Zelda Tears of the Kingdom NPCs either fear Tingle or want to fight him

Breath of the Wild Link Tingle — (Image credit: Nintendo)

A Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom player has made a surprising discovery about the residents of Hyrule, more specifically, how they feel about series regular Tingle.

As highlighted by the fan in the Tears of the Kingdom subreddit, a lot of the game's NPCs don't react well when Link puts on the Tingle outfit. "Why does the Tingle outfit scare everyone? What did my boy Tingle do?" the post reads, followed by a video of Link approaching random people in Hyrule whilst wearing the outfit inspired by the Wind Waker character.

In the video below, we see Link go up to Purah, who, at first, doesn't even look in his direction. Once Link dons the Tingle tights, shirt, and hood, though, Purah spins around and points a spear at TingLink (that's what I'm calling him from now on), suddenly very unhappy to be reminded of the Zelda mascot.

Why does the tingle outfit scare everyone? What did my boy tingle do?😭 from r/tearsofthekingdom

It's not just Purah who is unhappy at the site of the fairy either. After Purah, Link then goes up to several other NPCs (all of which have sharp spears) who suddenly turn on him and point their weapons at him. I don't know what Tingle did, but he clearly upset many people in Tears of the Kingdom.

Funny enough, this isn't the first time this has happened. The same thing happens in Breath of the Wild too - clearly, Hyrule isn't ready to forgive Tingle for his crimes.

There's been a lot of speculation in the comments of the Reddit post as to why the NPCs react this way. Following our own research, we've discovered that characters will either point their weapon at TingLink, if they have one, or become spooked at seeing him. According to the post's comments, there may be a good reason for this, as the first place you meet Tingle in Wind Waker is in prison - so maybe they have a right to be alarmed.

If you're new to the world of Zelda, Tingle has been part of the long-running Nintendo series since Majora's Mask in 2000 and went on to play a bigger role in Wind Waker, make appearances in Oracle of Ages, Four Swords Adventures, and The Minish Cap. The character is so popular in Japan that he even got three DSiWare spin-off games.

You may be surprised to hear that Tears of the Kingdom NPCs also have surprising reactions to Link when he's almost naked too.

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training. My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.