Zelda: Breath Of The Wild - 8 Mind-Blowing Theories About The Story
5. The Game Is Set In The “Hero Is Defeated” Timeline
The very first thing that happens in Breath Of The Wild is actually pretty mind-blowing in itself, and for some reason it's quite easy to miss. Link is literally resurrected, waking up - we learn - after one-hundred years of “slumber” in a place called the Shrine Of Resurrection. The obvious conclusion, then, is that Link was previously dead.
There's only one instance in the entire series in which Link canonically dies, and that's in one of the timeline offshoots that follows Ocarina Of Time. The Hyrule Historia defines this as the “The Hero is Defeated” timeline, and it's the only one that prominently features Ganon, not Ganondorf.
Which brings us to Calamity Ganon, the villain of Breath Of The Wild. If Link has just been brought back to life, and Ganon is (quite literally) floating around, it seems pretty conclusive that Breath Of The Wild is going to show fans the direct consequences of Ocarina Link's defeat (note that the Temple Of Time in Breath is identical to the one from Ocarina).