5 Unlikely Pop Culture Influences On Nintendo Games

3. Twin Peaks

The team behind The Legend of Zelda admitted to being obsessed with David Lynch's TV drama Twin Peaks, the world's obsession in 1990 before simmering away in June 1991. They admitted to modeLling the cast of characters in Link's Awakening after the "shady" types found in Twin Peaks; that is, quirky individuals populating a small town who outwardly appear to be normal citizens, yet harbour a dark secret which unravels over time. This style of storytelling was also in Majora's Mask. You were acquainted with a small town with a limited cast of characters whose stories would unravel in the three days before the apocalypse, uncovering the bizarre story of the various characters: ranchmen moonlighting as thieves, rock musicians who have terrible debts with pirates, and even a child who used to be a grown man. This is not unlike Twin Peaks' various characters who appear genuine in the daytime yet moonlight as prostitutes, murderers, and so forth. Lets compare A Link to the Past with the later, more bizarre episodes of the show. Nintendo claimed the Twin Peaks influence began with Link's Awakening, but Past was released after Twin Peaks reached its conclusion. I believe some story elements were borrowed straight from the show: a "dark world" and a "golden realm", a demon of the dark world possessing outsiders to sacrifice young maidens, humans attempting to harness the power of these worlds, and Link having dreams of Zelda coming to the rescue. Twin Peaks shows us the realms of the "black lodge" and "white lodge", with an evil force from the black lodge possessing men of the "regular" world in an attempt to gain more power by spreading chaos and murdering young women. Dale comes to the rescue based on the appearance of murder victim Laura Palmer in his dreams, and a race starts to find the entrance to said dark world. It all seems very familiar. There's also smaller callbacks to Twin Peaks throughout the franchise, namely dreamlike giants (Majora's Mask) and owls acting as avatars of someone else.