The Legend of Zelda franchise has almost 30 games, and each of them has plenty of characters. Despite there being overlap, there are also several new or overlooked characters included in each title. They’re often rich, colorful characters that add to the lore, storyline, and world of Hyrule. That’s not true of everyone, though.
With how strange and unique some of these games are, it’s no wonder that there are some odd characters out there. A few of them are unfortunately unpleasant, and hopefully any new games skip over bringing back some of these familiar faces.
5. Navi
It genuinely hurts to include Navi in an article like this, because she’s so iconic and started the trend of giving Link a much-needed helper. And she is generally pretty useful to point things out, it’s just done in an overbearing and annoying way. “Hey, listen!” is seared into all Zelda gamers’ memories, and not for a good reason.
Navi’s other function, essentially serving as the reason you can Z-target enemies and items, is great. If they’d just left her as that, she would probably not have gotten on many people’s nerves. As it stands, she is an unfortunate entry to this list, but it’s very difficult to imagine how the franchise would’ve unfolded without her.
4. The Imprisoned
Not quite the final boss of Skyward Sword, The Imprisoned is a miniboss (or a step in between mini and final) that requires a lot of effort to beat. It’s satisfying to take down this creature for the first time, but then you have to do it again, and it just gets harder and more annoying. Repeated boss fights aren’t uncommon, but it, like many other things in this game, is handled pretty poorly here.
Plus, with the motion controls of Skyward Sword not always being perfect, there are plenty of times when these fights take way longer than they need to and end up driving the player up a wall. A more streamlined version might’ve avoided being one of Zelda’s most annoying characters ever.
3. Kaepora Gaebora
Kaepora Gaebora serves one main purpose in Ocarina of Time, and that’s to fly Link down Death Mountain from the summit or take Link to Hyrule Castle from Lake Hylia. If that were all he did, this frustrating owl would be just fine as a character. That is a useful function that makes traveling a little easier.
But instead, he frequently interrupts your playthrough to provide advice on where to go and what to do next. That wouldn’t be so bad, but Navi exists and other characters serve that purpose, too. It’s as if Nintendo didn’t think gamers could quite figure it out on their own, so they included several different guide characters, and Kaepora Gaebora is among the worst.
2. Ruto
Maybe Ocarina of Time just had an issue with its characters. Another annoying one, Ruto, originated in that game. The princess of the Zora people, rescuing her is a task. She’s not particularly grateful to Link or kind when he’s rescuing her, and she tricks him into getting engaged.
This mostly applies to the young version of Ruto, because she matures tremendously in the seven-year time jump that Ocarina utilizes. She’s much better at that point, but it’s not quite enough to undo all the damage she did as a child. It’s probably for the best that future iterations of the Zora don’t really build on her.
1. Tingle
Tingle is perhaps the most annoying character in this franchise. Having to go to him multiple times and hear the same grating dialogue just to get a map of the immediate area is really one of the worst parts of an otherwise really brilliant game.
He also just doesn’t really add much to the experience. He’s very weird, kind of unsettling, and looks bad. There could’ve been some really interesting lore with a clearly adult character who thinks he’s still a fairy, but it’s really just a throwaway that doesn’t bring anything good to the table.
The experience in Majora’s Mask and the other games he also appears in is not hugely impacted by his presence, but he could easily be removed and replaced, and the game would not miss a beat at all.
