Turo, there is a timeline. One only needs to glance at the
developer quotes page to see that. However, if our interviews section was working I could pull up several quotes saying that they don't like the timeline to limit their creativity. Bottom line is that even though it doesn't make sense currently for a Ganon/dorf to appear before OoT, they can still make it happen and
make it make sense. I can even see a few ways they could do it. It would require rearranging just about all notions of Ganon that we currently have, but it's possible. But despite that, since it doesn't make sense
now, I think most theorists (and people who observe and draw conclusions) will follow Ockham's razor in assuming that he won't be in the game. That doesn't mean it's impossible, only unlikely enough to make that assumption. If there are two apples and an orange in a bin and you blindly pull one out (with gloves on, etc.), and if you had to guess what kind of fruit you pulled out, you'd guess it's an apple. Perhaps a better analogy would be if you had three apples in the bin, and closed your eyes long enough for anyone to have the opportunity to place an orange in it. Without any evidence of oranges being added, you'd still guess that any fruit you pull out is an apple, even though the possibility is there that it could be an orange.