What If Zelda Was A Girl?

About

What If Zelda Was A Girl?, otherwise known as Link and Zelda Confusion, refers to a common mistake by people with little to no prior knowledge of The Legend of Zelda video game series confusing Princess Zelda for the protagonist, Link. The question "what if Zelda was a girl?" became a copypasta used to troll users on 4chan sometime around 2010, spreading across social media in the years since.

Origin

The main reason for the confusion between Link and Zelda is the inclusion of the name "Zelda" in the title of the series despite the playable character being Link, a male, leading those who know little about the series to assume Zelda is the one portrayed as the protagonist. The character Samus Aran from the Metroid series of games is also frequently confused as a male and called "Metroid" due to the title, as well as the armor Samus wears.

Search interest for "what if Zelda was a girl" began to rise in 2010. On May 22nd, 2010, an anonymous user of 4chan's /tg/^[1] board posted, "what if Zelda was a girl?" along with a gender-swapped version of Link, offering one of the earliest known posts using the phrase to troll (shown below).

Users continued to post the phrase across 4chan over the course of the year, usually alongside gender-swapped images of Link, fishing for confused or angry reactions from users genuinely thinking they don't know Zelda is a girl (examples shown below).

Spread

Confusion between Link and Zelda, as well as jokes about it, have persisted online over the last decade. On May 18th, 2015, Redditor u/alexd281 posted an image to /r/facepalm^[2] of a shirt being sold online with an image of a gender-swapped version of Link that read, "What if Zelda was a girl?" referencing the meme, garnering over 470 upvotes in six years (shown below, left). Many, including the OP, were unaware of the meme and believed the shirt was legitimately claiming Zelda was a girl, which the OP admitted to in a comment that day (shown below, right).

On July 19th, 2019, The Gamer^[3] published a list of the 10 best "What If Zelda Were A Girl" memes. The meme has persisted on 4chan,^[4][5] with users still making posts on various boards using the line and gender-swapped Link artwork (examples shown below). The term has also become popular on Deviant Art^[6] in association with Legend of Zelda fan art.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References