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Jabu Jabu had worms?

Spiritual Mask Salesman

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I was 6 years old when I was able to play OoT and get somewhat far. I probably would have beat the game too but my control sticks started to wear down on my controllers. I didn't beat OoT or MM until I got the Zelda Collector's Edition on Gamecube. Anyway, playing the game that young, sometimes I had weird explanations of things I saw in the game. For example, I had a weird thought that Jabu Jabu was constipated.

I understood you were inside him, so I thought that section way in the back was basically his intestines. Those weird things you have to hit with your boomerang until they fall off, I thought was poop. Now of course the in game reality is those things are extensions of Barinade, I didn't piece together a connection for some reason when I was young. So Jabu Jabu is infected with parasites, those things aren't poop, but maybe I wasn't wrong about that area being his intestines?

Let's take a look at the dungeon map for Inside Jabu Jabu's Belly.

images


The furthest area in the back happens to be where you fight those parasetic tentacles, since the area is so far back I felt it'd be the closest area to his anus.

The English title description for Barinade simply calls him a Bio-electric Anemone.
But the Japanese title, translated to English, actually calls him an intestinal parasite.

So Barinade's tentacles are expanding out into Jabu Jabu's intestines, which is most likely that back area in my opinion.

I'm posting this in the theory section because I also wanted to point out, even after Barinade is defeated, those smaller parasites, Baris, remain. The holes in Jabu Jabu's stomach as damage from Barinade also don't go away. And in the Adult era what we find is Jabu Jabu is no longer in the domain. I think the damage Barinade caused was so severe that Jabu Jabu died.

I have to give @Magic Bean Seller a menetion. I posted this late so it slipped my mind to add this in. It was from him and I talking about OoT last night that I got the idea to write this.
 
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Woah, I've never thought that deeply in Jabu Jabu's anatomy. As a kid I always though he just kinda migrated to a different place, but there aren't any exit routes he could've taken since it was basically a circular enclosed lake. I definitely believe this theory, it happened to the great Deku tree as well.
 

Jirohnagi

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I was 6 years old when I was able to play OoT and get somewhat far. I probably would have beat the game too but my control sticks started to wear down on my controllers. I didn't beat OoT or MM until I got the Zelda Collector's Edition on Gamecube. Anyway, playing the game that young, sometimes I had weird explanations of things I saw in the game. For example, I had a weird thought that Jabu Jabu was constipated.

I understood you were inside him, so I thought that section way in the back was basically his intestines. Those weird things you have to hit with your boomerang until they fall off, I thought was poop. Now of course the in game reality is those things are extensions of Barinade, I didn't piece together a connection for some reason when I was young. So Jabu Jabu is infected with parasites, those things aren't poop, but maybe I wasn't wrong about that area being his intestines?

Let's take a look at the dungeon map for Inside Jabu Jabu's Belly.

images


The furthest area in the back happens to be where you fight those parasetic tentacles, since the area is so far back I felt it'd be closest area to his anus.

The English title description for Barinade simply calls him a Bio-electric Anemone.
But the Japanese title, translated to English, actually calls him an intestinal parasite.

So Barinade's tentacles are expanding out into Jabu Jabu's intestines, which is most likely that back area in my opinion.

I'm posting this in the theory section because I also wanted to point out, even after Barinade is defeated, those smaller parasites, Baris, remain. The holes in Jabu Jabu's stomach as damage from Barinade also don't go away. And in the Adult era what we find is Jabu Jabu is no longer in the domain. I think the damage Barinade caused was so severe that Jabu Jabu died.

I always see the map as quite literally a layout of jabu jabu, you have the tail at the back and the eyes/lung near the front, the central room where we find ruto could be looked at as the small intestines and the room right after the entrance could be looked at as the stomach (i certainly think so) it has water at the bottom and the water itself is greenish, for these reason i think Barinades boss room is located at either the left eye or close to the heart, possibly the lungs, if so then we can assume that the tentacles and indeed parinade are giant Tapeworms and Flukeworms that've been merged together by ganondorfs magic.

Tapeworms would burrow into the guts and absorb nutrients which we saw in Jabus belly left massive holes and even blocked pathways through the guts, link destroys the heads of the worms easing the advance of this cancerous march of barinade and the boss itself would be a flukeworm which burrows its way to a whales brain.....which it's well on the way to, after all Jabu Jabu never usually ate his attendents.

The one thing we do have to look at is Jabus deity status, much like the sacred cows of india he is left well alone (though fed) and much like the cows if he HAD caught a disease the zoras wouldn't try to find out whats wrong for fear of doing more damage, it was only under the duress of losing his daughter that link was allowed by the zora king to enter the whale.

I do think the buttons we see (buttons hah) were actually internal barnacles, the whale doesn't seem to have any on the outside of him (we can't dive under him to check easily as a kid) but maybe the running water of the river keeps him clean, but inside we see these horny growths connected to a web of tissue covering doorways, maybe they are just barnacles, but writing this and connecting the buttons and webs of tissues makes me actually wonder if they were actually a different sort of parasite the way the doors are blocked suggests impeding the flow of food and blood circulation around the whale if so would the switches be extensions of barinade or seperate parasites? I'd learn towards the latter as it still remains after the boss is dead (and could explain why he's not there in the future) As for the Doorways, intentionally or not nintendo has made it seem like the doors are actually muscle bands around the tissue that helps with digestion, in areas like the intestines it pushes the....food along towards the rear stripping all nutrients away, but if those sphincters are blocked then the food piles up, rich pickings for parasites and also as it rots more infection in the whale, the other doorways not in the presumed intestines are i would still say bands of muscle contracting and retractingt to allow sustenence or blood to flow to necessary areas such as the lungs and stomach. We can assume most of the path we follow in the whale is the channels barinade took as it burrowed through jabu jabu, i highly doubt there'd be a tunnel from the stomach to the lungs in a real stomach.

Finally we come to jabus death. I don't think he flew away or escaped or even froze over into a giant chunk of ice, i think he died not long after link pulled the master sword, maybe 2 years or less, why? He was eaten up with parasites that'd carved away a good slice of his body, he wasn't healing up well either, the baris still remained in his system which we can class as their own parasites at this point, he was also dealing with those "barnacle switches" and the webs of tissue over ventricles, sphincters and muscle bands, after link was done with him jabu would basically have need assistence to be able to digest his food (as we know dungeon doors reset on exiting and in jabus case we can see the webs of tissue regrow) and we can guess zoras won't touch him for he is their sacred cow, so my guess is Jabu Jabu either died from the parasitic infection of Barinade and it's tentacles or from complications from the entire event.

If we look at Barinade theres a reason i lump in the tentacles and the boss together and it's because they are connected, each tentacle has a color and they correspond to the connection link destroys on barinade to get the boss into phase 2. So link literally kills the route and stem of the infection but what about the body of the tentacles those are left to rot in the whale, and when they go theres large tunnels or rot and infectious tissue in the whale.
 

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