The 15 Most Awesome References in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

From the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Image from Nintendo Switch version taken by C. Wassenaar and via Nintendo.

4. The Divine Beasts

Somehow, the Rito manage to co-exist with the Zora in Breath of the Wild, but we’ll ignore that for now. Each of the four Divine Beasts has a specific name, and those names have some serious history behind them.

We’ll start with Vah Ruta, the Beast of the Zora. Ruto is the Princess of the Zora as well as the Sage of Water in Ocarina of Time. (She even has a lake and a mountain also bearing her name near Zora’s Domain.) However, the name itself dates back even further. It’s actually the name of a town in The Adventure of Link, too. Keep that map in mind.

Vah Rudania, meanwhile, is the Gorons’ Divine Beast. Darunia is the Chief of the Gorons in Ocarina, and the name, like that of Ruto, actually calls back to The Adventure of Link as well.

Vah Naboris has the same double-reference. Nabooru is a Gerudo thief you aid in the Spirit Temple in Ocarina, and she turns out to be the Sage of Spirit as well. In The Adventure of Link, you’ll find a Nabooru Town as well. (If you look, there’s only one Sage that doesn’t have a town name: Impa, who is herself a character anyway and doesn’t need a town, too.) Urbosa even actually refers to Nabooru by name in a cutscene.

Finally, Vah Medoh, as noted in the linked post, is a reference to Medli, the Sage of Earth from The Wind Waker and a Rito.