Franchise: The Legend of Zelda

There's a recurring phrase through-out the Zelda series where variations of "It's a secret to everybody" are put into games. This includes Zelda 1, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, Oracle of Ages, Oracle of Seasons, Twilight Princess, Skyward Sword and A Link Between Worlds.

Whilst most manga and comic adaptions of The Legend of Zelda feature Link as the main protagonist, there was one where he instead served as a minor role. "Zeruda no Densetsu: Riruto no Chikai" which translates to "The Legend of Zelda: Oath of Lilto" featured Lilto as the main character whom Link teaches about swordsmanship.

The manga ran for 4 volumes, was written by Jin Munesue, drawn by Junya Furusawa and published by Shounen Oh Comics, and although it was officially licensed by Nintendo, it's considered to be non-canon.

The Water Land theme from Super Mario Bros. 3 was later used as the theme for the Fairy Fountains in The Legend of Zelda series.

The Triforce was most likely based on the Mitsuuroko (or "The Three Scales"), the real life symbol of the Hōjō Clan who took control of Japan in the 13th century. Considering the prominence of Christian symbolism in the first two games in the series, the Triforce has also been theorized to symbolize the Christian doctrine of the Trinity defining God as the Father (Triforce of Power), the Son (Triforce of Courage), and the Holy Spirit (Triforce of Wisdom).

Before the timeline of The Legend of Zelda series was revealed in Hyrule Historia, there were attempts of releasing an official document detailing the order of when the games took place.

Nintendo first published http://www.zelda.com/lib_timeline.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">a page on the official Zelda.com website which told how up to "Oracle of Ages and Seasons" each Link was the same, but was later taken down.

The second attempt was by Dan Owsen, one of the English script writers for Nintendo and the Legend of Zelda games, who presented a document to Nintendo of Japan, however they vetoed the idea so to keep the timeline open to interpretation.

The Gerudo, a race first introduced in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, were largely inspired by the Arabic and Egyptian civilizations in the medieval Middle East. This can be alluded to by the Arabic and Egyptian themed locations and sculptures that the series has has to offer, in addition to the original design of the Crest of the Gerudo resembling an Islamic star and crescent. This symbol can be seen throughout the original release of Ocarina of Time on blocks, floor switches, and even the Mirror Shield. The similarities to the Islamic symbol caused controversy, and was changed to a new symbol in all re-releases of the game from the LodgeNet edition onwards.

A quote from Super Smash Bros. Melee offers an origin to the Like Like's name:

From the years 2000-2007, a Zelda game was released every year, as has every year from 2013-2021.

Excluding Twilight Princess, the Octorok enemy has been in every canon Zelda game. This has also made them the most reappearing enemy in the series.

According to Eiji Aonuma, the director for most of The Legend of Zelda games, the CD-i titles "Link: The Faces of Evil" and "Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon" (and presumably also "Zelda's Adventure") aren't considered part of the series canon and don't really fit in the franchise.

In the Japanese manual of the original NES Legend of Zelda, the recurring boss, Manhandla, is described as a "four-limbed, jumbo-sized Piranha Plant". A Piranha Plant is a kind of enemy from the Mario series.

During the Zelda portion of the Gamecube's Spaceworld 2000 trailer, Link is using the Hero's Shield of Majora's Mask, instead of the Hylian Shield which is commonly associated with Ocarina of Time's Adult Link, which the tech demo portrays.

There are two known concepts for unreleased Tingle games.

Nintendo veteran and Tingle series producer Kensuke Tanabe has claimed that in 2010, a horror game starring Tingle was in development at Vanpool, but was scrapped for "a variety of reasons". This would lead to the development of Dillon's Rolling Western.

Tanabe has stated in a 2018 interview that he had an idea for a game about Tingle turning into a "super-powered being" that he had not yet had the chance to pitch. It is not known if this game was ever seriously pitched to Nintendo or entered development after the interview, however the shuttering of Tingle series developers Vanpool means that it is highly unlikely it'll see the light of day.

The Master Sword being a sword that would get pulled out from its pedestal by those chosen appears to be derived from the Arthurian Legend of Excalibur, also known as the "sword in the stone". Similar to how King Arthur was divinely chosen to be able to pull out Excalibur, Link was given the power by the Goddesses to pull out the Master Sword. Because of these similarities, the Master Sword was renamed to "Excalibur" in the French localizations of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.

While Link being able to manually jump either on his own like in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link or through the use of an item like the Roc's Feather from The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening is a recurring ability in the series, several 3D installments forgo this in favor of having Link jump automatically at the edge of a platform. There are conflicting claims by series producer Eiji Aounuma and series co-creator Shigeru Miyamoto as to who thought of the automatic jump during the development of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and why. Aonuma claimed the autojump was directly inspired by the Roc's Feather and he had it implemented due to his own poor ability at playing platform games, wishing that the game could do the jumping for him. Miyamoto on the other hand claimed that he had thought of the autojump one morning and sprung it on the development team, who were planning to add a manual jump and were previously used to making Mario games, as an intentional limitation to see if they could "do all kinds of things." Manual jumping would be incorporated into a 3D Zelda game for the first time with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.