If there’s one thing Zelda fans agree on, it’s that the franchise has two main games that follow narratives much darker than expected from Nintendo’s writers: Twilight Princess and Majora’s Mask. Within the Zelda timeline that’s been established in the Hyrule Historia—a book published by Nintendo that contains artwork, comments on the games’ development, and more—the former comes right after the latter, and it carries on its legacy of darker elements within Nintendo’s storytelling.

To give some background: Majora’s Mask was released for the Nintendo 64 in April of 2000, two years after its predecessor (both story-wise and in regards to release dates) Ocarina of Time. Compared to it, it had a much more sinister and horrific story centered around themes such as grieving, death, and regret. Throughout the game you meet multiple characters who fit at least one of these themes, especially the deceased characters whose identities you borrow via the mask-wearing mechanic. When Link encounters these lost souls and plays the Song of Healing, a very disturbing melody you learn from the Mask Salesman at the beginning of the game, the player views a cutscene featuring that particular character’s memories.

For instance, at the Great Bay area you encounter a half-dead Zora musician named Mikau who washed up on the shore after failing to save his fiancé’s eggs from the Gerudo Pirates. Not being able to move on and die in peace, he’s stuck on the sand completely unable to move. Link plays the Song of Healing to put him to rest, and the player gets to view Mikau with his band members and fiancé before he finally dies. In exchange, the player is given the Zora mask which can be used to transform Link into a Zora.

This is just one of the many tragedies you encounter in the game, and it’s a trend that continues on into Twilight Princess for the Gamecube six years later. Twilight Princess follows the adventure of another Link, who was later confirmed to be the reincarnation of the Hero of Time from the two previous games in the timeline. In Twilight Princess, the player has the option to meet with a strange Stalfos named The Hero’s Shade in order to learn moves that make fighting enemies easier. You first meet this figure in the shape of a wolf in Faron Woods when Link goes to expel the evil within the temple there. Upon approaching him, a cutscene follows, and the wolf jumps to attack Link, only instead of dying Link is taken to another world. The wolf then reveals himself to be a warrior who plans on training Link to become a better swordsman, and the player is then taught their first hidden skill: the ending blow. After this, interacting with The Hero’s Shade becomes completely optional. To learn more hidden skills, you’d have to interact with the howling stones you find along your journey, but they only work when Link is in his wolf form.

It is through the player’s interactions with The Hero’s Shade that more lore is developed. Upon completing the hidden skills quest—seven being the total—The Shade reveals his identity as the previous hero whose tunic Link now wears, and previous speculation of fans becomes complete canon thanks to the Hyrule Historia’s official timeline revealing that the Hero of Time, the hero before Link in Twilight Princess, is The Hero’s Shade.

In the Child Timeline— the part of the official timeline that follows Link’s adventures from Majora’s Mask onwards—Link returns from the future in Ocarina of Time and is turned back into his kid self. He, along with Zelda, warn the king of Ganondorf’s dastardly plan, thus saving Hyrule. However, because he never had to battle Ganondorf, Link’s journey throughout time is never shared and he is never recognized as Hyrule’s savior. The story then continues on into the narrative of Majora’s Mask where Link travels far from Hyrule into the land of Termina, a sort of alternate Hyrule, after losing his best friend and companion Navi, who is hinted to be dead. After saving Termina from Majora, Link continues on his journey. From there, small connections can be made with the information that he eventually grows into The Hero’s Shade: Link likely returned to Hyrule to become a warrior—whether as a knight or as a mercenary, it’s unknown, but a grave dedicated to a “cursed swordsman” hidden within Hyrule Castle in Twilight Princess suggests he served as the former—and died, never having received recognition as the Hero of Time and thus never being able to train the next hero to fight Ganon’s next incarnation.

This form of storytelling and development is beyond what was done in Majora’s Mask. In Twilight Princess, Nintendo took the tragic elements of the game—specifically the themes of regret and death—and reflected them through a character that players would recognize. Thus, a stronger connection and sense of empathy form the audience is made. Many players of the game have previously enjoyed Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask, and would easily recognize The Hero’s Shade to be Link from Ocarina of Time. In fact, it was The Hero’s Shade’s story that first had fans speculating the existence of a timeline connecting all of the games.

In Twilight Princess, Nintendo managed to create an even more tragic effect on the narrative than that of Majora’s Mask through the use of familiarity. People are much more likely to be impacted when someone close to them dies rather than a total stranger. In Majora’s Mask, players can’t help but feel bad for the people they see die in the game, and the knowledge that you can’t save everyone—as you only have three in-game days before the moon crashes and destroys all of Termina—builds a somber tone to the story. However, in Twilight Princess, the victim is now someone the player has personally come to know. Having watched what the previous Link endured only to see him as a ghost lingering in regret with nothing to show for it—no title, no legacy, and no recognition for his efforts—creates a soul-crushing sadness within the player, and the grief is thus intensified. It’s like hearing someone in a city two miles away from you died from a shooting versus hearing that your best friend was shot and killed. It’s a twist in the story that’s made using the smallest of tweaks to already existing themes and ideas, making The Hero’s Shade possibly one of Nintendo’s most innovative pieces of Zelda lore.

The only issue, however, is that since this part of the story is completely optional, many players would likely miss out on it. Sure, it’s not a very useful piece of lore to the game as you don’t really need it to understand the basic story of Twilight Princess and the Hero of Twilight. Not to mention it makes sense why such a revelation would be kept out from the main story. After all, this was back in the time before Nintendo likely even thought of creating an overarching timeline of events that connected their games. Before Twilight Princess, the only games to have ever had a connected narrative was Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask, both of which took place within the same universe, in the same era, and with the same Link. The following game, Wind Waker, had no connection to either of them and even had a very different art style, using a more simplified and cartoonish look for its models. The story of The Hero’s Shade was just a small easter egg that previous fans would likely enjoy. Newer players wouldn’t be as interested as the hidden skill quest was only necessary if you wanted to complete 100% of the game—finishing all the quests, maxing out all upgrades, etc. If Nintendo truly thought it was that important for the players to know and understand, they likely would’ve added it to the main plot.

Yet that does not take away the fact that Nintendo has created one of the darkest narratives in the entire franchise of The Legend of Zelda, which has spanned for now 35 years, and that The Hero’s Shade has contributed to such disturbing storytelling through its use of familiarity with both themes and characters to make a twist in an otherwise predictable tale.