrelevant, because in either case, the problem seems to be that they don't really want to worry about continuity in it on itself anymore. So they have become lazy about it. Now, I'm gonna make another speculation, but I feel that maybe Aonuma and Fujibayashi made one miscalculation: they saw that traditional Zelda fans had become a tiny minority of their player base with BotW (around 15% to be precise. Yes, it can be calculated). So they thought that they didn't have to cater to those older fans anymore. That they could focus on newer fans and the complains of older fans would be little more than a drop in the bucket of praise from newer fans. However, they made one mistake: they assumed that newer fans wouldn't care about continuity... at all. That they would shrug off any contradictions between the stories of BotW and TotK, because they would be having too much creating Zonnai devices for them to even care. Unfortunately, they were kind of wrong, because even newer Zelda fans have called them out.

Amazing video, it's criminal that this doesn't have more views. Hope to see more videos from you!

Bro, this is fucking NUTS and you got an instant subscribe from me. I always knew they had something in mind for a timeline, as certain games referenced others or included the same Gannandorf (OOT/WW/TP), but I didn't know they planned it out from the beginning like this.

Fantastic job! Keep up the great work! I'm not a die hard fan of zelda by any means. But I've been there with it since the beginning. It seems to me history, and thus, timelines are woven into the fabric of the games. Almost integral to the stories. I couldn't imagine a zelda title without history.

Just terrific stuff. I’m usually just as interested in the behind the scenes of lore-making as I am to the lore itself. I initially clicked thinking “please let this not be another timeline video,” and boy did you over deliver. I never minded having to place TOTK at the end of Zelda, but I didn’t know they implied that it might be a DIFFERENT HYRULE?! That’s not just disrespectful to us fans, but also people who worked on the previous games.

OoT kinda fucked it up first because of how they changed the LttP backstory. Ganon was successful in acquiring the entire triforce before LttP, which isn't what happened at the end of OoT. He only had the triforce of power. I'm sure you could rationalise it somehow, but it doesn't fit cleanly at all.

Great video. I'm currently working on a video rethinking the Zelda timeline, so this was fun to see.

They could always go back and make prequels explaining ToTK.

Regardless of the explanation of the 3rd branch, I think the timeline splitting in 3 makes sense for a series with 3 as a major arc number. But I also like that there is no definitive placement for BotW/TotK and that they put references to all of the timelines so you can pick which one fit how you view the series. For me, I really like the idea that it somehow is in all 3 timelines. It's an inevitable future.

I think that Fujibayashi is probably the most important person to be looking at in terms of the series' current stance on lore and timelines. He started with the Capcom games before directing Skyward Sword, BotW, and TotK, and in all of these he seems utterly unconcerned with continuity, instead focusing on taking elements from previous games and reinterpreting or retelling them. It seems very much a focus on the "legend" aspect: these are stories that have been passed down for generations, and in the process some of them have gotten retold or details confused or conflated. If you look at his works, he has a lot of similar elements (origin stories, ancient technologies, cities in the sky, the light force) he keeps coming back to, but in very different ways. I feel like his stance is that what you're seeing is an interpretation of what could have happened rather than literal historical events. That gives players flexibility for interpretation. It's not for everybody, but it's something I personally love.

My theory is that the pre-BotW timeline is a legitimate timeline, for THAT story. But in BotW and TotK, it’s considered a myth. Or at least a loose retelling of what happened, as those events were passed on from generation to generation. Which is why TotK references many past events and characters, but changes the facts. I’m not saying I like that idea, but it makes sense.

I'm guessing that by saying that "Nintendo should get rid of the Zelda timeline", I don't think they mean that Nintendo should say that all games in the series are no longer connected despite direct references to each other. Rather, I think their saying that from NOW ON, all Zelda games(that aren't direct sequels like TOTK) should be essentially reboots(soft or hard) and that new Zelda games should either ignore other Zelda stories or straight up consider them to not be Canon. I strongly disagree with this notion, however. Without games building off of each other's story, Zelda plots would either start becoming derivative in order to still feel like their stories in the same series, or their stories would feel so different that they don't feel like ZELDA stories, only like High Fantasy stories that are told in a Zelda game.

It's so frustrating how loud the people who like to claim "it was all invented in 2011" are. It feels like it's a take that's echoed any and every time the timeline comes up at all. It makes trying to have an actual discussion on the matter far more difficult than it really should be. The timeline makes sense if you look at the games (and their surrounding media) in release order. Minor details might not line up 100% perfectly, but that's really just a byproduct of the fact that this is a long running franchise written as it goes by multiple writers with different visions and ideas. It feels like Zelda is the only fandom that seems incapable of understanding this half the time. I suppose this is all to say, I agree with you. Gonna rec this video any time someone gives that take now.

One solution to the fallen hero timeline I’ve always enjoyed is that that timeline canonically happens first-Link loses in the final fight of OoT for whatever reason, Zelda from Zelda II is awakened and for whatever reason dials time back to OoT to give Link another chance, he wins, then the timeline splits. Then we get the clusterf*** that is Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, which I theorize has a convoluted timeline/reality because the timelines are trying to reunite but having trouble doing so since the events of TotK further tamper with time

I’ve been playing Zeldas since 1988, a few months after the release of Zelda II. I remember the straight up shouting matches between kids arguing whether or not Ocarina’s story was actually the Imprisoning War from LttP, or if the devs just didn’t care about story and just did whatever they wanted (been remembering that a lot more lately with how people “talk” about TotK-so much that I quit clicking on anything TotK related). All this has happened before, and all this will happen again.

I think people talk like this because they are actually only fans of BOTW/TOTK and they don't want to/haven't played any of the other games People who've followed the entire series from the beginning are not confused and think the timeline was made up and invented suddenly and they don't complain about why there "needs to be one" or say "it should be done away with" People hear all the talk about the connections to other games and they're like "I don't want to have to play a bunch of old games"-it doesn't sound optional to them. So they resent it.

This was a great video to stumble on. Just looked down at my phone assuming this was a much larger channel after listening through. Got a subscriber, great content!

It's kind of sad that a subset of fans are being phased out even if not intentionally. Sure I don't mind the direction they are going in. Though I'm more gameplay and character-focused (personality-wise) when it comes to Zelda. However, satisfying a fan like me should come at the cost of alienating fans who love lore and theorizing about it.

Also Four Swords Adventures had a section of the game about the Gerudo and Ganondorf so it had to have taken place somewhere where Ganondorf was important in the previous game and Ganondorf being defeated at the end of Twilight Princess explains why he comes back as the monster form of Ganon instead. You pointing out that the shield being a family heirloom of the Hero of Minish same as the Windwaker timeline also makes a lot of sense since it's a different timeline the shield also exist in that version of Hyrule.

I like listening to lore and timeline theories but I'm pretty much in the ballpark the games weren't meant to be seriously connected, like to me apart from the ones specifically mentioned as connected (ww>ph>ss, oot>mm etc) the references to older ones are just that, Easter egg references. I think it also ties in with the stories being "legends" details are lost and changed over time so nothing perfectly fits

One thing is clear: fans care about the timeline a lot more than the devs.

Sounds like they have a rough idea of a timeline but can't be bothered to check all the lore for plotholes so they want fans to do the hard work of placing the story in the timeline and they will retroactively "confirm" the placement later. Like with the defeated hero timeline.

been a zelda nerd for more than half of my life and found this well researched, great vid man!!

I gotta say, you turned me around. I’m 34 years old, and I’ve been a Zelda fan since I was 4, starting with ALTTP. I’ve been voracious ever since, but I treated the series like FF: Games that are barely related, where the true star are the developers. The dungeons, the music, the combat, the puzzles. The stories are simply excuses to tie them all together. So I believed the timeline to be contrived bullshit, and it was frustrating to hop into the community and seeing so many people care about something so useless. However, your points actually made this a fun thought exercise. Like, it’s not serious at all, it’s just fun to talk about and theorize over. Thats actually really cool. Great video!

I could be mistaken, but since Hyrule Historia came out and before Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom existed as their own thing Nintendo went back and revised the timeline by not only adding in A Link Between Worlds and Tri Force Heroes, but they also flipped the order of the Oracle games with Link's Awakening. Link' Awakening is now before the Oracle games.

This video is so good and of high quality, I really hope you blow up

A lot of people seem to have a problem with the existence of a "fallen hero" timeline for one reason or another, but I don't really understand why? The way I always thought of it was that the already existing timeline split 'broke' time in a way that made it ripe for breaking again. Like how cracked glass begets more cracks. I'm not even the only person that has thought of this. I've seen someone use this concept to create another split and tie Hyrule into a very well made Skyrim mod called Relics of Hyrule. Besides, who is to say other fallen hero timelines don't exist? Why would their existence be a problem? Do you not like the idea that our hero can lose? I do. A hero predestined to win is no hero at all, for courage can only appear in the possibility of failure.

Will definitely be telling everyone about this channel! You deserve more this video is amazing

The algorithm is about to do you well my friend. Good job

my only "issue" (for lack of a better term) with how the timeline was handled after BotW is that Nintendo had a VERY satisfying answer right in front of them and for some reason chose to ignore it. The plot of Hyrule Warriors and Hyrule Legends quite literally revolves around the three timelines collapsing into one. It would fit *perfectly* right before BotW and Age of Calamity and explain most if not all of the contradictions in BotW and TotK with only some minor retcons.

Fantastic video. I was a forum using no-split theorist until TP came out and forced me to accept a split timeline. It was so cool how many options there seemed to be back then for placing the games this way or that. I have continued to resist further multiplication of realities in the franchise, and with HH’s “downfall” timeline and BotW’s “10,000 years” scale, it really seemed like they’re moving toward the “reinterpreted legend” model, sadly. You’ve done an awesome job of covering all sides here and I look forward to following you in the future. By the way, if you need help with Japanese translation I’d be happy to contribute. I used to translate professionally, though not in the tech industry.

That connection between the Hero of Winds and the Hero of Minish blew my mind.

Excellent video, and I agree that nearly every game ended up in their originally intended places. As a whole, the timeline isn't confusing, it's just a few select problem spots that give that impression. Aside from the blatant "deliberately give ToTK bad writing just to screw over the lore enjoyers" thing, Four Sword Adventures' placement is another result of the exact same issue. Not only does FSA *clearly* feature the same Link and Zelda as in Four Swords (meaning the two games' placements should not be separated under *any* circumstance), but according to Aonuma, Miyamoto came in late in development and made them scrap a bunch of the story that they had already built the game around. Thanks to datamines in recent years, we now know that said story elements pertained to ALttP, such as being able to find but not use the Master Sword, which combined with all the clues that remained intact (like several major Knights of Hyrule getting killed off, meeting the creator of the Medallions, Frozen Hyrule thawing out and creating a large wetland South of the castle, ect.) was basically foreshadowing that ALttP was the next game chronologically, with the Imprisoning War likely happening not long after FSA. In short, about 95% of FSA was almost definitely created under the intention of being a prequel to ALttP, and this original vision would have remained intact if Miyamoto hadn't "Upended the tea table" at the last minute because of his disdain for stories with more than zero complications. If we factor this in, and place FSA between Four Swords and ALttP, with seemingly no other games happening between them, you might think that's a problem because of OoT supposedly being the Imprisoning War itself, yet clashing with FSA, but the truth of the matter is that although the idea of OoT being the Imprisoning War was their initial idea, they went on to change tons of details and make a brand new story, which shared *some* elements with the description of the Imprisoning War, but also deviated *vastly* in other ways, to the point that from before OoT even released, it was impossible for the two to be one and the same. So how can this be rectified in a way that keeps as much dev intention intact as possible without in-game information contradicting each other? How can Four Swords be the "oldest" game as of its release, while leading directly into FSA, which in turn was originally intended to be a prequel to ALttP and presumably the Imprisoning War before it, despite clashing with OoT which was originally planned to be the Imprisoning War itself but eventually deviated in too many major ways? And no, simply accepting FSA's placement on the official timeline as correct doesn't work, because as stated in *multiple* previous games, if Ganon is killed, his evil soul lingers in the underworld indefinitely unless resurrected via some form of ritual, meaning that *it's not possible* for him to just reincarnate as a new Ganon later. The one answer that makes sense is that FSA is instead a *different* origin story for the *same* Ganondorf, born in the *same* year that he was prior to OoT, but in a *different* timeline. Basically, the only proper solution for everything to fit when taking both in-game info and developer intentions into account is if the Downfall timeline doesn't branch off from OoT, but instead *before* Four Swords. If one branch leads to Four Swords and the other leads to OoT, everything fits together cleanly. Even the whole "Zelda 2 towns being named after OoT sages" thing doesn't actually hold up because Mido gets a town instead of Impa, and of course there's the "Unseen" sage Kasuto, but naturally, this isn't a problem if OoT is *not* the Imprisoning War to begin with and the Zelda 2 towns are named after the sages from the *actual* Imprisoning War, which are still technically what the devs wanted those towns to be named after, even if the connection to OoT is severed. At this point, one questions remains... is there a logical place for the Downfall Timeline to branch off from before Four Swords? And lo and behold, there is, courtesy of of our old foe Vaati. Namely, the fact that Minish Cap serves as his origin story, and yet the game's ending results in him completely destroyed, whereas Four Swords instead requires him to be sealed away but alive. Lucky for us, MC actually has a bad ending where Zelda dies and Vaati becomes stronger, but this outcome leaves Link still alive, with the potential to at least seal him away if killing him isn't an option. Lastly, while this "bad ending" in MC is technically an extended Game Over, it's still FAR less arbitrary than the Hero of Time just randomly running out of hearts and dropping dead to Ganon during OoT's finale, despite that being the branching point many people suggest since he'd need to save every Sage first for the "OoT is the Imprisoning War" idea to work, even though Twinrova are still alive in the Oracle games, meaning that those games *also* can't fall in a timeline where they were already killed sooner. Twinrova can seemingly extend their age indefinitely, but if they could come back from the dead then they'd show up far more often. Sorry if this went on a bit of a tangent there btw. I guess I'm just a bit frustrated that everything could have worked out so cleanly if the timeline was allowed to fall into place naturally instead of getting skewed by the meddling of the higher-ups for such dumb reasons.

I laughed when you brought in the Resi timeline/games, because I'm a big fan of both Zelda and Resi and have been making this exact argument for years now. It always annoyed me that people ignored the very explicit connections between games.

a very well-written video, well done. I pretty much only think the choice of music at the end clashed with you saying you weren't trying to make a big deal out of it

The problem is usually fans trying to unwrap the timeline like they're archeologists, when it's more like asking the writer when his new story takes place and he shrugs and says "I don't know, like after? Sometime? Who cares." Historian didn't invent the timeline, it just called attention to something the creators don't pay *that* much attention to. And with the case of some specific titles, they clearly didn't care at all and it still doesn't matter.

This is what makes their recent continuity downfall so unbelievably pathetic. It is baffling that a team that used to care so much about connecting their games can suddenly just stop caring over the course of two games. Also... GET THIS MAN SOME VIEWS

It is worth noting that Wind Waker was Aonuma's first game he was the sole director of (he was co-director on Majora's Mask alongside Koizumi), so the contradiction with the Fallen Timeline MAY be reflecting his initial desire to retcon the first few games, that he later went back on. I don't have any evidence confirming this, but it's a possible reason for the confusing third timeline.

THANK YOU for this video. I’ve seen a lot of discourse on the Zelda series’ chronology since Breath of the Wild, and it’s kinda become a personal pet peeve. This video captures my opinion on the series almost exactly - although there is some wiggle room, the series can fit together in a way that’s at worst harmless and at best beneficial to the other games. For them to have gone almost forty years of prequels and sequels with the only real issues being that Ocarina of Time is a bad adaptation of what was supposed to be the Imprisoning War and Four Swords Adventures getting rewritten from an Imprisoning War adaptation to something that doesn’t really fit cleanly is fairly impressive. (Funny how literally every issue with continuity in this series comes back to the Imprisoning War…) I do echo the other comments disagreeing with the ending points on Tears of the Kingdom. Although the Imprisoning War in that game isn’t one that lore nuts initially expected, I don’t think it’s irreconcilable with the rest of the series. Skyward Sword’s ending only shows that Skyloft’s Link and Zelda wanted to live in the unnamed land - the two directly founding Hyrule was a word of god thing. It’s entirely possible for the people of Skyloft to populate the land, and *then* Tears’ Rauru and Sonia become the first actual King and Queen. The “Imprisoning War” is a term that only existed in LttP’s manual, so if there was anything fair game to rewrite for Tears’ plot, it was probably that. I’d actually argue it improves the timeline - now there’s no need for this awkward offscreen middle period between Ocarina and LttP because Ocarina adapted the LttP backstory badly. A version of Ocarina simply *is* the LttP backstory now, making it a game we mostly saw play out. There’s not perfect explanations out there yet, but there are reasonable ones. Maybe the reason Zelda theories have been less prominent is simply because Tears is a less mysterious game? In Breath, players who didn’t follow the pre-release knew absolutely nothing about the setting, so there were so many unanswered questions to explore. In Tears, we already know the setting well, several questions about it are answered, and the backstory presented is self-contained and doesn’t ask players to be aware of other titles. It’s a shame that it’s not a mysterious game, but that doesn’t mean it belongs any less. Either way, I still support the talking points in this video. Good stuff!

As someone who loves lore and worldbuilding, I honestly had a fascination with the Zelda timeline ever since I found out about it, and after I recently found out how the continuity was being built from the first few games I've only grown to appreciate it even more. Besides from how to handle Four Swords Adventures and the Downfall Timeline (I personally think it works better if Minish Cap leads to its own timeline split [since it actually has a bad ending _in_ it] that then leads to the Four Swords games and in turn to A Link to the Past [and thus have FSA Ganon be the same Ganon as in the other games, just in a different timeline branch where he didn't enter the Temple of Time]), I also agree with you on the whole timeline situation; there's no reason to discard it, it's another part of making the series into the richly-crafted marvel that it is and that regardless of the solution to the TotK conundrum, it's just a big disappointment that intentionally complicates things for no reason.

Amazing video man, keep it up!

I always liked the idea that Warriors brought the 3 timelines together, and BotW and TotK followed after.

Amazing video, great way to explain how every game fits together, even for someone like me that never really dug deep into reasearch nor has the Encyclopedia. I always found it fun to draw a clear line from Skyward Sword to Spirit Tracks just from memory and playing the games, but otherwise didn't really care that much if a game perfectly connected to each other or not when it comes to the series as a whole. If I was gonna give my take as to how the new games fit in the timeline, I would say it's either an alternate Hyrule that encompasses every other game, as if a retelling of the story; Or they rejoin the splits, but take place ages later, and all they have left is nothing but rebuilt ruins and forgotten legends. On some of the interviews and showcases, the directors said that BoTW originally was designed to have a fictional urban setting, where Link would ride a bike, have an electric guitar and fight UFOs. I'm gonna be honest, I think EDF Link would be easier to explain, but at least there's a precedent that these games take place much later than the others.

great video and amazing job at breaking down the continuities so well. As someone who isnt extremely focused on the timeline aspect, it great to hear everyone’s perspective

Loved this video bro, I was surprised when I saw how small your channel was, this was top tier. Keep it up💯

Can you link the source for the 64 dream magazine quote about the Oracle games? That has been something people have been searching for for a long time.

Holy shit this video is incredible. Good luck on youtube man I hope Bandit sees this

I appreciate this video so much, i always hate when people say that the timeline is made up and stuff, thank you so much

Holy shit you defined so perfectly why I'm upset about the timeline. They intentionally put contradictory stuff so we cant figure out the timeline

LOVVEDD THIS VID!! Super interesting keep making more

The only explanation I can think of for BotW and TotK being the way they are is that the timelines converge so their histories, races, etc are all blurred together. This could have been decided on because they wanted to give the series a soft reboot. (That was the whole pitch for the game.) My problem is that Aonuma really never really cared about story in the games. You can tell this from a lot of the interviews. He understands the story and lore is a part of the series, but at best, just passively oversees it, and at worst is actively trying to move away from it with each game. BotW could have been the excuse to not focus on story. I'm hoping that Nintendo is noticing the lack of interest among the fans. and go back to the stlye of story telling the older games had. No need to throw away the gold with the rubble.

"If you create a necessity to understand the lore in a long running franchise..." you get Kingdom Hearts.

Appreciate your take on this. Being disappointed in the continuity of Zelda's story across its games is a part of growing up. The older you are, the earlier it happened. People in their 30s & 40s have been disappointed at some point by Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, or Skyward Sword, just as people in their 20s have been disappointed somewhere between Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. The more i hear about what others like and dislike, the better i understand my own feelings about it.

This video ends on a common pessimistic outlook on TotK's lore. But after recently watching a video by GuyMRY about the game's connections to the rest of the timeline, I've realized that there is a major assumption I, and many others, have made about TotK that is only an assumption and is the cause of all these contradictions: That Ganondorf in TotK is supposed to be the same character as Ganondorf in OoT, and that he *has* to exist because of the events of Skyward Sword. The series has many characters that appear in a variety of eras without being legendary reincarnations of each other. Many OoT and MM characters appear in the Oracles, there are multiple Tingles and Beedles, Impa, those are just the ones that come off the top of my head. Why assume that Ganondorf is any different in a series that loves this cycle of good vs evil so much? I'm not gonna restate the entire video here, but I recommend anyone who thinks of TotK as a retcon or plot hole to go watch the video. It's called "How Tears of the Kingdom secretly connects to Zelda lore." It isn't a definitive theory by any means, but it does pose a possibility that doesn't contradict established lore in the slightest, it just adjusts a few core assumptions people have erroneously made about the franchise. And even still, there's a decent amount of evidence he provides to support his ideas, even if specific details are a bit shaky. Personally, I have no problem accepting TotK as taking place immediately after BotW at the end of the timeline, both games collectively telling a story of an inevitable crisis Hyrule finds itself falling into, that ultimately requires Zelda to travel back in time to an era of Hyrule *before* Hylia's time, in which an original Ganondorf, perhaps unwittingly being manipulated by Demise, seeks the golden power of the Triforce before being sealed away at the location underneath what later becomes the location of Hyrule Castle in Hylia's era. The only problem I have with the official timeline is the Fallen Hero timeline. If OoT was made as a direct prequel to aLttP, it just makes no sense to me that the only way aLttP happens after OoT is if Link fails in his quest. I think the narrative is far more satisfying if you instead put that split right before Wind Waker on the adult timeline, and have the failure centered around events that happen in between games. Clearly, there was some intended natural flow from Ganondorf being sealed in the end of OoT, to Ganondorf obtaining the Triforce and conquering the Sacred Realm. The decision to just throw that away as if it's an inconsistency rubs me the wrong way.

i love this!! it simly explains the existence of the timeline and debunks things i hate hearing like that it doesnt need to exist or when people say each game is a re-telling of the same story over and over. like so many of those viewpoints directly contradict the blatant connections.

I literally watched all 3 videos that you provided clips from just before this video. Eerie. The history behind decisions made will always be interesting, even if some are not popular. It’s made me want to go back and play the older titles and theorize myself, even if it amounts to nothing. thank you for this topic.

I completely agree with this video. I'd like to add the fact of how the compact separation of the old games vs the post-Ocarina games was likely because of the fact that all games before Majora were made by Miyamoto while Aonuma worked all the rest (not counting the Capcom games). Similarly, Fujibayashi is the director of the series since Skyward Sword. Also I feel the Capcom games (Oracles and the Four Sword related games) shouldn't be part of the timeline, they always felt out of place and considering they have partial ownerships of the titles. I wouldn't mind if they were not treated canon. Not only that but you can tell those games didn't involve Nintendo as much since the stories don't exactly fit or had limited input from Aonuma.

This video needs more views asap. Phenomenal job

I like to put totk at the end of the adult timeline. Perhaps the zonai where responsible for wind waker's tower of the gods. Perhaps when the waters receded that land would be called hyrule, but not a kingdom, letting Rauru found it. This would also mean there's another kindom of New Hyrule, which I could imagine be shortened to Newrule. Perhaps the Zonai are variants of the Twilight, the mirror would not have been broken in the adult timeline. The only other possible ancestor might be the ooccoo, but that's not a pleasant idea.

Have been wanting a video like this for the longest time

Great video my dude! I hope Nintendo changes their stance on the timeline in a future game. Not something that fixes everything but at the very least ties up loose ends.

These are my exact thoughts on all of it! I still remember about half a year ago, I pieced together that Wind Waker is the game that “messes up” the timeline due to being an extra adult timeline sequel, and it felt like solving a huge puzzle to me. Your video is great, because now I see that the “fallen timeline” exists because Nintendo wanted to reward fans who figured it out by giving them the TRUTH! There ARE 3 timelines! Very interesting. I also feel the exact same way about TotK. I thought BotW’s timeline placement was beautiful and a perfect reflection of the gameplay and design philosophy: piece it together and solve it in your own way. It worked, too. So, it’s incredibly frustrating for them to go out of their way to separate this new Hyrule from the rest of the series with the new TotK lore. It seems like a deliberate middle finger to lore enthusiasts for no reason.

My only real issue is the dialogue in the Oracle Games that imply that Link and Zelda have never met

Now if only someone would place the CD-I Zelda games into the timeline.

I think the reason why its so easy for many people to believe that the timeline is retroactive is because many of the games have no real consequence for the next. Its just mostly a loop of ganondorf comming back, in a place called hyrule, that looks completely different and has some very important race or powerful item that everyone in that games talks about that will never be mentioned in any other game. Many games you can simply shuffle around in the timeline and it doesn't really matter. They are quite compartmentalized. People might just assume if you planned a timeline ahead of time, there would be some bigger reasons for it. Just saying "this game takes place after that one" in a manual and then the actual game content doesn't really have anything much to say about it just makes it hard for me to see why a timeline is meaningful. I would love it if breath of the wild or some newer game later in the timeline had the ruins of the temple of time or whatever, completely recreated from OoT in terms of the rooms and architecture. And the wider map couple be superimposed over each other and they could line up and you could see say, a river dried up in the 1000s of years or whatever that passed and now it was a little canyon and this town sprang up in the ruins of the spirit temple. Or like if some new game came out and it was the earliest game in the time line and at the end you fight ganon underground and you crack the earth in the battle and lava flows out and its like that fight was what caused death mountain or something. Something big and undeniable actually tying these games together. Something to make the lore feel meaningful and grandiose. Like NPCs referencing legends and you being able to recognize which game it is. An actual cohesive history that you were a part of. That would be cool. That would be something a game with this many entries could have been doing for years. That would need a timeline. As it is now, it just feels superfluous.

I think BotW and TotK are on a whole new timeline at this point. They broke so many conventions that I think at this point it’s simply referencing events in the old games as the “tokens” of a Zelda story. They are adopting the classic Zelda themes to a new version of Hyrule. It’s a brand new Zelda for a new generation, which I find to be exciting as the old timeline can still exist and now we get a whole new version of Hyrule that pays tribute to the history yet does it’s own rendition of that story.

I'm only halfway through the video but I'm gonna chime in with my pet hypothesis: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are a retelling of some of the "legend." Just like in real life, the same legend can be told in several different ways. Specifically, I think Tears of the Kingdom is A Link to the Past. Edit: So yeah, I do think it's "miss-matched pieces." Or, more like it's a different puzzle with a similar image. It's like history and mythology in real life. I disagree whole-heartedly with the end of the video and I think TotK gets way more hate than it deserves. The contradictions are what sell me it's a re-telling.

Thank you for this amazing video. The timeline was made following as many previous statements they had made as possible. I would prefer them to use exclusively in game information instead but its their choice. the only stuff that changes if you use in-game exclusivly are: ALttP and OoT don't connect because of contradiction the oracle games are connected with OoT (somehow?) (same Twinrova and Hyrule castle) FSA is a direct sequel to FS with the same link, and is also the prequel to ALttP ALBW goes with Oot (which dosent make sense) becasue the backstory and sages are clearly based on that game and going down that route would have even more hurdles to get things to work out.

thank you for making this. as someone who loves lore in, well, media, everytime someone says the timeline is bad, or that it doesn't matter, a part of me dies inside. this is a great video

Likely the downfall timeline was at least conceptualized due to a glaring plothole going from ocarina of time to Link to the Past. Ganon had the full Triforce when sealed in Link to the Past but was only sealed with the Triforce of Power in Ocarina of Time. The Imprisioning war could have Child Timeline but Ganondorf likely wouldn't have known that the Ocarina of Time was a fourth key and the Master Sword which he likely couldn't pull was the path to the Sacred Realm. There is also the possibility that the Devs of Twilight Princess didn't want to make it darker than it already was and essentially have the hero lose in the middle or right at the end or make the event of Ocarina of Time pointless and rehash Ocariana of Time more than TP was already. I always viewed Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom as something between a hard and a soft reboot and even Tears of the Kingdom's backstory taking place after the Original Zelda Timeline/Age of Myth.

I love the objective drive of this video. The subject of the timeline has always been very heated and polarized. It’s refreshing to see a video that highlights the merit and flaws in the topic in such equal measure. All around, great stuff.

Making some solid points in this video! I watched another theory where they think the timeline split twice and much earlier in the timeline. It's never required, I wish people would see it as an added layer to the fun of world building and exploration. You blew my mind with the wind waker shield fact

I'm writing this before watching, and then I'll update when I finish the video, but in the most simple terms, I don't think Nintendo doesn't care about the timeline or anything like that. I just think not every game fits neatly into a timeline, and despite the fact some of the games are intended to be "sequential", the fact of the matter is not all of them do. And when you try to invent a timeline to fit every game, well, things get messy and convoluted. I'm also of the mind that fan theories before the timeline was introduced were a lot more fun, because now that we have "real answers" some of the answers are quite unsatisfactory. That's just my opinion though. I much preferred when there was no official timeline, things were left up to the imagination, and they didn't overcomplicate things that didn't need to be overcomplicated. And now to watch the video... [post video] This is was a good watch. Very informative. I don't have much to add to what I said previously. I own the Hyrule Historia, it's a welcome addition to my Zelda collection, but I've never read it as something that is intrinsic to the games. As I said, I don't think the argument (at least for me) is that Nintendo just doesn't care about the timeline [at least pre-BOTW], I think that not all the games fit neatly into a timeline, no matter how much people try. And we do need to be clear about something. If it's not in the game, it's not canon. Right? Like, developers say things all the time, and Nintendo devs in particular have been known to actively contradict themselves, and the things that occur in the games. At the end of the day, additional/supplemental documentation and dev interviews aren't canon. Only what is in the games is. I suppose this is a point of contention for some. Anyways, this was a good video. Very enjoyable.

I hope ToTK is a lore hiccup they'll polish over later. Its astounding that they seem to value consistency so little that even details from BoTW were glossed over.

Thank you, man! I used to believe that the timeline was some sort of retcon, but your video made me appreciate it more

I think it was a missed opportunity that they didn't use Zelda's time travel in Tears of the Kingdom to explain why there was a third branch.

Personally, I like the fan theory of the retconned downfall timeline. The idea is that the past of tears of the kingdom happens concurrently with and is a separate retelling of the events of oot. At the end of skyward sword a timeline split (may have) occurred, leading to one timeline with OoT, and its adult and child timelines, and one with ToTK's past and the downfall timeline. This would clear up the age-old question of how the three timelines can coexist while also allowing for BoTW and ToTK to not be disconnected from one timeline placement or another. My personal theory is that the OoT timline is after the events of Link and Zelda's timeline where demise (in the form of the imprisoned) was destroyed by the triforce, while the ToTK and Downfall timeline is after demise was sealed in the past, shortly after the era of the goddess.

This video is incredible. A lot of these things are things that I've tried explaining to people about the series, so it's really nice to see someone else put all of that information into a video that can be easily watched and understood by people.

I absolutely love that KZfaq now recommends small channels to me making content I would like to watch.

I love this video! It's so well made and provides an in-depth breakdown of the timeline without the unnecessary part of diving into the lore. I didn't even consider that as a possibility. I also, appreciate that you provided a sort of pseudo ending at ~18:50 to distinguish between the fact and opinion!

Oh my god you used the Shadow Tower death sound. I love you.

I honestly never made the connection between the Hero of Winds and the Heroes of the Four Sword due to their shield. That’s brilliant! Also thank you for addressing inane comments about how there never was a timeline or it didn’t matter when the games were explicitly said to be connected by Nintendo as sequels and prequels at the time of their release! (Literally my only complaint is Nintendo’s constant swapping of OoA/S with LA since they changed the order in Encyclopedia and say or try to posit that it’s a different Link). Also, with all Nintendo has said about BotW/TotK, I feel like people are treating Fujibayashi’s answer that the Kingdom of Hyrule may have collapsed as a cop-out when it really isn’t. There’s plenty of precedent for it going as far back as the original two games. The very first game takes place in a kingdom that’s completely collapsed and is a fraction of the kingdom that the second game features. It hasn’t collapsed to the point of no longer being the Kingdom of Hyrule, but it’s definitely declined and been on the decline in that timeline. And then in Wind Waker you have the kingdom collapse twice, once unintended by the people of Hyrule and the other by its king literally wishing the gods would do away with it. It gets flooded and buried and is no longer a kingdom at the end of that game, to the point that Spirit Tracks shows it’s established in a new land literally called New Hyrule. There’s no reason why BotW/TotK can’t take place at the end of any of the timelines where the kingdom has collapsed and been refounded. There’s no reason the Zonai can’t have been the people of Skyloft who thrived and developed amazing technologies and magical abilities and connected with and occupied the surface of the collapsed Hyrule until their civilization also collapsed, leading to Rauru and Mineru descending to establish the new Hyrule (or possibly new new Hyrule). Ganon’s nature has always been cyclical, why can’t the Imprisoning War be cyclical as well? People are giving up on the timeline when if anything they’re being given more that they can work with. Nintendo could definitely be better about this, but I don’t think they’re showing they don’t care about the timeline as people claim.

For 17:00, I'm pretty sure the WW Master Sword is different on account of being blue and shaped differently than all previous and future swords of other timelines, being unique to this game. This is because the Master Sword created and used since SS was removed from the timeline alongside Link and his reincarnating hero's spirit (luckily Minish Link had a descendant) and the sages had to forge a new blade themselves. This is further evident because they have to continuously pray to keep the blade powered to repel evil, while the goddess sword was imbued with the sacred flames, never running out of power. Also side note: the Tower of the Gods was needed to test the new candidate to have his soul replace the previous one as the chosen hero

Oh my god thank you so much for this video. It's very intelligently put together, and it's unfortunately a little bit of a rare thing on this particular topic. What a breath of fresh air!