Great theory. It explains everything in a way that does make sense. This is a different Ganon than before the timeline split. There are call backs to Ocarina of time Ganon but that doesn't mean they are the same. I love it

Because of Zelda 1 being a big inspiration for BOTW, I think it might be something inspired BY that "old man", though whether it is him in particular or someone who taught him the arts of life-theft..

The different timelines could be practically mirror images having many events repeat that happen off screen. Something to consider when you say that a fourth timeline is impossible, because that is exactly like saying similar events occurring a different way is impossible

Worst lore trashing the LoZ developers have ever done. I would argue that having master sword be the only unbreakable weapon in the games would have been perfect. You can't get it in either game without having to put in time and effort and outside of against bosses its not the strongest weapon. Plus it's just smart to have a way to not force the use of the crappy weapon durability system which just made the games not fun if the player didn't want to. You know in the zelda games that were supposed to be all about playing it how the player wanted to. Plus even still players would have to use the stupid constantly breaking weapons until they could unlock the master sword so the argument of players not experiencing the system holds no water. What are they going to do when they break it the next time after it spent literal centuries being powered up by Zelda only to magically become tin foil again because "REASONS". Thanks for making arguably the most awesome items in zelda lore feel as worthless as the first rotting stick you pick up off the ground at the start of the game.

I recently got though this games story, and I got to say, I'm completly baffled think diferntly to this.

19:48 actually geographically that checksout, if enough time passed then the geography could actually cycle back to where it was before. That could explain the Dueling Peaks splitting. Overall I think this theory is definitely veeery plausible, but due to Zelda being a long franchise and Nintendo probably not accounting for every last possible detail within the timeline makes it a little shaky, especially considering the fact that BoTW seemingly was a massive reboot so certain stuff being contradictory is to be expected. But I do overall think that this theory makes more sense than the idea that Rauru was the first ever king to rule over the land of Hyrule.

This is an awesome idea. It would explain why so many items from all the games appear. I am hoping Nintendo uses this as an idea for their next game. It can be a prequel to botw and totk. It can be an event where the timeline are starting to merge causing a break in reality. 3 Zeldas from 3 identical but slightly different universes needs to unite the timelines, the hero or heroes must work together to save reality.

Rauru had a different triforce than zelda held. Done.

I'm thinking that bofw and totk is it's own separate universe from the rest of the games

maybe the incarnations of ganon are to demise as the calamity ganons are to totk ganondorf, Demise leaks his angry juice out over time which causes a new demon king to be born or something akin to that process.

I really like this theory. Just to be certain, while experiencing amnesia didn't happen until waking up in the Shrine of Resurrection, does amnesia count as weakening only Link's body(brain), mind, soul, or a combination of these? Additionally, did going through the memory quests only restore Link's memories in relation to his duties and such, or did they essentially cure him completely of his amnesia, restoring who he once was?

Just loved the video. Im happy that most of the zelda fanbase is assuming this, and quit believing in a aLtERnATE TimELinE bs. The rito evidence, the shrines evidence, the phantom ganon sealed in the lomei things, the gerudo not getting a male after 10000 years because ganondorf wasn't dead, even the fact that the gerudo are allies to the kingdom of hyrule since its "founding" and not the thief they are in ocarina, and the pointed ears also are quite an evidence. Amazing video!!

You lost me...😅

I’m still confused how they implement poes in totk but not ghost/spirits enemies in the depths. Totk had so much potential that they missed, it would have surpassed botw.

Part 2?

The merger theory turns the main timeline split into a dragonbreak from the Elder Scrolls series. A dragonbreak fractures time, creating infinite separate realities that later merge into one when time fixes itself, making all outcomes true, though contradictory.

I actually consider the Bargainer Statues to be more like the Shinigami from Bleach, they merely collect the souls of those who have died hence their comment about good and evil.

I want a Zelda game where you play as the Happy Mask Salesman before the events of Majora's mask.

I think we should also consider the possibility that maybe all of the events of botw and totk takes place between ss and oot

During BotW and TotK there's 2 Master Swords, the one Link has and the one in Dragon Zelda. Could be the one being healed is stealing energy from the one being wielded.

It's like that guy who lived an entire life while in a coma

Ngl the master sword used to be an overpowered amazing powerful weapon that link uses the beat the shit out of ganondorf but now its more like "o no i hit 25 peple oh noes im broken now"

I think the way the master sword time travel works is that it puts Link in (magical, reversible) stasis, but he only stays for the full 7 year period starting from the very final time he takes the sword out. So each time he goes back to the past he actually wakes up from stasis early, and goes back into stasis when he puts the sword back. So it's always 7 years, but the time it commences properly happens after he's already done everything he needed to in the past.

One relatively minor point, though it has some implications for this theory: Majora's Mask ends, not with a continuation from your final 3-day cycle, but with a selectively merged timeline where all the good deeds you did that granted you masks, even the mutually incompatible ones that can't be done in the same cycle, have happened. So there is precedent for merging timelines, but that also demonstrates that timelines can be merged without involving the Sage of Time, and it raises uncomfortable questions about nested dragon breaks...

Most of the evidence you guys have found feels to me like it's pointing more towards a reboot. There's been so many writers between the games and I doubt they could keep consistent with all the minutiae of each title. Occam's razor - they did a reboot with a bunch of callbacks.

Watching this video makes me feel like I'm listening to Akane Kurashiki and I love it

ganondorf is of it wouldn't make any sense for him to reappear, but with this theory we might have a sequel. another thing is that most people forget that demise's hatred is reincarnated and not himself explaining why we are able to have vati and canon in the same game

Good theory but Nintendo doesn't listen to fans, so they will never say anything about this. Take for instance breath of the wild pointing to demise coming back in tears of the kingdom, literally everything was there, the sword was already on it's way out and the trailer even blue balled us by revealing a Ganon who looks almost exactly like demise but no, despite everyone saying this is definitely where it's going and that it would probably boost their sales by a shit ton, we got a piss poor Ganon and nothing like what the previous game hinted at.

Confident that Wild Era is apart of the Adult Era. The next game after “Spirit Track”

I believe the reason the Child and Adult Timelines co-exist is because Zelda is the one to send Link back in time. Whenever Link used the Ocarina, it created a clean slate because he was the sole creator of the loop. If the Adult Timeline never happens, then Zelda can't send Link back in time to prevent the Adult Timeline from happening. A paradox.

Thank you for sharing your information! Cool video :)

A couple of misconceptions were included, but otherwise, this is a pretty solid theory. And considering how much other Zelda theorists have criticized TotK for not having much lore to work with, it's impressive that you were able to squeeze some juice from this dried out fruit.

Skyward Sword is a timeline split. These games are part of (as Nintendo calls it) their "Triforce Trilogy". Originally Demise broke free from his seal and ravaged Hyrule, destroying iconic locations like the springs of power, courage and Wisdom, and the Sheikah nearly go extinct. Eventually he is defeated, but Hyrule is almost unrecognizable from the damage. People lived in scattered tribes, terrified of monsters. The Minish helped them rebuild, as seen in the history explained in Minish cap. Ganon takes longer to emerge as an incarnation of demise in this timeline, and it eventually leads to Ocarina of Time and the main timeline split we know about. Botw and all its history lead off in a 4th timeline branching from Link going back in time and killing Demise in the past. All the springs remain intact, along with other artifacts of the sky kingdom, and the Sheikah tribe thrives (why there are so many). Ganon is incarnated much sooner, because Demise died much sooner. (Shown in the ancient past of Totk) Nintendo, just to reference every game possible, scattered Easter eggs implying alternate versions of other Zelda timeline events occured. (The ancient fight with calamity Ganon may be their version of "A Link to the Past, with the "7 heroines" helping link instead of 7 maidens descended from sages. Fun Easter egg clothes and weapons aren't clues to the timeline, they are red herrings. They only exist to hit our nostalgia button so fans of every Zelda timeline are drawn in. The "imprisoning War" here is clearly an entirely different event from the one referred to in a Link To The Past. It is "this dimensions version" of the imprisoning war, not the one we're familiar with. Botw takes place at the same "time" as the original Legend of Zelda, just in another dimension, and Totk is this dimensions Zelda 2 "Adventure of Link". The devs purposely recreated iconic landscapes seen in the original Zelda game art, and they made a beta testing version of botw in 8bit that looked like classic zelda. They also went out of their way to make as many enemies from that game appear. Nintendo was too lazy on this one to make it fit into one of the already established timelines - they would need to care about story intricacy more. Instead they took the lazy route and decided to branch it off from the timelines earliest point (Skyward Sword) so they could do whatever they wanted without needing to be careful about anything. Ganon in Totk only recognizes links name because Zelda spouts it out every 5 min in the past to everyone she meets and ganon was using his phantom to spy. As a side note - I personally think in the original timeline, the Zonai showed up to find a fully functioning kingdom, and ended up going to war for the Triforce, and were the "dark interlopers" that were banished to the twilight realm and became the twili. It would explain why their architecture and bodies are so similar.

Aonuma and Fujibayashi did hint at the idea of Hyrule's founding actually being a refounding in an Interview (the same that said "No DLCs", can be seen in a Video made by "Monster Maze") It is not a dumb move though, this allows them to make new lore without fucking up the old one. But this also would mean, since Aonuma is done with the Wild Era, that the Zonai will also be just a One-Time-Thing just like the Twili

Several issues here. 1. The proposed "Rauru's Hyrule comes after SS" theory states that the entire section takes place in a separate timeline - and that includes everything in the past segments, as well. See, the theory goes that after all the time traveling shenanigans of SS the timeline split in two - one timeline where Demise was killed by Link, and one timeline where Demise became the Imprisoned and was destroyed before he could fully resurrect. According to the theory, the majority of the games continue on the Imprisoned Defeated timeline (where the Master Sword exists) while the Wild Era occurs on the Demise Defeated timeline (where there was no reason for Link to ever pull the Goddess Sword from it's pedestal - with presumably the Master Sword being forged at a later date to deal with the Calamity). 2. The maps aren't a good point to bring up as proof of anything, as they change in pretty much every Zelda game. OOT's map does not match the WW iteration of the Hyrule found under the Great Sea, and it certainly doesn't match TP's map. 3. I also wouldn't put too much faith in the idea that the Forest Sage was replaced by the Wind Sage. After all, both a Wind Sage and a Forest Sage exist at one point in Hyrule's History - the Adult Timeline. And the two Sages have different roles. The Earth and Wind Sage together empower the Master Sword while the seven Sages (Zelda included) act as allies to the Hero of Time and are a failsafe should something go wrong (such as Link dying). So while it's always fun to point out the Zelda team's odd obsession with incorporating the elements of Wind and Forest together, I wouldn't give it much thought beyond "it's a reference to the fact that Ocarina of Time was supposed to have a Wind Sage before we changed it." 4. And perhaps the most important point, any of this speculation could change in the blink of an eye (or rather, the introduction of the next Zelda game). Lord knows Nintendo and the Zelda team don't like to keep to a single version of the timeline. How many different iterations have they given us over the years? Certainly more than the two printed ones. While I wouldn't go so far as to say they don't care about a the timeline at all, I will say that they certainly like to fiddle with it on a creative whim.

i personally think that TOTK goes back to sometime after windwaker, with all the evidence of petrified coral reefs and giant tree roots all points to windwaker and the koroks planting seeds

I just found out the other day that the breath of the wild ancient Kingdom maps are the exact square mileage of my hometown

SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME WHY RAURU IS HYLIAN THE SAGE OF LIGHT IN OOT BUT IS ALSO A ZONAI HOLDER OF LIGHT POWER IN TOTK/BOTW. THEY ARE THE SAMW PERSON BUT ALSO NOT THE SAME PERSON SOMEONE PLEASE END MY SIFFERING HOW DOES THAT WORK

7:28 The Parella have been stated to be a separate species unrelated to the Zora. And as far as the Rito, they have very little in common with the ones from WW and most likely have a completely different origin. Off the top of my head, I don't remember there being anything explicitly stating the Wild Era Rito being related to the Zora (correct me if I'm wrong), so it's possible they originated differently. There are, after all other races of bird people that could have evolved into the new Rito, or they may have interbred with Zora crating a new sub-species of sorts.

Where is your guy's theory on how the time line merged

OK let’s get something straight. You are not the same person. You were a few years ago. Your entire atomic structure has changed. You have lost atoms and gained atoms, your cells have been destroyed, and new cells have taken their place. The only part of you that remains is the ghost like essence we call memory. So if I killed your grandfather, because I was an absolute jerk, you would not die. You can’t die. you are not the same person whose grandfather I killed. So people who say that the fallen timeline or whatever timeline must exist for link to go back and tell his past self, that’s bullshit. Modern quantum physics, and medical knowledge debunks that. If I killed your grandfather, you’d be fine. If the alternate histories were erased after link, did his journey or whatever you were talking about At the beginning of the video, it wouldn’t matter. By the way, nice job on this video. I love how you present your information, I love how your voice is very audible and not drowned out by stupid Lofi, garbage music, and I love how you speak clearly, and present your side of the story. Very nice job.

Unsolicited advice: watch this back at 1.25x speed and the cadence and flow of the video is so much more satisfying and all the info still comes in clear. Great video tho! It’s clear that as you continue to grow, your scripting and voice over will do amazing things for you. Keep working to be a better presenter and you’re golden. Keep it up! ❤ Some great examples are VaatiVidya if you want to be more “soulful” with it. His souls “prepare to cry” series videos are some of the best. Or something more factual and informative would be someone like Simon with any of his channels like “Today I Found Out” or “Biographics” Or even Brain Blaze if you want some silly comedy. 😂 I don’t even like Zelda much, but imma sub anyways just so you don’t think im a hater. Doing some “how to grow yt” research and a channel used you as an example. I decided to check ya out based on that. Have a good one!

Fall timeline is because you go back in time because you put the mastersword into the stone.

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22:29 Look at the Bargainer Statue *eyes?* Doesn't it look like a ⚖? The eyes of the Bargainer Statues reminds me of Balance between 2 weights. What if those weights are both *it* and the Goddess Statues? The Bargainer statues are directly underneath the Goddess Statues of Hylia. Could it be possible that both Statues are linked to the *same source?* Whatever that "Source" is? Also, when the Mother Goddess Statue in the Forgotten Temple is tumbled over, the other smaller Goddess Statues mention it lost it's "link" to it. The Mother Goddess Statue is right above the Bargainer Statue! And each Bargainer Statue has a Goddess Statue above it? Is it possible that whatever "entity" behind the Bargainer Statues are also behind the Goddess Statues controlling them as well? Hence, why the eyes of the Bargainer represents a *Balance Scale?* ⚖ Goddess Statue = Bargainer Statue

I mean, there is a downfall timeline cause in OOT when Link travels to the future Ganon alrready wins, so there is alrready a timeline where Ganondorf causes Downfall, and the player just creates the other two timelines cause they beat Ganondorf

A followup - when I re-examined the cutscene, something jumped out at me to support this theory. The Master Sword doesn't take any gloom damage until Link gets hurt. He's able to parry the first blast no problem, but that second blast trails up his arm, and corrodes it almost instantly. Only THEN do we see the gloom start to spread over the blade.