The Legend Of Zelda Twilight Princess / Tropes A - J

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• 20 Bear Asses: Link is rewarded with a bottle of Fairy Tears for collecting 20 Poe Souls. These not only refill his health completely, but they increase his attack power temporarily as well, only for 10 seconds at best.
• Ability Mixing: Like in The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, Link can combine Bombs with Arrows to shoot Bomb Arrows. After obtaining the optional Hawkeye item, which functions like a telescope, it can be used in conjunction with the bow as well to increase accuracy at distance.
• Aborted Declaration of Love: When Midna goes back to the Twilight Realm, she says, "Link, I...See you later." Granted, she may not have been about to do a love declaration, but it's implied. Apparently it is not implied at all in the Japanese version. According to Zelda Wiki, her last words in Japanese translates to "Link...s...see you." Which, as you can see, only includes the Ironic Echo.
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: One of these features twice in the game: the same location appears as the training level for Link's wolf form, as well as later, after the third dungeon. While not a huge area, it's still absurdly spacious, and seems to double as a prison of some kind. Said area is apparently inside Hyrule Castle, and clearly above ground level.
• Action Commands: A similar system to the Parry mechanic in The Wind Waker is employed for the finishing blow and helm splitter.
• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: The game has this happen in the opposite direction. When freeing the town and thus getting access to its stores, one store is very obviously meant for the wealthy (it doesn't even let you in without cleaning your shoes first). The few things it sells are so ridiculously overpriced that it is impossible to buy them with even the biggest rupee bag. It is an option though to reform the shop and have it branded by the business that a child from your hometown founded, leading to a happier environment, music and dancing and much lower prices.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: Speaking with Barnes within the time-frame after Barnes' Bombs reopens and before the water bombs are available reveals this little gem:
  Barnes: Barnes's bombs boast the biggest blasts, believe it! Better buy a bunch before they're all bought! Can't beat Barnes's bombs!
• Advancing Wall of Doom: The Twilight itself qualifies as this to all of Hyrule. In the actual gameplay, Link must escape a burning bridge before the flames reach him.
• Aerith and Bob: The children in Link's village are named Malo, Talo, and... Colin and Beth. Averted in Italian, where Talo is called Furio (an actual Italian name).
• Agony of the Feet: One phase of the fight against Zant takes place in a recreation of the Snowpeak Ruins boss's room. Zant grows giant, but hitting his foot with the Ball and Chain will cause him to shrink down to half his normal size and bounce around the room clutching his injured foot, leaving him vulnerable.
• Air-Aided Acrobatics: When hanging from an Oocoo in the City in the Sky, Link can gain extra height with the help of the eolic setpieces present there. They become the only reliable way to make way through the dungeon until the second Clawshot is collected.
• Airborne Mook: The Lizalfos enemies have winged relatives in this game, the Aeralfos, that attack Link from the air with strafing attacks.
• The Alcatraz: The catacombs of Hyrule Castle and the Arbiter's Grounds. The former is where Link is taken to after turning into a wolf, forcing him to escape. The latter's inmates on death row couldn't be killed by normal means, so they were instead banished to another dimension. Its only known "escapee" is Ganondorf himself, though he actually escaped as he was being sent there and needed the Triforce of Power to do so.
• Alien Blood: Morpheel produces purplish blood when its eye is attacked. Also, Dark Beast Ganon drips glowing white blood from his old abdominal wound.
• Alien Sky: The Twilight version of Hyrule has a yellowy brown sky, and there are black squares floating upwards. In the "real" Twilight Realm, the sky (such as it is) is swirling black, blue and purple.
• All Deserts Have Cacti: Like in Ocarina of Time, the Gerudo Desert is notable for being cactus-free, though Leevers (leech-like creatures) look similar to cacti in this game.
• All There in the Manual:
  • Technically, more like All There in the Supplemental Material. The official strategy guide and the trading card deck each provide considerable additional information about not only Link and Zelda, but almost every significant supporting character.
  • Hyrule Historia also reveals details about several of the characters that were otherwise never mentioned, such as the true identity of the Hero's Shade and slightly more info about the Twili and Oocca.
• Already Done for You: Happens in the final dungeon: As Link approaches the tower where the Boss Key is being held, he gets attacked by some mooks, but several secondary characters arrive and deal with them from the grounds.
• Alternate Timeline: This game follows the "child" part of the timeline split after Ocarina of Time, continuing from Majora's Mask.
• Ambiguously Human: Aside from the difference in the shape of their ears, humans and Hylians are treated as exactly the same species throughout the game. Link himself is often refered to as human and not Hylian; despite his Pointy Ears and despite Hylians still being around. Many of the cast, including Rusl and his family, have round ears. This never happens again in any other Legend of Zelda game.
• Ambushing Enemy: Torch slugs often hang on the ceilings of the Goron Mines, dropping down on Link's head when he passes underneath.
• American Kirby Is Hardcore: After The Wind Waker's disappointing sales on the West, it was decided that the next game would cater to Western gamers. The result was the Zelda game with the most realistic art style in the series, in addition to having a more serious and epic tone, being one of the darkest installments (tied with Majora's Mask in many fans' eyes), and having a higher age rating than previous games. Much of the game's official art also had Link looking more serious and aggressive.
• Amphibian Assault: The Deku Toad is a gargantuan amphibian who drops from the ceiling and is defeated by hitting its tongue. Midna panics at the sight of it.
• Amusing Injuries: If Link falls into a body of ice cold water in the Snowpeak region, he instantly becomes encased in a perfect block of ice, rather than suffering hypothermia and sinking.
• And I Must Scream:
  • Jovani sold his soul for wealth, and was turned into a sentient, but unmoving, golden statue.
  • Midna in the manga explains that this is what the Twilight does to any human caught in it. It strips them of their physical bodies and keeps their spirits in a sort of limbo. They're not alive, nor are they dead. They simply wander the Twilight, living in fear.
    Midna: Have you forgotten? When Light-dwellers enter the Twilight, they turn into spirits.
    Link: Are they alive?
    Midna: They're not dead... but they're not alive either. They simply exist in the interval of Twilight, forced to go around in fear.
• And Man Grew Proud: Lanayru relates the tale of a tribe of evil sorcerers who tried to use their magic to lay hold of the Triforce. They were stripped of their powers and banished from Hyrule. Midna and Zant are descendants of this tribe.
• ...And 99¢: After Malo buys out Chudley's Emporium, the Magic Armor which was previously 100,000 Rupees (400,000 in the HD port) there is reduced to 598 Rupees.
• Androcles' Lion: The first dungeon is full of monkeys that need to be saved, and are quick to return the favor, proving themselves to be vital to progressing through it. Furthermore, the first miniboss is a possessed baboon named Ook. After Link beats the insect possessing him off of Ook, he returns the favor by helping Link in the fight against the dungeon's boss Diababa.
• Angel Face, Demon Face: Princess Zelda becomes sickly pale, gets glowing yellow eyes, and starts developing blackish veins around her face and neck after she's possessed by Ganondorf.
• Animal Motifs: Link transforms into a wolf when in the Twilight Realm. Throughout the game there are references to Link in his human form having "the eyes of a beast".
• Animal Talk: Being a wolf allows Link to talk to animals such as cats, frogs, and Cuccos. He can even talk to Epona, although about the only thing Epona says is that she knows he's Link but would rather see him transformed back.
• Animate Inanimate Matter: The Freezards and Chilfoses of the Icepeak Ruins are both made out of animated ice, the former in the form of rough masses and the latter shaped like skeletons.
• Animorphism: Link and the Hero's Shade can both transform into wolves, while the final boss Ganon is, of course, a big boar.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • When climbing Hyrule Castle, falling in one of the half-dozen flights of staircases will restart you at the staircase you fell in, rather than the beginning of the (single large) room.
  • In the Palace of Twilight, backtracking to the first two sections would seem impossible without the Sols that activate platforms, and there's a tall room in the central section that involves several elevator platform rides, only some of which will carry you up. Returning to these areas activates new floating platforms that will let you go through the rooms in the first section, and skip the series of elevators in the last section.
  • Like The Wind Waker HD before it, the HD version of this game brings a few:
    • Link swims and climbs on vines much faster, unlike in the original.
    • Link doesn't do an Item Get! animation the first time he collects a given value of Rupee anymore, nor does he return excess Rupees to treasure chests anymore.^note Ironically enough, returning excess Rupees to treasure chests was itself an attempt at this trope that backfired horribly; nothing is more annoying than finding a chest that holds something you're already maxed out on... unless you're a completionist (read: average Zelda player who's found the Compass for a given dungeon) and you're trying to get every chest.
    • Only twelve Tears of Light must be collected in Twilight segments, as opposed to the original sixteen.
    • A new item called the Ghost Lantern lights up when a Poe is nearby, even during the day, when they are not physically present. The map also shows how many Poes are in a general region, and how many you've killed.
    • The map in general shows more info, like where you last started your game, minigames, horse grasses and sidequests.
    • The sword doesn't clash against walls anymore, making combat in narrow areas much easier.
• Anti-Wastage Features: In the original version, opening a treasure chest containing a rupee when your Wallet of Holding is full will cause Link to put it back, which keeps you from wasting money.
• Apathetic Citizens: Most of the residents of Hyrule Castle Town are oblivious to what is going on around them, even when brought back out of the Twilight. A giant golden pyramid-barrier over the castle just means business as usual.
• Aquatic Mook: The game features neither River Zoras nor Octoroks (the latter's absence is a major omission, as it was present in all prior games), but has Toadpolis who behave in the exact same manner. In addition, Baris and Skullfish make their return.
• Arboreal Abode: Link lives inside a tree, like in Ocarina of Time.
• Armored Dragons: Argorok, a dragon fought as the boss of the City in the Sky, wears a full suit of armor all over its body. In order to defeat it, Link has to destroy said armor to reach its hidden weak spot.
• Armor Is Useless: This incarnation of the Hero's outfit has chain mail under the green tunic. But Link takes the same amount of damage wearing the Hero's Clothes as he does in the prologue without it.
• Armor of Invincibility: The game brings back the Magic Armor from The Wind Waker, this time as an actual suit of armor that Link can change into or out of as he pleases. As the game doesn't have a magic meter, this one eats Rupees at a rate of 2 per second.
• Arrows on Fire: The game gives fire arrows, no longer available as items, to Bulblins and their twilight counterparts, which typically do minimal damage and can be swatted out of the air with your sword. If you're wearing the Zora armor, however, they do a massive six times normal damage. Out of combat, Fire Arrows are used on two separate occasions to trap you on a bridge coated with oil.
• Artifact of Doom: The Fused Shadow and the Mirror of Twilight. The former is an ancient, powerful armor that can be used to defeat powerful enemies, but can corrupt those who can't control dark powers. The Mirror of Twilight can be used to warp between worlds when it's in complete form, but it too can corrupt careless people and creatures when it's torn apart and misused, and may let through dangerous beings.
• Artificial Brilliance: A Darknut with its armor removed is smart enough to hang back behind the fully armored Darknuts, darting in and out to attack. Have fun fighting four at once in the Bonus Dungeon. It's a significantly greater challenge than the actual final boss... unless stocked up on bomb arrows.
• Artificial Script: The game features a developed Hylian alphabet like that of The Wind Waker, though the text itself converts from English words instead of Japanese.
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • During an Escort Mission where you protect a wagon, instead of just powering through attacks relying on Link to defend them, the driver will veer off course to go around in a huge circle before continuing its path every single time it's hit by an attack, and occasionally just for the hell of it. Of course, this maneuver prolongs the mission and allows enemies to encircle them more easily, making it much more likely they'll take another hit and do another circle.
  • In the City in the Sky, there's a room with two Lizalfos, each in a different far corner of the room. Instead of being a single floor, the floor is broken up into squares. If you shoot one Lizalfos with a Bomb Arrow, the other will run over to investigate… and not think to jump the gap on the way, thus falling to its death.
  • Running over to investigate the body of a fallen comrade is also a mistake in itself, since the enemy is positioning itself in the same place that allowed the other one to be shot, meaning that Link doesn't even have to change where he's aiming all that much.
• Artistic License – Child Labor Laws: Malo is the youngest and shortest of the village children, but he ends up not only running several shops, he even buys out the competition (thanks to Link's continued funding) and employs adults. We're to assume the Hyrule Kingdom's labor laws are either very lax, or simply don't exist.
• Artistic License – Engineering: The bridges of Eldin and Lake Hylia are an architect's nightmare because virtually nothing is holding them up or supporting their massive valley-spanning structures. And it's not a case of Bizarrchitecture because they are both in such a state of disrepair. And the bridge of Eldin technically shouldn't even be standing anymore after having a large chunk of its center span being broken off by twilight magic: The rest of the bridge would've already fallen from its sudden removal.
• Artistic License – Physics: In the sliding block puzzles, if a block in motion collides with a stationary block that is not flush against the edge of the area, the stationary block remains stationary and the moving block instantly comes to a halt. In reality, the moving block would transfer its kinetic energy to the stationary block, causing it to slide away.
• Art Nouveau: The Lakebed Temple draws a lot of inspiration from Catalan Modernism, especially Gaudí's famous trencadis technique. It's noticeably one of the most beautiful temples of the game.
• Art-Shifted Sequel: Among 3D games, the game follows up The Wind Waker (which employed cel-shaded visuals) by opting to use a more realistic art style.
• Ascended Glitch: Originally, it was possible to get Green Chu Jelly if a Blue and Yellow Chu combined. Seeing as it only worked in the Wii version and it had no effect when drunk, had no text on the item subscreen, and no text appeared when obtained, it was most likely left in by mistake from when the game had a magic meter. The HD version not only leaves it in, but gives it proper text referencing that it has no effect.
• Aside Glance: Link glances in your direction if you leave him standing in one place long enough. Presumably to check you're still there.
• As Long as It Sounds Foreign: Midna's spoken language is comprised of english phrases spoken by her actress Akiko Kōmoto, which have had their syllables scrambled around into an incomprehensible gibberish. The end result sounds like some strange merge of Asian accent with French, while employing neither the grammar rules nor words of either language. Although, it's gibberish to us, in-universe she could easily be speaking perfect Hylian.
• Ass Kicking Pose: At the end of a boss defeat cutscene, or if you sheathe your sword right before a tough enemy poofs, Link will twirl his weapon before he sheathes it over his shoulder, looking particularly badass. Combining this with the Mortal Draw technique makes for some nice showing iaijitsu.
• Asteroids Monster: Chus are small blobs of slime that split into smaller blobs when killed (this can go both ways, as smaller junks can congeal to form a larger enemy); since each small Chu comes in a different color, it's important to avoid the merge if the player seeks to scoop the remaining fluids they leave after being killed.
• Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: Non-character examples. The grass that makes the hawk call resembles a soaring bird, and the grass that calls Epona resembles a horseshoe.
• Attack Its Weak Point: The eyes of Diababa, Morpheel and Armogohma, the jewel on Fyrus's head, the Twilight Sword in Stallord's head, and the open point in Argorok's armor (on its back); the third battle with Zant has his shoes, and Beast Ganon has his underbelly during the Final Boss battle's second phase.
• Attack Reflector: The Shield Bash allows you to reflect projectiles, but it requires good timing.
• Attack the Injury: When the Sages attempted to execute Ganondorf it failed, but left an injury. In both the dark beast forms and Ganondorf form, this remains a vulnerable weak spot for him, and Link must take advantage to defeat him. The finishing blow with the Master Sword is also delivered to this spot.
• Attack the Mouth: The Deku Toad is defeated by repeatedly attacking its tongue.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Following the classic Zelda tradition, one of Ganondorf's forms is vulnerable to a random useless item in your inventory. In the final battle of the game, the Final Boss can be distracted and made vulnerable by... a fishing rod.
• Attract Mode: An extended trailer featuring beautiful music and clips from various cutscenes and action sequences can be viewed if the start screen is allowed to idle for a period of time.
• Audible Sharpness: How you know your sword/tail is ready for another spin slash in the Wii version. In the Gamecube / Wii U Versions, this sound is used for charging a spin attack instead.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • For the most part, the wolf form takes more damage, can't block, and enemies that are knocked down can't be attacked directly. But new abilities are available in this form, and, on the rare occasions you find a suitable enemy, few things are more cathartic than literally ripping their throats or souls out.
  • The Magic Armor. It looks amazing, but it'll drain your wallet away to nothing in no time. After that, it truly becomes a dead-weight, leaving you vulnerable in battle until you take it off. You have to keep stock of maximizing your rupees with the Giant wallet and wear it only in difficult battles as there's no point into wearing it in puzzles with no enemies. Situations such as the battle against the four Darknuts in the Cave of Ordeals are among the few situations where using it is practical. Downplayed in the HD remake, where the max rupee count for each wallet has been increased, in addition to the new Colossal Wallet that can hold 9,999 rupees, ensuring that you can actually make decent use of it for long periods of time.
• Awesome, but Temporary: The game has the Light Sword, a super-powered Master Sword that can One-Hit KO all Shadow Beasts, and do tremendous damage to Zant. However, it can only be used in the Twilight Realm. Justified, as the power that the Master Sword acquires comes from the Sol, which are used as the Twilight Realm's equivalent to the Sun, and are necessary to keep the realm functional. After restoring the Sol and overthrowing Zant, Link and Midna return to the Light World to face Ganondorf, where the Master Sword loses the power of the Sol and returns to its prior state.
• Babies Ever After: One of the final scenes of the game shows this happening to Rusl and Uli. Granted they were married with a child for the course of the game and Uli's pregnancy is both visually noticeable and plot-related, the fact that they show the baby at the end makes it count.
• Back from the Brink: By the time Link starts fighting back the Twilight, it's taken over all of Hyrule apart from Link's hometown, Ordon Village. In fact, they would have gotten that area too had Link not come back at just the right time to kill off the Twilight Beasts.
• Background Music Override:
  • When Midna is nearly dying; "Midna's Lament" will play in all areas unless an enemy is nearby, in which case it gets overriden.
  • While you're busting through Hyrule Castle, the normal enemy music will be overriden with the sound of the rain if you're outdoors, or Hyrule Castle's theme if you're inside.
• Backstab: More like backslash — the Back Slice Hidden Skill, which allows you to roll around an enemy to slash their back. (It's actually the parry attack from Wind Waker, only it can be used at any time instead of being strictly a Counter-Attack.)
• Bag of Holding: Comes standard with the hero garb, being able to carry a wallet, a fish journal, a bottle, a slingshot, a lantern, a wooden sword, and a big lantern before meeting Midna for the first time. Beforehand, Midna is shown to have access to a hammerspace where she keeps Link's sword and shield while he's in wolf form, so she's likely holding onto all of his items for him.
• Bait-and-Switch Boss: The game does this in the fourth dungeon (which may seem like the final dungeon if you aren't familiar with the series tradition of having two sets of Mac Guffins). Big Bad Zant appears, but rather than facing Link directly, he just drives his sword into the skull of a dragon skeleton, animating the boss of the dungeon. Even then, you may think it's just his Dragon and you'll be facing him [immediately] afterwards, but no.
• Ballad of X: The main theme in Hyrule Field is called "The Ballad of Twilight."
• Balloon-Bursting Bird: One minigame in Lake Hylia has you steering a big Kargaroc (basically a monstrous vulture) to pop fruit-shaped balloons for points.
• Banishing Ritual: Ganondorf was originally supposed to be executed by the sages, but he survived and started attacking them. In a last-minute maneuver, they resorted to banishing him to the Twilight Realm, where he found Zant.
• Barbarian Tribe: Bulblins seem to operate in this fashion. They live in a crude encampment in the desert, but venture out into the world for ransacking and pillaging. They tame wild boars, and are ruled by the gargantuan Lord Bulblin (who, as the biggest of the Bulblins, is also Large and in Charge).
• Bare-Bottomed Monkey: The monkeys encountered in the Forest Temple are all bare-bottomed, with a couple of jokes about them falling on their backsides ensuing. Of particular note is their boss Ook; not only does he taunt the player by spanking his big red behind at them, it's actually his weak point during his boss fight.
• Barely-Changed Dub Name:
  • In the German translation of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Ilia became "Ilya" and Zant became "Zanto".
  • The French version changed the name Zant to Xanto.
  • Depending on country, Midna's name was translated as either Midna or Midona.
• Bathos: At one point, you find yourself in an abandoned village, having been tasked to kill twenty Bulblins (orc-like creatures) in a western-style shoot-out in order to save the last resident (an elderly lady). This particular scene is also accompanied by a western soundtrack. Later on, you're given a similar task that's accompanied by the same music piece. This time however, you're tasked with talking to and befriending twenty of the old lady's cats.
• Battle Boomerang: A unique variant. The Gale Boomerang is enchanted with the power of a wind fairy, allowing it to hit things with magical accuracy and move in physics-defying ways.
• Battle in the Rain: The second half of the battle against Argorok takes place on the top of the City in the Sky, during a raging thunderstorm. It's also raining in the courtyard of Hyrule Castle and will occasionally in Hyrule Field. It is likely to rain at least once when you fight King Bulblin for Colin.
• Battle Theme Music:
  • For this game, the boss battle music often gets a triumphant version of the game's overworld theme when you're in the process of exploiting the enemy's weak spot with some well-aimed sword strikes. It uses one song for the bosses before the fourth dungeon, and another for the ones after. The switch happens right in the middle of the fourth boss's fight. Also in the game, there is also a tense 'You're Losing' mix when Ganondorf seems to get the upper hand when you've locked blades with him.
  • Regarding minibosses, several of them has unique themes that fit their nature or style, though a few still adhere to a general track (such as Darknut and Aeralfos).
• Battle Tops: The Spinner is a top-based battle vehicle. In addition to allowing Link to ride through magnetic rails and over quicksand, it can also be used as a cog to operate large machines or structures. It can also attack small enemies and is vital to defeat one of the bosses, Stallord.
• Beat the Curse Out of Him:
  • Ook, the baboon miniboss of the Forest Temple, who is being mind controlled by some strange insect on his head. You snap him out of it by hitting him in his bright red bottom with your sword (and at the end the bug falls off and dies); in the temple's boss battle, he comes back and helps you, free of the curse.
  • Yeta turns into the boss Blizzeta when she looks at her reflection of a shard of the Mirror of Twilight and is corrupted by it. Link must defeat her in battle to dispel the curse and claim the mirror fragment.
  • During the final battle, Ganondorf possesses Zelda's body and uses her magic against you, which includes holy light. When you send it back at him, Zelda is dead and a holy being, but Ganondorf is demonic, so only he gets hurt. Also, this only weakens him. It takes magic from Midna to actually drive him out of Zelda.
• Beautiful All Along: After the Final Boss battle, it's revealed that Midna was cursed into her diminutive impish guise, and has a rather more shapely and statuesque humanlike true form which is then only seen in the epilogue.
• Begin with a Finisher: The most powerful attack Link can learn is the Mortal Draw, which does critical damage while drawing the sword. Against unarmored foes, it can end a battle as soon as it begins.
• Benevolent Architecture: The dungeon where the Spinner it's found in is covered with slots in the walls for the Spinner to slot into. There are also a lot of places where Midna can jump you around. When you lack that ability due to her being mortally wounded, there are ropes spread across the areas you'd normally need her to cross.
• Bequeathed Power: Partway though the game, Zelda sacrifices her physical form to save Midna's life by transferring... something to her. It's never specified what she gave her, but it's hinted to be the Triforce of Wisdom.
• Best Friend: Link grew up with Mayor Bo's daughter, Ilia, who's shown to be his best friend in Ordon Village by tending to Epona for him. She also made the Horse Call for him, to wish him well on his journey to deliver the Ordon Sword and Shield to Hyrule Castle, but was abducted by King Bulblin before she had the chance.
• Betty and Veronica: It's very background, but if you look for it, it's quite funny. After Colin is injured saving Beth's life, blonde Beth and dark-haired Luda become rivals for the right to take care of him.
• Beware My Stinger Tail: The Lizalfos tie sharp objects, such as axe heads, to their tails.
• BFG: Auru whips out a cannon held like a rocket launcher near the end to help defeat some enemies in Link's way.
• BFS: Several enemies have one.
  • Most notable are the Darknuts with the large claymore they initially fight with. Once their armor has been stripped off, they throw it at you before pulling out a more sensibly-sized sword. Sensible for the Darknut, that is; given the Darknut's size, the sword is almost as big as you are.
  • The Death Sword miniboss is an enormous floating meat-cleaver thing, wielded by an invisible ghost boss.
  • There's also the one the Sages attempted to execute Ganondorf with, which he takes for himself after breaking free, and uses it to fight Link.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Usurper King Zant is the leader of the Twili who desires to conquer Hyrule as well, though he is actually in league with Ganondorf, who has returned and seeks to take over both Hyrule and the Twilight Realm.
• Big Boo's Haunt:
  • The Arbiter's Grounds combine it with Shifting Sand Land and features undead enemies (like ReDead Knights, Stalfos and the boss, Stallord) and spectral enemies like the Poes and the Mini-Boss, Death Sword.
  • The Palace of Twilight is located in the Twilight Realm and is infested by Shadow Beasts and other Twilight-based enemies, as well as dark fog made of Shadow Crystal particles that turn Link into a wolf and can only be removed by the light of the Sol Spheres or the enhanced Master Sword.
• Big Brother Mentor: Rusl, the Ordon swordsman and Colin's father, is this to Link. It's stated that he was responsible for teaching Link everything he knows and can be viewed as either a sample of this trope or a straight father figure. Their relationship is more depicted as this in the manga adaptation.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: The light stolen to the guardian spirits has to be retrieved by killing electric, luminiscent Shadow Bugs. Their queen is the Twilit Bloat, found in Lake Hylia.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • When Colin is kidnapped from Kakariko Village, Link comes bursting in on his horse with a look that just guarantees King Bulblin's asskicking.
  • Also Ook, when he heroically bursts into the room during the battle with Diababa, Leit Motif and all.
• Big Fish in a Bigger Ocean: Midna was a step above others in the Twilight Realm due to her possession of a piece of the Fused Shadow. When the villain Zant was given a fraction of Ganondorf's power, he quickly took control of the Twilight Realm and forced Midna to rely on Link and Princess Zelda for help. When Midna tries to take Ganondorf on with the full power of the Fused Shadow, he effortlessly curb-stomps her and crushes the artifact with one hand.
• Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: A pair of peaceful Yeti are characters Link meets and befriends over the course of his adventure, namely when he travels to Snowpeak. One of them (Yeta) suffers a Demonic Possession due to a curse by a fragment of the Mirror of Twilight, but Link manages to exorcize her via a boss battle. Afterwards, Link can compete against them in a sliding race.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • The Twilight Realm has 'Sols', which act like their version of the sun. Guess the Latin word for "sun."
  • In the Spanish translation, where 'Sol' is the same word for "sun", they are referred to as 'Taiyo.' Which is Japanese for "sun".
  • The lyrics to the Malo Mart song are in Japanese and roughly translate to "Why not buy some? Why not buy some? If you like it, why not buy some?"
• Bishōnen Line: The final battle against Ganon, who goes from his bestial form, to his regular, Ganondorf form on horseback, to a one-on-one sword duel.
• Bittersweet Ending: Sure, Link defeats Ganon and saves Hyrule, but Midna destroys the Mirror of Twilight, meaning the two of them will probably never see each other again. And of course, Ganondorf’s death in the game is only a minor setback, since he gets reincarnated in Four Swords Adventures because of Demise's death curse.
• Black Cloak: Zelda wears one over her regular garments while being held prisoner in the tower. The robe is implied to be a costume of mourning for her ravaged country.
• Black Comedy: Malo opens up a shop in Kakariko Village — instead of visiting the injured Colin in the makeshift hospital. The real kicker is that Malo is using the merchandise and building of a woman who turned into a shadow beast and died shortly beforehand. Plus, he looks like a toddler, and talks about cornering markets like a McDuck.
• Blackout Basement: Many dark caves and basements are found in the game. You have the standby of your wolf senses, but they are significantly nerfed in the aforementioned dark caves. The best thing to do is light the lantern.
• Blade Lock: During the final battle, there is a move called "chance" that initiates a lock between Link's sword and Ganondorf's. It's the easiest way to beat him.
• Blind Shoulder Toss: No sooner have you gotten the three Plot Coupons than the apparent Big Bad Zant shows up, takes them, looks at them for a moment, and then tosses them away in disdain, leaving you to find four more Plot Coupons to find him again.
• Bling of War: The Magic Armor is primarily red with golden trim, and we mean actual gold trim. It even weighs Link down if you let it consume all your money.
• Blocking Stops All Damage: There's an example with enemies in the Darknuts. If they're blocking, an attack won't hurt them. It doesn't matter if it's Link's sword, the ball and chain, an explosion from the bomb arrows, or even if his attack doesn't actually hit the area they're guarding with said block, their block animation just prevents all damage.
• Block Puzzle: The blocks on ice in Snowpeak Ruins and an optional ice cavern in Hyrule Field, where the low friction makes the puzzles more difficult. The blocks have to press and hold switches found in the floors, but due to the low friction the blocks have to be stopped exactly where the switches are, for which it's important to manipulate the positions of the blocks themselves.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf (respectively) have this kind of dynamic. This even extends to their personalities: Link falls under Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold, Zelda is a Brainy Brunette, and Ganondorf is a Fiery Redhead (albeit slightly less than in Ocarina of Time).
• Bloodless Carnage: Played with. Enemies' and Link's blood flash briefly on screen, but as there is no Clothing Damage, one won't think much of it. But after the monster invasion to Ordon Province, visiting Rusl after the cleansing of Faron Province but before defeating the game's first boss (Diababa) in the Forest Temple will show him on his sofa with nightmares wrapped in bloody bandages. It's finally played straight at the end of the game, when Link stabs the Master Sword through Ganondorf's abdomen, yet no blood is seen out of his wound.
• Blow You Away: The Gale Boomerang is used to blow (mostly) pinwheels for various effects, as well as tiles and leaves to unveil secrets in the ground.
• Blush Sticker: There's a very unusual example of the Deku Toad◊, a miniboss monster with a pair of these designed with differently colored rings that give them the appearance of archery targets.
• Bombardier Mook: During the wagon Escort Mission, Kargaroks fly overhead with bombs clutched in the claws and try to drop them on the wagon. Link must shoot them down with his bow and arrows to prevent this, as they won't come down into melee range.
• Bonus Dungeon:
  • The Cave of Ordeals is an optional gauntlet area with 50 floors filled with enemies and (near the end) some minibosses. But it's optional, as the only reward for its completion is releasing fairies in the Light Spirits' springs and providing an unlimited supply of Great Fairy's Tears in them.
  • In the HD version, the Wolf Link amiibo unlocks a new dungeon, "Cave of Shadows," which is similar to the Cave of Ordeals but can only be done in wolf form.
• Bonus Feature Failure: Getting all the Poe Souls rewards you a Silver Rupee (200 rupees) every time you ask... but by then, Link has already beaten seven dungeons and the Cave of Ordeals to get those souls, filling up his wallet along the way. By comparison, the earlier reward of getting a bottle full of Great Fairy's Tears seems much better. It's Not Completely Useless, though, since Rupees also serve as fuel for your Magic Armor.
• Book Ends:
  • The game begins and ends in twilight: it starts at dusk, and ends at dawn.
  • The final dungeon of the Fused Shadows arc is accessed from a cave at the bottom of Lake Hylia, and the boss is fought at the lowest point in the entire game world. The final dungeon of the Mirror of Twilight arc is accessed by a cannon that is also at Lake Hylia, and the boss is fought at the highest point in the entire game world. Both bosses have the same music, and both eventually involve latching onto and attacking an eye on the boss's back. Even more interesting is that in both of these dungeons, you get a Clawshot.
  • On a meta scale, Twilight Princess was released during the end of the GameCube cycle and the beginning of the Wii's, while Skyward Sword was released at the end of the Wii cycle.
• Boom, Headshot!: This trope is optionally self-inflicted. There is a section at the Snowpeak Ruins dungeon that contains cannons. If you load one with a cannonball and one of your bombs and position Link in front of the blast, he will die instantly, regardless of how many hearts you have at the time.
• Boss-Altering Consequence: The Fishing Rod is normally pointless to use in boss fights. However, if you pull it out in the fight against Ganondorf, he will become so distracted by it that he won't be able to act.
• Boss-Arena Idiocy:
  • Armogohma fights you in an arena filled with giant, hammer-wielding statues, which are the only way to kill it and the only such devices in the game.
  • Stallord fights you in a circular room that conveniently has grooves spiraling up it, allowing Link to ride up using his Spinner and attack.
  • Argorok fights you on a rooftop with towers in each corner that Link can use to Clawshot his way up to where Argorok flies around.
• Boss Corridor: The fight against Ganondorf is preceded by a long, decrepit upstairs corridor. The game gradually replaces the background music of Hyrule Castle with Ganondorf's Leitmotif to hype the upcoming battle.
• Boss Remix:
  • The Theme Music Powerup during boss battles is a remix of the Hyrule Field theme. Relatedly, two of the boss themes (namely those of Fyrus and Blizzeta respectively) remix one of the variations of Hyrule Field's theme as well.
  • The Shadow Insect Queen's theme is a remix of the Twilight mook battle theme.
  • Stallord, a dinosaur/dragon skeleton, fittingly uses remixes of "Dinosaur Boss Battle" from Ocarina of Time.
  • As Zant serves as a Final-Exam Boss, he gets several themes, which are each a mix of the original music of whichever boss or mini-boss he's currently mimicking and his own Leitmotif, before finally descending into a frantic, sped-up version of his original theme.
  • The fight against Puppet Zelda is a remix of Ganondorf's theme and Zelda's Lullaby. The final boss theme incorporates snippets of Ganondorf's theme.
• Boss Room: In Arbiter's Grounds, neither the boss nor miniboss are immediately visible: The boss room has a house-sized dragon skull that doesn't do anything until Zant reanimates it), while the miniboss room only has a very big sword tied to the floor with lots of ofuda-carrying ropes that just screams DO NOT CUT THESE ROPES.
• Boss Subtitles: With the descriptor of "Twilit [X]", up until Zant. In some countries, Stallord is also exempt from the theme, being reanimated by Zant instead of corrupted, though he follows the Twilit theme in English speaking countries.
• Boss Tease: The boss of the City in the Sky can be seen when you first arrive, and later serves to cause a Broken Bridge.
• Boss Vulnerability: The Final Boss is weird in the sense that you have to make him vulnerable, but the action you can do to break his guard is a free action (so long as you went to the trouble of getting it, of course) you can easily spam nonstop. However, this leads to the Final Boss becoming a Marathon Boss.
• A Boy and His X: The game features a fallen Twili named Midna who turns out to be the titular princess and her wolf companion Link (some of the time, anyway). At first, their relationship is more akin to pet and owner, with Midna riding Link around as though he were a horse and simply using him to fulfill her own ends, but by the end of the game, they've become Fire-Forged Friends (with no small amount of Ship Tease on the side).
• Braggart Boss: King Bulblin, complete with admittance of Link being a Worthy Opponent and Heel–Face Turn.
• Bragging Rights Reward:
  • There's a Poe-collecting sidequest that, like the Skulltula one in Ocarina of Time, rewards you with infinite money. While this game does have more use for rupees, thanks to the invincible Magic Armor being fueled by it, it still counts as this trope since a) You don't get infinite Rupees on hand, just have a quick source to max out your wallet, and b) The only location in the game where most players would want to use the item that benefits from the infinite money reward, the aforementioned Magic Armor, is the Cave of Ordeals... but you won't be heading in with the advantage of this sidequest's reward because the last Poe needed to complete it is located on one of the final floors of said 50-floor dungeon.
  • The bug hunt is a maddening example. Every unique bug you give the girl gets you money. She gives you a total of 150 Rupees for every matched male/female pair. And the reward for giving her all 12 pairs of bugs? The ability to carry 1000 Rupees. It would've been useful before she gave you 1800 Rupees. And by the time you could do this, you have been given enough Rupees to buy everything of value. It does synergize well with the Magic Armor, however.
  • Completing all fifty levels of the Cave of Ordeals in grants you the ability to refill your empty bottles with Great Fairy's Tears (and fairies while you're at it) at any spring. If you were able to complete the Cave of Ordeals though, you'll likely not need the Great Fairy's Tears for any other part of Twilight Princess.
• Brats with Slingshots: Oddly, grown-up Link gets a slingshot to play with the village kids, and it's obviated halfway through the second dungeon combat-wise.^note It remains a good utility for small tasks such as hitting switches and Skulltulas when you don't want to waste arrows.
• Breakable Weapons: Like in Ocarina of Time, wooden shields are destroyed if set on fire. As an added bonus, the Ordon Shield in this game is Permanently Missable. You can buy an infinite number of replacement Wooden Shields, which work just as well, but they don't have the same coat of arms as the Ordon Shield has.
• Breaking Old Trends:
  • The Octoroks had a perfect attendance record in the series (even acknowledged in-universe in The Wind Waker), but they fail to show up in this game.
  • As with previous bosses in the Zelda series, while various items may play a role in exploiting a boss's weakness, it's your sword that is the key to actually defeating every boss in this game... with two glaring exceptions:
    • Blizzeta is remarkable as a boss in that the ball and chain is the only weapon that can damage her and take her down. Your sword, despite being the Master Sword, will be completely ineffective against her.
    • Armogohma has to be stunned with the arrows and then hit with a statue controlled by the Dominion Rod, not with the sword. The sword isn't even required for when the boss is reduced to a small spider, as the arrows can do the job just fine.
  • For the first time in the series, Link actually has a required key item stolen from him. Just when you collected the 3rd Fused Shadow and return to the grotto, a cutscene happens where Zant easily defeats you and Midna from behind and steals the three pieces.
  • Zant is the first major antagonist in the series to give up a Heart Container once defeated. All other antagonist bosses before Zant never gave a Heart Container.
• Breaking the Bonds: In a flashback, Ganondorf does this. Set for execution at the hands (or sword rather), of the sages, he breaks free from his chains (AFTER he is already stabbed in the stomach) and in one swift move kills one of the sages. Of course, he had the Triforce of Power on his side, so he did have some help.
• Breath Weapon:
  • The large Freezards of the Icepeak Ruins attack by breathing out streams of icy mist at Link.
  • In the second phase of its battle, the dragon Arogorok breathes streams of fire at Link.
• Broken Bridge: Three, in fact. Two of them are missing and must be rebuilt or restored, while the third has an entire chunk yanked out of its middle which you must hunt down and warp back to its place.
• Brutal Bonus Level:
  • The Cave of Shadows is a marathon of enemies with no heart drops and keeps you stuck in wolf form, meaning no healing items or Magic Armor either. You may occasionally find a dig spot with a heart or three, but they are exceptionally rare. Most enemies do half a heart of damage, with some doing a full heart. You also have to fight multiple ReDead Knights at a time on several floors, as well as two floors full of icy enemies and obstacles. The only things that can heal you are the Wolf Link amiibo if you have completed the current challenge at least once and the Sheik and Zelda amiibos, once a piece.
  • Both the Cave of Ordeals and the Cave of Shadows become more difficult the second time through. Thought three Darknuts at once was bad? How about four?
• Bug Catching: There are 24 golden bugs that can be caught and given to a little girl named Agitha in exchange for Rupees and a wallet upgrade.
• Bugs Herald Evil: The most prominent example is the Arbiter's Grounds, an abandoned prison where ghosts still roam. The location is shrouded in evil even without being the home of the Mirror of Twilight, and is crawling with scarabs that will swarm Link en masse unless kept away with a lantern. The Death Sword is an ancient evil that dissolves into a cloud of locusts when defeated. There's also the Temple of Time, which while in much better condition when you visit it as a dungeon, is also crawling with giant spiders. Naturally, this is a giveaway that their progenitor was corrupted by a shard of the mirror and became Armogohma.
• Bullfight Boss: King Bulblin, when you first avoid him running into you. The battle takes place on the Bridge of Eldin, and is a jousting duel where Link has to attack King Bulblin in the right instant to avoid being bumped into the pit.
• But Now I Must Go: Midna. Eiji Aonuma said she may return if enough people want it, and she eventually did show up in Hyrule Warriors (which takes place in an Alternate Continuity from the rest of the series).
• By the Lights of Their Eyes: If you go into Link's basement and move around for a while, you may be surprised to see a pair of catlike eyes staring at you from the darkness. Take your lantern out to see your reflection.
• Call-Forward: Retroactively to The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures. The Hero’s Shade, aka the Hero of Time, tells the current Link that he will fight his true enemy, Ganondorf, just as the Royal Knights of Hyrule tell Link that Vaati is not his only enemy.
• Came from the Sky: Oocco and her son come from the City in the Sky. She fell off, and eventually gave up hope of getting back to the sky until she met Link.
• Camera Lock-On: As with all other console 3D games, enemies and characters can be aimed at with the help of the targeting button. Like Wind Waker, it doesn't include a fairy as a justification. The mechanic is taught before Link acquires his companion, but Midna still serves as the lock-on in Wolf form, with her magic trapping enemies and letting Wolf Link lock onto them and attack in rapid succession.
• Can't Argue with Elves: Midna has a kind of logic that's all her own, and her suggestions to Link are usually just thinly-veiled (or not at all veiled) orders.
• Can't Refuse the Call Anymore: When Link finds himself turned into a wolf and locked in the twilit Hyrule Castle. The mid-game twist occurs when Zant blindsides Link and takes the Fused Shadows they worked hard to get.
• Cap: Somewhat controversially, the game has a feature where if you open a treasure chest that contains more rupees than you can currently carry, you will simply put the rupees back into the chest to come back for later. Sounds good on paper, but it can hamper dungeon exploration as the player searches for which unopened chest contain a missing key, and rupee chests obstinately remain "unopened".
• Cardiovascular Love: The game uses this on occasion as a source of visual humor due to hearts being the series' long-standing recovery items:
  • If Link talks to the fangirls outside the clawshot game in Castle Town after winning at least once, they will squeal in excitement and produce a cluster of cartoon hearts, which will fall to the ground as health pickups.
  • The reunion of a yeti couple after a quick bout of possession results in a huge mass of hearts shooting out of their loving embrace, the largest being a health-boosting Heart Container.
• Cartoon Bomb: In addition to having standard round bombs as well as a Bombchu-like type known as Bomblings, the game also introduces an special variant that is water-proof and can be used underwater. These explosives, known as Water Bombs, looks like blue round fish with red eyes and white fangs.
• Cash Gate:
  • You need to purchase the Slingshot in Ordon Village in order to progress through the first part of the game.
  • After you restore light to Lanayru, you will regain control of Link in Lake Hylia. The only way out of the lake at this point is to pay Fyer so that his cannon can blast you back to Hyrule Field. Downplayed in that it only costs ten Rupees.
  • The first time Fyer sends you to Gerudo Desert is free of change; any future trips will cost you ten Rupees. Should you warp out of Gerudo Desert before first accessing a portal there, the only way back will require you to pay Fyer.
  • Played straight with getting to the City in the Sky. You must pay Fyer 300 Rupees so that he will fix the Sky Cannon, which is your only means of getting there.
• Cast from Money: Lacking the magic meter of many other games, the magic armor in this game drains your wallet at a extremely fast rate.
• Catapult to Glory: Fyer's Cannon is capable of shooting someone to the desert, but that destination is forbidden without a permit (Link receives one from Auru, who is one of Fyer's closest friends). Much later in the game, the sole transportation method between the ground and the high skies to reach the Oocca's homeland is via the even more powerful Sky Cannon, though it needs to be repaired beforehand.
• Cats Are Mean: Subverted. While it seems like the cat in Ordon is mean for stealing Link’s fish, he’s actually nice and helps Link out when he’s turned into a wolf and must get past Hanch. Same thing with Louise who helps Link get into the castle to save Midna.
• The Cavalry: Telma's resistance at Hyrule Castle basically blow up the bad guys pursuing Link.
• Cerebus Call-Back: Whenever Link purifies a Light Spirit spring and frees the surrounding region of Twilight, Midna, who rides on Wolf Link's back in the Twilight but must hide in his shadow in normal Hyrule, will playfully say "See you later!" before disappearing into his shadow. She says this again at the end when she must return to the Twilight Realm while destroying the Mirror of Twilight, knowing fully well that this means she will never see Link again.
• Chained by Fashion:
  • Midna wears a shackle in her hair in both forms. In Hyrule Warriors, it forms the basis of her imp form's weapon type, since she attacks with her hair and magic like in this game.
  • Wolf Link only gets to enjoy a few moments without a manacle chained to his paw. Midna breaks it by the chain rather than the manacle itself, so it somehow becomes a permanent part of his form, as it goes away when Link turns human, only to be there again when he changes back.
  • This ends up being the weakness of Fyrus, as Link can bring him down by holding the chains on his ankles while wearing the Iron Boots to stay in place and serve as a stake to anchor the chain. Fyrus keeps walking until his legs are pulled out from under him, letting Link rush in to attack.
• Challenging the Chief: The Gorons in The Legend of Zelda series have a culture revolving nearly entirely around physical strength. The strongest and toughest Goron is the tribal chieftain, no exceptions. This comes into play in this very game, wherein the Gorons will not allow you to enter their mines until you beat one of their elders in a sumo contest (which is actually impossible to win unless you cheat with the Iron Boots).
• Chandelier Swing: There's a subversion in Hyrule Castle; the chandeliers don't swing, but Link can use his Clawshots to grapple from one to another.
• Chaos Architecture:
  • This was actually done fairly well between The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and this game, with the kingdom simply being a bit larger and the places more evenly distributed. The game also justifies why Midna wouldn't recognize the Palace of Twilight, her own home, by her commenting that Zant's dark magic warped it.
  • It happens when you visit dungeons from Ocarina of Time. The Forest Temple, the Water Temple and the Temple of Time all return in this game, and yet they all have drastically different architecture (for starters, the Forest Temple is no longer a mansion, likely because the mansion itself crumbled and fell down at some point in the chronology, and the Water Temple is renamed the Lakebed Temple).
• Character in the Logo: The game's logo has a stylized silhouette of Link's wolf form and Midna's helmet.
• Charged Attack: The Jump Strike Hidden Skill and the Midna/Wolf Link energy field attack. The Spin and Great Spin attacks can be used this way too, complete with Audible Sharpness, though they can alternately be performed by rotating the stick 360 degrees and slashing.
• Chase Fight: During an Escort Mission of a coach from Hyrule Castle Town to Kakariko Village, Link has to fight off several Bokoblins while riding Epona. At one point, Link must also defeat King Bulblin in a joustic match like in an earlier moment (albeit requiring a different method this time due to the opponent's higher defense).
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • On Death Mountain, a giant volcanic rock rains down from the sky; then later on, you have to have Midna teleport it to Zora's Domain in order to thaw it out.
  • The very first item Link receives is the fishing pole. Seems relatively pointless, other than for fishing. Turns out that it can be used as a distraction against Ganondorf in the final battle; you can't hit him with it, but you can distract him while you get in a few good shots.
  • Only the true ruler of the Twilight Realm can destroy the Mirror of Twilight.
• Chekhov's Gunman: The game's first miniboss Ook the Monkey appears after Link frees him from the influence of an Insect of Darkness to help Link in the second phase of the fight against Diababa by swinging around carrying Bomblings for Link to hurl at Diababa with the Gale Boomerang.
• Chekhov's Skill: Near the beginning of the game, if you speak to the mayor of Ordon Village, a goat comes flying out of Ordon Ranch, and you either catch it by holding 'A' or get run over. This 'skill' is used on charging Gorons when Link is climbing Death Mountain, and later still in the final fight with Ganon, while you're both in animal form, making this a Chekhov's Boomerang.
• Chekhov's Volcano: Death Mountain is shown to be spewing ash and rocks when Link first arrives, foreshadowing that something wrong is going on in what will soon be his destination.
• Cherry Blossoms: A gameplay mechanic in Lanayru's fishing hole. Cherry blossoms filling the trees lets you know that the current season is spring, which affects the likelihood of finding certain fish.
• Cherry Tapping: Using the fishing rod^note The Coral Earring, a royal piece of jewelry received earlier in the game from Prince Ralis the Zora, is automatically attached as the fishing hook when obtained — likely serving as the reason for Ganondorf's distraction to swing at him makes him drop his nigh-unbreakable guard as he just STARES. Proceed to unsheathe your sword and slash him to pieces.
• Cheshire Cat Grin:
  • Midna makes quite a few of these (in her imp form). Especially whenever she hits a turning point in her quest to overthrow Zant.
  • The Skull Kid has one plastered on his face almost throughout his entire encounter with Link.
• Chest Monster: There are Tile Worms which hid under floor tiles and jump up when you cross them. Luckily, they occasionally peek up to look around, and you can wait with the Gale Boomerang in tow.
• Childhood Friend Romance: Link grew up together with Mayor Bo's daughter, Ilia. The game does everything short of outright stating they're couple, as several characters make note of how close they are and, late in the game, there's a sidequest dedicated to restoring Ilia's lost memories. At the end of which, Cor Goron and the others give them a moment alone. After giving Link the Horse Call, she urges him on his quest and tells him that whenever he finally returns to Ordon Village, she'll be waiting for him.
• Children Are Innocent: The children of Ordon Village, particularly Colin. Malo, however, has the cynicism and maturity of an adult, being capable of running a shop in Kakariko Village and planning the purchase of an abusively expensive emporium in Hyrule Castle Town so its products are made available for less wealthy people.
• Choice of Two Weapons: Link is shown training with the sword and bow, and can learn sword techniques throughout the game.
• The Chosen One: Several different characters in the game explicitly refer to Link being the hero chosen by the goddesses. A Triforce mark (a sign of being the Chosen One) is also visible on his sword hand even from the beginning of the game. Zelda and Ganondorf — also chosen by the goddesses — have the same marks on their hands, too.
• Chunky Salsa Rule: Unusually for this series, Twilight Princess features a few ways you can die instantly (as opposed to, say, drowning) regardless of how much health you have, although they're very specific things that players are relatively unlikely to do by accident. Staying in the burning bomb storage shack until it explodes, falling into lava or very cold water while wearing the Zora Armor, and standing in front of a cannon as it fires are all guaranteed instant kills. Fairies still revive you, though (except the exploding shack), and you will live if wearing the Magic Armor, though you'll lose 1000 Rupees.
• Clifftop Caterwauling: Wolf Link from the pre-release trailer and opening. Also, the sequences in-game before Link discovers a new technique.
• Climax Boss: Zant is only the penultimate boss in the game, as he confesses after his defeat that Ganondorf is back in the Light World and ready to take over Hyrule.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: After defeating Armogohma, a friggin' huge armored spider in the Temple of Time, it's revealed that the "eye" that was Armogohma's weak point was the actual boss; a small spider with an eye design on its back that runs around the room, trying to stay away from Link, and it's easily beaten with a few arrows, or one pound from an animated statue. This is Played for Laughs: the boss takes this form after Link does his customary victory pose. He gets this hilarious "WTF?" expression on his face when the miniature spider appears.
• Clothes Make the Legend: When Link is restored to his proper form for the first time after being a wolf, the light spirit Faron explains that his new garments are those of the legendary hero.
• Collection Sidequest: The Poe Souls and golden bugs. The former are necessary to restore Jovani's body to normal, while the latter have to be delivered to Agitha to receive money rewards. Both characters await you in Hyrule Castle Town.
• Colossus Climb: Two bosses in the game don't have to be climbed as much as getting high enough to use the hookshot on their weak point on their back. Cue Link sitting on the boss frantically stabbing said weak point with his sword until he gets shaken off.
• Combat Tentacles: Midna's Fused Shadow form has seven tentacles and a pitchfork.
• Comfort Food: Yeto brews a soup for his sick wife using pumpkin, goat cheese, and fish... and as you add each ingredient, the soup becomes tastier and is a better healing potion. You can drink as much of it as you want, and considering how many bottomless pits and spiky ice monsters haunt the premises, you'll probably want a lot of it.
• Comic-Book Adaptation: Averted this time. The aforementioned rating mark-up ^note from All Ages to 12+ in the Japanese CERO prevented Akira Himekawa from publishing one. It was eventually released in 2016 to coincide with the HD version, with an international release planned for 2017.
• Confusion Fu: Zant is somewhere between this and Unskilled, but Strong, due to him being a Ganon-powered Psychopathic Manchild.
• Conlang: Midna speaks Twili, the language of her character's race. The language is never seen written, but the spoken aspect is basically scrambled English. If one takes the time to unscramble every phrase Midna speaks, you'll find that it is applicable to the given situation. For example, Midna's statement when teleporting you being "I will take you there with my power."
• Conspicuous Electric Obstacle: The Temple of Time features electric barriers that harm Link upon contact. There are switches that disable them, but only as long as they're kept pressed. The statue Link controls with the Dominion Rod is immune to it.
• Continue Your Mission, Dammit!: Done in the City in the Sky dungeon. You're urged to hurry up because the place is under attack by Argorok, and as you explore you get to watch said monster fly around and trash the place. You're not actually timed, but it's probably the first dungeon in Zelda history to actually create a sense of urgency without some kind of timer.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Agitha isn't the first little girl to nickname Link "Grasshopper" because of his green clothes.
  • The symbols of the Sages' elements from Ocarina of Time appear on the robes of this game's Sages, who were presumably all killed in Ocarina of Time's adult half, leading to the awakening of the Sages we see there.
  • The theme used for the Zora royal family is the Serenade of Water from Ocarina of Time.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: Link gains access to a One-Hit Kill move that, as you'd expect, cannot be used on most bosses. On some, the move can Attack Its Weak Point, but is merely a powerful attack and not a one-hit kill. The only exception is against Darkhammer, who actually goes down to it.
• Controllable Helplessness: When Link first wakes up in the dungeon as a wolf, he's chained to the floor, and all you can do is move around a little bit before Midna shows up.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Link is perfectly fine running around in the Goron Mines. Even if you make him leap into the lava, he'll only come out about two hearts less for the wear. If you wear the Zora Tunic though — which is specifically stated to be weak against fire, Link'll still be fine running around unless you leap into the lava.
• Conveniently Timed Attack from Behind: In the final dungeon of the game, Link is about to get hit by an arrow when "The Group" comes in with a bazooka.
• Convenient Weakness Placement: Armagohma will fight you inside a ring of statues whose only purpose is to smack the crap out of whatever's in front of them.
• Cool Horse:
  • Epona, naturally. And for the first time in the series, you can use weapons and items other than your bow while riding her.
  • Also for a second time, Ganondorf's demon horse... thing.
• Cool Sword: Besides the Master Sword, there is the Sword of the Six Sages, an ornate sword made of Hard Light created to kill Ganondorf.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: The in-game explanation for why the shop in Castle Town sells things at outrageous prices. How crazy? The cheapest thing on display is a set of 10 Arrows... for 2,000 Rupees. That's double your possible maximum money capacity with both wallet upgrades.^note The HD version adds a third upgrade to top you off at 9,999 Rupees... and the arrows now cost 10,000. And it gets crazier from there. The absolutely most expensive thing in the shop is the Magic Armor... for 100,000 Rupees. Of course, there's no way you're buying anything from this shop as it is... so instead you help Malo buy out the owner, and then purchase things from him at half the price of anywhere else.
• The Corruption: The Fused Shadows and Mirror of Twilight shards both corrupt creatures (and people) into monsters. Though Midna doesn't care about what the Fused Shadows do, seeing what the mirror shards do to Yeta and Armogohma freak her out.
• Cosmic Deadline: The first three dungeons take the longest to locate (the very first one in particular). But from there, each dungeon takes less time than the previous one, with the exception of the City in the Sky. The last two dungeons merely require Link and Midna to go where they are, which takes little, if any, effort. It doesn't help that the very last dungeon houses the Final Boss that hijacked what was supposed to be the last opponent, whose residing dungeon had at least some smooth buildup.
• Cosmic Keystone: In relation to prior Zelda games, this one changes up the mythos a bit: the Triforce is notably backgrounded, and new Light Spirits are added; without the Light Spirits, the Twilight Realm takes over the world. And the Twilight Realm has its own — small suns that return Dark creatures to their original, more peaceful forms.
• Counter-Attack: The "Mortal Draw" is especially risky as Link must have his sword and shield put away to use it, though it's still worth using despite that. Many tough enemies are almost impossible to harm when they aren't trying to hit you, as well. Especially Darknuts.
• Coup de Grâce Cutscene: The end of the Final Boss battle shows Link impaling Ganondorf through the chest.
• Cowardly Boss: The Skull Kid, fought in the Sacred Grove. He spends time sending puppets to Link (who, in that moment, is stuck in his wolf form) and never attacks directly, and upon taking damage he'll open up a different area of the grove and go there. Link has to chase him all over the place until making him give up and unveil the path to the Master Sword. Later in the game, Link is able to confront him in his human form, and can shoot arrows to attack him from a diatnce, making the fight much easier.
• Cranium Ride: In order to reach the source of the river that feeds Lake Hylia, Link and Midna must make use of one of the enormous Twilight avians. Once Link has subdued the creature, Midna jumps onto its head and takes control of it to make it fly them past a series of otherwise impassable obstacles.
• Crate Expectations: Link comes across randomly located crates in the game, which he can destroy with his sword (or, if you're a wolf, your claws) to reveal hearts and Rupees. These crates are found all over the place; there are even crates, for no discernible in-game reason, on small islands in the middle of Lake Hylia.
• Creepily Long Arms: Zant. The effect is enhanced by the tassels at the ends of his long sleeves, which nearly reach the floor. As it turns out, his actual arms aren't much shorter. It seems to be a typical trait of the Twili people in general, even the ones who aren't enemies.
• Crosshair Aware:
  • The Deku Toad, Mini-Boss of Lakebed Temple, uses the "shadow that tells you where it's going to land" variation. Hopefully, it misses by at least a tad^note pole.
  • Blizzeta, the boss of Snowpeak Ruins, relies on the player using the reflection in the ice floor Link is running on.
• Crossing the Desert: The Gerudo Mesa, a large and treacherous desert that Link and Midna must cross to reach the Arbiter's Grounds.
• Curse: Being in the realm of Twilight turns him into a wolf. Later, he is cursed to turn into a wolf by Zant, even when in the World of Light. It's also revealed that Midna herself used to be a Twili, but was cursed into the form of an imp by Zant.
• Cursed with Awesome:
  • Link's wolf form, which he turns into when he enters an area covered with Twilight, and it not only makes a few things a bit simpler, but also has the ability to warp. Although it's played a bit more straight later, when Zant actually does curse Link, locking him in wolf form. When you get the curse removed (and can now freely switch forms), Midna lampshades the fact that the curse has turned out to be quite useful. On the "cursed" side of things, there's the fact that people are frightened of Wolf Link. Besides the first time he goes to Ordon Village in that form though, no one actually tries to attack him or hinder him.
  • You see a scene where the Sages attempt to execute Ganondorf, leading him to discover he has the Triforce of Power. Furthermore, the Sages seal him away by sending him to the Twilight Realm, where he ends up turning into a god-like mass of pure power.
• Cute Kitten:
  • There are several cats that run around Castle Town and Telma's Bar. And you can pick them up and carry them and they follow you when you walk around and yes, it is the most adorable thing ever. You can even talk to them as Wolf Link and they always seem eager to help you or play with you, meow!
  • There's also the minigame late in the game where you explore the Hidden Village as a wolf in order to find and talk to 20 cats, all of whom want to be friends!
• Cuteness Overload: Agatha squees whenever Link presents her a Golden Bug, despite her not (visibly) doing so in the presence of bugs he already gave her.
• Cutscene Incompetence:
  • Zig-zagged in the cutscene immediately after completing the Lakebed Temple and retrieving the last piece of the Fused Shadow. Zant surprises Link from behind and knocks him senseless before he can even go for his weapon. Then, halfway through the ensuing confrontation between Zant and Midna, Link, now in wolf form, gets back up, goes on the attack...and is promptly tossed aside and knocked out again.
  • Fully subverted in the final dungeon. Link is ambushed by a group of enemies and prepares for battle, but before he can get a hit in, the resistance group shoots them down from afar. Though Link almost certainly could have handled the enemies himself, the moment is significant for the resistance that shows they've got Link's back and will handle things on the lower floors while he forges ahead to the throne room and the final boss.
• Cutscene Power to the Max:
  • Midna's Fused Shadows. She could destroy practically anything with them, yet she leaves Link to risk his life doing all the dirty work. This one may be justified in that she doesn't want to risk being seen talking to human Link.
  • Midna can only warp Link when he's in wolf form... except for when you've just finished a dungeon.
• Cutting the Knot:
  • Early on in the fifth dungeon, you have to deal with ice by aiming stationary cannons with hidden cannonballs at it, carefully avoiding it, and so on. The item for this dungeon is the Ball and Chain, which you can immediately pull out and go to town smashing the ice you had to maneuver through to get it.
  • The entire gimmick for the Temple of Time is that you have to traverse the temple in order to find a statue, bring it back down to the first level, and position it in the correct place in order to unlock the way to the boss. Going up to retrieve said statue, you have to deal with tedious puzzles involving sliding gates that are controlled by specifically-placed switches. However, once you get the statue, it turns out that it's also equipped with a big honking hammer that you can use to just bash the gates down (along with any other monsters in your path) on the trip back down.
• Cycle of Hurting: The Gibdos in this game are often accompanied by half a dozen Stalchildren; the Stalchildren knock you down, when you get up the Gibdo paralyzes and hits your with their BFS, then the skeletons hit you again, lather, rinse, repeat.
• Daddy System: Originally announced as a GameCube game, it was repeatedly delayed, with much speculation that it would be moved to the next Nintendo system — eventually, it was released on both GameCube and Wii. Apart from controls, resolution, and the need to flip everything backwards for the Wii version to make Link right-handed (inconveniencing left-handed players), the games are exactly the same.
• Damage Discrimination: Put back in full force for enemies. The worst example is the trio of Darknuts at the bottom of the Cave of Ordeals, who clump together into an unassailable wad in spite of their tendency to use wide ground-clearing slashes.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
  • A minor example, but if you're playing this game after The Wind Waker, don't assume that drowning will merely send you back to shore with a bit of health taken away; it causes a Game Over right then and there.
  • This game's got several mirrored versions with respect to others: Gamecube vs. Wii, Wii vs Wii U HD normal mode, HD normal mode vs. hero mode. When you are used to playing one version, you'll probably head the wrong way a few times when you play a mirrored version.
• Damsel in Distress: Compared to other games, Princess Zelda isn't kidnapped - she surrenders to the Big Bad to save her people from genocide, although it amounts to roughly the same thing. While unable to actively participate in the fight for most of the game, she is extremely helpful to the point of appearing to give up her own life when she does appear, and is a vital participant in the endgame.
• Dance Battler: Zant, during the final part of his battle. He uses a stylish melee combat style that involves repeatedly waggling with his swords and spinning rapidly.
• Dangerous Device Disposal Debacle: Inverted. After using the Mirror of Twilight to enter Hyrule and take it over, Zant breaks the Mirror into four pieces so Link and Midna can't use it to reenter the Twilight Realm. Midna explains that only the true ruler of the Twili could completely shatter the mirror and that this proves Zant is a fake, so she has Link wander all over Hyrule to gather all the Mirror Shards and reassemble it so they can access the Twilight Realm where he waits.
• Darkest Hour: Zant steals the fused shadows, Link gets trapped in his wolf form, and Midna is dying, but you can save her! And Zelda dies instead.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Double Subverted. The Twilight is initially shown to be a threat to Hyrule, but it turns out that Midna and the rest of the Twili (who have been living there for generations) are mostly good people. It even turns out that the Big Bad's power of darkness is not the usual Twili magic. It's Ganondorf's.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • Twilight Princess is on par with Majora's Mask as one of the darkest entries in the franchise. It was even the first Zelda game to go above an ESRB E rating and earn a T rating for its more realistic depictions of violence and some legitimately disturbing imagery. Japan's CERO gave it a 12+ rating, and this was the reason why Akira Himekawa could not create a manga adaptation for this game until 2016, when the HD edition of the game was released. It is aesthetically darker, deals with mature themes, and has plenty of suspenseful moments the first time you play through.
  • When Akira Himekawa finally got permission to create a manga adaptation, it managed to be even darker, with having Ordon villagers turning into Shadow Beasts, and they can even talk.
• Dark Reprise: Midna's Lament is a somber piano variation of the main theme that replaces all non-battle BGM while Midna is suffering from exposure to Lanayru's light. The Game Over theme is also a darker snippet of the main theme of the game.
• Dark World: The Twilight-covered areas of Hyrule. The geography is almost the same as that of their original rendition, but they're corrupted by Shadow Beasts and they can only be restored by retrieving all Tears of Light. There's also the Twilight Realm, but only its palace is visited during the events of the game.
• Dash Attack: Wolf Link's most common attack (since attacking normally has much less range than if you had a sword, it's safer to back away and dash at enemies), and is also be used to move faster.
• The Day the Music Lied: The same thing happens with Armagohma. Link destroys it, the epic victory music plays, Link does that badass sword sheathe and... Armagohma's not dead. The music promptly dies as Link's jaw drops, though what's left of the monster is laughably easy to defeat.
• Deadly Gas: Faron Woods has one area with a deadly purple gas/mist that can be temporarily locally dispelled by waving a lantern about.
• Deal with the Devil:
  • Jovani sold his soul to the Poes in exchange for unlimited wealth. They turned him and his cat into immobile but completely sentient golden statues to go along with it.
  • The game starts with Link being recruited by a wicked-looking imp who will help you rescue your friends in return for retrieving three forbidden artifacts sealed away by Hyrule's light spirits. Subverted — the imp, Midna, may look wicked, but she isn't. Well, not much.
  • The game also has a variant on this in Zant, who sells his allegiance to Ganondorf in exchange for the latter's help in usurping the throne of the Twilight Realm. Zant, mistakenly believing Ganondorf to be a god, can't be killed as long as the immortal thief-lord lives, but in exchange for the Twilight throne, Ganondorf forces Zant to turn his people into monsters and invade Hyrule (Zant didn't really need much persuasion on that matter, though). In reality, the reason Ganondorf offered the bond to Zant was to feed on his hatred in order to restore his power after his execution. In the end, this deal backfires on Ganondorf when he tries to reach out to Zant for power to save him from dying, but a disillusioned Zant opts to kill himself instead by snapping his own neck, taking Ganondorf with him.
• Death from Above:
  • The game introduces a combat technique called the Finishing Blow, a One-Hit Kill which involves Link jumping very high in the air and coming down to impale the foe on his sword.
  • The Helm Splitter Hidden Skill, which requires a Shield Bash to disorient the enemy before Link slices from above.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: If you die in a dungeon, rather than being booted back to the entrance like in previous games, you restart in the room where you died. Unless you quit and reload.
• Death Mountain: In addition to the classic Death Mountain area, which is once again filled with lava in its caves, the game also has Snowpeak. It is a snowy highland full of slippery slopes and deep pits where you fight wolves and skeletal ice-people and encounter friendly yetis.
• Death or Glory Attack:
  • The sword tech "Mortal Draw" works like this. To use it, you must walk up to an enemy with your sword sheathed, and then press A when prompted during a small window. If it hits, you kill almost any enemy in one strike. If you mistime it, then the enemy gets a free strike at you.
  • Facing a certain charge attack from the Final Boss will prompt you with "chance" and to press A, which enters you into a (completely optional) button-mashing Blade Lock event with him. If you miss the "chance" window and fail to get out of the way, then you get hit with the brunt of the attack. If you fail the Blade Lock, he'll take away a chunk of your health. But if you succeed both of those, you're well on your way to killing him.
• Deer in the Headlights: As the Bulblins who invaded Link's home and kidnapped the children there arrive in Kakariko Village, Beth is too scared to move, unlike her friends. Colin notices it just in time, grows a backbone, and pushes her out of the way just in time, leading to him getting kidnapped instead. Beth is quite grateful for it after Link saves Colin.
• Defeat Equals Explosion: Defeated monsters tend to turn black and explode (Twilit monsters explode and leave Tron Line particles).
• Defeat Means Friendship: Ook the baboon, the miniboss of the Forest Temple, shows up to help you defeat the temple boss. Justified, because your defeating him causes him to be freed from the Twilit insect which was chewing on his brain and making him evil, and he comes to your aid out of gratitude.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Midna is presented as a mean-spirited Tsundere with little care towards the Light World, but that changes after being saved from death by Zelda.
• Degraded Boss:
  • The City in the Sky features a fight with an Aeralfos, a winged reptilian creature that uses a sword, shield, and a suit of armor. Later in the dungeon, you're faced with two of them at once and the Cave of Ordeals features scores of such creatures; one is fought as an enemy in Hyrule Castle as well.
  • Darknuts switch from miniboss (Temple of Time), to enemy (Cave of Ordeals), then miniboss (Hyrule Castle at the mid), and enemy yet again (Hyrule Castle at the end).
• Deliberately Monochrome: The Twilight areas, in a partial manner. According to the early trailers, the Twilight was originally supposed to be completely monochrome, but the development team decided to make it more sepia-like with lots of bloom.
• Demonic Possession:
  • Most of the bosses were under possession by a Fused Shadow, Zant's sword, or a shard of the Mirror of Twilight.
  • Miniboss Ook is being controlled by a Twili bug during the starting events of the game. He's cured after being defeated by Link in the Forest Temple.
  • This happens to Zelda in the first phase of the final boss, courtesy of Ganondorf.
• Descent into Darkness Song: Perfected in this song. Listen as Hyrule Castle's theme is slowly taken over by Ganon's theme as you progress.
• Determinator:
  • The Postman is a benign example. He always completes his deliveries no matter where his recipient is. Even if you're playing as Wolf Link, he'll still recognize you anyway! Even the Twilight itself doesn't seem to be a barrier to his job, and that's an area that turns people into ghosts, or wolves, when they enter! Heck, even the freaking Cave of Ordeals doesn't stop him since he can be found on the last floor, meaning he somehow managed to get through 49 floors of dangerous monsters all by himself!
  • Then there's King Bulblin, who you have to fight four times. And in two of the fights he falls off a cliff upon defeat, but still comes back to fight you again.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • If you are wearing the Magic Armor powered up while riding Epona, and it runs out (making it as heavy as the iron boots), Epona bucks you off, since she can't carry you.
  • When you talk to her in Snowpeak, Ashei's dialogue will vary depending on if you previously introduced yourself to her at Telma's bar.
  • When first meeting Agitha in Castle Town, she'll make a different comment on Link's clothing depending on if he's wearing the Hero's clothes or Zora Armor at the time. In the HD version, this also extends to the Magic Armor, which can only be seen if Link goes through the Cave of Shadows and obtains the Big Wallet, as the upgrade is required to purchase the Magic Armor, and wallet upgrades are otherwise obtained from giving Agitha golden bugs (meaning her comment about Link's attire cannot be seen by that point).
  • The second hidden skill learned from the Hero's Shade is the shield bash, which is also used for the fourth skill, the Helm Splitter. If you don't actually have a shield (which can only be seen by getting the Ordon Shield burnt then either not buying a replacement or the Hylian Shield) prior to going in, then the Hero's Shade will cut the lesson short and request you to get a shield then come back before spawning Link back at wherever he was previously.
  • If the player intentionally ignored meeting Oocoo all the way up to the Temple of Time, Oocoo's dialogue when running into her at the entrance will be a much more generic request for help since she and Link have never seen each other before.
  • By holding down the right trigger and pressing A while riding Epona, Link can do a backflip off of her, which is much faster than dismounting her normally. During the horseback fight against Ganondorf however, this ability is disabled since Zelda is right behind Link on Epona, so he naturally wouldn't be able to jump over her.
• Did Not Get the Girl:
  • After you restore Jovani's soul, he happily runs off to find his girlfriend. He's found later in the tavern crying his eyes out, when he discovers he's been gone so long that she's found another love interest.
  • Midna destroys the Mirror from the other side at the game's ending, ensuring she and Link will never meet again.
• Didn't Need Those Anyway!:
  • Darknuts, much like in The Wind Waker and the Iron Knuckles in Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. Once the armor is removed, they toss their massive weapon and draw a longsword, and become capable of doing combos.
  • The seventh boss is an armored dragon. Link must drag it down to the ground with the weight of his iron boots to crack the armor. After two incidents of this, the dragon will burst out of it.
• Dilating Door: Doors are surprisingly complicated, mechanically speaking. Many dungeon doors are round, and when pushed in, roll out of the way through some mystery of technology.
• Disability Immunity: Besides Zelda herself, the Zora queen Rutela is the only being of light unaffected by the Twilight's effect of turning people into spirits, and by extension, the only being of light besides Zelda and the spirits of light able to see him. This is because she was already dead by the time Link met her, asking for his help as a ghost.
• Disappears into Light: The Sage of Water puffs away into billowing white smoke when Ganondorf throttles him. His mask gets left behind, though.
• Disc-One Final Dungeon: The Lakebed Temple cleanly ends the game's first act, with the Twilight cleansed from Hyrule and the Fused Shadows retrieved, but Zant proves too powerful for the Fused Shadows alone, so Link and Midna set out to recover the Master Sword and the Mirror of Twilight.
• Disconnected Side Area: The Gerudo Desert cannot be reached on foot like every other land-based area and must instead be traversed to with a giant cannon at Lake Hylia. The only way to get out of the area is to warp out.
• Dismantled MacGuffin: The game does this thrice on its own. The boss key of the second dungeon is split up into three pieces, and when assembled, it gives you access to a piece of the Fused Shadow (as they were in turn split beforehand). Then you have to reassemble the Mirror of Twilight in the second stage of the game.
• Disney Acid Sequence:
  • Unlocking new sword techniques involves meeting Link's ancestor and... um... howling a duet with him.
  • The infamous scene when Link first meets Lanayru. The latter tries to explain the former the origins of the Fused Shadow and what happens to those who can't control its power, but the images displayed are very abstract, only fitting the description given in a symbolic manner.
• Disney Death: Despite all evidence to the contrary, Midna actually survives her final battle with Ganon.
• Distracted by the Sexy:
  • When Midna is in her true form, Link's eyes are glued to her. She lampshades that along with his Heroic Mime lack of words.
  • Whenever Link talks to Telma, her cleavage is always very close to his eyes, though she doesn't call him out on it.
• Divine Birds: The Oocca live in the City in the Sky and are implied to be the descendants either of the sky people or possibly their pets.
• Diving Save: Colin saves Beth from being run down by King Bulblin's charging boar in a striking slow-motion cutscene.
• Door to Before:
  • There's the elevator down from Gor Coron's chamber. If you plan on going straight into the Mines and never returning to the chamber after you beat Fyrus, you'll never need it, but hey, there's the option.
  • After obtaining the Zora Armor and Water Bombs, both of which are required for the Lakebed Temple, you can open a shortcut back to Lake Hylia from Kakariko Graveyard (it becomes handy after you bring Prince Ralis to the village, as from there the way back to Lake Hylia is very long otherwise).
• Double-Meaning Title: The title can refer to both Zelda, the princess of a realm which has been overtaken by Twilight, and Midna, whose actual royal title is Twilight Princess.
• Double Unlock: The ultimate armor is available at the Hyrule shop for more money than you can ever hold. In order to buy it, you need to fund Malo's shop to the tune of several thousand Rupees, at which point he buys out the shop, leaving the armor for sale. But it's still very expensive, and works on Rupees (so if no money remains after the purchase, it still won't be ready for use).
• Down the Drain: The underwater sewer segments of Hyrule Castle, where Link (in wolf form) has to open water gates to get past obstacles.
• Draconic Humanoid: The game has incarnations of Lizalfos and Dinolfos, but also Aeralfos: winged lizard-men found in the City in the Sky.
• The Dragon: King Bulblin's evil actions respond to Zant's plans to overrun Hyrule, though he later helps Link after being beaten four times, choosing to side with the strongest. In turn, Zant responds to Ganondorf's plans to take revenge from the Light World for his imprisonment in the Twilight Realm.
• Dramatic Drop: Zelda drops her sword in classic slow-mo fashion when she realizes she is outnumbered by Zant's invading forces and that any form of resistance will endanger her kingdom further, signifying her passing the Despair Event Horizon.
• Dramatic Thunder: Though not the final boss, the fight of the final "regular" dungeon has Link Colossus Climbing Argorok atop the tallest tower of a sky castle.
• Dr. Jerk: Dr. Borville in Castle Town is not fond of the majority of his patients, and refuses to accept consult from non-human ones. Turns out he doesn't know Zora biology very well, but didn't want to admit it.
• Drought Level of Doom: The Cave of Ordeals, which is 50 floors long and is devoid of supplies save for a few obscure spots with hearts that can be digged by Wolf Link. You do encounter Chus that drop drinkable Chu Jelly, but it's primarily Purple Chu Jelly that has a random effect (it can heal you or take away hearts). The HD remake also adds the Cave of Shadows, which has the same idea but you are stuck as Wolf Link, which means no healing at all.
• Dual Wielding:
  • Once Link obtains the second Clawshot, it becomes the "Double Clawshot" — one on each hand. This lets him latch onto a target while already hanging from another.
  • In the final phase of the battle with Zant, he wields two swords.
• Dual-World Gameplay: Oddly, the game averts this trope. The world doesn't change much when it's under the Twilight Realm's influence, but all the NPCs and monsters do. The Twilight Realm itself does not mirror Hyrule at all, and acts instead as the penultimate dungeon.
• Due to the Dead: After Ganondorf finally dies, Zelda is seen standing behind Link with her hands folded and her head bowed. The implication is that she's praying for the soul of her departed enemy.
• Dungeon Bypass: When reaching the Temple of Time, you gain the Dominion Rod and thereby gain control of a monolithic, mobile, hammer-wielding statue, which you have to return to the first room. The hammer-wielding statue can break past all of the fiddly little gates and things that you had to work your way past on the way up. And kill all enemies in one hit. You do not know what fun is until you see an entire puzzle-room destroyed 'neath the mighty tread of the Hammer Golem!
• Dungeon Shop: The game has a shop run by a friendly NPC in one of the last dungeons in the game. The existence of the shop is also justified, in this case, as said dungeon happens to be an actual city that is overrun by monsters, with the shop being located near the beginning where they haven't managed to spread to yet.
• Dungeon Town: The City in the Sky is the home of the Oocca. In addition to occassionally seeing Oocca wandering around inside it, there is a handy shop near the entrance.
• Dutch Angle: The game has several of these, with one of the more prominent examples being when Ganondorf dies while standing with the Master Sword lodged in his chest.
• Duty That Transcends Death: It's stated in other texts that the protagonist of Ocarina of Time was filled with regret because, in his own timeline, no one knew him as a "Hero" and so his legend, his skills, and the other valuable lessons he learned were never passed on to anyone else. He was so committed to the need to pass on his heroic legacy that he wandered the world as the restless "Hero's Spirit", not able to move on until meeting the Hero of Twilight (his direct successor) and passing his teachings to him.
• Dying Town: Kakariko Village, due to the rampant attacks from monsters that reduced considerably its population.

E-J

• Ear Fins: The Zora in this game have droopy dog-like ears that also resemble pectoral fins.
• Early Game Hell: The first fights against Shadow Beasts are the hardest because Link only has three hearts, the Shadow Beasts deal a full heart of damage, and there's no healing available during the fights. The first fight adds another nasty wrinkle: the move required to prevent the Shadow Beasts from reviving is locked until they revive once and Midna teaches it to Link, so Link effectively has to beat them twice. Lastly, unlike the game's two 3D predecessors, the entire prologue also lacks enough Heart Pieces for Link to assemble a fourth Heart Container (especially since it's now required to collect five Pieces to do so), so the player will have to keep surviving with only three Hearts until the defeat of the first boss (Diababa) in the Forest Temple.
• Earthy Barefoot Character: Ilia is introduced feet first and is the only villager, besides Talo, to not wear shoes. According to the supplemental material, she spends more time at the Ordon Spring and the surrounding forest, than the village itself. Or occasionally pitching in at the ranch. She's a call-back to both Saria and Malon, who were friends with nature as well.
• Easing into the Adventure: The game starts out by making you close up the barn and help out a few villagers.
• Easter Egg:
  • A short minigame for a Piece of Heart has you trying to shoot an arrow at a wooden pole at the highest point in Kakariko, from the lowest point at the other end of Kakariko. Talo, attending the pole, has lines for Link hitting the pole, and Link missing the pole. Once the minigame is completed, he also has lines for Link hitting it again, missing it (again), Link hitting it from the rooftop Talo is standing on, and missing it from the rooftop Talo is standing on. He even has a line for Link hitting it with the Hawkeye.
  • The HD version adds one: screenshots of the then-unnamed The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild can be seen in picture frames inside Chudley's Fine Good and Trinkets Emporium.
• Easy Amnesia: Ilia suffers this after she and the other village children are kidnapped. Unlike the others, Ilia was shot with a poisoned arrow, and Eiji Aonuma explains that this is the reason for her memory loss. Returning items of significance to her helps unlock her memory.
• Easy Level Trick:
  • Defied with the Roll Goal mini-game. It's possible, via building momentum, to "jump" the ball across gaps and reach the goal in spite of skipping large portions of the maze, but Hena will fail you anyways, pointing out that you didn't technically complete the whole maze.
  • Invoked with the river canoe minigame. The best strategy is to not move the canoe whatsoever and just focus on hitting the pots, as you'll have just enough points to win the prize if you manage to hit every single pot along the way, and the canoe itself has unwieldy controls that can cause a loss if you try moving it out of the way of obstacles.
• Edge Gravity: Link will, if forced to walk off an edge, usually grab the edge and hold on for dear life. This makes it difficult sometimes to get him to actually jump off when you want him to, such as if jumping to a lower level in an area.
• Editorial Synaesthesia: While Wolf Link's senses are activated he can "see" smells as clouds and spirits as their true forms.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Ashei fits this trope physically, with her black braided hair and almost paper-white skin (complete with under-eye dark circles). She's one of the good guys, however.
• Eldritch Abomination:
  • The Arbiter's Grounds happens to be home to a being named Death Sword. It starts out as a giant sword in the middle of an otherwise empty room embedded in the floor being held down by ropes covered in sealing charms. This means that whatever this thing is, it is so dangerous that the light spirits couldn't kill it or banish it and had to bind it in one spot. Upon being disturbed the blade pulls free, its owner completely invisible to the human eye unless it chooses to be seen, but the enhanced senses of a wolf reveal it to be a horrific horned demon-like creature with a row of fangs and glowing red eyes, that screams noise of a hundred damned souls, and has horribly emaciated flesh. It holds its head at an angle like its neck can't support its weight or has been broken yet its not a ghost as shown by its otherwise physical form. No explanation for what this thing is, why it's here, or what it did to end up imprisoned has ever been given and it's bizarre abilities don't even resemble anything in Hyrule. The most haunting thing about this being is when you win the fight, rather than exploding into a puff of evil then dispersing, it turns into a cloud of blackness which flys up towards the ceiling into the dark. Given this is completely at odds with how evil creatures die throughout the rest of the Legend of Zelda series this suggests it is not actually be dead and might not actually be able to die.
  • Midna takes a bizarre and all immensely powerful form when using the fused shadow. The helmet turns her into a multi-armed trident wielding creature, somewhat larger than Ganon. The impression given when speaking to the spirit Lanayru is that the fused shadow is capable of breaking reality and the last time it was used, he and the other spirits had to intervene and break it to prevent it's users in controlling the Triforce through its power.
• Elemental Motifs: The dungeons where Link finds the four pieces of the Mirror of Twilight.
  • Fire: The Arbiter's Grounds, which is lit with lamps and torches. The boss Stallord has a fiery Breath Weapon.
  • Water: Snowpeak Ruins, which is filled with ice.
  • Earth: The Temple of Time, which is located in a grove and is filled with smooth stone surfaces and statues.
  • Air: The City in the Sky, which is suspended in the clouds and is filled with air geysers and flying enemies.
• Elite Mooks: The Darknuts and Aeralfos are degraded to this after they're defeated in their respective Mini-Boss battles. They remain as the most powerful enemies in the game due to their advanced swordplay and Link's need to resort to more complex strategies (namely dismantling the Darknuts' armor before being able to inflict damage on them, as in The Wind Waker, and taking the Aeralfos to the ground with the Clawshot at the right time).
• Elves Versus Dwarves: Subverted. The Gorons appear to be a brutish race locked into a conflict with the civilized Hylians, but it's later revealed they chose to isolate themselves out of concern, since their leader Darbus has been transformed into a dangerous monster by a piece of the Fused Shadow. Once Link breaks the curse, the Gorons restore their amicable relations with the Hylians, with members of both races happily working together at Kakariko Village.
• Emotion Eater: In one of the last cutscenes of the game, Ganondorf states that he restored his power by drawing upon the hatred of the Twili. It is implied that he bonded himself to his Unwitting Pawn Zant, himself one of the most hateful Twili, to give himself a font of hatred from which he could become more powerful. Later games in the franchise expand on this idea by establishing that Ganon himself is considered "Hatred and Malice Incarnate".
• Empathic Environment: It is raining as you rush a mortally injured Midna to Zelda.
• Empty Room Until the Trap: All of whom are Mini Bosses:
  • One room in the Lakebed Temple appears to be empty at first and Midna advises you to look around. Then you realize that small tadpole-like enemies are dropping down from the ceiling, and you look up to see the dungeon's mini-boss, a giant toad, who drops down to fight you.
  • The mini-boss room in Arbiter's Grounds has a large sword embedded in the center of the room, but when you cut one of the ropes holding it onto the floor, it burns away the other ropes and an apparition appears wielding it, which can be seen in wolf form until you make it partially solid enough to attack it as a human.
  • The mini-boss in the Snowpeak Ruins is in what looks like a simple hallway with two suits of armor on display. Then when you get to the other end of the hallway both doors suddenly lock and the suit of armor immediately behind you is smashed by the other one, which comes to life wielding a ball and chain, which eventually becomes yours after you win.
• Enemy Chatter: Near the beginning of the game, you can see two Bokoblins conversing. You can't understand what they're saying, of course.
• Enemy Rising Behind: Snowpeak Ruins has a cutscene like this. A ball and chain statue comes to life and attacks Link from behind while the camera is in front of him.
• Enemy Scan: Midna can give some limited information on a few enemies, like Darknuts and Shadow Beasts. Unfortunately, she offers the least informative hint system of all the 3D games in the series.
• Enemy Summoner: King Bulblin uses a horn to call other Bulblins during his first battle against Link.
• Epic Flail: A ball and chain takes the place of the Megaton Hammer as the heavy, destructive item that Link acquires.
• Equivalent Exchange: Link can acquire a magical suit of golden armor which will prevent him from taking any damage. However, whenever he wears it, his wallet is slowly drained of money, and he loses extra money every time he takes a hit. Once he runs out of Rupees (the coin of the realm), the armor weighs him down considerably, making his movements slow and awkward.
• Escape Rope: The character Ooccoo can be found in several dungeons and allows Link to teleport out at any time; then, by using Ooccoo Jr., the player can teleport back inside, even to the same room, much like Farore's Wind from Ocarina of Time. However, in the City of the Sky, Ooccoo won't teleport the player back to Lake Hylia, but instead to the shop, which is near the entrance of the dungeon. This makes her use as an Escape Rope far less viable, as you can't leave the shop or even save and quit without resetting her "warp point": as soon as you leave the shop or load the game, Ooccoo will be waiting for you in the first room of the dungeon.
• Escort Mission: You have to escort a comatose prince from a huge, fortified city to a small mountain town's shaman/doctor by fighting off raiders that try to light his wagon on fire (your tornado-spewing boomerang can take care of that). Fortunately, it's a resilient little wagon. Unfortunately, the enemies drop bombs that blow hard enough to spook the horse off the path.
• Eternal English: Hero's Shade (aka the Hero Of Time himself) speaks in a modern dialect, though somewhat formally, but that could be explained as him knowing it to converse with this game's Link more easily.
• Every Proper Lady Should Curtsy: Princess Agitha makes a brief reverence when you give her one of the golden bugs.
• Evil Learns of Outside Context: In the backstory, a tribe of Evil Sorcerers attempted to use their shadowy power to claim the Triforce. As punishment for their deeds, the Spirits of Light had them sealed away in the Twilight Realm, where they eventually became the Twili and mostly forgot about both Hyrule and their previous evil ambitions. Centuries later, in the "Child timeline" created at the end of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Ganondorf is also banished to the Twilight Realm. However, he has a piece of the Triforce himself, the Triforce of Power, and he uses a God Guise to convince Zant to usurp the Twilight throne and raise a new army of monsters to conquer Hyrule on his behalf. So this counts as a double example: Ganondorf becomes aware of the Twilight Realm and its resources, while Zant becomes aware of Hyrule.
• Expansion Pack World: Hyrule is portrayed on a grander scale than in Ocarina of Time, having a snowy area. The game also adds a parallel world of twilight, ^note not to be confused with the Dark World from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, connected to Hyrule only by a mirror, ^note also nothing like that of A Link to the Past either which has an otherworldly glow to it filled with the shadowy descendants of dark wizards trapped by the Goddesses. They were the creators of the first set of Plot Coupons in the game, the Fused Shadows. It's also the home of Midna and Zant.
• Exploding Barrels: Exploding Barrels assist in taking out enemies in a Western sequence.
• Exposition Fairy: At first, Midna accompanies Link and helps him only for personal purposes, but eventually she embraces the role. She takes advantage of her powers to help Link whenever she can, and hides within Link's shadow when they're not interacting. She does not provide enemy names and strategies, however, and has less useful comments about bosses.
• Eyes Are Mental: Link retains his blue eyes and a similar-looking gaze while in wolf form.
• Fairy Companion: The onscreen cursor in the Wii version of the game appears as a fairy, although the actual companion in the game itself is rather different.
• Fake Platform: In order to get to the Big Bad in the final dungeon, you have to go through a room full of these. Changing into your wolf form lets you see ghosts that point the way; aside from that, all you can do is avoid the ones that killed you last time.
• Falling Chandelier of Doom: In the Arbiter's Grounds dungeon, you can drop a chandelier on yourself at one stage, if you're not careful. Later, you must actually drop a chandelier on yourself (standing in a gap in the middle so as not to be reduced to a 2-dimensional object) in order to progress.
• Fangirl: The three girls who witness Link while he's playing the STAR game become this to him after he wins, admiring his skills and giving him hearts when they're squeeing around him. Beth attempts to be a fangirl to both Link and Ralis, but in both cases it ends up being fruitless as it's one-sided (especially in the case of Ralis, since he's very depressed and only wants to return to Zora's Domain).
• Fanservice: Link (however briefly) sumo wrestles with the village mayor... shirtless and barefoot. We find that he possesses a not overly muscular, but very nicely toned chest and biceps. Balanced out by the mayor being also shirtless and pants-less (and the camera is centered on his rear while he's bent over).
• Fantastic Racism: The Gorons complain about the Hylians mistreating them, and Dr. Borville refuses medical treatment to Prince Ralis because he is a Zora. An NPC mentions that Borville was playing that off because he didn't want to be exposed as ignorant of Zora physiology.
• Feed It a Bomb: There's a giant frog Mini-Boss in the Lakebed Temple that stuns itself when it falls from the ceiling. However, when it opens its mouth, you can toss a bomb in there to stun him again, thus preventing most of its attack pattern. There are also carnivorous plants in the Forest Temple which can only be killed by lobbing Bomblings into them. A bigger-than-usual Deku Baba houses a carnivorous plant as well, and can only be bombed once the Baba is killed.
• Feet-First Introduction: Ilia's introductory cutscene begins with a close-up of her bare feet, then slowly pans up her body, stopping just shy of fully showing her face. Though you get to see her smile, before she leads Epona offscreen towards the Ordon Spring.
• Fiendish Fish:
  • Morpheel, the boss of the Lakebed Temple, is a disgusting mix of a cyclopean eel and a coelacanth with anemone-like tentacles around its maw to boot.
  • Skullfish are series-recurring enemies resembling skeletal fish with jaws bristling with sharp teeth. They're generally entirely skeletal besides the usual Glowing Eyelights of Undeath, but the ones in this game still have some sort of fleshy core inside their ribcages. They are, of course, highly aggressive.
• Fighting Across Time and Space: The battle against Zant revisits several previously defeated boss arenas and plays a distorted version of the boss' theme. Each time, the same item used to defeat the previous boss (boomerang, Epic Flail, hookshot, etc.) is key to beating Zant.
• Fighting Your Friend: Happens twice. First, in Snowpeak Ruins against Yeta, a friendly Yeti cursed by a shard of the Mirror of Twilight, transforming her into the fifth boss, Blizzeta. Then, during the climax, where the traditional Tennis Boss fight is against a possessed Princess Zelda.
• Final Boss, New Dimension: Inverted when, after going through the second-to-last dungeon in an alternate dimension, during the boss battle Zant actually transports you to places in Hyrule visited previously during the game.
• Final Boss Preview: Zant ambushes Link and Midna after beating the Lakebed Temple, trapping Link in wolf form and nearly killing Midna by exposing her to Lanayru's light. However, Zant isn't the final boss.
• Final Dungeon Preview: Early in the game, Wolf Link gets dragged to Hyrule Castle, where he is freed by Midna, traverses the high towers with her, and hears about Hyrule's plight from Princess Zelda before getting warped back to Ordon. He goes through the same area almost midway through the game to save an injured Midna. Link finally gets to storm Hyrule Castle as a proper dungeon at the end, though not the section he traversed as Wolf Link.
• Final-Exam Boss: Zant, when he takes Link on a wild goose chase through an ever-changing backdrop of different fight scenes from throughout the game, which conveniently hint at whatever tactic the player should use to counter it.
• Fisher Kingdom: When the Twilight envelops Hyrule, most people fade to mere spirit beings and are powerless against the dark monsters. Link, on the other hand, is protected by the Triforce of Courage and gets transformed into a wolf and is able to fight them. Zelda (also protected by the Triforce, her piece being the Triforce of Wisdom) seems completely unaffected.
• Finishing Move: The Ending Blow, the only one of the Hidden Skills which you are required to learn in order to advance the plot/win the game (the others are optional). It can also be used on bosses after doing enough damage to their weak points. Wolf Link can use this move, but only on Poes.
• Fire, Water, Wind: The first three dungeons, mimicking the archetypes and motifs of prior games' starter dungeons (like those of Ocarina of Time and The Wind Waker). The Forest Temple has a major use of wind (both for puzzle-solving and by way of its main item, the Gale Boomerang), the Goron Mines take place inside a highly-volcanic cavern, and the Lakebed Temple is located in the depths of Lake Hylia.
• First Town: Ordon Village is a sleepy ranch town south of the Faron province.
• Fishing for Mooks: The two Dark Nuts in the Very Definitely Final Dungeon can be fought this way by carefully attracting the attention of only one of them and luring it down the hall and away from the other. The three you fight in the Brutal Bonus Level can also be taken on in this manner, but only if you're really careful and lucky.
• Fishing Minigame: Bobber fishing can be done anywhere the water is deep enough. Lure fishing can be done in a fishing hole at the "playground for adults" on the Zora river.
• Flipping Helpless:
  • The Twilit Bloat lands on it back once you've gotten it twice, allowing you to jump on it and use the area attack on its legs, thus dealing the finishing blow.
  • Armogohma lands on her back when you shoot her in the eye with an arrow. This gives you an opportunity to control the nearest statue to go towards her and deal a damaging blow by smashing her in the belly with its hammer.
• Floating Continent: The City in the Sky and the Palace of Twilight. The former remains suspended in the sky thanks to the advanced technology that takes advantage of wind-powered propellers, while the latter is simply kept in the air due to magic.
• Floating Limbs: The spirit Sages have disembodied hands and faces that float in front of their heads like masks.
• Flunky Boss: Armogohma drops several eggs during battle, each of which is hatched near-instantly to give birth to smaller Gohmas that proceed to attack Link as soon as they're born.
• Fluorescent Footprints: As a wolf, Link can see a floating colored fog of scent which he can track while using his senses. It also prevents you from taking in much of the scenery.
• Fog of Doom: Once you head to the Forest Temple in human form with Midna, you have to go through a mass of purple fog following a monkey with your lantern. The fog doesn't affect your enemies, sadly, making it very annoying when you're running along and the monkey suddenly stops in terror and you careen into purple death. The penultimate dungeon also has black, ashy mist that traps you in wolf form as long as you stand in it.
• Follow the Money: Rupees will guide you to risky (but rewarding) shortcuts during the snowboarding and canoeing sections.
• Forced Transformation:
  • Midna, the Twilight Princess, spends most of the game trapped in imp form which limits the magical powers inherent in her being the Twilight Princess.
  • Link changes into a wolf whenever he enters the Twilight, and Zant tries to do this to him outside the shadows by fusing a crystal into his head, permanently trapping him within the form he took while he was within the Twilight. Thanks to the Master Sword, however, it doesn't stick. Rather, it actually makes him more powerful since the Master Sword removes the crystal, and with Midna keeping it, gives him the means to transform to and from his wolf form at will. Midna is quick to point out how accidentally helpful this was.
• Forced Tutorial: Happens during the prologue, where you have to learn everything including fishing, goat wrangling and swordplay in your home village. Also, the game forgets that it already taught you what the different-colored Rupees are worth when you turn it off. Every single time you boot up the game, you'll have to go through the Item Get! routine again and again the first time you pick up each color of Rupee other than green. This was fixed in the Updated Re-release for the Wii U, to the relief of many.
• For Doom the Bell Tolls: Blizzeta's first boss music, which then goes into Ominous Pipe Organ territory with its second version.
• Foreshadowing:
  • At one point during the story, Midna comments about how Princess Zelda seemed to be living the life of luxury (something she envies) instead of being more responsible, and calls her out on surrendering to Zant. This is foreshadowing her role as the true Twilight Princess, used to luxury, and when she called out Zelda, she was probably talking more about her own cowardice in leaving the Twili.
  • To stop Zant, who has somehow gotten a power boost, you'll need the Mirror of Twilight, which the Sages used to banish people directly to the Twilight Realm. It is soon revealed that this was done with Ganondorf after his execution failed.
  • Midna says only the true ruler of the Twilight Realm has the power to destroy the Mirror of Twilight, and we see Zant has only broken it into four pieces. Midna layer clarifies the implication, that this proves he is a false king, and who else but the true ruler herself would know?
  • Midna tells you that Zant's power is a false one and unlike Twili magic, and Zant himself says that he got it from a god... Ganondorf.
  • There's a symbol on the front of Zant's armor that looks like the Gerudo Symbol (the one used starting with the Updated Re-release of Ocarina of Time, not the crescent moon). This foreshadows that Ganondorf is the one behind him.
  • It's implied that the Hero's Shade fully expects Link to howl while in his wolf form next to the Howling Stones to summon him, and then to come meet him as a human the next time they meet. This foreshadows the fact that Link gets to eventually be able to switch between his wolf and human forms at will.
• Fossil Revival: The boss fight at the Arbiter's Grounds is against Stallord, Twilit Fossil, a giant skeleton dragon, which is reanimated by Zant and his dark sword, the Scimitar of Twilight.
• Four Is Death:
  • Both the Fused Shadow and the Mirror of Twilight, artifacts on the decidedly dark side, are split into four pieces.
  • The Arbiter's Grounds, which serves as the game's fourth dungeon, is an ancient gibbet located in the desert where the worst criminals of Hyrule are housed and executed; it is overrun by spectral beings (from four larger-than-usual Poes to the Mini-Boss, Death Sword), skeletal monsters (Bubbles, Stalfos and the giant skeletal dragon, Stallord, who serves as the Boss) and Gibdos. In addition, the dungeon reuses the same concept as Ocarina of Time's Forest Temple: the aforementioned four Poes seal the way to the boss, as well as the item needed to defeat it (the Spinner), and Link has to hunt down and defeat them to reopen the gate, with the last one having the ability to split into four clones. The dungeon is also home to the Mirror of Twilight, which serves as the portal leading to the Twilight Realm, where many of its inmates were exiled, including Ganondorf.
• Free Rotating Camera: Only in the GameCube and Wii U versions (borrowing the camera system that debuted in The Wind Waker), since the Wii doesn't have a secondary stick in its standard control (and the game isn't compatible with any other).
• Freaky Electronic Music: The Twilight beasts are announced by distorted, muted electronic music. This is combined with use of Tron Lines and floating pixels to emphasize how alien they are in a medieval fantasy setting.
• Free-Sample Plot Coupon:
  • Midna and Link proceed to look for the Fused Shadows after purging Faron Woods from the influence of twilight. Luckily, the former already has the first one (her helmet).
  • When they find out that the Mirror of Twilight is broken, the Sages tell them about where the missing Mirror Shards are. Good thing the fourth shard is still in its place, so they only have to find three more.
• Freudian Trio: The three main antagonists form one.
  • Id: King Bulbin actively battles Link throughout the game, raided Ordon Village, and is implied to bring the Twilight Realm directly into Hyrule.
  • Superego: Ganondorf plots behind the scenes, only confronts the heroes when everything else falls.
  • Ego: Zant is the main antagonist for most of the game, conquering Hyrule and leading the enemy forces. He normally acts calm, but is eventually revealed to have severe Ax-Crazy tendencies as well.
• Foil: Zelda and Ganondorf can be seen as a pair of these, as a result of their influences on Midna, and Zant, respectively, who are also foils for each other. Zelda's actions rub off on Midna to make her more compassionate, while Ganondorf's lust for power corrupts Zant.
• Frothy Mugs of Water: Averted for the first time since A Link to the Past. Telma's Bar apparently serves actual alcohol, and Jovani can even be seen drowning his sorrows after you collect all 60 Poe Souls and turn him back to normal.
• Frozen Foe Platform: Hostile Gorons can't be killed, instead they roll up into a ball that can be climbed on, and they get back up with enough force to send Link flying vertically to gain access to ledges. Once the Gorons stop being hostile, they still allow Link to climb on their backs to send him on his way up, but now they do so willingly.
• Full-Boar Action: The game has the Bulblins, who ride giant, aggressive boars called Bullbos. Link can even ride the Bullbos himself in a couple of locations. The Bullbos are pretty stupid, and can run right into walls or off the edge of cliffs (your horse Epona will always stop before doing either of these); but when charging can also smash down walls, allowing access to new areas, or break archer towers. They're also completely unkillable — after taking damage they just collapse and get back up again after a while.
• Full Health Bonus:
  • The final sword technique is an upgrade to the basic Spin Attack that increases its range, but it only works if Link is at full health.
  • The Great Fairy's Tears act much like Wind Waker's Elixir Soup, restoring Link to full health and doubling attack power as long as he remains so.
• Fun with Acronyms: Purlo's description of the STAR game plays a variation on this trope.
  Purlo: The rules are exceedingly simple!
  So all you must endeavor to do is
  Track down all the glowing orbs
  And collect them all before time
  Runs out!
  Quite an outstanding name, I must say...
• Futile Hand Reach: During the Final Boss battle, Link tries to reach out for Midna, who prepares to sacrifice herself to take out Ganon. She warps him and Zelda to safety before he can get to her.
• Game-Breaking Bug: Supposedly due to being rushed a bit earlier out the door, there are several minor bugs in the Wii version, which actually makes it the more ideal choice for speedrunning. However, one of the most infamous major flaws makes the game Unintentionally Unwinnable by saving in a specific window, inadvertently letting an NPC permanently obstruct Link and Midna. Nintendo gave out replacement discs if the faulty ones were sent in.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Bulblins begin showing up as regular enemies during and after Link's first fight with King Bulblin, since they now know that he's dangerous and what he looks like. The only exceptions are the three in Ordon Village near the beginning of the game, but even then, they're only encountered as Wolf Link so they likely didn't recognize him.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: In the final dungeon, Link is rescued by his allies from an arrow to the face and about four mooks, despite the fact that by now Link has destroyed entire hordes of enemies and has been hit by more arrows than a practice dummy.
• Gameplay Protagonist, Story Protagonist: Many series newcomers may wonder why the game is titled after a princess who is barely in the story. While the Zelda series has wavered who the protagonist is, the crux of this installment's story is about the Twilight Princess, Midna, as she develops from someone who only wants to save her own kingdom, to someone who also wants to save her friends' realm with Hyrule. While a plot of saving children and a childhood friend of playable character, Link, starts off, they are also concluded quickly with little fanfare, Link is now joining the fight for Midna's sake.
• Gemini Destruction Law: Shadow Beasts always attack in groups of 3 or more, and when only one is left standing it will let out a howl that revives the others. To defeat them you must use area attacks to take down the last two at once.
• "Get Back Here!" Boss:
  • Stallord. After seemingly defeating it in a normal type battle, has its head come alive and fly around the area shooting fireballs, requiring you to chase after it with the Spinner.
  • Armogohma, whose Clipped-Wing Angel form will run randomly around the boss room faster than Link. Easiest way to finish it off? Stick a bomb arrow in its ass.
  • At the end of the game, you face Ganondorf on horseback. Link must steer the horse close enough to him so Zelda can strike him with her Light Arrows, all while Ganondorf is constantly running away and taking potshots at Link with his sword.
• Ghostly Glide: The Death Sword hovers in the air until it crashes down on you. Then it floats back up and heads slowly toward you. Only when you use the wolf's senses do you see the robed ghost holding it up.
• Ghost Town: The Hidden Village north of the Bridge of Eldin, which you visit during your quest to help regain Ilia's memory.
• Giant Hands of Doom: On each side of the Twilight Palace, Link must remove a Sol from one of Zant's Hands and carry it outside through several complicated rooms while continually being chased by the hand. If the hand succeeds in grabbing a Sol, it will carry it back to the last room and force Link to start all over again.
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: The Twilit Bloat only makes its appearance when all other Shadow Insects have been defeated. Midna believes it's just a stray bug, but that changes when it's suddenly revealed to be a King Mook.
• Giant Spider: Many Gohmas, both infants and older juveniles, are found in the Temple of Time, with the boss being their progenitor and the biggest of the lot — Armogohma is massive. And then, when you defeat the giant spider, its body disintegrates and its large, central eye becomes another spider, surrounded by hundreds of tiny little spiders... and they swarm chaotically around the room...
• Girl in the Tower: The deposed Zelda is found in the highest tower of Hyrule Castle. After Zant invades Hyrule and Zelda surrenders to prevent a gruesome war, she is forced to remain in the tower until she gives her life force to save Midna at one point.
• Girlish Pigtails: Agitha and Ashei both have these, although Ashei's not very girlish otherwise. In the case of Agitha, the pigtails as well as the regal dresses and insect-shaped jewels add further to her personality as a very feminine character.
• Go Back to the Source: Link has to return the Master Sword to its pedestal in order to gain access to the Temple of Time. However, this does not involve relinquishing the sword; he just strikes the pedestal.
• God Guise: Ganondorf pretended to be a god to make Zant his Unwitting Pawn to get out of the Twilight Realm and take over Hyrule. Played with in that Ganondorf, while technically just a very powerful sorcerer, actually is something of a Physical God since he's currently wielding the divine powers of the (incomplete) Triforce and in a later game would be revealed to be the reincarnation of Demise.
• Gonk: Despite the realism, several characters are ugly in over-the-top ways, like Falbi, Gor Ebizo, and Dr. Borville.
• Go for the Eye: Several bosses corrupted by the Fused Shadows or Twilight Mirror are weak when you aim for the eyes. Eyes are Diababa's and Morpheel's main weak points. Fyrus and Armogohma are also susceptible to an arrow in the eye, though it's only to stun them.
• Good Colors, Evil Colors: Twilight Portals that Link can use to teleport have green highlights, while those with red highlights spawn enemies.
• Good-Guy Bar: Telma's Bar. Inside are a bunch of hapless soldiers that stand around all day doing nothing, but La Résistance also meets up there and offers advice to Link.
• Good Morning, Crono: Double subverted. The first cutscene with Link has him awake and talking with one of the villagers... but you're only given control of Link after a second cutscene, where he's woken up by a different villager the next day.
• Good Shapeshifting, Evil Shapeshifting: Link can turn into a Noble Wolf, which provides some abilities unavailable to his Hylian self. Ganondorf, again, turns into the boar Ganon in the final battle.
• Gotta Catch 'Em All:
  • The quest for the Fused Shadow pieces make up the first arc of the game, in an ultimately fruitless attempt to defeat Zant; later, the quest for the shards of the Mirror of Twilight becomes the top priority to go to the Twilight Realm.
  • Two sidequests are based on item collection: The Golden Bugs to help Agitha complete her insect collection in her imaginary kingdom, and the hunt of the Imp Poes to collect their souls and help Jovani regain his physical form. The two sources of the collection are in Hyrule Castle Town.
• Gotta Kill Them All: There are sixty Poe souls for you to collect in a side quest by killing Poes. They're almost everywhere and some are only visible at night.
• Grand Finale: While Wind Waker ended up being a Series Fauxnale for the "Hero of Time Saga", this game serves as the proper finale to said saga, providing closure to what happened to the Hero of Time and Ganondorf when the former was sent back to his era.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: Found in the Lakebed Temple, the Clawshot has a few unique differences from the Hookshot (which by itself is absent this time): If you're latched onto a ceiling, you can adjust the chain's extension to go up or down; also, Link remains attached to the targeted object until the Clawshot is put away. Rather than getting a length upgrade, you get another one later on, allowing Link to Building Swing with the best of them.
• Great Escape: Link gets captured by the Shadow Beasts shortly after he enters one of the Twilight areas of Hyrule and is transformed into a wolf for the first time. Midna meets him in jail and the two of them make their way out of prison (and eventually meet Princess Zelda).
• Great Offscreen War: The game describes how an evil tribe of powerful sorcerers (nicknamed the Dark Interlopers) came so close to getting the Triforce that the gods ordered the Light Spirits to intervene. The sorcerers' weapon, the Fused Shadow, was split into pieces and scattered to the corners of Hyrule. The sorcerers were only able to keep one piece, which Midna wears as a helmet.
• Green-Skinned Space Babe: The Zoras, as well as Midna's true form.
• Grimy Water: The boss of the Forest Temple resides in a pit filled with toxic purple water, despite the water in the rest of the dungeon being relatively clean. Defeating the boss will purify the spring and return the water to normal.
• Groin Attack: Link appears to be doing this whenever he uses a finishing stab on a Bokoblin.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • There is a certain room in the Goron Mines with a seemingly impenetrable fence. Up until now, the player has seen weak wooden barriers that can be smashed, and large iron ones that can be dropped by snipping the ropes holding them up. The fence, although worn, doesn't respond in any way to weaponry and can't be dropped, and you can't shoot through the gaps in it to the barrels or torches beyond. You're actually supposed to roll against it to collapse it, but at no point is this indicated to you.
  • There's quite a few caves and rupee deposits that are very well hidden, and you'd be hard-pressed to find them without looking at a guide or going out of your way to explore every last inch of every area. The most notable example is probably the hidden silver rupee in Kakariko Village, requiring you to use Wolf Link to jump on top of a building then shooting a bomb arrow into a hard-to-see bell that looks like decoration. And that's not even getting into the countless number of chests hidden in unremarkable areas all across the overworld.
  • Link can do a backflip off of Epona by holding the right trigger and pressing A. This allows him to dismount her even when moving, making it a helpful time saver. Nowhere in the game is this ability ever mentioned, meaning the only way to find it would be by accident.
• Gusty Glade: The Forest Temple mixes this with The Lost Woods, as there are outdoor areas where wind blows and puts into work the eolic machinery (in the indoor areas, Link has to use the Gale Boomerang instead). Later in the game, Link visits the City in the Sky, which has lots of gusting winds and fans that help and/or hinder his progress.
• Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: During the horseback portion of the Ganondorf boss battle, Zelda shoots Ganondorf with her Light Arrows while Link attacks him with the Master Sword.
• Hailfire Peaks: The first dungeon in the game (Forest Temple) is predominantly The Lost Woods, but also has setpieces that make use of the wind, thus invoking Gusty Glade (in fact, the main item found here is the Gale Boomerang, which is blessed by the Fairy of Winds). Later in the game, the Arbiter's Grounds is a mix between the desert and haunted crypt themes that had previously been separate in Ocarina of Time when last present in the same game.
• Hallway Fight: Snowpeak Ruins' miniboss room appears on the map as a circle, as with all the others. Once inside, however, it's actually a long corridor (the extra space is used for storing, of all things, cannons), with the miniboss being a giant armored lizard swinging an Epic Flail. To get past him without getting smashed to bits, Link has to hookshot the ceiling behind the lizard and drop down.
• Hands-Free Handlamp: The lantern illuminates the area around Link, but he can clip it his belt if he needs to use another item (thankfully, using the sword automatically does this). However, he can only light things on fire if he's holding it.
• Happily Married: Rusl and Uli in Ordon Village, and Yeto and Yeta on Snowpeak.
• Happy Ending Override: After defeating Ganondorf and saving two lands from destruction, Twilight Princess shows that this has befallen the Link of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Not only has he been forgotten by his people, he's been reanimated as a zombie-like creature called the Hero's Shade as he watches Ganondorf come back to haunt his country with a new army of monsters and Zant as his lackey. All he can do now is pass on his skills to his new incarnation and hope he can save the day.
• Hard Levels, Easy Bosses: A very unusual example of this trope. While Twilight Princess is considered one of the easiest Zelda games overall, with both the enemies and bosses being very easy to handle most of the time due to dealing very little damage, the actual dungeons in this game can be surprisingly complex in comparison. The maze-like layout of some of them and occasionally challenging puzzles result in said dungeons sometimes taking multiple hours on a first-time playthrough. In comparison, the bosses are a complete breeze. For example, Lakebed Temple, Snowpeak Ruins, and the City in the Sky are considered the hardest and most complex dungeons in the game, yet their bosses are seen as a complete joke, with only Argorok being considered a Goddamned Boss at worst. Only the final few bosses actually serve a notable challenge, although you probably still won’t die with enough preparation. Hero Mode in the Wii U version, despite being offered as a Hard Mode, solidifies this even more. While the enemies are much more challenging to face due to the increased damage and lack of heart drops, the bosses still manage to be easy overall despite also costing Link more hearts due to their predictable patterns and some attacks being hard to get hit by unless you go out of your way.
• Harder Than Hard: The HD version has a Hero Mode just like other previous Zelda games and remasters that makes Link take double damage. It also supports the Ganondorf amiibo, which also causes Link to take double damage. And you can use the Ganondorf amiibo in Hero Mode, so do the math.
• Hard Light: The bridge to the Twilight Realm, and the stairs in the Temple of Time, both complete with a warm jingle.
• Harmless Freezing: When Link reaches Zora's Domain while it's frozen, he and Midna can see an absolute plethora of Zoras frozen beneath the water; and none are notably harmed by the freezing itself, being instead popsicles who'll return to normal when the waters' temperature lowers via hot rock from Death Mountain teleported in and dropped. At worst, most of them are splayed out on the ground or holding each other in the immediate aftermath of freedom. This does not apply to Link himself when using the Zora armor: If he falls under cold water or is hit by a Freezard's ice breath, it'll be a One-Hit Kill for him.
• Healing Potion:
  • Red and blue potions can be purchased from shops. Red heals eight hearts, blue heals all of them.
  • Milk heals three hearts.
  • The Great Fairy's Tears. Much like Wind Waker's Elixir Soup, except you can fill up as many bottles as you have; there's only one helping per bottle, though.
  • Chu Jelly, which can be scooped up after killing Chus. Depending on the color, they can act as lantern oil (yellow), restore eight or all of Link's hearts (red and blue, respectively), make him lose a heart (black), do nothing (green; it would likely have been used as a Mana Potion had the magic meter been kept in the game), act like the Great Fairy's Tears (rare), or be a Russian Roulette of sorts (purple).
  • All kinds of soup. The Nasty Soup is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. You can scoop as much as you want for free, but you probably wouldn't want to, as like the Purple Chu Jelly it has a random chance of damaging Link. Yeto's soup is also free, and starts off Simple (restores two hearts). As you go through the Snowpeak Ruins and get him some more ingredients, it turns into the Good Soup (restores four hearts), then into the Superb Soup (restores eight hearts; basically a free red potion).
  • Hot Spring Water. It's easy to obtain and replenishes all hearts, but useless in long journeys as it turns into regular, non-drinkable cold water after it cools down.
• Healing Serpent: The Spirit Of Light Lanayru takes the form of a serpent and, like all of the other Spirits Of Light, resides in a Healing Spring, which can be used.
• Healing Spring:
  • The Goron Hot Springs slowly heal players back to full health. Twilight Princess has a side quest where you need to bring a barrel of springwater to a lethargic Goron to wake him up, the problem is that the water needs to be hot, the barrel has only a single hit point, and getting hit by an enemy makes Link drop the barrel.
  • The springs guarded by the guardian spirits contain the spirits of light, which turns out to be a plot point: when Zant throws Midna into one, the mere presence of the light spirit nearly kills her due to being a Twili, and only after Zelda gifts Midna most of her life force can she move around in the light world again.
• Heartbeat Soundtrack: The music that accompanies each encounter with the Shadow Beasts.
• Heart Container: A unique case with the Heart Pieces. The game abandons the traditional 4-Piece system seen in most other games in the series in favor of a 5-Piece one because it ended up having two more dungeons (and thus two more heart containers earned from bosses) than originally planned; the resulting abundance gives them presence not only in the overworld but also in the dungeons. Fortunately, a character in Hyrule Castle Town can help Link locate the missing pieces for a modest price.
• Heel–Face Turn: King Bulbin, after beating him enough times.
  King Bulbin: I follow the strongest side. It is all I have ever known.
• Henpecked Husband:
  • And henpecked father. Hanch in Ordon Village is completely overruled in all choices by his wife Sera and daughter Beth.
  • It's not seen if Bo has a wife, but his daughter bosses him (and Link) around in the same way.
• Herding Mission: Ordon Ranch has a Goat Herding mini-game available where Link must corral goats into a barn. It must be completed twice in the campaign but can be played multiple times after that. Completing it once after the required times gets you a Piece of Heart.
• Heroes Gone Fishing: The gift of completing part of the tutorial is a handmade fishing rod. This game gives you two types of fishing to play with. Fishing can net you some surprisingly handy results, including one of the four bottles, bags of money, and a smelly fish required to advance the plot. You can even boast of your fishing achievements to the final boss by shaking your fishing rod in his face, which shocks him so much that he leaves his guard open to attack.
• Heroic BSoD: Link experiences a short one after a particularly dark exposition sequence that tells of the history of the Twili and Hyrule's own shameful role in its unfortunate founding.
• High-Altitude Battle: There's the battle against Argorok, a flying dragon, from the City in the Sky. You get to the city by shooting yourself up into the sky with a cannon. Once there, you climb to the top of the tallest tower on the entire floating island. At the top, you find several pillars, which you climb up on. From the top of those, you use the clawshot to hook onto some flying peahats to get even higher, and from there you use the clawshot again to get to the dragon.
• High-Speed Battle: The second half of the battle with Stallord plays out akin to an on-rails pursuit. Link has to chase him, by using the Spinner to ride the rails lining the arena and the central column. Stallord's speed increases as he takes damage, along with the number of spikes, forcing Link to jump between rails, to avoid them.
• Hijacked by Ganon: This game names the trope when Zant turns out to have been given his powers by Ganondorf, with Midna even making a smart-ass remark about how that should have been obvious immediately after the revelation was made. There is some foreshadowing of this when you first meet Zant where he mentions his "God" while deriding the Fused Shadows, but the game makes Zant look like the Big Bad until Ganon's role is revealed.
• Hint System: For a small fee, Madame Fanadi can give Link a vague hint as to what do do next or where to find a Heart Piece.
• Hitodama Light: When Link enters the Twilight Realm, normal humans become like spirits and appear as floating flames. Their real forms are only visible by using the animal senses of Link's wolf form.
• Hollywood Magnetism: The main concept for the Goron Mines revolves around using the Iron Boots to walk around on areas of magnetic ore in the walls. That's plausible enough. What's not is that fact that in some places, the ore emits some kind of super-strong column of magnetism that will pull you onto the wall if you fall into the beam with the boots on. Plus, Link's carrying several other items made of metal (such as his sword and shield) which are unaffected by the magnets. His hat, seemingly, is, since it still points towards his feet when he walks upside-down on the magnets.
• Hologram: Two holograms appear in Palace of Twilight as minibosses. Both of the holograms are of Zant, a major villain in the game; the holograms act as keepers of the Sols, alongside the hands that begin chasing Link as soon as he grabs them.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: This appears to be the case at the beginning of the second half of the Diababa fight. When the 3rd head emerges, it sinks the bomb plants, making it impossible for you to damage it. You have to basically fend off its attacks for a minute before Ook swoops in to help by bringing bombs.
• Hope Spot: Two short ones concerning Ilia's memory loss. Both Link's and Epona's names seem to trigger the return of her memory, but she simply ends up telling you that she will never forget your name (as if you really were some brave stranger she just met) and that Epona is a very lovely name for a horse.
• Horseback Heroism: In a number of scenes, but particularly when Link rushes to save Colin from the Bulblins, and when chasing down Ganondorf for the final battle.
• HP to One: Both the Nasty Soup and the Purple Chu have random properties, ranging from this trope to an unexpected full health recovery. Very risky indeed.
• Human Cannonball: Link fires himself out of a Sky Cannon to reach the City in the Sky.
• Humanity Is Insane: After the Goddesses created the world, everyone lived in paradise. All shared the light equally, the people were content in body and mind. Until... word of the Sacred Realm got out. All hell breaks loose afterward.
• Hurt Foot Hop: During the boss fight against Zant, at one point he becomes a giant, and in order to defeat him, you must swing the iron ball and chain into his foot. As he hops around holding his foot in pain, he shrinks back down to regular size, which is when you attack him.
• Hypnotize the Captive: Zelda is possessed as Ganon's puppet near the end and you are forced to fight her.
• Iaijutsu Practitioner: The Mortal Draw technique lets Link instantly draw his sword and attempt to One-Hit KO the opponent.
• Ice Crystals: Chillfos and White Wolfos are enemies made out of crystal-shaped ice, and Blizzeta shapes her icy pillars into the typical crystal shape (at least on the bottom) so she can spear Link with them.
• Ice Palace: Snowpeak Ruins, located at the end of the Snow Province. It's not made of ice, but instead is a ruined manor that has frozen over. This one is actually inhabited, by two friendly Yeti—the ice is a non-issue and the monsters just household pests to them.
• An Ice Person: Under the influence of the Mirror of Twilight, Yeta becomes Blizzeta and is capable of summoning large ice shards to attack Link, as well as covering herself in a huge Freezard-like carapace.
• I Fight for the Strongest Side!: King Bulblin is the Trope Namer, though the trope name itself is a corruption of his actual line, and is why he both served as The Heavy and pulls a Heel–Face Turn at the end.
• I Know Your True Name: Epona sees through Link's wolf form and encourages him to return to normal and ride with her instead. Telma's cat Louise also recognizes Link trapped as a wolf after he is kicked out of the bar by scared patrons and shows Link a way to the castle.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice:
  • After his defeat in the Palace of Twilight, Midna impales Zant with her ponytail.
  • The Ending Blow which consists of a jumping stab into your downed opponent impaling them with your sword, this is a move that defeats Ganondorf in the Final Battle (using the Master Sword. If that wasn't enough Ganondorf is still standing upright with Master Sword sticking through his torso, it's not until Zant (Ganondrof's connection to the Twilight realm) snaps his own neck that Ganon succumbs to his wound and dies.
• Implacable Man: Wallmasters in the Palace of Twilight. You can stun it with your Bow and Clawshot, but you can't kill it and it will keep coming back to take away the Sol from you. Although, it'll give up after you go to the "outside" area and place the Sol in the ground.
• Implied Love Interest: Ilia for Link, which probably makes it the first time in the franchise it isn't Princess Zelda. The two of them grew up together and are clearly very close, and Link is as much motivated by rescuing her and the other Ordon children as by saving the world, but whether or not their relationship is purely platonic is left ambiguous.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: A mini-game in Kakariko Village requires you to shoot an arrow at a post on a guard tower a hundred yards away, but the arrows don't drop at all and there is a targeting sight. The mini-game wins you the Hawkeye, an item that functions like binoculars, or a sniper scope when combined with the bow, giving you even more improbable aiming powers!
• Improbable Weapon User: You can distract Ganondorf with a fishing rod, allowing you to then slash the idiot. The empty bottle is once again an effective weapon as well against Puppet Zelda.
• Incoming Ham: The Postman in every one of his appearances is introduced with him yelling "Mr. Link! WAAAAAAIT!"
• Inescapable Ambush:
  • The portal locations are a side effect of Link being ambushed by shadow beasts, who show up in a group and erect a force barrier similar to a boxing ring around themselves. When Link defeats them, the portal becomes available.
  • At several points in Hyrule Castle, Link gets sealed inside magic barrier rings and attacked by enemies (that for some reason can walk straight through them).
• Inexplicable Treasure Chests:
  • In the Temple of Time ruins, a large treasure chest is seen open and (worse yet) empty. That's because you find it in the past. It has a Piece of Heart inside.
  • Near the beginning of the game, Rusl leaves you a Wooden Sword. In a chest. Logically, this means that either he lugged a chest up a ladder and into your house, or the chest belongs to you in the first place, and he just put the sword inside and closed the lid.
• Infernal Background: Ganondorf does this first hand during the flashback scene where he meets Zant. Ganon first appears as a giant ball of fire and pulls Zant inside, where he appears as a giant flaming face surrounded by a flaming background.
• Instant Cosplay Surprise: Link starts the game wearing clothes like those everyone else in his village wears. After he first ventures in the Twilight, is turned into a wolf, and eventually purges the Twilight from the area, he's turned back into a Hylian, now wearing the oh-so-familiar green clothes worn by his predecessor in Ocarina of Time, much to his surprise.
• Interface Spoiler:
  • Part of the reason for the game's Ring Menu is to keep players from using it to measure their progress throughout the game. It still keeps track of your Plot Coupons, though. The HD version plays it straight, with a menu of inventory boxes on the GamePad that shows what you have and haven't gotten.
  • The minimap in the HD version shows you how many Poes you've defeated out of the ones in an area. If you aren't following a guide but have been to one area where there's 19 to defeat and 2+ in another, you quickly realize that Jovani's sidequest is going to take a lot longer than initially suggested in-game.
• Internal Homage: In The Legend Of Zelda cartoon series, Link would twirl his sword before sheathing it. After doing certain sword moves, beating a boss or if you sheathe it right after an enemy's defeat, the Link in this game will do the same.
• Interspecies Friendship: Link growing a friendship with the imp-like Midna, a Twili. This one also comes with some good amounts of Ship Tease. Midna also develops a friendship with Princess Zelda.
• Invasion of the Baby Snatchers: The children of Link's hometown are stolen by Bulblins, and much of the first half of the game is about Link tracking down and rescuing all of them.
• Inverse Law of Utility and Lethality: After a certain point in your lessons, the Hero's Shade tells you that the rest of the secret techniques he's going to teach you are incredibly powerful, but also very dangerous to perform. They are actually quite useful (the Mortal Draw in particular one-shots everything that isn't a Darknut), but they're also easy to screw up, and you may want to stick with more pedestrian techniques if you're not confident in your ability to use them.
• Invincibility Power-Up: The Magic Armor, which protects Link from enemy attacks at the cost of the current amount of money in his wallet.
• Invincible Boogeymen: Once you grab one of the Sols present in the Palace of Twilight, a large mechanical hand similar to the Wallmasters will start chasing you. It cannot be killed, only stunned, and it aims to claim back the Sol to put it back to the spot you took it from. "Psycho" Strings play while it's roaming, and your objective is to take the Sol to its outer slot in the Palace's entrance. Once you do this process with both Sols, you'll be able to progress to the dungeon's second half and won't have to worry about the hands anymore.
• Invisible Monsters: Spectral enemies such as Poes and ghost rats are invisible and intangible to human senses; Link can only perceive and interact with them when in his wolf form.
• Irony: After all the fragments of the Fused Shadow are retrieved, Link is turned into a wolf for a fourth time and trapped in the form after Zant forcefully places a shadow crystal into Link's forehead. Zant's intention is to render Link powerless forever, but, once the latter finds the Master Sword, the crystal pops out and Midna keeps it, letting Link turn between wolf and human at will. Midna lampshades this backfire both when she reveals this to Link as well as before the battle with Zant.
• Item Get!:
  • Played straight with the "item get" music, except when Link receives the horsecall from Ilia. At that point, Link just calmly holds up the item while "Ilia's Theme" plays in the background.
  • The original version does this too often with Rupees. Every time you load a save file, the flag for anything larger than a green rupee gets reset, so the first time you obtain a blue/yellow/red/orange rupee during that play session will result in an Item Get, even if you've sat through it twenty times before. Apparently Link has a really bad memory and needs the Item Get narrator to remind him how much each kind of rupee is worth as well as how he feels about it. Fortunately, this is fixed in the HD version.
  • The mailman either hums an off-tune version of the "secret found" tune or sings the regular Item Get tune ("Dah dah-dah-dah daaaaaah!") when presenting letters to Link.
• It's All Upstairs From Here:
  • The Temple of Time is an interesting case, as Link has to reach the top, fight his first Darknut, get the Dominion Rod, and then go back to the first floor while escorting a big statue.
  • The path to the throne of Hyrule Castle where Ganondorf awaits is a badly damaged staircase with many pits, requiring Link to use the Spinner and the Double Clawshots to traverse it. He also has to defeat powerful enemies like armored Lizalfos and a Darknut in the process.
• It's Personal: Link freaks out when Ilia and the Ordon children are kidnapped. Later, Midna has to use the chance to rescue them from peril to manipulate Link into helping her.
• It's Personal with the Dragon: Much of the game is spent with a grudge against and trying to take down Zant, who is ultimately Ganondorf's pawn. And before Zant enters the plot, It's Personal between Link and King Bulblin.
• Jackass Genie: Jovani was a poor man who sold his soul to the Poes for immeasurable wealth. They answered his wish, filling his home with elegant furniture, portraits, and coins... but also turned him and his cat into immobile but sentient solid gold statues, unable to enjoy their riches.
• Japanese Beetle Brothers: Among the bugs you can catch, there are the Kabuto (referred to simply as a Beetle) and the Stag Beetle, putting it into coincidental.
• Jaw Drop:
  • Link's jaw drops when he sees Armogohma's wimpy second form.
  • Link has this reaction when he sees Midna's true form. Lampshaded by Midna; she makes fun of him for being stunned speechless.
  • Midna gets an at least somewhat serious one when she discovers that Zant has broken the Twilight Mirror.
• Jerkass:
  • Midna is really bossy and condescending to Link until she gets some Character Development and becomes a Tsundere instead.
  • The bird that runs the balloon popping minigame in Lake Hylia takes pride in his game being seemingly unbeatable, and mocks Wolf Link every time he fails. Not only that, he also shouts racial slurs at Human Link and refuses to let him play on that reason alone.
  • The guy running the STAR minigame in Castle Town for the same exact reason as above. He doesn't even try to hide the fact that he's blatantly scamming Link and everyone else in town with a seemingly impossible game.
• Jerkass Gods: Implied by the Sages when they suggest that it was "by some divine prank" that Ganondorf is imbued with the Triforce of Power. The truth is more complicated, as the player will remember from Ocarina of Time.
• Jerkass Has a Point: The Castle Town doctor's tone may be a little harsh when he refuses to treat Prince Ralis, but given that Zora biology is presumably very different from that of humans/Hylians, turning down the case is the right thing to do if it was outside of his expertise. Thing is, he doesn't want people to know it's outside his expertise, so he just comes off as discriminatory instead.
• Journey to the Sky: The last piece of the Mirror of Twilight lies in the City in the Sky, homeland of the Oocca. To reach it, Link has to travel across Hyrule to find some ancient statues and move them with the Dominion Rod (which in turn needs to have its power restored by completing a prior task) to acquire the characters in sky language written beneath them. Doing this will complete a text that, once read by Shad in the basement of Renado's sanctuary, allows a nearby statue to be moved with the Rod and reveal a Sky Cannon. Unfortunately, the Cannon is broken, so Link and Midna have to transport it to Lake Hylia and pay 300 Rupees to Fyer so he repairs it. Only then can the young hero use it to launch himself skyward and reach the City in the Sky.
• Jump Scare:
  • Right after completion of the Lakebed Temple, Link warps outside and back into Lanayru's cavern, turns around, and immediately finds himself face-to-face with Zant, quietly standing before him. Moments before, the wide shot of the cavern shows nothing around Link's position, making this unwelcome appearance even more surprising.
  • The infamous scene in the Snowpeak Ruins where Yeta becomes Blizzeta is shown by her face flipping around to a Nightmare Face.
• Jurisdiction Friction: A Castle Town guard is heard to say that they can't investigate the lake drying up because it's under East Hyrule jurisdiction.
• Justified Tutorial: Link's friends ask him to show off the slingshot and wooden sword he acquired, shortly before they chase after a monkey and Link gets his first taste of real enemies chasing after them. More advanced sword moves are taught to Link by the ghost of the Hero of Time.
• Just You, Me, and My GUARDS!: King Bulblin makes Link fight this way in the mounted combat sequence, though once Link hits King Bulbin enough times they move to the Bridge of Eldin to fight one-on-one.

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