“The Legend of Zelda and Religious Censorship”

In the tight-fisted rule of Nintendo of America over the NES, Zelda walked the line between what was acceptable and what was taboo. This is the story of Zelda censorship in time for Zelda week here at The Pixels!

Nintendo has come a long way from removing crosses on churches (ahem, clinics) and changing the color of blood from red to green to publishing games like Bayonetta and Xenoblade Chronicles, but those who recall that bygone era may remember that games felt pressure not just from Nintendo, but also from the American public. Video games were relatively new, dominated by a nerdy and generally antisocial subculture, and were potentially frightening to the masses for the violent and/or religious themes they presented. Parents were further distressed by fear-mongering from preachers, teachers, and radio personalities who expressed concern that video games were brainwashing kids into Satanists. Little Billy might play Final Fantasy one day, and next thing you know he’s sacrificing a goat to draw a circle of blood the next day!

Following in the footsteps of the Comics Code Authority of the ‘50s, video games looked like they might fall prey to moral panic, censorship, and eventually government regulation. Video games remained a scapegoat for everything bad in society.

Wading into the social alarm was The Legend of Zelda. It had a high fantasy setting, and featured elves, goblins, and wizards. Who knew what kind of spell it might put kids under with its black magic?

I was one of those kids. 

I remember playing The Legend of Zelda for my NES with that shimmering gold cartridge. It wasn’t my first game, but it was the one that made me fall in love with video games. I could explore a world separate from my own. It felt like it went on forever as I went from screen to screen, fed my inquisitive mind with rewards hidden behind rock and stone, and cherished the curiosity I lavished upon it with secrets and treasures. It felt alive.

My parents (bless them, as they were just trying to do what they thought was best) weren’t exactly prudish, but they weren’t immune to the moral outcries of the day. Sure, dad would pump Pink Floyd, and my younger brother and I watched movies like Alien at a pretty young age. Mom seemed okay with just about any of the cartoons we watched. But when it came to video games, something like Castlevania was off limits.

I was clever enough to inform them, without verification, that The Legend of Zelda was a Christian game. Notice the golden cross on his shield? It’s also on the shield of the Darknut enemies in the game.

Little did I know that Nintendo’s groundbreaking title was a bit more complicated than that. This wasn’t some Wisdom Tree game. In its formative years, The Legend of Zelda borrowed from Christian motifs, albeit without specific history or theology, to build its narrative foundation. Christianity was the intended in-universe religion. But this was used more for texture and decoration, not dedicated to the lore. It wasn’t until later that the kingdom of Hyrule and its surrounding regions would be populated by the unique mythos of the three goddesses.

What stands out in Nintendo of America’s crusade against religious imagery was that cross on Link’s shield. In the book Playing with Religion in Digital Games, it states the following: 

To obtain Nintendo’s Seal of Approval, a game had to follow NOA’s strict content guidelines, and since no NES developer could release a game without the seal, Nintendo effectively determined what content could be included… the prohibition against the release of games that ‘reflect ethnic, religious, nationalistic, or sexual stereotypes of language; this includes symbols that are related to any type of racial, religious, nationalistic, or ethnic group, such as crosses, pentagrams, God, Gods (Roman mythological gods are acceptable), Satan, hell, Buddha’.

(Playing with Religion in Digital Games, Nintendo of America and a History of Censorship, pg.180)

NOA did whatever they could do to cement their reputation as a non-edgy, non-controversial, family-friendly company. In Japan, this was less the case. There, the book item was explicitly called “Bible”, but this was changed to “Book of Magic” in North America. The image of a cross can be seen on both the in-game sprite and official artwork.

It could be argued that the North American cover art for The Legend of Zelda contains religious imagery with the key (emblem of St. Peter and the papacy), the heart (the sacred heart is a Catholic object of devotion), and the lion (biblical symbol for Christ). Of course, those images bear many meanings across many cultures, but Link did carry the sign of the cross. Where was the Zelda censorship there?

In the sequel, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, there’s an item simply called “Cross”. Somehow, this item that revealed hidden enemies in the dark, kept its name. I guess they didn’t have many creative options to change the name for something that obviously looks like a crucifix. As you can tell, Nintendo of America could be very uneven and ineffective with their own policy.

While exploring what made it past NOA’s watchtower and what didn’t in the early titles of the franchise, I stumbled upon an atom bomb among rusted swords and tarnished shields. This image, Link kneeling in front of Jesus on the crucifix, was NOT fan art.

What felt like an archaeological find had me consulting gaming historians and scouring the internet for legitimate sources. I spent some hours trying to find the origin of this image. Many, like myself, wrote it off as the result of some overzealous fan. Wikis and websites simply reported that it had appeared in a strategy guide somewhere.

It turns out this was (as you may have guessed) only released in Japan. Nintendo of America never would have let this one fly! The image appears at the top of Chapter 6 in Kamigami no Triforce – Nintendo Official Guidebooks Vol.2 for The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, known in Japan as Triforce of the Gods. The book contains unique artwork beyond this image that hasn’t been reprinted elsewhere, as far as I can tell.

By the time the SNES had arrived, Link’s shield adopted its iconic Hylian insignia, and the Arthurian, Sword in the Stone-like legend became a more dominant reference than the New Testament.

So… is Zelda a quote “Christian” game? No, I wouldn’t say so. It just so happened to receive a more lenient treatment than many other games at the mercy of NOA’s censors and some of its spiritual trappings are little more than initial worldbuilding texture. The series eventually crafted its own religious, spiritual, and mythological textures. Most, if not all, of the overt references to Christianity were long gone in a few entries, but we still have the early games to remind us how crafting a mythos is an artform that takes a lot of time, and how much both Nintendo of America and Zelda censorship have chilled out since the 8-bit days.

Just don’t get me started on this image of Peach holding up a crucifix to ward off a Hammer Bro like she’s in The Exorcist.

Red formerly ran The Well-Red Mage and now serves The Pixels as founder, writer, editor, streamer, and podcaster. He has undertaken a seemingly endless crusade to talk about the games themselves in the midst of a culture obsessed with the latest controversy, scandal, and news cycle about harassment, toxicity, and negativity. Pick out his feathered cap on Mage Cast podcast, on Twitter @thewellredmage, or on Twitch at /thewellredmage.