Aliens in Majora’s Mask Were Included Due to a UFO Boom in Japan

Ever wondered why aliens were included in Majora’s Mask? The answer was revealed by Legend of Zelda boss Eiji Aonuma in a recent interview with GameSpot. The interview was basically centered around Majora’s Mask 3D, among a few other Zelda-related things.

Aonuma says aliens were included in

Majora’s Mask due to a then-recent fascination with aliens and UFO invasions in Japan. The media were starting to focus on extraterrestrial life as well, so I believe Nintendo thought it would be a good idea to include some modern trends in MM. Aonuma also says that he thought aliens would be something interesting and scary to incorporate into the game. After all, Majora’s Mask was designed to be a somewhat creepy game. It’s amazing how 15 years later we notice all these details that we may not have questioned when we played the original game.

Here is a quote from the interview about the aliens:

“But the reason we used this at the time was because Japan was experiencing something of a UFO boom. And it even went so far as for shows on TV to cover it and explaining to people what cattle mutilation was. So even to see words as scary as ‘cattle mutilation’ on TV and the idea of UFOs abducting people led to this whole idea of Earth being invaded by aliens becoming rather popular. I thought it would be really interesting and scary to use in a game. That’s how we decided to go with that.”

— Eiji Aonuma

Source: GameSpot