Summary

• Zelda's vast universe is home to a range of intriguing and bizarre villains, each with their own quirks and backstories.
• From dark wizards to demon-possessed politicians, the smaller titles of Zelda are the ones usually offering a variety of unique and creative villain designs worth exploring.
• With new titles on the horizon, the series might introduce fresh and exciting antagonists to the beloved Zelda franchise.

When it comes to The Legend of Zelda’s villains, it’s hard to think past Ganondorf, Hyrule Kingdom’s endlessly recurring foe, but there are plenty of other creepy and memorable antagonists peppered throughout the series’ 38-year span. Some are ridiculous, some are terrifying, and many are just plain bizarre. From demonic politicians to bird-men from the shadow realm, Link and Zelda have vanquished it all.

Since the antagonist role in Zelda’s major games is usually reserved for Ganondorf, the bulk of Zelda’s villains can be found in smaller titles, particularly those released for handheld consoles. It’s in these more obscure margins that Nintendo tends to get stranger and more creative, resulting in some of the developer’s cooler villain designs. With the experimental Echoes of Wisdom announced at the June 2024 Nintendo Direct, and a new Switch likely releasing sometime in the next couple of years, the latter half of the decade might also see some fresh antagonists introduced to the IP.

10 Agahnim Is Ganon’s Dorky Sidekick

Agahnim shows up in A Link To The Past as its apparent main antagonist, before Link discovers that he’s been working for Ganon the whole time. He’s a dark wizard with an impressive red robe, gnarly fingernails, and the ability to brainwash Hyrule’s entire army into doing his evil bidding. As with many secondary Zelda villains, Agahnim is a trickster who talks his way into a position of power in Hyrule before unleashing his master plan.

Agahnim deserves some respect because he’s such a hard worker; he single-handedly infiltrates Hyrule Castle, kidnaps the Seven Maidens, and magically enslaves dozens of soldiers. Ganon may swoop in and take all the credit, but it’s Agahnim who does all the heavy lifting. Letting his boss walk all over him isn't a great look, however, and it doesn’t help that his name and visual design evoke racist and antiquated stereotypes of evil Middle-eastern sorcerers.

9 Chancellor Cole Is Most Definitely Not A Crook

Chancellor Cole is Zelda’s loyal and utterly trustworthy advisor in the 2009 DS title, Spirit Tracks. He’s an eccentric politician, conservative regarding the princess’s mobility but refreshingly progressive when it comes to pardoning lengthy prison sentences. Always smiling, Cole is a genial fellow who’s understandably irked by mischievous young scamps like Link. He’s also an impressively gentrified dresser, refusing to go out in public unless he’s wearing a minimum of two top hats.

The reveal that Cole is actually a mustache-twirling demon, then, comes as a shocking surprise. His lax policies on incarceration are actually a ploy to release a giant laughing skull from the Tower of Spirits and put it in charge of Hyrule’s economy, which both Zelda and Link agree seems dangerously negligent. Even Cole’s fashion sense is not what it seems – beneath his top hats are two curved horns. As if to add insult to injury, the politician is then transformed into a mustached boar-man hybrid so horrifying that it would give Ganondorf nightmares. Cole certainly makes an impression.

8 Demise Is An Early Access Ganon

Demise is the fiery final antagonist of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Implied to be the original incarnation of the eternal evil that becomes Ganon, he shares his successor’s vibrant red mane and atrocious personality. For Tolkien nerds, Demise is basically the Morgoth to Ganon’s Sauron. He is the fountain of all evil in the setting: creating the first monsters and cursing Hyrule to suffer the continual reincarnation of his hatred manifest.

Demise absolutely looks the part of an eternal evil, possessing all the usual accoutrements: flaming eyes, huge stature, charred skin, and an absurdly large sword. The problem with Demise is one that he shares with all the great capital “e” Evils – he’s just painfully generic. Ganondorf’s charm derives from the fact that he was once a man; his malevolence is human and believable. Demise, on the other hand, seems to be evil simply for evil’s sake. His design is cool – but ultimately, he’s a half-baked Ganon.

7 Vaati Is A Thought-Provoking Villain

Vaati makes his demonic debut in The Minish Cap, a quirky 2004 release for the Game Boy Advance. With his pale skin, emo haircut, facial scar, and flapping cape, the evil wizard resembles almost every anime villain from the early 2000s. Originally an innocent pixie-like creature known as a Minish, Vaati is corrupted by the darkness inherent in humanity and begins to covet the Triforce, eventually transforming into an unrecognizable demonic entity.

Vaati is an exceptional villain for several reasons. His origin story is intriguing because it attributes Vaati’s corruption not to some cosmic force, but to humanity’s own selfishness and greed. The Legend of Zelda has always had faint environmental themes – think Ganon’s destruction of the lush Hyrule landscape – but Vaati’s fall explicitly casts humanity as a polluter of nature and its gentle spirits. The battle between Link and Vaati is meaningful because it’s really an internal struggle between humanity’s best and worst impulses.

As coy nature spirits, the Minish are likely inspired by Celtic/Germanic fairies and Shinto kami.

6 Dark Link Is A Fantastic Test For The Player

Decades before Elden Ring and its infamous Mimic Tear, The Legend of Zelda was pitting its players against evenly-matched doppelgängers. Dark Link first crops up as the final boss of the second game, The Adventure of Link, before returning in style midway through the Water Temple in the N64 classic, Ocarina of Time. A silent, shadowy clone of Link with red eyes, the villain has access to the same gadgets and weapons as the player, making him a fearsome opponent.

Dark Link’s true nature is hinted by his arena and the temple in which he can be fought. Towards the end of the Water Temple in Ocarina, the player happens upon a vast flooded room. A tiny island lies at its center, upon which stands a dead tree. The tree casts a dark reflection in the water. As the player approaches the island, they automatically lock on to Dark Link, who is concealed in the shadow of the tree. The implication, then, is that the miniboss is not a unique entity, but merely a reflection of Link.

5 Bellum Makes For A Kraken Villain

The antagonist of the 2007 DS title Phantom Hourglass, a sequel to The Wind Waker, Bellum is a squid-like demon that feeds on the life force of human beings. Likely a reference to the mythical kraken, the creature attacks unwary vessels and commands its own terrible ghost ship. Bellum is more bestial and obviously inhuman than the majority of Zelda villains, lending it an unpredictability and eerie muteness that amps up the horror.

Bellum is fearsome enough in its original form, but becomes downright terrifying once it possesses the body of captain Linebeck (who bears a suspicious resemblance to Johnny Depp's quotable Captain Jack Sparrow). Bellumbeck is the demon’s final form; a towering suit of armor with a rigor-mortis grin. Wind Waker is a wonderful Zelda game, but except for its toe-curling re-deads, it loses some of the horror that made the N64 games so compelling. Thankfully, the tentacled nightmare that is Bellum redresses this issue with gooey aplomb.

4 The Calamity Is All Ganon And No Dorf

One of the trickiest parts of Breath of the Wild has nothing to do with the combat, or the puzzles, but with working out exactly who or what Link is supposed to be fighting. Calamity Ganon is not really Ganondorf, as Tears of the Kingdom later makes clear, but rather a kind of evil condensation that builds up sporadically to wreak havoc on Hyrule. It’s the eternal will of Ganon, or the curse of Demise made manifest as a a separate, formless entity that has grown out of control throughout the millennia.

Calamity Ganon appears in-game as a spiraling cloud of black smoke over Hyrule Castle, and later as a spider-like machine with the flowing red hair of Ganondorf. Whereas Demise comes off as basic, BOTW’s villain is a wild force of nature that resembles a dark god more than any other foe in the series. It isn’t really a character – it’s the worst impulses of humanity given a bellowing, writhing form. It’s the same darkness that corrupted Vaati and likely birthed Demise thousands of years before.

3 Zant Is A Flamboyant Lovecraftian Terror

It’s difficult to know where to start with Zant. Apparently a Twili, one of the humanoid inhabitants of the mysterious Twilight realm, he fulfills the same ing sorcerer role as Agahnim in A Link to the Past by aiding in the resurrection of Ganondorf at the end of Twilight Princess. Zant conquers Hyrule by merging it with his own bizarre dimension, releasing a host of horrible shadow-creatures and irritating collectible bugs.

For all his intimidation, Zant’s impressive CV is dwarfed by his ridiculous ego. Prancing around Hyrule castle in a bird helmet and a hooded cloak several sizes too big for him, the transdimensional wizard poses, moans, screeches, and gloats obliquely about a dark god. The poses are especially worth noting. At first, he contorts his upper torso into a spiral, then he does the outstretched-arms move from The Shawshank Redemption. All this happens mid-conversation. It’s hard to tell whether Nintendo meant this performance to be intimidating or amusing, but it nails both in a way that evokes Lemongrab from Adventure Time.

2 Ganondorf Is The Human Face Of Evil In Zelda

Ganondorf is the central antagonist of the Zelda franchise. Once a human Gerudo King, he stole his way into the Sacred Realm, claimed the Triforce of Power, and was transformed into an eternal dark entity. Naturally, he represents power and the will to dominate, just as Zelda and Link represent wisdom and courage respectively. The fact that Ganondorf is a human and not purely a paranormal force is critical to the series’ overarching moral.

At first glance, The Legend of Zelda appears to be a fairly black and white tale of good-versus-evil. Most of the series’ villains, however, are too human to be truly evil. Ganondorf reflects humankind's most bestial instincts; there’s a reason he takes the form of a monstrous hog. Zelda is a symbol of civilization and learning. She represents the wisdom that humanity needs to be better than its worst impulses, whereas Link represents the courage required to overcome those impulses. Ganon is eternal because these instincts are inherent to humanity – they can be overcome, but never erased.

1 Majora Is An Unknowable Horror

Majora’s Mask is the most avant-garde title that Nintendo has ever released. Ocarina’s scares were largely concerned with bloody handprints and spooky monsters, but recurring Zelda character Skull Kid, and uses an undefined power to tear the moon from its orbit and bear it roaring down on the land of Termina.

That the moon inexplicably has the face of an angry demon, or that there are children living on it that repeatedly ask Link if he is doing “the right thing,” are facts that the game never seeks to explain. Eventually, the mask releases Skull Kid from its influence, and faces Link as the final boss of the game. In its first form, it flies around trailing tentacles, becoming progressively more human in appearance as the fight goes on. Unlike Ganondorf and nearly every other The Legend of Zelda villain, Majora’s origin or motivation is never explained. It is utterly unique.