With most of its games in either pixels or blocky graphics, The Legend of Zelda hasn’t been known as a sexy franchise (outside of those overtly sexual fairies and whatever Tingle is doing), but it appears that Nintendo was intentionally making Tears of the Kingdom‘s Ganondorf hot.
When character designs and first looks of Tears of the Kingdom first dropped, the instant reaction from men and women alike was that Ganondorf was indeed our daddy. It was a strange, new, sexy look for the character, who many of us grew up thinking of as an ugly demon king intent on the domination of Hyrule. Well, it turns out that making the new Ganondorf a thirst trap was entirely intentional and done in order to make him a more convincing character and ruler.
In a Nintendo Dream interview with Tears of the Kingdom director Hidemaro Fujibayashi and series producer Eiji Aonuma (translated by Nintendo Everything), Fujibayashi laid out exactly why he made Ganondorf a shoo-in for Sexiest Video Game Character at this year’s VGA Awards (make this a real category, you cowards).
“The designer didn’t simply make him look violent; they managed to fulfill my wish of making him look overwhelmingly evil while also being handsome enough that both men and women would fall for him,” explained Fujibayashi after noting that this was the first time we saw Ganondorf murder someone on screen and that he really wanted him to be evil. “We put a lot of thought into choosing his clothes and accessories, keeping in mind that Ganondorf himself should have a strong sense of beauty and good taste. We thought he would probably be a character who paid a lot of attention to his appearance, demonstrating his dignity and intelligence as a king, and designing him with that in mind, we were meticulous with his face, body, all the way down to his fingertips, making him come off as robust and sexy at the same time.”
So, there you have it. You no longer have to keep your Ganondorf fanfiction hidden in a drawer, afraid you’ll be judged. Nintendo wanted us all to be smitten with Ganondorf, so there’s no shame in it.
