Fanfic / Dimensional Links

"I don't really see how the timeline could get any more messed up, so no!"

— Farore

Dimensional Links is a Legend of Zelda massive crossover work written by ChangelingRin.

The plot opens with Demise lamenting the complete uselessness of his hatred incarnations. Deciding to take matters into his own hands, he yanks them out of the timeline... leaving massive holes in the fabric of Space-Time where they were. Thankfully, our green-clad hero is always willing to help save the world... or rather, all eighteen of them are, if they'd just stop destroying everything they touch as well.

The fic is undergoing a rewrite, in order to bring up the overall quality of the fic, but without changing the plot or major events.

A version containing only the rewritten chapters can be found here.

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Dimensional Links contains examples of:

• Alliance of Alternates: Both the incarnations of Link and Demise ended up creating a heroic and villainous versions of this.
• Adaptational Species Change: In the original version, Sketch's Forced Transformation form was an ocelot. In the new one, it's a collared lizard. This even gets lampshaded when an angry Farore starts listing a bunch of felines Sketch could have transformed into, including ocelots.
• Aloof Ally: Oni a.k.a. the Fierce Deity, on the grounds that he tends to believe that the Links should figure things out for themselves and that Helping Would Be Kill Stealing. However, in exigent circumstances, such as the appearance of Majora or when Ocarina Ganondorf tricks the Links into deaging themselves by 7 years, leaving several as barely toddlers and even the oldest at only 10 (except for Shadow, whose appearance is largely a matter of choice). In the former case, he goes in hard, and in the latter he reluctantly involves himself to protect the younger Links (as they are his descendants), though he only acts defensively (though he does bend sufficiently to provide long range archery assistance, with their equipment).
• Alternate Self: Hoo, boy where to start... we have at least eighteen different versions of Link (nineteen counting Shadow Link/Dark Link), at least a couple Zeldas, several different Ganons/Ganondorfs including Demise as the Big Bad. Heck, even Demise's Hatred Incarnations could be considered alternate selves of the Demon King.
• Alternative-Self Name-Change: Each of the Links gets a name based on the dimension or time period they came from. The one who assigns the nicknames is Red from "Four Swords" who did the same thing in the manga adaptation of the same game.
  • Four Swords Adventures Links: Green, Blue, Red, and Vio (as found in the manga)
  • Spirit Tracks Link: Steam
  • The Legend of Zelda and The Adventure of Link Link: Realm
  • Twilight Princess Link: Dusk
  • The Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass Link: Wind
  • A Link Between Worlds Link: Sketch
  • A Link To The Past, Link's Awakening and the Oracle series Link: Lore
  • Ocarina of Time Link: Ocarina
  • Majora's Mask Link: Mask
  • Four Swords Links: The Four
  • The Minish Cap Link: Speck
  • Skyward Sword Link: Genesis, often shortened to "Gen"
  • There is an additional Link called "Oni". In this story, he is the Link that died in the Skyward Sword prequel manga and was placed in the Fierce Deity mask.
• Ambiguously Related: The sheer resemblance between most of the Links makes it pretty clear that they're all probably related somehow (Aryll sees them all as a whole clutch of new big brothers), but given the distance in time between them and timeline splits, it's not entirely clear how - for the most part. It's also occasionally implied that some of the Zeldas are related to some of the Links, too. As per canon, Ocarina/Mask is the ancestor of Dusk, though it's not clear if any of them has figured that out. On the other hand, on meeting Aryll, Steam realises that she's his great-grandmother and that Wind is therefore his great-great-uncle and, incidentally, the great-grandfather of his third cousin, his Zelda, by Tetra.
• Apocalypse How: The universe, or at least just the planet, appears to be suffering from metaphysical annihilation, due to the after effects of Demise's spell.
• Ash Face: Lore when Mask and Ocarina try blowing up the inter-dimensional hole with bombs just as he's coming through.
• Ax-Crazy:
  • Majora. Good God, Majora. Even the other villains - hell, even Demise - are creeped out by it.
  • Zant is a more downplayed version, with Mask noting that he reminds him a bit of Majora. He just puts more focus on the “crazy” part.
• Berserk Button: Do not put any of the Links in mortal danger, especially one of the younger and smaller ones. If you do, Dusk will get angry, as Past Ganon finds out the hard way. It's one that he shares with Oni (though the latter's definition of 'mortal danger' is a bit more elastic), with it being noted that Oni is where Dusk gets it from.
• Beware the Nice Ones: All of the Links to a more or less extent (as in canon), but Dusk especially. In his own words, he prefers to be a Beta. While he eventually grudgingly accepts that he's part of the leadership (as the moderating influence between Gen and Lore), he prefers to be the Team Dad in the background. Accordingly, the other Links see his Alpha side only intermittently, but when it does show up, even Shadow is intimidated by it. Then there's what he casually does to the Shadow Beasts, and to Past Ganon.
• Beware the Silly Ones:
  • Lore seems to revel in being this, and when he's possessed it's pointed out that despite all his behaviour, he's probably the most experienced of them and could probably beat the hell out of them. When he gets possessed, fourteen other Links, several bailing on the fight against Ganondorf to do so, ganging up on him and the possessor is considered an appropriate response, and they consider the fact that they won was mainly because the possessor didn't know how to use Lore's skills yet.
  • As is pointed out, while Zant is completely nuts and treated as an utter joke by Demise and the other villains, he's got some extremely potent curse magic and serious magical stamina to lay it over the entirety of Hyrule. As Twilight Ganondorf notes, while getting him into an appropriate mindset for combat is difficult, it's generally worth it. However, as he also notes, Zant would be utterly terrifying if he was remotely practical. Which he isn't, thankfully for the sake of the heroes.
• Big Brother Instinct:
  • Hearing that Aryll was kidnapped causes the other Links to freak out despite never meeting her before. Wind quickly calms them down by saying he already rescued her.
  • Dusk develops this towards the entire group. Past Ganon found this out the hard way.
• Big "WHAT?!": Din and Nayru when they find out that the Four Sword Links wound up in the Spirit Tracks world.
• Black Comedy: Being villains, they really couldn't give less of a crap watching Majora torch Bellum. They also treat beating up Zant as a hobby.
• Blue Blood: Aside from the Zeldas and Midna, Wind teases Steam for this when the latter figures out how they're related ( Aryll is Steam's great-grandmother and Wind eventually marries Tetra and becomes great-grandfather to ST!Zelda), before the latter irately points out that he's a cousin of royalty on the not royal side.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Blue, who is scolded by Vio and Red for "breaking things" and later Shadow joins in by just knocking Blue out.
• Bridezilla: Invoked by Four's Zelda. Since Vaati kidnapped her and wanted to marry her immediately, Zelda, in an attempt to stall for time until she was rescued, started picking fights with him over each and every tiny detail of the wedding, up to and including colour coordination of the napkins with the bouquet. Fortunately, her plan was successful and the Four arrived to save her before the wedding.
• Christmas Episode: Lore halts the entire plot to throw one solely because he really doesn't want to talk to the Wind Fish.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Half of what Lore and Zant say is entirely irrelevant in context. In Lore's case, it's probably Obfuscating Insanity. In Zant's, it absolutely isn't. Other characters are usually quick to point out that it doesn't make sense.
  Steam: Are you sane?
  Lore: Maybe. Depends on if I think insanity would be more fun at the time.
• Cloud Cuckoo Landers Minder: The other Links, especially Dusk, do this for Lore. On the villainous side, Twilight Ganondorf is reluctantly this to Zant, as he's just about the only one who can get him to shut up for five seconds (Majora can too, but its method mostly just replaces speaking with screaming) and can reliably interpret his babble.
• Combat Medic: Gen gets tasked with this due to his Bag of Holding allowing him to carry a lot of healing potions.
• Comically Missing the Point: Upon being absorbed into Demise, all of the villains of the series begin demanding their freedom. Except Zant, who demands a sandwich.
• Composite Character: Oni is a combination of the Fierce Deity and the Link from the Skyward Sword prequel manga.
• Confusion Fu: Lore, when he's in full flight, to the utter bafflement of both allies and enemies. It is entirely intentional. The only one who isn't surprised is Dusk, because he's Seen It All.
• Contrived Coincidence: Humorously invoked by the universe before Sketch and Wind can start questioning "Nintendo physics and logic" in regard to Sketch's abilities. Averted in the rewrite, where the Goddesses intentionally interrupt them.
• Creepy Good: Shadow has shades of this, though it fades somewhat over time. It's all over the place with Oni, however - the blank white eyes are just the start.
• Crossover Villain-in-Chief: Demise quickly establishes himself as the most dangerous of all villains, and forces the others to follow his orders.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Zant. While the emphasis is heavily on the 'Moron' part and he's usually beaten up by other villains as a hobby (and Majora considers him to be its favourite victim), the rewrite demonstrates that he's extremely powerful and kind of terrifying when he actually focuses. As Twilight Ganondorf notes, while getting him to focus is a massive trial, the results are worth all the babbling about Peahats - though he does tend to grab the Villain Ball.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Trying to fight Demise head-on when the Demon King had all the powers of all the villains did not go well for the Links.
  • Dusk later delivers one to Past Ganon. The other Links get put through the wringer trying to take down Veran and Onox; Dusk simply hits Ganon with a mortal draw.
  • Oni also handily defeats Majora.
• Cuteness Overload: Red uses his cute puppy impersonation mentioned below to render Veran all but comatose.
• Cuteness Proximity:
  • Red elicits this quite frequently (and almost invariably intentionally) through his 'cute puppy' impersonation, leaving a number of characters cursing their weakness to cute puppies. It gets to the point where he weaponises it during the fight against Veran, who's rendered unable to function through sheer Cuteness Overload.
  • Aryll is so ridiculously cute that she elicits this from all the Links. When Wind says, voicing the concerns of the group, that they need to move on with saving the universe, she gets upset that he (and all her new big brothers) have only been around for one day. Every single Link - which by implication includes Shadow - promptly caves like wet paper. It's so effective Red starts taking notes on how to improve his puppy impersonation.
  • The youngest de-aged Links get this, much to their dismay, because they are about three or four at most, and ridiculously cute. Midna also finds Dusk's wolf-puppy form adorable - and hilarious.
• Deadpan Snarker: Most of the Links, to one extent or another, though Shadow wins prizes - and gets out-snarked by Midna. The Ganondorfs aren't bad either, and Lorule Ganon gets in a good one liner when revealing to the wary Links that now he's in charge of the Fusion Dance with Yuga.
  Lorule Ganon: I'm afraid Yuga isn't in right now, can I take a message?
• Destructive Savior: The Links. Quite a few of their battles end up wrecking the landscape around them. More than one Zelda has gotten annoyed by this, though when it's pointed out after the Past Ganon-Onox-Veran battle what they were up against, the local Zelda reassesses and thanks them for leaving the ground recognisable as... dirt. Fortunately, they've managed to prevent any bystanders from getting hurt.
• Deus ex Machina: Literally. Farore (going against the usual non-interference policy of the goddesses) directly intervenes and bails the Links out when their first fight against Demise goes south. This has consequences. By intervening like that, she gives away the location of the trio to Demise, who immediately starts hunting for them. The goddesses, having invested most of their power in the triforce, know they aren't strong enough to take him themselves, and are forced to go into hiding (leaving behind a mocking note).
• Did Not Do the Bloody Research: Though it was later changed.
• Didn't Think This Through: Twilight Ganondorf had been so focused on corralling Zant that he failed to account for what the Heroes, one of which is Lore, might do, or not do, themselves. Needless to say, he was NOT pleased with himself.
• The Dreaded:
  • Demise, considering that he controls all the other villains and very nearly killed every single one of the Links without breaking a sweat, requiring a literal Deus ex Machina.
  • Majora disturbs even Demise, and scares all of the other villains and pretty much everyone else bar only Oni. There is excellent reason for this.
  • Regarding the above, Oni is treated with a certain wariness even by the other Links. Again, there is excellent reason for this - mostly, that Oni a.k.a. the Fierce Deity needs another Link to act as a conscience, since when he does fight, There Is No Kill Like Overkill.
  • Veran manages to scare even Demise into silence, from inside his own head. That takes some doing.
• Dude, She's Like in a Coma: TP's Zelda is found unconscious in the throne room when Zant disappears. Kissing her awake is among the suggestions that the guards throw out to wake her. For added hilarity, they try to recruit Link when he arrives.
• Embarrassing Nickname: "Little Wolf" for Dusk. Midna, naturally, uses it at every opportunity and is delighted when he gets deaged and turns into a wolf puppy.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • Midna sees the mysterious portal, sees Link investigating it, then decides that it'll be hilarious to throw him through, before bagging up the curse stone (that allows him to transform into a wolf at will) and throws it after him.
  • Oni's. He tells Mask that his job is essentially to point him at what needs hitting and say how hard he wants it hit, before informing one of the other Links (who's worried for Mask, who Oni is essentially possessing) that he doesn't want to hurt him and that his target is Majora (who's been flattening the Links), but for his own safety, he should get out of his way. Sensibly, the other Link does.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Demise (like everyone else) finds Majora to be... disturbing.
  • Even Ocarina Ganon is horrified by the sight of the OoT era Great Fairies, just like more or less everyone else.
• Eviler than Thou:
  • Demise to all of his hatred incarnations.
  • Lorule Ganon to Yuga (inverting Yuga's attempted Grand Theft Me is one of the very few things that Demise approves of that any of his hatred incarnations has actually done).
  • Majora scares all of the villains, and even Demise is careful not to make it too angry, as he likes his mindscape functional.
• Evil Gloating: Demise snaps at his reincarnations for ruining his. This naturally confuses the Links since the reincarnations are still in his head.
• Experienced Protagonist: Some of the Links are more experienced than others, having gone through multiple adventures (or in Dusk's case, one extremely long one) though Lore takes the cake, having saved multiple countries - he's actually delighted when the others arrive, because Victory Is Boring. He's also arguably the most effective all-round fighter of the Links, thanks to his experience, the fact that he has an item for every situation, and his pure crazy. All things told, it's very fortunate that Bellum had no idea how to do more than basic puppetry when he possesses Lore.
• Failed a Spot Check: Dusk and Midna completely miss the large, gaping hole in time and space when they arrive to find Zelda. Lampshaded by Dusk once they take notice.
• Fastball Special: A variation; at one point, Speck, tired of spending ages trying to climb from ground to whichever villain's ear (for context he shrinks to thumb size and stabs their ears), asks Ocarina to give him an arrow ride.
• Feathered Fiend: Cuccos are repeatedly considered evil incarnate by pretty much everyone (except for Zant). Even Majora won't mess with one if he can help it.
• Figure It Out Yourself: Oni's philosophy towards the Links, which is why he very rarely gets directly involved.
• Finishing Each Other's Sentences: Green, Blue, Red, and Vio all chip in while telling their story. It easily gets on the other Links' nerves.
• Forced Transformation:
  • All the Links, except Shadow, get this in Twilight Princess's Hyrule, er, the Twilight Realm. Lore in particular isn't all that excited to be a rabbit, and all of them end up having to relearn how to walk.
  • While he can't do it to Zant himself, Demise summons an image of Zant and turns it into a duck.
• Foreign-Language Tirade: Lore indulges in this even though he's a native Hylian speaker, and the languages he uses for his cursing cone from other countries or species.
• Genius Bruiser: Ganondorf, as in canon. Outside of the powered-up Demise, Twilight Ganondorf is by far the strongest villain the Links had to fight, putting them through a marathon battle even longer than the one in canon, and Hyrule Ganondorf tricked the Links into activating the Temple of Time, making all of them seven years younger and rendering half of them unable to help fight at all, necessitating the intervention of Oni to keep them alive.
• Greek Chorus: Nayru, Din, and Farore.
• The Gods Must Be Lazy: Somehow "averted" seems too tame of a word to use. The plot kicks off when Demise, finally free of the Master Sword, decides to take matters into his own hands by absorbing his Hatred Incarnations, ripping several temporal rifts across the three timelines and beginning The End of the World as We Know It. The Three Goddesses of Hyrule take immediate action by bringing virtually every version of Link to date together, including the Link from Skyward Sword, the one responsible for Demise's defeat in the first place, together.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: Not seen directly, but some of the Links agree that the Hyrule Castle Guard can be pretty incompetent.
• Hearing Voices: Demise after absorbing the villains. Unfortunately, they not only hate being in his head, they hate being in his head with each other!
• Helping Would Be Kill Stealing: Oni's general opinion, since he thinks that they should work it out themselves and fight their own battles. He very rarely gets directly involved as a result, doing so exactly twice - and only once did he actually attack his opponent, acting completely defensively in the other fight.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Shadow, although the 'heroic' doesn't generally apply outside of the fact that he is allied with the Links. He later starts developing more positive traits under their influence.
• Heroic Lineage: Some of the Links and Zeldas are directly related to each other - Wind is Steam's great-great uncle and great-grandfather of Steam's Zelda via Tetra, the two founding New Hyrule, something Steam figures out when he meets the 8 year old version of his great-grandmother Aryll, meaning that Steam's Zelda is his 3rd cousin. Meanwhile, as in canon, Ocarina and Mask are ancestor(s) of Dusk, though it's unclear whether they've realised it yet. More generally, it is also heavily implied that Gen and his Zelda found the royal family.
• Hive Mind: The Four, to an extent. While they think as individuals, compared to Green, Blue, Red, and Vio, they have personalities so close together that they can't help acting this way. Any time they try to act individually, the others have to suppress the urge to copy one's individual action.
• Humanoid Abomination: Shadow. Given that he's made entirely of Shadow magic, his shape and appearance are largely a matter of personal choice, becoming positively eldritch when sufficiently angry. However, at baseline he does have to copy the hero, and spends a considerable amount of time as Dusk's double (Dusk has Seen It All and is largely unfazed), before mimicking a rather aggrieved Gen, and finally taking the latter's suggestion to make a unique appearance from a mixture of the various Links' traits.
• Insult Backfire: A mild variation. Midna teases Dusk about his feelings for TP's Zelda in front of the other Links. Since most of them have (or have had) crushes on the Zeldas of their own worlds, none of them hold it against him. She grumbles that teasing a Link in front of other Links was a bad idea.
• I See Dead People: Steam has this ability. He can also see mask spirits and invisible people.
• It Amused Me: Demise doesn't get a lot of help (or respect) from his hatred incarnations because it amuses them to watch him screw up in the pettiest of ways. This is in spite of the fact that they would be out of his head as soon as they find Link. Eventually, however, he manages to corral them into helping on the grounds that he's going to make each of their enemies suffer.
• It Makes Sense in Context: "Have you seen a giant squid? I need to destroy it to save a pirate princess and a whale god."
• It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time: Mask's opinion of the Garo Mask. Also, Din putting a majority of her power into the Triforce.
• It's Personal: Shadow with some Ganons and all Ganondorfs, which is initially the only circumstance under which he'll actually get involved.
• The Juggernaut: Demise after reabsorbing all his hatred incarnations. See Curb-Stomp Battle.
• Jumped at the Call: Lore, who's been on "four-ish" adventures so far and doesn't at all seem to be astounded by the other Links. He even takes Dusk ditching leadership on him in stride. In fact, he's delighted, mostly because Victory Is Boring.
• Like Brother and Sister: Some of the Links and Zeldas share this dynamic, perhaps most prominently Steam and his Zelda - which makes more sense than most, since on meeting Aryll and deducing his relationship to Wind, Steam realises that they're 3rd cousins.
• Meaningful Name: The Link from Skyward Sword is given the nickname Genesis, or Gen for short. Fitting, as he is in fact the genesis for virtually every other Link in the entire Legend of Zelda franchise to date, including ones that are not physically present, such as the Link from Breath of the Wild. As it turns out, though, this isn't quite true... in fact, Oni was the first, from the Skyward Sword prequel manga, and is faintly amused by the assumption otherwise. For his part, Gen isn't all that bothered.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Shadow sides with the Links because he wants revenge for Hyrule Ganondorf abandoning him after creating him. This is lost on Ganondorf, who is mystified about why Shadow would turn against him.
• Most Common Card Game: The villains after they get themselves sorted out in Demise's head (except for Zant, who thinks they're playing YuGiOh^note Go Fish in the original version ). Demise pauses to wonder how they got the cards.
• My Beloved Smother: Farore is a bit of this to her various Courage incarnations, but she takes it up several notches into something outright manic when she picks up on Shadow, cooing over the Token Evil Team Mate like a lost kitten, and declaring that she will look after him... by getting the other Links to love him into submission.
• The Navigator: Wind, with translations provided by Dusk.
• The Nicknamer: Red for the Links, and Lore for the various enemies, mainly for the purpose of successfully aggravating said enemies.
• Noble Wolf: Dusk, naturally, in wolf form, though the other Links mostly just coo over how soft he is. He finds this halfway between bemusing and exasperating, but he's willing to turn into a giant fluffy wolf to comfort a badly disassociating Sketch.
• Noodle Incident: The various times Realm got lost.
  Blue: (regarding who's to be the group leader) And it's not Realm, that's for sure. He could get lost in a hallway.
  Realm: (beat) That's actually happened before.
  • One of Red, Blue, Green and Vio's attempts to destroy the hole in their world in Chapter 5 involves a complicated setup involving a mirror, three bombs, time-delayed wicks, and an application of physics to invert the explosion. It doesn't work.
• No Sense of Direction: Realm. He got stuck in a volcano from a library, wound up on the same island in a lake in his Hyrule three times while looking for Death Mountain, and found a random cavern with a cow. And he pulls Wind into it too. Granted, part of it is aggravated by his Wandering magic, but it's made quite clear that his habit of getting lost is a him problem.
  Blue: ... I know I just met you. And I know that you're probably capable of being a Hero once you get to wherever it is you're going. But if it legitimately takes you that long, and you lose your stuff that often, how in the world do you ever get anything done?
• Not So Above It All: Dusk is usually by far the sanest and most sensible of the Links, and the last to get side-tracked. Except, apparently, for that one time he wasted three months running around looking for golden bugs.
• Obfuscating Insanity: The other Links think that Lore's pulling this, but they aren't entirely certain. The closest thing they can be sure of is that he's not quite as mad as he pretends to be and that he's figured out how to weaponise it.
  Dusk: You've figured out how to weaponise your personality. Of course you have.
• Official Couple: Dusk and TP!Zelda, with the former being a stuttering mess who is most certainly amenable and the latter cheerfully bullying her council of advisors into accepting her courtship of the Hero. Additionally, Wind/Tetra is implicitly confirmed by Steam realising that Aryll, Wind's sister, is his great-grandmother and that ST!Zelda is therefore his 3rd Cousin.
• Oh, Crap!: All the Links find themselves saying this when they go up against Demise for the first time and realize he has the powers of virtually every villain the Links have faced to date in their respective eras.
• Oh, My Gods!: Naturally, the Links use the Three Goddesses, the aforementioned Goddesses use themselves, and the Hatred Incarnations use Demise.
• Omniglot: Thanks to his travelling, Lore is fluent in five languages, at conversation level in three, and has picked up the basics (and the curses) of several more. He demands lessons from Ezlo in Jabber (well, initially he demands a Jabber nut, then on finding out they aren't available, he demands Ezlo, who compromises on lessons).
• One-Steve Limit: The Links start using nicknames to refer to each other to avoid confusion. The different Ganons and Ganondorfs also put together a system - though theirs involves significantly more fighting and insults.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Realm stops his quest when he finds Ganon's minions running for the hills and completely ignoring him.
  • When Dusk shows his rarely seen Alpha side, a) something very serious is going on, b) even Shadow backs down.
  • If Zant's showing signs of sanity, it means that he's focused on something, and considering that he's the main reason that Dusk's Hyrule was covered in Twilight and completely nuts, this is not good.
• Other Me Annoys Me: All over the place with the Links, but it gets said aloud between Ocarina and Mask.
• Out of Focus:
  • The author consciously tries to avert that kind of stuff. Dusk and Lore, due to their popularity, tend to get a bit more of the spotlight than the others, but every Link gets his own distinct personality and character moments.
  • The villains mostly escape this too, since the way the story is structured means that each one gets A Day in the Limelight. That said, some of them (read: any large pig things named Ganon) have rather interchangeable personalities.
• Pass the Popcorn: Din and Farore just before the Links show up to take on Demise.
• Physical God: Demise and the Goddesses, naturally. Majora also verges on this territory, but is annihilated by an actual version of this trope - Oni a.k.a. the Fierce Deity.
• Pocket Dimension: Dusk's shadow, apparently. Midna remodelled it.
• Power Incontinence: The entire reason why Realm gets lost is because he has an innate magical connection. He just can't control it. It gets much worse once he invokes it and overtaxes it, to the point where he can't even take a single step without teleporting.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: "You. Are. NOT. Naming. Me. Train."
• Random Transportation: Realm's ability to get lost, but the "island in the middle of the lake" is a common destination.
• Refuge in Audacity: Probably the only thing that kept Realm from being attacked by Ganon's minions at first.
  • Lore's usual M.O. for dealing with the various villains.
• Resolved Noodle Incident: Early in Chapter 9, a "Rain Incident" is mentioned as having happened to Sketch. Later on, it's revealed at one point, Sketch had gone into the rain to solve a puzzle...but because his paint is watercolor, it started running and caused all sorts of Body Horror to Sketch, forcing him to de-merge and run for the nearest shelter until his body went back to normal. He's had a bad case of aquaphobia ever since.
• Running Gag:
  • Some Links tend to be standing in a bad spot just as others are coming through the portals.
  • Characters commenting, either mentally or aloud, on the lack of originality with the Four Swords Adventures Links' nicknames.
  • Realm getting into increasingly absurd situations due to lack of directional sense.
  • Mask and Ocarina's struggles with time travel, tenses, and potential paradoxes, due to being the same Link from different points in his own timeline.
  • Blue Breaking the Fourth Wall, and getting beaten up by Vio and Red (and occasionally Shadow, who knocks him out cold) for it.
  • Red's 'cute puppy' look, which has practically every character subjected to it inwardly cursing their weakness to adorable puppies. He actually learns to weaponise it.
  • Cuccos being evil incarnate.
• Sanity Has Advantages: Ganondorf (all of them) and Veran are the only villains who actually bother to plan their battles against the Links. They also come far closer to winning than any of the other villains. Twilight Ganondorf actually laments the lack of this in Zant's case - as the rewrite demonstrates, he's incredibly dangerous when he actually focuses (though getting him to focus is a trial by itself), but even then, he still grabs the Villain Ball (if he'd attacked the Links while they were adjusting to their Cursed transformations, he could have killed more or less all of them. Instead, he decided to creepily vanish into the darkness).
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Farore lives and breathes this trope.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Demise, as per the norm. Also as per the norm, the can is un-sealed.
• Seen It All: Dusk and Lore. They deal with it in different ways; Lore veers deep into Cloudcuckoolander territory. Dusk, meanwhile, is simply unfazed by everything, to the bafflement of his fellow Links. 'Everything' includes Shadow running around looking like a palette swap of him for months on end and living in his actual shadow - all Dusk does is warn him that Midna's got it decorated to her liking and that if he messes about with it, or with Dusk himself, he'll have to answer to her.
• Shout-Out: Speck nearly trampling a Picori village causes one of the inhabitants to holler "Greenzilla!" Apparently, it's a local legend...guess the guys who made the legend couldn't use the real name because of inter-dimensional copyright laws.
  • When the villains are playing their Most Common Card Game, Zant thinks they're playing Yu-Gi-Oh!. He even references card games on motorcycles.
  • When Demise notices mushrooms while walking SS Hyrule, Zant suggests he eats one based on a fourth-hand story of a plumber using "giant shrooms to defeat a spiky dinosaur and save the Princess".
  • Chapter 55 has the Links discuss Vaati's interest in pretty girls, and Ocarina suggests multiple reasons why Vaati may have kidnapped Zelda besides her being pretty. One of his proposed explanations is "a prophecy about an unholy match between a demon and a princess," which Blue promptly points out.
• Stupidest Thing I've Ever Heard: Demise's response to Zant's above Shout-Out before he starts tearing apart Mario's premise.
• Team Dad: Dusk, interchanging with Gen. Gen's the one who's always fretting about enough healing potions, and learning to cook Wind's grandmother's soup in order to carry something a bit tastier that heals people. Dusk, meanwhile, tends to be most protective of the other Links, particularly the younger ones (as at least one Ganon has found out the hard way), and most empathetic, acting as a mediator between Gen and Lore as the de facto third member of the leadership.
• Teleport Spam: Used to Realm's advantage during his Ganon fight, and his disadvantage when he can't stay in the same spot for more than a step.
• Teleportation Misfire: Realm's Condition gets worse and worse as his Ganon fight goes on, needing the Four to carry him to stop him from teleporting.
• Tempting Fate: Sketch, when he finds himself on an island. Once he begins to muse about enjoying a vacation. Cue rain.
• This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: As part of his Figure It Out Yourself philosophy, Oni refuses to fight the Links' battles for them, barring the canon exception of fighting Majora. He makes another exception when the Links are de-aged and half of them are too young to fight, but only a partial one - he does not directly attack, but parries Ganondorf's attacks away from the youngest Links, and eventually grudgingly provides some archery - though only with their equipment.
• Time-Travel Tense Trouble: Mask and Ocarina seem to have a lot of trouble with this. It comes with being the Hero of Time. They're both awed when a Zelda neatly sums it up, and get in a lot of arguments when in their respective eras of Hyrule and people ask them about things.
• Token Evil Teammate: Shadow, who joins out of a desire for revenge and refuses to fight any villain not named Ganon or Ganondorf, although he slowly grows a soft spot for the Links - something which has a lot to do with Farore's slightly manic intention to love him into submission by proxy through the other Links.
• Torment by Annoyance: The villains in Demise's head, who stage a rebellion at one point. Their methods include annoying songs and banjo music. When Demise decides he likes the banjo music, they then turn to bagpipes.
• Totally Not a Werewolf: Most of the cast calls Dusk a werewolf at some point, even though he points out that his transformation doesn't work that way. No one cares.
• Tranquil Fury: At the end of Chapter 8, Dusk gets a bit of this after Midna throws him through the portal. Very calm, very murderous:
  Dusk: ...I'm going to strangle her. I'm going to strangle her within an inch of her life. And then I'm going to tie her to a boulder and torture her with all the people she could be making fun of but can't because of the spell I'm going to have Zelda cast on her mouth to prevent her from talking until I extract an ironclad promise from her to never do this to me ever again.
  (black pouch drops out of the void and lands between his eyes before falling onto the ground)
  Dusk: On second thought, I'm going to kill her. I'm going to kill her, then bring her back to life and kill her again just to make sure she's got the point, and then I'm going to bring her back to life a second time so I can chain her to a Cucco for the rest of her existence.
• The Unintelligible: Bellum, being a monstrous squid. Ocean Ganondorf and Malladus, however, understand him just fine.
• Victory by Endurance: Realm, due to regularly being chased by monsters with no horse or vehicle, has a ridiculous amount of stamina compared to the other Links when it comes to running around, being able to do it for hours with no issue (to the point that he's surprised that the other Links can't run for hours like it's no time at all). His introduction has him outrun a four-headed dragon to the point that it gives up in exhaustion, and in several of the fights he and the other Links have had his role basically amounts to running around and drawing fire from the villains.
• Villain Respect:
  • On his defeat, Twilight Ganondorf grudgingly admits that while he hates the Links, he has to commend their fighting ability - and Lore's mastery of "the deceptive arts", though given that this follows the words "and some of you lack any honour", that might not have been meant as much of a compliment.
  • Lorule Ganon remarks approvingly that Hilda (Zelda's counterpart in Lorule), who was plotting to steal Hyrule's Triforce to fix Lorule out of a desperate desire to save her kingdom, came up with a good scheme and would fit in well with the other villains - Veran would apparently be thrilled to have another girl in the group.
  • Lorule Ganon gets this himself from Demise, with one of the very few things he approves about any of his hatred incarnations being how Lorule Ganon reversed the Grand Theft Me that Yuga pulled on him.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: The Four Sword Links, who, in spite of the teamwork they've developed through their journey, are constantly arguing with each other when it comes to actually planning anything out.
  • Dusk and Midna are this as well, as in canon.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Happens In-Universe a few times, and it typically marks the villains getting smarter and tougher to fight.
  • Twilight Ganondorf pretty much runs circles around the Links, giving then a brutal and lengthy fight despite fighting alone.
  • Past Ganon, Veran and Onox. Previously, while they were used to fighting two bosses at the time, the Links merely split themselves in teams and took them on separately. However, those bosses planned their assault beforehand, and specifically set up a strategy to cover each other's weaknesses, opening with an Alpha Strike and barely leaving them room for a breather.
• Willing Channeler: Whoever's wearing the Fierce Deity is this for Oni.
• Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: Parodied when the three goddesses of Hyrule discuss ways to guide the different Links.
  Din: Have we considered just sending them a message? You know, have the local Great Fairy turn up and say, 'Hero, thou must goeth into yonder hole'?
  Farore: (looking flatly) Nobody talks like that.
• You Fight Like a Cow: Unusually, both heroes and some of the villains use this to excellent effect. In the former case, it usually involves insulting nicknames and whatever insanity Lore's coming up with now (which is an entirely intentional distraction tactic) - he's also usually the source of the nicknames. Sometimes it gets varied, as Wind derides one of the Vaatis' wind magic skills. In the latter case, it's for a given value of excellent - Hyrule Ganondorf neatly manages to trick the Links into accidentally activating the Temple of Time and de-ageing them all by 7 years, leaving the oldest of them at 10, and the youngest at 3 or 4, which is excellent, while Ocean Ganondorf drives Shadow to enraged Angrish and even more violence.

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