Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom community rocked by graphical hitch that literally gives Link the balls to take on Ganon

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It takes courage to fight the demon king

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
(Image credit: Nintendo)

Hyrulean hero Link displays admirable courage in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and his fight against the demon king, and through an amazing graphical coincidence, he can now be physically endowed with the cojones you'd need for that kind of sacred quest.

Twitter user Dahffodil highlighted this graphical hitch with a caption I never expected to read: "Link balls jumpscare." Another user, Kyra, was quick to share the video that seems to have spawned this extremely important image. 

Link is ultimately just a weird little guy with a sword, and if you've played Tears of the Kingdom at all, you know it's surprisingly easy for enemies to ragdoll our hero and send him buckling, rolling, and flying. That's the case in the fight against the Hinox featured in this video, too. Link collapses after taking a slam attack, only to fall forward at just the right angle to display the true jewels of Hyrule kingdom.

Here's something else I didn't expect to write in this life: did Nintendo add ball physics? No, of course not, amazing as that would've been. Iconoclasts creator Joakim Sandberg, one of the 26 game developers who told us why Tears of the Kingdom will be talked about for years, offered a helpful explanation of what's actually behind this amusing display. 

"It's funny looking, but y'all do realize this is the torso moving down and clipping through the blue cloth creating the illusion of jiggle, right," Sandberg said in a tweet. "Nintendo didn't put in ball physics." 

Link's newfound gonads may not be canon or intentional, but I can tell you right now that won't stop this image from going down in Hyrule history. 

Meanwhile, Tears of the Kingdom players have cooked up yet another item dupe. 

Austin Wood
Austin Wood
Senior writer

Austin has been a game journalist for 12 years, having freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree. He's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize his position is a cover for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a lot of news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.