Where is Termina?

It's supposed to be a parallel dimension, but that's mostly an explanation for the reused character models. If the game had enough dev time to give the NPCs unique models, Termina could easily just be another country.

I'm more impressed how the mask salesman fits one chair and a huge piano on him.

5:20 all the kokiri fade in and out when you get too far, while normal hylians dont. I always figured the Kokiri had some ability to hide themselves similar to koroks.

Saria fading in in Ocarina of Time always struck me as entirely sequitur considering all of the kokiri in kokiri Forest fade in and out. You can see their fairies before you see them. My guess is that this was originally done due to graphical limitations considering all of the bugs, fairies, and dust motes in kokiri Forest, but it definitely had the added effect of making the kokiri feel otherworldly.

The idea that Termina ceases to exist right after Link saves it is a genuinely terrible idea. Yes, take away the entire victory, and goal of the game. I guess the only difference would be Link survives. By ceasing to exist Termina would be more destroyed than the Moon could ever do.

I always thought of it as a far away land on the same plain. The Goron said "Dodongo Cavern's finest" when you give him that rock-jerky thing. There were, at least in the N64 release, depictions of the Triforce everywhere. And I thought link, the salesman, and the Skull kid straight up walked there. Like it was a different kingdom. The Skull kid says: You have the same smell as the fairy kid who taught me that song in the woods..." I assumed the Swamp Lost woods were connected to Hyrule's Lost woods. Also MM has the weapon "Bombchu" and the animal "Real Bombchu" but OT only had the item, not the animal it was based on. They had to have gotten the idea for the style of bomb somewhere.

Termina is beyond bizarre

One thing that always Stood out to me was the alice in wonderland like opening when Link falls down the tree after chasing skull kid in the beginning of the game.

Personally I always thought of Termina and Hyrule being kinda like the Feywild in D&D (basically the walls between worlds can get dangerously thin to the point where you can end up in one or the or the other if you aren't careful).

I always thought that Termina was one of many different alternative worlds out there. The Lost Woods must have portals to all kinds of different universes, dimensions, all that good stuff. The Triforce Goddesses abandoned this world, but The Goddess of Time brought Link here because she wants to try and save it.

It's definitely a real physical place. And most likely a parallel universe. Especially with the information we get from Link Between Worlds where parallel world is definitively used to describe an alternate universe. Not to mention link brings back physical items from termina into Hyrule. In Twilight princess, the bow is explicitly stated to have belonged to the hero of time. It also has two prongs on the inside. The only other bow in the entire Zelda series with two prongs on the inside is the one the hero of time gets from the woodfall temple

Would be so dope if they made another Breath of the Wild style game, but its set in Termina. Lots of ideas to go around, I'm sure.

Termina is directly across the kingdom of Hyrule on the planet [insert name here, please, Nintendo!]. Hence the "twisted hallway" between the two worlds.

I never liked that Dark Horse made it so Termina disappeared once Link departed. It makes all the efforts to save the people seem rather worthless. I like to look at it as something akin to a pocket dimension within Hyrule. A side effect of the creation of the world by the Goddesses.

Given the Realm of the Ocean King is a canonical alternate world that was bridged by both Bellum’s magical curse on the Ghost Ship (with per some manga Linebeck was the former first mate or cabin boy on), as well as some other portal, given the presence of Zaus and others who are apparently listed as still being Hylian, but also noted as having ancestors dating far back who defended the realm, before Bellum began meddling with that realm, I believe Termina could just be like that, another branching/connected realm.

idk, for me, it just boils down to Termina being a dimension that so happens to have a handful of familiar characters. You gotta remember that this game revolves around a civilized version of Deku’s and a war between two long dead kingdoms so Termina has been around long before Skull Kid and Link. Imo, it can’t be based of Skull Kid’s memory because ain’t no way he ever left the Lost Woods (it’s heavily implied that they stay and play in the woods forever). it can’t be based off Link’s memory, because there’s a lot of characters (even species) that don’t exist in any past/future version of Hyrule.

I think Termina is a real physical place in the same world as Hyrule but the power of Majora's Mask warped that specific area into a temporary unique pocket dimension with a lot of oddities. When Link left it returned to it's original self. Essentially all three ideas. Similar characters to OOT physically exist in the world of Hyrule, but they're warped to look like people Link recognizes.

Because of the events of the ending of Ocarina of Time, where Link returns to Zelda after defeating Ganon in the adult timeline, entering Hyrule Castle in the present, and informing Zelda of everything, it could’ve change the timeline significantly to the point where he’s never met the magic owl. (And the likelihood that Ganondor was incarcerated early!) Really has me thinking about how Lord Beerus killed a specific high-profile individual to “prevent” a timeline from changing in Dragon Ball Super…

Termina is S.W. of Lorule, their marshes connect. It's the equivalent of Holodrum in the Hyrule dimension.

Always loved that terminal can also mean the end of something, with the reaction to death being the entire theme of the game. Any justification for why it uses the same assets as OOT will be shoehorned on anyway, and we haven't seen Termina since, so it feels irrelevant to me. It has always struck me how the entire tone of the land seems like it's already dying, the land seemed fertile for conflict. and Majora just tipped the scales a little. like he was just lighting a powder keg, Doom and misfortune really do seem to be baked into the very bedrock of the foundation of Termina, like it was about to die even without the skull kids presence. Allowing him to confront the loss of his friends and healing from the pain he caused may have even saved them from these tragedies manifesting in some other way, death is about new beginnings just as much as it's about endings. I do appreciate the abstraction the guide provides on some level, the land was always doomed to die the way everything dies and Link simply allowed that to happen in a way that wasn't beguiled with sadness, but instead hope for what else might be.