If you would like to avoid spoilers, I suggest you stop reading now. I apologize, but this is necessary for this discussion. In Link’s Awakening, Link, after saving Hyrule and defeating Ganon, traveled abroad on a ship to hone his skills. He finally decided to return to Hyrule, but a squall destroyed his ship and he was left for dead … until he washed up on the shores of an island. A young woman named Marin took him in and nursed him back to health. When Link came to his senses, Marin and her father, Tarin, explained he was on Koholint Island.

What did the Face Shrine's message really mean?

When Link finally ventured out to find his belongings, he noticed a strange egg atop the island. At the shores where his belongings washed up, Link met a strange owl whom explained if he wished to leave, he would have to wake the Wind Fish. Apparently there was no other way off the island. After that, Link braved the wilds of Koholint and obtained the Eight Instruments of the Sirens. Atop Mount Tamaranch, Link played the Ballad of the Wind Fish and entered into the egg. Link faced off against the Nightmares, creatures trying to take over Koholint Island by making the Wind Fish endlessly sleep. In the end, Link defeated the Nightmares and woke the Wind Fish. Upon doing so, Koholint vanished as predicted by the owl (actually the guardian spirit of the Wind Fish while he slumbered). In the end, Link wakes up on a piece of flotsam and sees a giant “whale with wings” flying off – the Wind Fish.

For most people, it was pretty cut and dry. Link simply washed ashore an island created by the dream of the Wind Fish, and all powerful being. When he awoke, it vanished and Link was simply thrown back into the water and left in the middle of the ocean (yeah, how will he survive now). But, some fans didn’t take that at face value. Fans wanted to know if Koholint really existed. Did it exist in the real world? Or perhaps, maybe all of this was the fabrication of Link’s mind. To me, Link’s Awakening is the equivalent of the film Total Recall, in which Douglas Quaid is lead to believe he is some double agent named Hauser. The whole “selling point” of the movie is you can’t tell who he really is, or whether or not what is going on is a dream or reality.

If you don’t want a Total Recall spoiler, skip past the parenthesis (But luckily for fans of the film, the newest DVD special edition has a commentary which reveals that everything that occurred after Quaid visited Recall was just a fabrication and that Douglas Quaid really lost himself in the implanted memory). We don’t have this luxury as Zelda fans, yet. But Total Recall got me thinking about comas. You see, Link was, in fact, shipwrecked at sea. At the end, we see him on a piece of flotsam – usually associated with boat wreckage. We can’t deny that the Wind Fish existed – he flies off in the end. So I propose one of my own personal theories of what happened in Link’s Awakening (although I still lean toward the idea that it all happened, and Koholint just vanished when the Wind Fish awoke).

Link went into a coma when he was shipwrecked, and the Wind Fish, a benevolent spirit, had to “guide” him back to consciousness. Koholint was a fabrication of Link’s mind. Notice how Marin supposedly looked like Zelda to Link. How past enemies appeared on this seemingly remote island. Even the Nightmares - which were supposed to be nightmares of the Wind Fish if you believe the whole ordeal was solely his doing – were from Link’s past. The whole quest really appeared to be like what real coma patients go through – they are lost in some real life place in their mind, and they have to find the way “out.” Link had the Wind Fish to guide him, who used the owl to enter his dream.

The Nightmares were merely symbolizing the forces trying to keep Link asleep. Koholint was the prison Link was in – the state of his mind – which the Nightmares could keep control of as long as the “Wind Fish” (or Link) slept. The Wind Fish, in the dream, was the symbol of the “exit” Link had to reach in order to break free of the coma. In the end, Link conquered the Nightmares and woke from his coma. The Wind Fish then flew away after helping Link.

This also poses, if true, some interesting insights into the psyche of Link. It would make it obvious he has a conscious, or sub conscious, desire for Princess Zelda (who took the form of Marin). If you analyze some of the other attributes of the game in more detail (perhaps I’ll save this for another article), you could find even more possible hints as to who Link really is according to the creative team. But unfortunately, as awesome as this may sound to some of you reading, this isn’t necessarily the truth.

As stated in the opening to this article, we still don’t know what really happened. Until such time, if ever, that somebody from Nintendo comes forth and clarifies the game’s events, the truth will remain another entry in the “Dark Secrets and Mysteries of Koholint”.

And as the book asks, “Do you really want to read it?”

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- Mike "TSA" Damiani is the Senior Editor and Owner of The Hylia.