The Official Zelda Timeline Isn’t Actually a Timeline at All

Oh yes, we are about to touch upon the most debated and heavily opinionated subject in all of Zelda lore: the Zelda Timeline. To be more specific, I am going to talk about the Official Zelda Timeline, as in the one presented in Hyrule Historia. Many of us know it well, and for the few that don’t, have no fear because we’ll be touching upon all the major aspects of it soon enough.

I want to actually start off by saying I am by no means suggesting the Official Zelda Timeline isn’t correct—I can’t dispute what the minds behind Zelda say it is. However, I can safely say that what we are being shown isn’t in fact a timeline at all.

It all starts with the understanding of what a timeline actually is. While there are many interpretations, we’re going to go with the base definition that is most commonly accepted in our culture and history books:

“A timeline is a way of displaying a list of events in chronological order, sometimes described as a project artifact. It is typically a graphic design showing a long bar labelled with dates alongside itself and usually events labelled on points where they would have happened.”

The big part of this commonly accepted definition is that timelines work based on time itself. As time goes by, events happen, and when we mark these events on a info-graph we are creating a timeline of events over a specified period of actual time. This is important to keep in mind, because the Zelda universe deals with something called parallel universes. The basis here is that two universes exist and can be mapped on a timeline over the same period of time. Even if events happen at different points in the timeline itself, the measurement of these events is still within the same time schedule.

Essentially, these are two worlds existing in their own dimension or universe that are basing their existence upon the same commonly accepted time continuum. I know some of this gets a bit technical, but that’s what happens when you talk about the Zelda timeline. It’s been long known that two universes exist that run along the same time path—known more commonly as the Child and Adult Timelines. The split is caused by the events that happen in Ocarina of Time, where Link is sent back in time to relive his childhood and stop Ganondorf before anything else happens.

It’s a time paradox of sorts, because for the Child Timeline to exist it needs Adult Link to complete his quest in the first place. Still, while these deal heavily in the realm of real world theories in quantum mechanics, how these two timelines co-exist over the same period of time can be easily explained and understood. If the timelines were to ever meet again, then all of this is thrown out the window. However, that isn’t the case, at least not yet.

What creates a problem with this is when the third timeline comes into existence. For this explanation we are going to assume that Link died during Ocarina of Time at some point, which is how he was defeated. While we cannot prove this was definitively the case, we can assume that Ganondorf had his day and Link failed to stop him. This causes the third split, and many are quick to throw this split into the multiverse theory—that is, universes that exist parallel to each other in time. Except, this isn’t actually possible.

If Link fails in his quest to stop Ganondorf, he never travels back in time to create the Child Timeline. The idea that Link fails actually completely destroys the existence of the two timelines we have come to know and accept. They can’t exist together because the actions to create the third makes the original split timelines no longer exist

Game Theory actually did a video that touched upon this very issue back in 2012:

The Zelda bits start at 4:23.

The reason I bring this up is that the only logical explanation we can come up with for all three “timelines” to exist is the many worlds interpretation. Essentially, every decision ever made and every possible outcome in any given situation exists in its own world. Did you put on boxers or briefs this morning? Two worlds exist, one where you chose briefs and another where you chose boxers. You can imagine how crazy this can get, and there hasn’t been any actual evidence this is a real thing. It’s just an idea created by people way more learned then myself that explains some stuff in quantum mechanics. You can read more about it here.

However, the point of discussing all this is that when using this explanation, which can account for all three timelines, they don’t actually follow the same set path of time. They don’t run parallel to each other in the space-time continuum. They exist in their own universe that runs on its own schedule, and the flow of time is not the same as it is in other universes. You can also see how crazy this can become, even in a game like A Link Between Worlds. You can do many things in different orders, but every decision you make would create a new world running on its own time scale. This would make the flow of possible “timelines” never ending. We worry about three, when really there might be several hundred, maybe even thousands of them.

Of course, the easiest way to dismiss all this is that it is just a video game series, and it doesn’t need to use logic to make sense of its world. That is a totally fair assessment. But then why does the series itself use logic to explain all the timeline splits, without bothering to explain how they can co-exist when one cancels out the other two? That is a question I find myself pondering from time to time myself. We constantly theorize about Zelda with a fine tooth comb using real world logic to explain events, but then we’re supposed to toss this out the window and accept the Zelda timeline has three parallel paths that can’t technically exist in the same space of time?

The Official Zelda Timeline exists, and I can’t question that. Yet, that doesn’t make it logically correct, nor does it inherently make it a coherent timeline. There may be other faults you can find within the timeline, but this split—the idea of the third split itself—just doesn’t play nice with everything else. You can take this to mean whatever you want. What are your thoughts on the 3rd split?