The Legend of Zelda has many mysteries, and it's probably one of the best series to mine for data and endlessly theorize on whatever struck their curiosity. From the Triforce's presence on various statues in Ikana, to the mysterious references of a new Goddess of Time who's never seen or really mentioned outside of the first game to introduce her. Zelda is just as complicated if not more so than some Sonic games regarding clever details and hidden messages one might uncover by reading tablets or decoding gossip stones. One of my favorite things to do regarding the legend of Zelda is look into it's past and guess on how certain races or people or important historical deities might have interacted. And today, I want to talk to you about one of my favorite places. The land of the dead. . . the canyon of wandering spirits with lingering regrets. Zelda fans- (and maybe my usual Sonic fans) I present to you my outlook on the races and people who once inhabited the lost Kingdom of Ikana. I hope you enjoy my deduction.

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As we all know, Ikana Canyon was once a lusher part of Termina, populated by a mostly human race, and extended as far as Romania Ranch, possibly uniting most of Termina. The kingdom may have its origins with those who created and used Majora's Mask, and the people were known for their pride and eagerness to shed blood in warfare and promote a militaristic spirit. However. . . what if I told you that most of Ikana's army and inhabitants were probably not human at all. Now at first. . . you might think that being human is easily the mostly likely race living in Ikana, but after looking at various skeletons, and other forms of the undead dwelling in the canyon. One might be very surprised to find that inhabitants of Ikana were probably just as strange and diverse as all the rest of the races in the other sections of Termina combined. I'll start by showing you a stalchild. One of the lowest ranking soldiers and easiest enemies to defeat in the undead army. Get ready for some quick anatomy because you're going to be shocked!

http://zelda.wikia.com/wiki/Stalchild

At a first glance, the stalchild appears to be a small human skeleton with no particularly outstanding features and a thirst for blood. However, upon looking closer one may notice long sharp red claws and more importantly- a muzzle. So to speak, rather than having a flat faced skeleton like the Stalfos in Ocarina of Time, these little guys maintain the facial features that actually look closer to a Stalhound found in the legend of Zelda Twilight Princess?

http://zelda.wikia.com/wiki/Stalhound

Although the jaw is missing. So what if I told you that Stalchildren. . . are not the skeletons of a human race, but actually a humanoid doglike race of Jakals? Something more like we would see in Wind Waker!



We can even see that one of the King of Ikana's servants also bears a similar design (with a large extending muzzle) http://zelda.wikia.com/wiki/Igos%27_Servants Suggesting, that perhaps, the kindof of ikana consisted of both a dog like race of jackals and humans!

But wait there's more, we haven't gotten to the very end yet.

When link enters some of the gravestones found in Ikana Graveyard. He finds a familiar enemy from Ocarina of time Guarding not only a piece of a heart, but also the very song that can defeat sharp the elder. A large suit or armor known as an Iron Knuckle. Now, an Iron Knuckle is just an animated suite of armor used to guard something right? Except for that one case with Nabooru, am I correct again?

Well, you would be wrong my friends, because, if you were to walk up to any "sleeping" Iron Knuckle as Goron Link and use a first person view to clip- and look through the armor. You would see the face of a Gerudo. See for yourself.



What's even more so, is regardless of which iron knuckle you fight. You can also see part of the female geruado's breasts once the chest plate falls off. . .



And later 3DS remakes of both MM and OOT, no efforts are made to remove these details from either game! In fact, the breasts are even easier to identify in the models. What does this mean?

I think it means something relatively easy. Brainwashing bad Gerudoes into service is not only something Ganondorf and Geruado elites before him have done. But it's also something that the people of Ikana have done in the past for their own services (and probably with other races too!). This also means it's possible that redeads, and mummies found under the well could be more than simple human corpses. They could be geruado bodies still living with "lingering regrets" waiting to be fulfilled.

With the many different kinds of races that an empire such as Ikana would doubtlessly come across. Their army and culture probably became a melting pot of all sorts of races. Therefore I'm going to have to say that Ikana probably was the main homeland of all humans back in the early days, but that it was also a melting pot for all kinds of races as time went on. Eventually some of them becoming extinct. (Such as the jackals) while other still lived on after the great kingdom's fall in places like Clock Town, as people of peace and commerce, or as pirates and fisherman, as is the case with the non-zora inhabitants of great bay.

So there you have it. The kingdom of Ikana is made up of dogs, an all female race, and the boring human. Sounds like a good base to me for building up an empire. The only question left to ask, is what do you think? Have you noticed anything interesting on the history of Ikana? And do you agree with this theory? Go ahead and post your thoughts below!

greenluigi :
NintendoFanKimmy :
Eirinn :
sonicthehedgehog57 :
Mecha Leo :

Anything?

This is really interesting! I like the jackal stalchildren theory. That makes a disturbing amount of sense! :o

Although on the Gerudo Iron Knuckles, I think that was more of an oversight in development, and a bit of laziness on the developer's part. From a technical standpoint; Majora's Mask is just a beefed up rom hack of Ocarina of Time. They more than likely just copy + pasted the Ocarina of Time's Iron Knuckle, disregarding or just plain forgetting who was inside.

Eh, if I can be honest, I think the main reason we can find so many different theories in LoZ is because the developers write so many different types of stories and leave loose ends they never plan to tie up, or they contradict themselves leaving us to either see it as such or look for a reasonable explanation.

Kind of like Hyrule Historia: I'll never believe that timeline. Ever. What happened there was the developer kept hearing people trying to make sense of a timeline that never existed, like Mario or Final Fantasy (to my knowledge) for example: no consistent storyline unless it's a direct sequel, and they decided to make something up. That's my opinion personally.


However, that isn't to say that the theories that come out of this series aren't good. In fact I find LoZ tends to have some of the most interesting theories out there, and this one is no exception.
I can see the Stalchild and Gerudo thing especially. I would be inclined to think it was laziness on the developer's part and that they just never bothered to remove the character model inside (as an added bonus, they didn't have to rig up another character's movements and stuff, just slap an armor layer over one they already had). In fact with the glitching the camera through part that was exactly what it looked like to me - laziness on their part.

But to see that they not only left the gerudo inside, but even sharpened the model's resolution and smoothed the jaggies really makes me think such is not the case, unless it was laziness part two and they remade them all over again and once more slapped the character in another suit of armor.


So I like this theory, definitely. Whether it's intended or laziness, I don't know, but I like the theory. :3

Those boring humans tho.

This is pretty sweet, looking back into the origins of these armies of skellies and zombos. That thing about gerudos especially hit a nail, I mean I doubt that the Zelda team would've been so lazy as to not polish that model up, they altered many models for Majora's Mask so why not this one? Or maybe it was a hiccup, you can never be sure...
Still, i'm surprised I never heard this, if you can find out what's underneath that helmet so simply as just moving the camera the right way, why haven't there been other people talking about this gerudo conspiracy? You found the gold man...