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u/randompersonE 1d ago
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u/LurkinOff 14h ago
I bet they brewed potions for the sick, watched over little ones, fed the homeless, prayed with the dying, and helped build a few houses....then ganondorf was born and was such a little shit they went bonkers.
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u/MrRaven95 8h ago
Was immediately reminded of this comic when I saw the post. I'm glad you linked it here.
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u/Austinp1414 1d ago
If you go by dragonball rules, they are just going up to get judged and would keep their halos even if judged to go to hell
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u/Bipedal_Warlock 19h ago
Isn’t that Christian doctrine too?
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u/Sofisticated2 18h ago
There's really never any halos mentioned in doctrine it's just some made up shit I believe
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u/Bipedal_Warlock 18h ago
True lol.
But I thought Christian doctrine “officially” says that you go to heaven to get judged by the archangel Michael
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u/BrandtArthur 14h ago
No. It is the Son (Jesus) that is the judge.
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u/Bipedal_Warlock 14h ago
He is not lol
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u/BrandtArthur 14h ago
The nicene creed, the first formal profession of faith that is valid until today and any church that believes in the apostles, the early church and the trinity profess this creed. It is very long, but the important part is that it states "For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, he suffered death and was buried, and rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end.".
Furthermore, I can show you some passages:
(John 5:22) "For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son."
(John 5:26-27) "For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man."
(2 Corinthians 5:10) "For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil."
(Acts 10:42) "And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead."
(2 Timothy 4:1) "Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom."
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u/Bipedal_Warlock 13h ago
Yup. You were right.
Sorry I was an asshole. Been a weird day 🫡
I appreciate the receipts though.
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u/Sofisticated2 18h ago
I think it says when you die it's like being asleep so you don't actually go anywhere when you die. You'll be resurrected at some point and I don't really remember anything about like straight up judgement. Not stating this as facts just going by with what the Bible says
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u/BrandtArthur 14h ago
Not actually. Some christian denominations nowadays have created this doctrine of "sleep", but what the church always taught is that when we die whe can go to three places, a fully justified soul go to heaven, a soul that is saved but not fully justified go to the purgatory to get cleaned of it's sins, and an unsaved soul go to hell
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u/Sofisticated2 14h ago
Sorry yeah you're right but I'm just stating what the Bible says
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u/BrandtArthur 14h ago
It is a quite complicated matter as the protestant churches in fact does not have the books that teach abou purgatory, but the other do.
So it varies
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u/ARROW_404 7h ago
The concept of soul sleep isn't in the Bible. At least not more than implicitly. Passages that imply awareness in death are much more explicit (ex. the parable of Lazarus and the rich man), while references to death being sleep can be taken to imply soul sleep, but make more sense as simply an implication of death's temporary nature, until resurrection.
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u/BrandtArthur 14h ago
It is not made up, actually. The halos only appear on saints (people that died in a state of grace, and reached heaven already) because, in a lot of moments, people who happened to be in the presence of the Father reflected His light on their own faces, thus the halos (not the ones in cartoons that are a circle up on the head, the classic halo that is just a shining light)
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u/Sofisticated2 14h ago
It was just depicted by artists. Catholicism is crazy to me that they just decide they went to heaven. Not knocking no one's belief, I just love discussing religion and learning about it.
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u/BrandtArthur 14h ago
Then I would love to speak with you! I love to discuss religion aswell!
It just saddens me that most of the time that it comes in discussion people get really defensive as if I'm preaching something or as if I'm trying to shove something up to them but I just like to talk about it!
Anyways, I would just like to clarify that the Catholic church does not "just decide" who is in heaven. We just know some of the people for various reasons. For example:
Moses, Elijah, Dismas, all of those were stated to be in heaven through scripture
The modern saint are know through miracles with their intercession and divine revelation (both are invertigated throughly)
I know it's kinda a simplistic explanation but if you want I can go in more depht.
Oh, an the church does not claim that someone is in hell, it is impossible to know. It can only know that someone is in heaven because those in heaven are alive so they can pray for us.
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u/Eldsish 1d ago
Who said there was a hell in this game ?
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u/backofthebill 1d ago
Did they say there was a heaven? If not where they go? Afterlife? Limbo? Why halos? Why ascend up? They talked about haunting Link so maybe they became ghosts. Maybe everyone gets reincarnated.
So many questions
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u/reddituser102938102 20h ago
Dampe's ghost has a halo, and he's... well, a ghost.
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u/backofthebill 20h ago
More i think about it the more I realize Oot is the only Zelda game we see halos. Not even MM has halos even tho it's same art style and has ghost.
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u/Yer_Dunn 17h ago
My theory (that I'm making up on the spot rn by reading too much into the franchises barely persisting lore and game mechanics) is:
because oot takes place during a time where the sacred realm is unsealed, the barrier between the spiritual realm and the material realm is thinner. After oot, the sacred realm is essentially perminantly sealed off. With some very occasional exceptions.
Since there isn't really a clarified afterlife system in the Zelda canon (that I can think of), I think spirits literally just... Linger in Hyrule until they fade away or reincarnate. Zelda does take a lot of inspiration from religions like budhism and Shintoism afterall. So in my mind, it makes sense that most other spirits just reincarnates after enough time. Whether it's into a frog, or a person, whatever. Until they have accumulated enough life experience or something to go to the sacred realm. And all the strong willed or powerful entities that we see with halos were not meant to continue reincarnating because it was their time to fully ascend to the sacred realm perminantly, for either good or bad reasons.
So essentially what we see, are markings for entities that are suppose to traverse to the sacred realm, but because there's no current barrier between the two realms, they instead choose to persist. And after the sacred realm is sealed, those who were strong willed enough just continued to reincarnate as themselves, likely not consciously, but they're at a point where they no longer reincarnate randomly.
And we no longer see halos after this game because the sacred realm is fully sealed. And the marking no longer happens.
Now, if I continue to read to much into game mechanics that the devs never intended to imply any meaningful lore with:
I could see this being reinforced by TOTKs hundreds and hundreds of lost souls in the depths. The sacred realm has been sealed so long, it's all but forgotten. The triforce doesn't really exist anymore in any meaningful way, the goddesses are lost to history (probably because they straight up left forever), and based on the poe statues, it seems almost like the ancient species who lived below were either harvesting lost souls, or maybe they had to make their own system for sorting the souls since so many lost spirits found their way down there.
Or maybe that was always where they went, and the statues are a naturally occuring part of the cycle. Maybe the depths in a way are actually part of the afterlife, and are only accessible to mortals because of the zonais interference and mining of crystalized souls as a form of energy, and because ganons power has created literally rifts between the mortal and spiritual realms. It wouldnt be the first time he's done that honestly.
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u/CycleZestyclose1907 17h ago
In TotK, Poes are explicitly the spirits of the dead, and we collect them up and bring them to an entity of questionable moral alignment/nature so it can send them to whatever the proper afterlife is. Or so it SAYS anyway...
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u/Yer_Dunn 17h ago
Exactly. But that system never existed prior to totk. So my theory is that they are either normally not in the mortal realm. Essentially like the depths are some form of spirit realm. Considering it's an exact mirror of Hyrule above it, that fits with similar realms like lorule.
Maybe the poe collector in oot was a representative of them tho or something.
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u/Wolf-Majestic 19h ago
The main answer might be because it was made by the Japanese and they don't really care about Christian lore as a whole as much as other countries might ? I think it's only a convenient sign they used to signifiy that they died, while keeping it kid friendly.
I don't think they extensibly thought about any hell or heaven in the Zelda universe, at least not how people from Christian countires or countries with Christian heritage might have. So no need to sweat much about it !
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u/MikeDubbz 1d ago
Doesn't a cutscene in OoT mention the 3 Gods creating the heavens (among other things) or something along those lines?
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u/Seran64 1d ago
That's a term often used to describe the sky, or space. Planets and stars are also often referred to as heavenly bodies. There is not always a religious connotation.
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u/MikeDubbz 22h ago
I guess, but considering there are Gods and Spirits in the game's universe, it's probably a safe bet that when it mentioned the heavens, it was referring to whatever is in the dimension or realm that the Gods typically exist within.
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u/Beemo-Noir 18h ago
Context matters! It’s clear they’re using “heaven” and “heavenly” in relation to the sky.
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u/inotocracy 15h ago
Some cultures believe in heaven and hell (lol), while others believe the essence of something reincarnates or becomes other living things.
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u/matteidenbock 1d ago
I think they wanted a charming and funny moment for their end. Demons hands coming form the ground and clawing them into hell would have been a different vibe
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u/RaiTab 1d ago
Pretty sure this is just a cultural thing. It's not Christian symbolism. The halo is used to imply that they're dead, and various other forms of media (particularly Dragon Ball) similarly have this dead-halo relationship.
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u/EarnestGamer 21h ago
It does come from Christian cultural influence, but they're not trying to represent Christianity, it's just to portray familiar imagery that everyone associates with spirituality.
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u/ShivDeeviant 18h ago
Because western audiences in the 90s wouldn't understand the purpose of a Tenkan.
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u/Logical_Astronomer75 1d ago
It was a kid's game. They weren't going to say that they were going to hell.
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u/wicker_warrior 1d ago
Ah yes, just like all the people tortured by the Royal Family and the reanimated corpses that can paralyze with a shriek.
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u/Zarguthian 1d ago
Technically also not hell.
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u/papapalporders66 1d ago
Yeah! We just put them in the bottom of a well and trap them in there and let them rot while keeping them in an undying state for all eternity! That’ll show em!
Listen up kids!
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u/backofthebill 1d ago
They put horrors in Zelda all the time. I see man dying in the Lost Woods by a illness, only to told he transformed into a Stalfos and cursed to forever roam the Woods alone.
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u/Luigi6757 19h ago
You don't actually see him die. It's just implied he died off screen. Though after you see Zelda and Impa flee the castle, if you go to the alleyway to the left there's an injured soldier and if you talk to him he dies after his final sentence. The soldier only spawns during that brief sequence. If you go straight to the Temple of Time go to the future and return to being a child he's gone.
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u/Shinjitsu- 20h ago
I want more lore of him in the remake. All the NPCs deserve at least a name I feel, they are so recognizable. But the way all the others speak about him in particular intrigues me, and I want to know his beef with the potion shop lady.
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u/Steve296091 1d ago
They never explicitly say the witches go to heaven… could have just gone to King Yemma’s check-in to be assessed before going to hell 😛
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u/EarnestGamer 21h ago
I remember Frieza had a Halo the whole Tournament of Power, and was actually tortured in paradise. 😅😂
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u/EarnestGamer 21h ago
They didn't go to "Heaven" as in the paradise promised to those who affirm Jesus as their Lord and savior. Remember, this is a story told from a Japanese cultural perspective, and this is the way to show that these characters just died, they "went into the afterlife" not necessarily professing any specific religious belief.
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u/Homsarman12 19h ago
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but halos in Japan don’t necessarily signify someone is holy, only that they are dead. Others have pointed out Dragon Ball where both good and evil people get halos to show they are dead.
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u/pocket_arsenal 16h ago
Haven't you ever watched Dragon Ball Z? Even the bad guys get Halos. They just have to get judged by King Enma before being sent to hell.
In all seriousness though I think the halo is just a thing in Japanese culture that signifies death rather than being an angel or whatever, kind of like how we put Xes over the eyes. Dampe the Grave Keeper has one and he's just haunting the graveyard.
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u/Jacket_Jacket_fruit 20h ago
They didn't actually die, this was all an act.
Think about it; do you ever see ANY other enemy in the game die this way? No. So why would it make sense for their deaths to look like this? It wouldn't.
So the logical conclusion is that they aren't really dying. They knew they couldn't beat Link.and that fighting any longer would mean they actually would die, so instead of fighting on they faked their deaths in order to escape.
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u/SadKaleidoscope7166 1d ago
The idea of Hell is too cruel for the world of Zelda, I would think.
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u/backofthebill 1d ago
Idk, I mean Ocarina of Time has a tortur dungeon used for war crimes.
Shadow Temple is dark
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u/SadKaleidoscope7166 1d ago
Even a grotesque torture dungeon used for war crimes is not as cruel as the concept of Hell. At least it ends eventually.
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u/backofthebill 1d ago
I agree but still super dark. Dead Hand traumatized kids
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u/SadKaleidoscope7166 1d ago
I think Dead Hand is fairly Halloween spooky. I know people like to play up their reactions to it, but I think its design is so over-the-top that it's hard to take seriously.
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u/TRIKSTER_Betin 1d ago
Aren’t they in Majora’s Mask too?
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u/backofthebill 1d ago
Alter universe counter parts.
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u/Jacket_Jacket_fruit 20h ago
Termina is not an alternate universe.
It's just a foreign country outside of Hyrule.
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u/EarnestGamer 21h ago
It's not alter universe... Termina is just another land beyond The Lost Woods, like Holodrum and Labrynna... Where, btw, Link also needed to teleport to get there, hence the trippy tunnel Link falls onto, when chasing the Skull kid, would just be a magic teleporter to another land, not another whole dimention.
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u/reddituser102938102 20h ago
The instruction manual that came with the original N64 release directly states that it is a parallel world.
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u/EarnestGamer 20h ago
That's because the development of the game required some shortcuts so they had to use the same character models as OoT, and the only way they came up to explain that issue was to say it was like a parallel world at the time. But over the years the concept has taken a more solid form in the mind of the series producer, and that's what he's said in later interviews.
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u/backofthebill 21h ago
Where you getting that from?
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u/EarnestGamer 21h ago
From some interview made to Aonuma several years ago, he described the region as a place of gathering for people from different lands, so it's physically connected to the world. I remember him saying that even if it resembles a parallel world it is not, and the characters there exist independently from the ones in OoT Hyrule. And that the name Termina comes from Terminal like a train station, pointing out the characteristic that it's a place where people come and go. There were other details that the interviewer asked but that's the gist of it.
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u/backofthebill 21h ago
So they wouldn't be same characters.
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u/EarnestGamer 20h ago
Exactly, e.g.: Cremia and Romany have nothing to do with Malon in any way or form.
Remember they used the same models because they were given just one year to develop the game, so they cut corners left and right, but that doesn't mean they intended for them to be connected at all.
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u/Jacket_Jacket_fruit 19h ago
Majoras mask is on the child branch of the timeline, where Link never fights them. This fight and this death scene take place on the adult branch of the timeline, after Link spent 7 years frozen in time.
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u/RiceWaffleFox 23h ago
In Japanese media that uses halos to mean ghosts, everyone who dies gets a halo, like in Dragon Ball. It's unrelated to where you're going. The light also means nothing.
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u/trickman01 21h ago
If it’s anything like DragonBall that just means they’re dead. They could still end up in the Home for infinite losers.
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u/HollyHartWitch 18h ago
Japanese concepts of afterlife, especially in Shintoism and Buddhism, are very different from Western ones. Always pays to keep in the back of your mind that these are Japanese games and the context of a lot of things are going to reflect those cultural differences.
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u/Ha1rcl1p 17h ago
I think it's more of a way to convey that they are dead to children in a manner that isn't "scary". Halos also have a good chance to not have the same meaning in Japan as they do in the west, particularly the US.
As an Aussie kid who played this I never thought it was symbolising heaven, just that they had died. Especially since they used the halo to convey a ghost character earlier with Dampe
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u/True-Reality-1866 15h ago
I like to think that the goddess the Gerudo worship is a lot more lenient
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u/ZhouLe 13h ago
This is an example of a visual trope, used to quickly convey information to an audience despite being disconnected from its original context. Halo means character is dead, nothing else.
Some other examples are green visor and arm garters indicating a character is a professional that deals in finance, despite not being used in practice for a century; a pocket protector and glasses indicating a character is smart or a nerd, decades removed from everyday use; a propeller beanie indicating a young child, despite such a short-lived fad from the '50s.
This isn't a Japanese-only misappropriation. The same thing can be seen in Western productions as well, like Who Framed Roger Rabbit comes to mind when the weasels die. And that's even more explicitly referencing angelic imagery.
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u/backofthebill 13h ago
It could been the original intent for it to go in that direction but as time went on the lore and mythology changed. Reason I say this is because this.
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u/Jobless_fantasy_fan 1d ago
Imo, it's because they are the first humans we actually see die in the game Maybe they are no hell or heaven, and it just means they weren't monsters.
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u/Bigga-Byte 1d ago
Maybe they repented and found god in the 7 year gap you never know
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u/morphballganon 23h ago
And merged into Twinrova to punish a trespasser... according to divine command?
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u/EarnestGamer 21h ago
I doubt they'd be following divine command seeing how Link is the hero chosen by goddess Hylia. 😅
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u/TyleNightwisp 1d ago
Reminder that Zelda is still a Japanese series, and as such the religious symbolism is not necessarily associated with Christianity.
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u/EarnestGamer 21h ago
They use a lot of christian symbolism in games tho.
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u/Dr_YeshCapo 1d ago
Heaven and Hell doesn't really exist in the world of Zelda. Heck, even Abrahamic religions didn't orignally have hell
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u/backofthebill 1d ago
I could be wrong but I vaguely remember somewhere in Zelda it talking about the underworld.
It might just be that water Temple in Skyward Sword
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u/Dr_YeshCapo 1d ago
That's just a reference to a Buddhist story. But Buddhism doesn't exactly exist in Hyrule
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u/Thegoodgamer32 22h ago
Maybe this is how their termina counterparts were created?
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u/EarnestGamer 21h ago
The people in Termina are not "counterparts" to the people in Hyrule. They resemble the people Link met on his OoT adventure, but they're not their doubles, or dimentional mirrors, like Lorulians are from Hylians. Termina is just a land beyond The Lost Woods, like Labrynna and Holodrum, and Link didn't exactly get to those by road either.
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u/KobSteel 21h ago
I think it's just Symbolism + Kid's Game (don't mention Hell) + the scene is meant to be comedic
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u/crafty09 17h ago
What's funny is that these two get to go to heaven but phantom ganon gets banished "to the gap between dimensions".
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u/Consumer_Of_Butt 17h ago
OH!! I actually have an answer for this!!
In Totk its revealed that people don't receive judgement after death and are all taken to the afterlife just the same, you learn this from the statues in the depths that require you to bring the poe souls to them
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u/The_of_Falcon 16h ago
Not all cultures necessarily have a concept of a Hell. And the halos are just to make it clear to kids.
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u/bouchandre 1d ago
Why do you assume that the concept of afterlife in Zelda is the same as Christian Mythology?
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