The Legend of Zelda: Does Termina Really Vanish After Majora’s Mask? (2024)

In the official Hyrule Encyclopedia, Termina is stated to merely be a figment of the Skull Kid's imagination brought to life by Majora's Mask, and that it vanishes once the evil within the mask is vanquished. Not only does this not make any sense, but to say that players are disappointed by this 'truth' is an understatement. The "All Just a Dream" trope is among the lowest common denominators among story conclusions, meaning nothing that happened in this story ever mattered. While some video game franchises are light enough on story not to depend on continuity, this 'truth' might as well retcon The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask from the Child Timeline.

What's especially infuriating about this is that The Legend of Zelda has dealt with a dream world before Majora's Mask. In The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, Koholint Island is directly revealed to be an illusion world created by the Wind Fish's dreams. There's a lingering sadness for Link to complete his quest, believing that he'll never see Tarin or Marin again once he does. Nothing of the sort crosses Link's mind in Majora's Mask — the game's focus remains on Link's steadfast commitment to stop the Moon from crashing into Termina.

No In-Game Evidence of This Theory Exists

Entire Governments Don’t Stem from Childhood Imagination

Termina is stated to be a parallel world in the Majora's Mask instructions manual. This is implied when Link first sets foot in Termina — the hallway behind the gate that Link runs through twists similarly to one of the hallways in the Forest Temple in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time before it seals behind him. The parallel world concept is much more palatable considering the context — many of the NPCs, enemies, and items in Ocarina of Time are reused in Majora's Mask. Nintendo's official reasoning is that the game developers recycled Ocarina of Time's assets to complete the game within a year.

Regardless, these 'alternate-universe' characters work against the Encyclopedia's explanation. As a creature that lingers within the Lost Woods, the Skull Kid couldn't possibly have met many Hyruleans. Many of these characters — Malon, Princess Ruto, and the Cucco Lady are only three — have never so much as set foot in the Kokiri Forest, let alone ventured into the Lost Woods. One of the Kokiri, Fado, implies that anyone without a guardian fairy will become a Stalfos when they linger within the Lost Woods. Speaking of which, the Kokiri children are among the few that the Skull Kid could have met at some point, yet absolutely none of them have a Terminan counterpart — not even Saria.

Another point to consider is how different Termina's culture is compared to Hyrule. While Hyrule's most dominant power is a monarchy that the Zelda series is named after, Termina is politically diverse. Clock Town is a democratic village led by a mayor, the swamp to the south is ruled by a Deku monarchy, the mountains are led by a Goron patriarch, and so on. Even their deities greatly differ — Hyrule has the three Golden Goddesses, while Termina has the Four Giants.

An elderly Terminan, Anju's grandmother, can recite a story to Link about the Four Giants and their friendship with a small imp implied to be the Skull Kid. Even if the Four Giants are a reference to four friends who abandoned the Skull Kid, he couldn't have imagined a complex society from living in a forest.

Termina's technological advancements further prove this point — modern hallmarks like tourist shops, rock bands, hotels, motorboats, and plans for space travel do not exist in Hyrule. The closest equivalent to a clock in Ocarina of Time is a Gossip Stone, which states the time when Link strikes one. It's inconceivable to think that any amount of evil magic or a Skull Kid's imagination could come up with all of this.

Furthermore, the Encyclopedia contains numerous errors and flawed interpretations that conflict with in-game elements from various Zelda games — for example, the Great Deku Tree never told Link of his Hylian origins after vanquishing Gohma, as stated on page 236. He learns this from the Deku Tree Sprout after he conquers the Forest Temple as an adult.

Future Zelda Games Reference Majora's Mask

Link Keeps His Gilded Sword and Mirror Shield

While it's common for Zelda games to reference earlier ones, it would be strange to think that anything from Termina would be among them had it vanished after Link's departure. The small cameo appearances of Majora's Mask don't count, but they do exist — the mask itself hangs upon the wall in Link's house in The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, and it can be found as a unique headpiece in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom as an all-in-one version of the monster masks. What should count is the brief glimpse of Link riding Epona in the Lost Woods after Termina is saved.

He still has the Mirror Shield he finds beneath the well in Ikana. If he has his Kokiri Sword fully tempered by the mountain smithy, it will still be a Gilded Sword. This contradicts the idea that Termina is an illusion since anything or anyone born from it should vanish, as Link's Awakening attests to — Marin's fate, if Link completes that game without dying, is excluded from this assessment, of course.

While the Hero of Time is implied to have never been remembered as a hero, nobody in Termina ever directly witnesses Link battle Majora's Mask. They simply watch the Four Giants stop the Moon's descent before it vanishes into a rainbow, so it's no contradiction for Termina to continue existing beyond Link's departure.

What each reference to Majora's Mask should represent is that Nintendo doesn't wish for it to be forgotten — not like those Philips CD-i games. Despite being an oddball in the Zelda series, it's greatly treasured among fans — so much so that a fan campaign known as Operation Moonfall once petitioned Nintendo to give Majora's Mask a Nintendo 3DS remake like its prequel, Ocarina of Time.

If Nintendo's developers truly wanted to treat Termina as 'make-believe', a scene in Majora's Mask would have shown it. It helps that the Happy Mask Salesman urges Link to retrieve his mask before 'something terrible happens'. Someone as well-versed in masks as he would have known ahead of time if Termina was an imagined world, thus he likely wouldn't have demanded Link's assistance if he thought its fate never mattered.

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask

Majora’s Mask is easily the strangest, most risk-taking adventure in the Zelda series. It’s completely unlike any of Link’s other games and delivers a tense, bizarre, and somber exploration of what it’s like to experience the end of the world, again and again. Most of its crazy ideas pay off just as well on the Nintendo 3DS today as they did on the Nintendo 64 original 20 years ago, which is the mark of a great game. Majora’s Mask’s core Groundhog Day-like conceit is a deep puzzle in and of itself. Time is always of the essence, and you have to tie up any loose ends you have before using the Song of Time to travel back to the start of the cycle. While certain items and knowledge carry over to the next playthrough, most interactions you have with characters and the world itself are reset with each revolution.

Action

Adventure

Franchise

The Legend of Zelda

Platform(s)

Nintendo 64 , GameCube

Released

October 26, 2000

Developer(s)

Nintendo EAD

Publisher(s)

Nintendo

Engine

Proprietary Engine

ESRB

E10+ For Everyone 10+ due to Animated Blood, Fantasy Violence, Suggestive Themes