It’s not a surprise that a game like Ocarina of Time, which has time travel as a core mechanic is home to at least a couple paradoxes. For the most part, the residents of Hyrule in the Adult Timeline are far more concerned with the impending doom of Ganondorf’s rule to worry about the past and thus, there are not many who remember the young Kokiri boy from seven years ago. However, there is one particularly stubborn man who does in fact remember a young boy from seven years prior who played a certain song that messed up the man’s favorite windmill. That young boy is clearly implied to be young Link, but this is technically impossible.
Allow me to explain: the Phonogram Man of the Kakariko Village windmill is where Link can learn the infamous “Song of Storms”, an ocarina song that allows Link to control the weather and unlock many great secrets throughout Hyrule. However, the “Song of Storms” can only be unlocked by taking out the Ocarina in front of the Phonogram Man as Adult Link, which he will recognize as similar to the one used by a “kid from seven years ago”, screwing up the windmill in the process. This teaches Link the song for the first time and, after he plays it, the windmill begins going berserk, causing the man to accuse Link of playing the ocarina “again.”
Since this is the only way Link can learn the Song of Storms, it’s impossible that Link is also the young boy who initially played the Phonogram Man this song. If Link travels back seven years and approaches the Phonogram Man as a Child, the man is in significantly better spirits, happily playing his song beside the windmill. Child Link can still play the “Song of Storms” he learned as an Adult, completing the time loop by ruining the windmill and angering the man, but the question still remains: who taught the Phonogram Man the “Song of Storms” in the first place? Is it some other mysterious, mischievous child who also happened to appear seven years ago, or is it simply a trick of the timelines?
There are technically many ways that one can explain away this time loop, but it’s still a very interesting one for me to talk about personally. I like to think of the “Song of Storms” as a mysterious product of a manipulated timeline, but I also really like the idea of a random Ocarina-wielding prankster who just happens to ruin the windmill around the same time Child Link was exploring Hyrule for the first time. Either way, I do find it a shame, and a little funny, that the poor Phonogram Man goes from being one of the happiest people in Hyrule to seething in rage for a full seven years, never forgetting the young boy with the Ocarina and the song he played.
