Great Flood
Hyrulean text depicting the Great Flood
First appearance	The Wind Waker (2003)
Country	Hyrule
Occurrence	Once
Purpose	Sealing away Ganondorf and Hyrule
Characteristics	Hyrule flooded and frozen in time Creation of the Great Sea

"When the gods heard our pleas, they chose to seal away not only Ganon, but Hyrule itself...and so, with a torrential downpour of rains from the heavens...Our fair kingdom was soon buried beneath the waves, forgotten at the bottom of the ocean."

— Daphnes Nohansen Hyrule

The Great Flood is an event mentioned in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. This event occurred hundreds of years before the events of the game and resulted in the total submersion of Hyrule and the formation of the Great Sea.

Story Edit

Many years after Ocarina of Time, the seal on the Sacred Realm began to weaken for an unknown reason, and Ganondorf saw his opportunity to finally break free of his prison. Using the might of the Triforce of Power, Ganondorf was able to fully break the seal on the Dark World and return to Hyrule in a wrath, meaning to make good on the threat he had made many years earlier to the Hero of Time and the Seven Sages that he would make their descendants as well as all of Hyrule pay for his imprisonment. As Ganondorf wreaked havoc on Hyrule, the people prayed that the legendary Hero of Time would reappear to save them again as he had done before, but despite their desperate pleas, the Hero of Time did not appear. Hence, they had no choice but to appeal to the gods, hoping that they would save them from Ganondorf.

Seeing that there was no hero to take up the Master Sword and knowing that they could not sit idly by and let Ganondorf take over the land of Hyrule, the gods chose to seal away not only Ganondorf and his minions but Hyrule itself, but knew that to seal Hyrule's people away with the Kingdom would only grant the King of Evil's wish for the destruction of the land. Therefore, the people who would build a new civilization above the floodwaters were instructed to flee to the mountaintops. Ganondorf's army had reached the gates of Hyrule Castle and was in the process of invading the structure when the gods answered the people's cries. After Hyrule's people had safely escaped, the gods created a great storm that swept the skies over the land of Hyrule, sealing Hyrule and Ganondorf's army under an immense ocean. As the land was drowned beneath the great deluge, an enchanted air chamber was cast over the entire kingdom, preventing the water from destroying the land and merely sealing it beneath the large body of water that was formed. At the same time, the entire land and everyone still in it were frozen right where they stood, kept in stasis by a seal cast upon the Master Sword and the Pedestal of Time. As long as the Master Sword was not removed from the Pedestal of Time, Hyrule, Ganondorf, and his army would remain frozen in time, forgotten at the bottom of the vast ocean that now covered Hyrule.

Hyrule's mountaintops became islands on the surface of the newly-created ocean, and the people that had escaped the flood formed new civilizations upon the surface of the sea, eventually forgetting about the ancient land of Hyrule that still existed at the bottom of the ocean and the evil that had been sealed away with it. Only its legend would be remembered. On Outset Island, it became customary to garb young boys in green when they came of age as a homage to the Hero of Legend, with the islanders hoping for these young men to know courage like that of the Hero himself.

Theory Edit

The Great Flood may have been inspired by stories such as the flood in the Bible and Torah.

It is stated that, despite the prayers of the people of Hyrule, the Hero of Time did not appear when Ganondorf broke free of his prison in the Sacred Realm, because he had left the land of Hyrule after defeating Ganondorf. It is strongly theorized that the Hero of Time never appeared because after the events of Ocarina of Time, he was transported to Termina, an alternate world of Hyrule, leading up to the events of Majora's Mask. It is possible that he never found his way back to Hyrule after the events of Majora's Mask, thus forcing the Golden Goddesses to seal Hyrule away under the Great Sea. However, none of this is officially confirmed to be true.