This trope isn't named after The Legend of Zelda just for the pun — the franchise is known for spawning a plethora of urban legends about what you can and can't do in nearly every game.
- The Legend of Zelda: This trope goes all the way back to the very first game for the NES. Being one of, if not the, earliest game to have a New Game Plus second quest, the game quickly spawned playground rumors spread by kids who claimed that their cousins, neighbors, or friends who went to other schools had reached a third quest, often attainable only after an absurd number of playthroughs, such as nine or twelve. Examination of the game’s ROM data reveals only two quests. Indeed, the falsity of these rumors should be obvious by virtue of the fact that the second quest closes with the words "End of The Legend of Zelda".
- The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past features one of the most famous non-gameplay related examples in gaming. At the start of the game, your injured uncle tells you "Zelda is your...". This has led many gamers to believe that Zelda is Link's sister (or more rarely, Link's cousin), and some believe the Japanese version made it more explicit. In the Japanese version Link's uncle says "Y-you are the princess'...", which has led fans to speculate that the line is actually something along the lines of "You are the princess' only hope" (though some still see it as "You are the princess' brother"). The GBA version of the game contains a new translation which says "You must rescue Princess Zelda. Our people are fated to." instead. Thus far, Link and Zelda haven't been presented as related in any incarnation except in an early manga (which is full of Early Adaptation Weirdness, is an adaptation of the first title, and is non-canon to the games).
- The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening The final dungeon of the game is in the Wind Fish's Egg, a location that you have been able to reach since you could get to the second dungeon, but cannot enter until all eight dungeons are cleared. Once inside, you enter a room with nothing special, however the second room is almost completely black, and lacks a floor, forcing you to fall down and do a Lost Woods style puzzle. However if one looks closely, you can see a set of floor tiles on the other side of the second room, implying there is something over there. There isn't, but rumors flew regarding a second version of the dungeon, one that was more like the rest you had played through during the game. Maybe there was a harder Final Boss, maybe there was a secret ending, maybe there was a secret ninth instrument that instant-killed the final boss; It all depended on who told you about it. Using the screen-warping glitch from the 1993 original to cross the chasm can easily solve the mystery: it just takes you straight into the aforementioned maze sequence, nothing more.
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has an incredible number of such rumors. It was a perfect storm of an intricate game that came out right around the time Internet rumors became really popular, and people tend to cling to the urban legends they remember, even though the game has been hacked so thoroughly that you can easily find its complete text dump
(i.e. every possible line of dialogue the game spits at you). But still the rumors persist, and they include:- That you could obtain the Triforce in the game. The closest you get is a piece of the Triforce, which isn't a usable in-game item but rather a story element. People believed you could get all three Triforce pieces and do something really cool with them. And that may have been the case early in the game's development, when screenshots came out showing the Triforce as an obtainable item (and kick-starting the rumor), but there's nothing like that in the final game. Some claim that a Triforce-shaped engraving in the inventory screen was meant to be a slot for the Triforce once you got it (Word of God says it's just decoration, hinted by the symbol being a raised relief rather than a hollow indentation for something to fit into). A relatively more convincing derivative rumor (with alleged screenshots and everything) suggested that you could catch a glimpse of (but not obtain) the Triforce by playing a song called the "Overture of Sages" just prior to pulling out the Master Sword, but neglected to teach you how to learn the song to begin with (because it doesn't exist). Surprisingly, come 2022, SGDQ proved that this was actually true... by using arbitrary code execution to make it true by force.
- That you can beat the Marathon Man. The fact of the matter is: you can't. That didn't stop people from trying, though, leading to creative "solutions" such as going back in time and waiting seven in-game years (shown in this hacked video). In reality, he'll always beat you by just one second; even if you use a cheat to finish in zero seconds, his time will read "00:0/". The real point of the race is just to beat your best time. The devs admitted that they left it at that because they couldn't think of a good reward for beating him.
- That you could free the Zoras trapped under the ice by re-entering the Great Deku Tree as Adult Link and finding a hammer that can break the ice. It's only possible to enter the Deku Tree as an adult with a cheat device or glitches, and even then, there's nothing new to see.
- That there was a hidden dungeon known as the "Desert Pyramid" in the Haunted Wastelands which, for whatever reason, contained the Triforce. You can reveal the "pyramid" by playing the Song of Storms in a specific location with the right orientation; the lightning flashes illuminate a triangular silhouette on the horizon, and thus the rumor writes itself. Reaching the silhouette without cheats is impossible thanks to the desert's swirling sands, but close examination reveals a simple rock with a particularly pointy top.◊ The Desert Pyramid dungeon in The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures may be a reference to this rumor.
- That there was a nude code! Dan Owsen started this one on his "Ask Dan" column on Nintendo's website, posting a ridiculously long code sequence purporting to render characters naked — but only Malon, Talon, and Ingo. So many people used the "code" and complained to Owsen when it didn't work that he had to apologize in the column. Of course, it wasn't the first time Dan had perpetuated a rumor or had been a jerk to the fans.
- That you could obtain an M16 by using a certain item (usually a bomb or the hammer) in a specific spot in Kakariko Village during or after the shadow attack once you beat the Water Temple.
- That you could totally get a gender-bending tunic that would result in a female Link. That one was one site's April Fools' joke; they thought it wasn't convincing, but they didn't bank on people believing it because technically, Sheik held precedent.
- That there was a "Sky Temple". This one arose out of the fact that the Sage of Light, the first Sage you meet, doesn't have his own temple that you have to beat (because he wasn't trapped in it like the others). One memorable story of how to get there was to use a GameShark to prevent night from changing into day and kill hundreds of Stalchildren in Hyrule Fields, causing (supposedly) a gigantic skeleton to approach you from the distance, who could be killed with a single hit. The skeleton's skull was then supposed to provide a telepad to the Sky Temple, which was also rumored to contain the Triforce.note A more bizarre theory was that the cow in the hidden hole near the peak of Death Mountain will fly you there (and also turn purple, for whatever reason) — but only after you've beaten the game.
- That you can reach the cut Unicorn Fountain, rumored to be accessible through an underwater door in Zora's Domain, and get the Sword Beam seen in pre-release screenshots. A pathway does exist down there, but it just leads to an underwater dead end with a black wall — and you don't just make a hard-to-get-to space like that for no reason, do you?
- That you could replace your fire arrows with "phantom arrows." This supposedly required you to use the potion from the Biggoron Sword quest on the ghost in the desert.
- That there was an extremely rare chance of encountering a strange pig-like enemy during the graveyard race against Dampe. Known as the "El Puerco" rumor, it circulated around GameFAQs for quite a while. General consensus now is that the initial "sighting", if not a complete fabrication, was the result of a player encountering a very rare, very odd glitch with the ReDead enemy's model.
- That you could get a "Gold Tunic", which would combine the effects of the Goron and Zora Tunics and was related to the Gold Skulltula Tokens. While you can use a cheat device to get a gold-colored tunic (or almost any other color), it's purely cosmetic.
- That you can find the "Beta forest" seen in early Zelda 64 screenshots and videos. In the 1990s and early 2000s, rumors abounded on how to find it, but it's long since been understood that the forest is from an entirely different build from the final product and was scrapped (like almost everything else from that build).
- That you could obtain the Triforce in the game. The closest you get is a piece of the Triforce, which isn't a usable in-game item but rather a story element. People believed you could get all three Triforce pieces and do something really cool with them. And that may have been the case early in the game's development, when screenshots came out showing the Triforce as an obtainable item (and kick-starting the rumor), but there's nothing like that in the final game. Some claim that a Triforce-shaped engraving in the inventory screen was meant to be a slot for the Triforce once you got it (Word of God says it's just decoration, hinted by the symbol being a raised relief rather than a hollow indentation for something to fit into). A relatively more convincing derivative rumor
- The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: When the game was first released, rumors circulated about exactly what happens when the in-game clock hits zero on the third day. These included everything from the game deleting your save file to erasing all saved games on the cartridge to even bricking your cartridge and/or N64. Nintendo Power even addressed these rumors saying that, while the player should avoid the Moon hitting Termina (obviously), nothing bad would happen to the player's game cartridge or system. They even encouraged readers to watch it at least once since it's pretty cool looking.
- The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess has its own set of rumors, including:
- That you could get into Fado's house. While it's impossible, and the door is always locked, this one was very popular on GameFAQs (although mostly in joke topics). Using a cheat device or glitch to get in just puts you in the dark space behind the door, because there's no house map data and no transition programmed in.
- That you could find the hidden "Beta forest", the name for a wide-open expanse of trees seen in the game's first two trailers. Fans were excited about a departure from the usual cave-system-disguised-by-occasional-trees that passes as a forest in the Zelda games, but the Beta forest isn't in the final version. Most videos "proving" its existence are usually just exhibitions of random glitches. There is a Beta forest Dummied Out, but it's not the same as the one in the trailer and is most likely a map for testing the game's controls and physics.
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: In the early days of game release, there were several rumors floating around. All were debunked within the first few months of the game's release.
- An item called the "Zora Trident" was listed as existing by several fan-sites, and was obtained by fusing the Lightscale and Ceremonial Tridents together. It was supposedly unbreakable and offered stats comparable to the Master Sword. This was eventually found to be false.
- The game offers 120 shrines and four Heart Containers. Each Heart Container adds one heart to Link's life gauge, while each shrine gives one spirit orb; four spirit orbs can be traded in for one Heart Container or Stamina Vessel. Link has space for twenty-seven hearts and ten stamina increments in addition to what he starts with, meaning that he will always be three Heart Containers, three Stamina Vessels or some combination thereof short of having maxed stats. Rumors were floating around about getting the last three containers/vessels, such as killing every Molduga in the desert, solving all quests, etc., but all proved false. The Champion's Ballad DLC later added four more shrines to the Great Plateau, adding one more Container/Vessel, but Link remains two Containers/Vessels short of max stats.
- There are a number of consistent misunderstandings about how the game's enemies' Level Scaling works, typically involving it being tied to story beats such as getting the paraglider or clearing Divine Beasts, or that enemies slightly increase in difficulty with each blood moon. In reality, the scaling is based purely on the number of enemies that Link has killed. However, as increasingly strong enemies give progressively larger amounts of points, defeating a Blight Ganon is typically enough make a tier or two of enemies all level up at once, giving rise to the impression that clearing Divine Beasts is what makes monsters stronger.
- A rumor that persisted considerably longer is that if Link is riding a horse while wearing the lynel mask, lynels will take longer to see through his disguise and turn hostile than they would if he's dismounted. This isn't so — a lynel will always take precisely thirty seconds to see through the mask after noticing Link's presence, regardless of whether he's mounted or not.
- When the Master Mode DLC first released which made enemies more difficult as well as changed some of their locations, there were rumors of Moldugas in the Hebra region. In reality, they are still exclusive to the Gerudo Desert.
- The Blood Moon is consistently believed to happen either at random or to be responsive to player actions — the belief that it's hastened by killing large numbers of enemies is particularly common. While the game may force a panic Blood Moon as an emergency cleanup service if too many things are onscreen as a result of player actions, the timer for the Blood Moon happens consistently every two hours or so of real-world play time. After that amount of time has passed and the game overworld has been reloaded, a Blood Moon will be scheduled for the next night. Many players don't know this and tell others to build campfires to pass time and check the moon each night, which will do nothing. You have to spend real time to get another one to occur.
- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has one that surrounds the character of Kass, from the previous game. In the base game, Kass is just flat-out not in the game. However, because he is such a beloved character, dozens of rumors popped up within days of launch that Kass is in the game, just incredibly well hidden in a random cave or on a difficult to reach sky island. Some rumors even went so far as to say that Kass had died and that one could somehow visit his grave. However, as stated before, he is simply not in the game, though a couple of characters do mention him (though not by name). Most likely, being a traveling minstrel, he simply left Hyrule.
