(A new, more coherent, version of this post is available here.)

The Hylians/‘good guy’ factions in The Legend of Zelda are doing horrifying things to the monsters.

When you kill a monster in a Zelda game, it explodes in a puff of evil smoke. Then, depending on the game, it drops an item. Sometimes it’s a rupee or a heart but other times it’s treasure or a monster part (useful for potions and upgrading gear).

But is that what’s happening in-universe?

Do the monsters just disappear and leave behind a useful item? Or is that just a stylistic choice made due to hardware limitations? Because in the memories/cutscenes of Breath of the Wild (BotW), defeated enemies don’t explode or disappear. In Memory 8, for instance, Link and Zelda are surrounded by slain monsters who, far from disappearing, just lay where they fell (several of them are Lynels which suggests that Link was OP before his 100-year nap). I’m inclined to think that this is what’s actually happening. That is, there are no exploding monsters in Zelda, it’s a stylistic choice, they actually just collapse. But this has some disturbing implications for the item drops.

You can hunt wild animals in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom (TotK) and they also disappear and drop items (meat). I assume this is also a stylistic choice and that Link (in-universe) does have to do some field butchering. We just don’t see him doing it. But if Link has to butcher animals for the meat item drops, and if he’s also getting monster part item drops… is Link butchering the monsters? Because if the monsters aren’t exploding, and leaving items behind, he must be. When the Bokoblins drop their horns for example, if the slain Bokoblin hasn’t exploded, Link must have cut the horn off! Worse still, some of the monster drops in BotW and TotK are internal organs (like the Bokoblin guts), suggesting that Link has cut some of them open. Then he uses the harvested parts to make potions. And it’s not just Link that’s doing this. All the people of Hyrule seem to use monster parts in this way – which is why they’re willing to buy them.

Whilst some monsters are like plants and animals, some of them are highly intelligent. The various ‘Blins’ (Moblins, Bokoblins, Bulblins) wear clothes, use tools and build camps and forts. In some of the games they’re shown to have organisational structures: regular Bokoblins, in TotK, follow Boss Bokoblins in patrols around the Hyrulean countryside and in Twilight Princess the well-organised Bulblins are led by a King who can speak (to Midna’s in-universe surprise). The Lizalfos as well are mentioned, in the BotW Zora monuments, as having Generals. We’re not talking about a horde of demonic creatures; we’re talking about an organised military comprised of intelligent monsters. Moreover, Zelda enemies/monsters have been redeemed in the past. The Zora were enemies in the original top-down games but became good guys in Ocarina of Time (which I believe was a prequel). The Oracle games later distinguished between the River Zora (the bad guys) and the self-described ‘noble’ Sea Zora (who also seem to live in rivers). But A Link Between Worlds redeemed the River Zora as well. That game introduced a River Zora queen, a sage who helps Link. So, if the Zora can go from being monsters to being good guys, why not the other intelligent monsters? Perhaps the term monster is just a term for any living thing that threatens the Hylians.

I admit that most of the monsters do seem to be controlled and created by Demons. In Botw and Totk, most notably, they’re connected to the demonic Blood Moon and they are nearly always loyal to Ganon/Ganondorf. But they could still become good guys! In The Wind Waker, there’s a Moblin named Moe who gives a load of treasure to a character called Maggie (although he also suggests he wants to eat her… so maybe not completely redeemed). Then there’s the famous Zelda line “It’s a secret to everybody” which was originally uttered by a Moblin so that, I believe, Link would leave him alone. And of course, Batreaux, a friendly monster in Skyward Sword who wants to become human. In Totk, meanwhile, you help Kilton teach people about monsters so that they’ll be less scared of them.

And what do the Hylians do to these organised, intelligent and redeemable monsters? They use them for spare parts and potion ingredients! Worse, there’s a thing in BotW and TotK called Monster Extract (produced by the supposed monster fan Kilton) that the Hylians use to flavour their food. This gets even worse when you consider that in A Link to the Past, it’s implied that the monsters used to be human (although this may not be the Blins, I reckon that the anthropomorphic dog knights from Wind Waker, Dark Nuts, are the former humans since in other games the Dark Nuts are just people). It’s no wonder that the monsters don’t like Hyrule and are using their armies to help Ganondorf invade and conquer it. From what I can tell, from this rabbit hole of weird thoughts, the Hylians are the most monstrous people in the Zelda games.

The real monsters in The Legend of Zelda, are the friends we made along the way.

-Dexter