What Lies on the Other Side: Quest for the “Nega-Triforce”

In the latest Nintendo Direct, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata dropped a veritable bombshell of thoroughly unexpected information: that a significant part of the upcoming 3DS title The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds‘ plot would revolve around a second Triforce. No, not a second Triforce in the sense of “the Triforce of Courage versus the Triforces of Power and Wisdom”, but a second whole Triforce comprised of three units.

Up until this reveal, most theorists and even casual fans made the connection that the “Dark Triforce” in the game’s logo was simply a neat artistic way to represent the game’s dichotomy between the Light World and Dark World, and how Link would travel between them. While that’s still a valid assumption, Iwata’s information puts a much more literal spin on the logo’s imagery.

What does this mean for the series as a whole – how will an additional Triforce (perhaps retroactively) affect the lore of the Zelda

saga? How would a “Dark Triforce” even come to be in the first place? There’s no way we can know these answers until the game releases or

Nintendo divulges further information, but there’s one question in

particular that we can certainly dive into:

Might evidence for the “Nega-Triforce” have existed before our very eyes in previous games?

It’s an interesting thought, and one that has a certain merit. It’s almost inarguable that Nintendo makes up most of the overarching story of the Zelda series as it goes along, adding bits here and there as the years go by. But something of this magnitude – the reveal of an entirely separate Triforce – might just be the biggest addition to the Zelda canon since those added in A Link to the Past.

But this isn’t the first time that an upside-down or “odd” Triforce has popped up in the series. Two examples of phenomena along these lines can be witnessed in Majora’s Mask; one in the spot where Link is turned into his Deku Scrub form by the somewhat-possessed Skullkid, and the other is viewable in the Stone Tower Temple.

The first of these two is not an inverted Triforce like the one seen in A Link Between Worlds‘ logo, but rather a distorted variation of the Triforce, with what is presumably the top “Power” segment separated from the other two and placed beneath them. It’s an odd depiction to be sure, and would appear to be meaningless in and of itself if it weren’t for the other equally bizarre Triforce depiction in this very same game.

Later on, in the Stone Tower Temple, there are block-shaped statues which bear the Triforce on – what is for lack of a better word – their backsides. Hylian Dan was one of the first to spot this oddity and makes note of it in the legendary theory article The Message of Majora’s Mask (an excellent read, by the way).

Effectively, the Triforce is “upside-down” on these statues, not in terms of exact shape but of literal placement.

It’s interesting to note that both of these off-color variations on the Triforce symbol are in Majora’s Mask, a game which takes place in an alternate version of Hyrule. In this way, it seems to share a bit of “story DNA” in terms of broad themes with A Link Between Worlds, but the chances of direct plot connection between the two are miniscule at best.

Both of these depictions in Majora’s Mask are practically nothing when compared to this next bit, however. Easily the most well-known depiction of an “odd” Triforce was in the most recent title in the series, Skyward Sword – and this Triforce was both dark and upside-down. It’s the inverted Triforce that adorns the sword of the villain Demise.

It’s been noted many times in the past that Demise’s sword bears a striking resemblance to the blade of evil’s bane, the Master Sword itself. In fact, Demise’s sword even takes on the form of a humanoid like the Master Sword in the form of Ghirahim. This information by itself initially led to discussion about Demise using this sword almost as an insult to Hylia’s plans… but now one can’t be so sure.

Series director Eiji Aonuma has made it increasingly clear in recent years that one of his overarching goals with the Zelda series is to unify the canon. We’ve seen this approach in both the game Skyward Sword (which answered numerous major series questions) and the release of the entire timeline along with additional information that fills in the gaps in Hyrule Historia.

It’s entirely possible that there is in fact a connection between Demise, Demise’s sword, and this new “Nega-Triforce”. It’s entirely possible that there’s zero connection whatsoever too, but hey, speculation is fun, right?

Speaking of speculation, check in over the next few days as we dive deeper into what the Dark Triforce might be – you may be surprised at some of the possibilities.

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