Recently, a couple of Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom players experienced an unexpected but funny jump scare. And no, the jumpscare had nothing to do with the game’s imposing villain, Ganon. It was apparently the jiggle physics of the hero of Hyrule’s crown jewels. Or at least what looks like it. Yeah, it’s gonna be one of those kinds of explainer blogs, so buckle up.
Earlier his week, Twitter user Dahffodil uploaded TotK gameplay clip of Link falling to his knees with the Pulitzer Prize-worthy caption “link balls jumpscare.” Folks, the screenshot of what could seem like Link’s dangly bits can only be compared to the bulge attached below the waist of Clone High’s JFK. That thang is thanging. To make matters all the more cinematic, a fellow Twitter user named Kyra replied with a video of Link getting rag dolled to the ground, causing his balls (?) to sway in response, like two large burlap sacks full of shock fruit. You can see what I’m talking about below.
Link’s package has been myth busted (unfortunately)
The screenshot and clip of Link’s danglers quickly went viral collectively garnering over 50,000 likes and 9,802 bookmarks on Twitter, for research purposes of course. The attention led Dahffodil to mute their post so as to not have their phone vibrate its way to the center of the Earth and challenge Ganon to a boss battle itself. While many online have made their voices clear on the topic of Link’s “jiggle physics” being the only valid use-case of the feature in video games, it turns out that Link’s swingers aren’t what they appear to be.
Iconoclasts creator Joakim Sandberg revealed in a quote retweet that Link’s clackers aren’t nads at all but the results of a graphical hitch after Link’s got rag-dolled in Kyra’s video.
“It’s funny looking, but y’all do realize this is the torso moving down and clipping through the blue cloth creating the illusion of jiggle, right? Nintendo didn’t put in ball physics,” Sandberg wrote. “If the blue cloth wasn’t there you’d see the whole torso bouncing while bent down.”
Personally, I choose to believe that producer Eiji Aonuma sat TotK developers down and stressed the importance of pushing the Nintendo Switch to its graphical limit by assuring that the Link’s sack had the physics of a wrecking ball. Life is what you make it, after all.