Yes, it's nothing more than a loose reference. It's treated as nothing more than backstory that has no impact on the narrative. There's no level of interconnected narrative. I've never gotten the sense that the events from any game directly affect those in another game. Heck, each game's...
The games sometimes have very loose references to other games alongside some retroactive continuity scribbles, but never anything direct. No Zelda game has ever influenced the events of another in a specific way, it's always pushed through an ambiguity filter and then retold in such a way where...