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Majora’s Mask: The Iron Knuckles are Gerudos - What Does this Mean for Ikana?
June 21 2012 by Dylan James
Well, this quite the surprise. Zelda fan community translation master (and friend of Zelda Informer) Glitterberri has tipped us off about a new discovery found deep inside the halls of data and character animations of The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask - that the Iron Knuckle character models still have Gerudos inside them.
For those who are unaware, all the Iron Knuckles in Ocarina of Time were actually Gerudos (Gerudo heads different from Nabooru’s could be found inside the character models). However, this detail was strangely not removed from Majora’s Mask...and the Iron Knuckles of said game are long dead knights of Ikana, reanimated beneath the graveyard.
Here is the screenshot of a Gerudo warrior inside the Iron Knuckle in Majora’s Mask:
There are two ways to look at this. The first is that this is merely a symptom of character model conversion from Ocarina of Time to Majora’s Mask and doesn’t really mean anything. However, it should be noted that multiple other character models were edited between the games to ensure there wasn’t excessive reference to the first game - so why not this?
The second possibility is that the people of Ikana may very well be Termina’s equivalent of the Gerudo - which is even more odd, when the pirates of Great Bay (who use the Gerudo character models from Ocarina) are taken into consideration. It’s possible that these pirates may be the descendants of the people of Ikana - but what exactly does the Gerudo/Ikana dichotomy add to the series’ mythology?
The answer lies in many of the other theories regarding the parallels between Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask - if not further. The Ikana are a desert people, so it isn’t too much of a stretch to see them as Termina’s parallels of the Gerudo. It’s the other layer this whole Gerudo aspect adds to the history of Ikana that’s so interesting - namely, the myriad theories regarding the people of Stone Tower (who made/summoned Majora’s Mask) being the interlopers of the Twilight Princess backstory.
These theories have been circulating around for a long time - but the possible new Gerudo layer only furthers the possibilities. There is a recurring theme in the Zelda series of a tribe gifted in dark power which was banished to the Twilight Realm - and multiple villains in the series have been linked to them (like Agahnim of A Link to the Past, who has light blue skin and refers to his evil home tribe). Could the Gerudo be somehow linked with this tribe? Might they have been a part of it?
As it is, we cannot know. It seems very unlikely that this is the case - and the evidence is based on far too many variables. It’s still some interesting food for thought, and it would work towards linking most of the thematically similar villains of the series under one roof.
What do you think of this new development? Simply a case of character model translation, or evidence of more? Comment away!
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