10 Censored Moments In Zelda Games
Swearing!?
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“The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild” (2017) Yes, there has been a case of swearing in “The Legend of Zelda”. Perhaps this was done to make the game come off a bit more “adult”? Who can say, really? In an encounter with Teba, the Rito becomes frustrated over how close he was to taking down one of the Divine Beasts before uttering “dammit!”. No one knows how many copies of “Breath of the Wild” retain this mild profanity, but many copies you can obtain today have altered the line to “darn it.”
Crest of the Gerudo
“The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D” (2011) A recurring issue you’ll see throughout “Zelda’s” history of censorship is religion. Recent entries have taken a bit more care to not possibly stir the pot with religious circles, and “Ocarina of Time’s” 3DS remake went through a drastic change to avoid any problems. In the original game, the Crest of the Gerudo uses imagery that is quite similar to images and symbols found within the Islam religion. “Ocarina of Time 3D” took these images and heavily altered them to where the symbols have virtually no shared characteristics of any kind.
The “Bible”
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“The Legend of Zelda” (1986) Even in the late 80’s and early 90’s, Nintendo was super cautious about making religious references and allusions of any kind for “Zelda’s” international releases. The first instance of this behavior goes back all the way to the very first game. Though the Japanese version directly refers to one item as “the Bible”, international versions will know this as the “Book of Magic”. You can thank Nintendo of America’s strict guidelines on depicting religion in games for this change, and the change was carried forward for Lana’s 8-Bit Book of Magic in “Hyrule Warriors”, which went so far as to remove the cross altogether.
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“Zelda II: The Adventures of Link” (1988) “Zelda II” is a walking contradiction when it comes to removing references to religion. Throughout the game, you will see Wizzrobes sporting crosses on their robes, and Link straight-up uses a cross as a means to see invisible enemies. So, what’s the problem here? Whereas the Japanese version refers to its various landmarks as “temples”, the international version of “Zelda II” changed the names of these landmarks to “Palaces”. But again, enemies and usable items get a free pass.
Agahnim
“The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past” (1992) This Super NES classic saw a couple of arguably meticulous alterations for, as with the previous “Zelda” titles, religious references. The first of these changes occurred for the traitorous swine Agahnim, who served as a priest in Hyrule Castle. But international versions could not call him a priest as that infers some religious connotations to his title. So, he is known as the “wise man” or “wizard” of Hyrule Castle instead. At this point, what would you expect from a game that couldn’t give itself a cooler title like “Triforce of the Gods”? (True story, by the by.)
The Hippo
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“The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening” (1993) “Link’s Awakening” also saw some heavy alterations, but compared to Link’s other outings, it was arguably more deserving of the censorship. However, we would have never had “hippo with breasts” on our bingo cards. Yes, the Japanese version of “Link’s Awakening” features a hippo woman in Animal Village who acts as a nude model. Obviously, this would not have sat well with parents let alone localization teams. With the exception of Germany, just about every one of Nintendo’s localization teams changed the hippo woman to a simple hippo - no breasts, no towel pull-up animation, just a regular hippo.
The Fire Temple
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“The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time” (1998) It is somewhat strange that the 3DS remake of “Ocarina of Time” featured such a late change to not offend Islam followers while the original blatantly included allusions to it. Some copies of the original “Ocarina of Time” feature a track for the Fire Temple that uses chants from an Islamic prayer. Contrary to what some might tell you, no one outside of Nintendo recognized the chant’s references until years after the fact. In 2012, Nintendo revealed the cause of the song’s inclusion, citing its selection from commercially available tracks and recognizing the religious tones sometime after initial manufacturing. No uproar occurred after release, and none occurred in the years that followed.
Book of Mudora
“The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past” (1992) The Book of Mudora has long served as the history book of Hyrule, loaded with information about the land’s creation and myths. However, it too was subject to censorship as the Japanese version featured some characters within the book that resembled Egyptian hieroglyphics. For the overseas version, the Book of Mudora was heavily reworked, changing all characters to random symbols. You could say that they basically rewrote the entire Hylian language.
Martha's Bay
“The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening” (1993) Much like the hippo, the Mermaid was heavily censored for reasons pertaining to sexual content. For the international versions, the mermaid will ask Link to retrieve her lost necklace. This was not the case in the Japanese version. Instead of losing a necklace, the mermaid will ask Link to find her lost…bikini top. Obviously, this sort of thing cannot be in a game played mostly by kids (at least those residing outside of Japan), and so, the change was made.
Ganondorf’s Cough
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“The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time” (1998) This is perhaps the most famously censored moment across the "Legend of Zelda" games. In Versions 1.0 and 1.1 of "Ocarina of Time", Ganon will cough up blood at some point during your final encounter with him. For some reason, this was changed in version 1.2 and all future reprints to a green, um…spit? Unless his blood is green? We won't get into it, but it does kind of lessen the more "adult" tone "Ocarina of Time" was sort of going for.
