The Zelda series is full of adventure and beauty, but it is also full of bone-chilling horror and creepiness. Games like Twilight Princess and Majora’s Mask have their fair share of nightmare-inducing cutscenes and heartbreaking sidequests. For sheer brain-breaking, frightening enemy design though, I think the crown has to go to Ocarina of Time. From the floating severed hands of Bongo Bongo to the grasping hands of Dead Hand, I don’t know how this game didn’t scar me during my childhood. Artist Mandilor reunites us with these nightmarish fiends in their work of art entitled “The Horror of It All”, while also causing us to consider Link’s place in the tale.
Right from the beginning, it’s hard not to notice the horde of enemies looming over the young, Hylian hero. Bongo Bongo floats curiously above the rest, yet it doesn’t seem like it’s going to attack. It’s waiting, observing. A grotesque red Wall Master can be found to the right, its fingers twisted and gnarled in a way that evokes the sounds of crackling and snapping bones. Two Skulltulas chill on webs that frame Link. ReDeads also appear with their thin, gangly bodies causing them to dwarf the elvish adventurer. Even they don’t seem all that scary though. They’re not reaching for Link, looking to grasp him and take a bite out of the tender tot. They don’t look like the terrors we remember. Despite having scary designs, they almost look sad.
The only enemy that truly looks as if it might attack is Dead Hand. Its bloody scythe-like hands hover menacingly over Link as if just waiting for the moment to execute the unsuspecting hero. Its nightmarish, gaping mouth is twisted at an unnatural angle. It has the advantage. Link is in mortal peril, but no attack has come. At least not yet.
The other most notable figures for the audience to observe lie in the bottom center of the piece, framed by the light. A long Deku Scrub lies on the floor, seemingly dead. Its face looks peaceful. There’s no feeling of malice or ill will from this little walnut of an enemy. Yet it lies dead just the same.
Link stands over the Deku Scrub with both his hand and his offending sword hovering over its lifeless body. The “hero’s” face is twisted into a mask as terrifying as any ReDead’s. He seems distraught. He appears to have killed this tiny scrub, and it’s wrecking him. How many has he killed? While the Hylian civilization has painted every minion as an abomination to be eradicated on his way to a sacred stone, who’s to say that they aren’t just creatures doing what comes natural? History will paint Link as the hero, but if all the bodies of those he’s slain were laid at his feet like this tiny Deku Scrub, the blood on his hands might make him look more monstrous than them all.
Mandilor’s art is so amazing not just because it expertly reminds us of the terrors we fought as we made our way through one of the most celebrated games in the Zelda series but because it invites us to answer the question in the title ourselves. It’s immediately assumed that the horror mentioned applies to the monsters who plagued us and blocked our path forward, yet Link has to wrestle with the horror of the enemy blood on his hands. Even more interesting is the prospect brought up by the hero’s agency. After all, he didn’t kill those enemies. We, the players, did. For fans of the series, the monster blood is a spot that cannot be easily scrubbed out. In the end, who is really the horror?
