Secrets of the UPHEAVAL - Tears of the Kingdom Lore 

First

Awesome video

I'm just excited for part 2!

9:03 About the castles flight. In TotK it is "reasoned" that the Castle itself being stuck in the ground... was somehow enabling a strenghtening of the seal. So Ganondorf did had a reason to just lift it up. In order to break free. It was necessary for him to break free. He was bound by more than just physical walls. There was some kind of holy force holding him back as well, in form of the Castle being stuck in the ground.

⁠also I believe ganondorf lifted up the castle because it was meant to protect the seal over him. How he may have known this I don’t know

Pretty sure he said heiroglyphs... but I love the idea of Hyruleglyphs, so that is officially their name now.

I bet Nintendo will canonize the word in the next sequel.

Smart!

​@@MonsterMazeits geoglyphs smh lol

It's the same story with TotK as Ancient Cistern, The Spider's Thread. Since elevation references escaping the land of death, it makes sense Zonai look like Anubis. Your heart has to be as light as a loftwing feather. Sheikah towers just have this The Jetsons aesthetic that Hyrule Castle joins now.

Absolutely! There were 2 plans being executed at the same time

Hyrules plan = zelda’s plan!

@@MonsterMazedoesn’t the beginning of the game show Zelda in dragon form part the cloud barrier that keeps you from getting to the surface in the tutorial? My interpretation was that the dragon parted the sky barrier that was also present in skyward sword. My personal theory was that the dragons went above the sky barrier in BOTW, and those were what the portals were. Maybe the light dragon was hiding above the cloud barrier in BOTW and that’s why we haven’t seen her until now.

​@@d3va383well yes. That's exactly it honestly

That's pretty much it. The people of Hyrule likely made it so the Sky Islands and Shrines would appear after what I assumed was Rauru's awakening, but this video suggests it's the purification unit's activation. This means Link can then travel to the fallen Ring Ruins in Kakariko Village resulting in him meeting Mineru and embarking on a quest to find the Master Sword and other 4 Sages. However, Ganondorf learned of the plan and unleashed various regional phenomena to hide the Secret Stones, then corrupted Mineru's construct and deceived the researchers to prevent Link from reaching her. The chasms I think are how he unleashed the Gloom that summoned all the monsters and decayed the weapons.

Same!!

I didn't even _notice_ that it was a floating platform, i thought it was all floored and the center platform fell because the floor broke due to Ganondorf.

I think the floor broke on purpose When the purification unit was activated, it was probably designed to break the floor and stop Ganondorf from escaping the chamber

Huh?

I agree. It does make sense that it would have other purposes besides acting as a seal, though. The ones who built it likely knew that it wouldn't hold if Rauru's primary seal broke and planned for certain events to trigger if the seal was ever removed.

Same, when I first saw it I assumed it was basically just another, albeit colossal, sealing spike, akin to the one used in the sealed grounds to keep the Imprisoned Demise at bay

I imagine it’s like a gigantic cork.

This was my assumption as well. Plus, i feel like removing the castle would make it a bit easier for him to release gloom into Hyrule. Like a sink drain, but in reverse

To add on to this, this entire contraption was also a big fat warning. If the seal broke the castle would rise and a lot of stuff happen that ANYONE on the kingdom knew whats going on. Sorta home security warning because of an intruder. It would be much worse if the seal broke and ganondorf got a silent getaway.

Good call! The helms are already on the list of talking points for the upcoming video

And your battery becomes blue when you're fully upgraded, instead of green !

This is accurate to the properties of zonaite as well: it doesn’t conduct electricity and has a dull sheen

i’m pretty sure the ancient blades were discovered in the depths by that construct! it tells you that it found them while searching for materials - i can’t remember if it just found a couple or like a whole pile.

Keep in mind that the Sheikah also are Hylia's emissaries and are endowed with mystical abilities as an act of divine providence on her part, for which she also has ties to blue hue energy like the Skyward Strike and the Gates of Time. On the flip side though, the land of Hyrule is also referred to as the "Holy Land" on account of it being the first place the Goddesses touched ground, and its a given that its rich with an abundance of latent force that condenses into ore material that can be extracted and refined/converted into energy. Ore and mineral stones like Timeshift ore, Opal, Topaz, Sapphire, Rubies, Rupee ore, Zonaite, the four elements from The Minish Cap, etc, are all collectively endowed with elemental latent energy on account of Hyrule being the Holy Land blessed from the eminence of the Goddesses at the dawn of creation.

Exactly. We even get a tablet saying so.

They weren't on the surface though, the sky islands appear after Zelda altered the present by time traveling to the Past and telling Rauru about the stuff happening in the present.

@@JorgeRodriguez-xz5ecthey were already there. It’s a closed time loop.

Thanks Aydens, that means a lot to hear! I try my best to structure my videos that way, haha.

It's well done and explained but I'd call these more facts than theory, people infer all sorts of incorrect things but I don't see much room to interpret this part differently

I agree with you. More facts than theories, but still a gently amount of speculation and a lot of room to do so. I mean, Zelda's lore is everything but conclusive. At least the last time I checked. 😅

I think when zelda disappears it changes the past, zonai tech means sheika never needed to develop it

Which makes a sort of “song of storms” paradox, because Zelda’s expertise is sheikah technology.

​@tylerpharez901 Due to the fact that the murals in the depths show Zelda as a dragon, it seems more likely than not that Zelda was always meant to go back in time. This means her time travel never affected anything since she already existed in the past.

That really reminds me of Zeltik and NBC’s theory a while ago when we only had the first trailer, where they basically theorized that Ganondorf’s malice/gloom was purified to be used as the energy source of the sheikah technology

oh hmm, the shrines of light say they “imprison and _purify_ evil”

Ohh, that would explain why people say the shrines started to "glow" after the Upheaval. They are channeling and storing the energy that Rauru is purifying from Ganondorf all those years. So, when the seal was broken, the shrines activated to be used for purifying the people who reaches their end! That's very cool if true. Gosh I wish they would let all of these unanswered questions to search in post game missions or something, to complete the lore. It would have been glorious.

Thanks Gossip! I see you've been on a roll with your content, cheers!

The Lomei Labyrinth structures in the Depths have the same, "barbaric" style like the ruins in Faron. Either that is an oversight, or the Sheikah had access to the Depths and built these structures/covered them up, too. I'd assume the Depths had been mined long before,during and some time after the past shown in TotK.

I think you absolutely nailed it. And I will definitely be talking about the Zonai ruins on the surface vs those in the sky/depths

​@@UltimateTobiThe issue with that is the floating parts of the labyrinths. If the Sheikah did build the surface and depths parts of the labyrinths how would that account for the Zonai trials that require you to complete all three? I think the older Zonai ruins are just that. Zonai ruins from before they first ascended skyward and the three different clans mentioned at each labyrinth give us a look into how the Zonai society was structured. There was a line of Tauro's in game mentioning how the Zonai ruins on the surface seem to predate the ones that fell from the sky after all.

@@Ryujishida The idea wasn't exactly that they built them, but covered them up, as mentioned in the initial comment, in order to make it seem more crude. The ruins in Faron do have the sleek Zonai architecture beneath the crude stone work/cover. The same one as the Lomei Labyrinths have. Also the ones in the sky. Now the question is: did the sky parts rise from the ground or were they always there like the rest?

This has a flaw, the sky islards rose shortly after zelda's draconification, but the sheikah we know of didnt appear until many calamities later (enough to spot a pattern), this leaves many thousands of years between he sky islands and the sheikah

rauru really turned himself into a zonai shrine for the greater good

The origin of the aAncient Energy from BotW perhaps? 👀

Clearly a reference to nuclear energy. I've been keeping tabs on everything blue, and it's now clear it's converted malice into energy, that Sheikah found as a fuel source. Gloom could be it's radioactive waste product. However I think Fujibayashi is hinting at time itself being this energy source, even in Age of Calamity that he supervised. Green is the fusion of time, and so it's a "green" energy version of energy from STOPPED time. Let's say Sonia has actually USED time powers before, for actual, tangible effect. And this was a mass recall. She prevented a war in the future by recalling it's components into her time, the people, Zonai, and the Secret Stones that would be invented for that purpose. But by postponing such a war, she placed it actually EARLIER, in HER time. Now she has a passive effect of drawing things from the future, including Zelda, which is like the counter force to upheaval. Upheaval fills the gaps when things are dislocated in time, but the idea of time dislocation is to prevent a single, massive overflow all at once in a time of calamity. This is what she tries to teach Zelda to do, because THIS is the function of Hyrule.

It's good to be back! Yeah it's difficult to tell what holds up the other islands. There must be even more to it. We know not all islands are the same. The Great Sky Islands was said to be lifted into the sky by the sages. But other islands are much older and had to have existed back when the other Zonai were still around.

​@@MonsterMaze they may have some kind of secondary power generation, or part of the island is just a big battery (which considering the power density of large bateries, these islands could still keep floating for eons)

It's very fun digging into things that aren't accesible through regular means. It's like peaking behind the curtain ^^

They’ve been doing this since Demon Souls, and most fromsoft games lol. It works for those games. Not Zelda games

@@PuffnStuff117 yeah, i love those games too lmao. But i do think it works for botw and totk at the very least, they arent your conventional zelda games after all

​@@PuffnStuff117wrong.

The wind sage has his bow stolen. The fire sage is drugged out by a mask. The water sage is forced to contend with massive pollution. The lightning sage is bad at aiming. The sage of spirit is trapped. The demon king probably thought he had his bases covered. Also, it is established that the champion weapons can be remade from even decayed weapons, so destroying them wouldn't be as effective.

@@obits3 The bow Tulin had stolen from him wasn’t the Great Eagle Bow, it was a Swallow Bow.

@@legomaster2538bows weren’t decayed at all

@@dsur5547 I know, I just wanted to include the Rito.

I think so! It may even be the source of the Ancient Energy from BotW. Which was abundant in specific locations around Hyrule. The castle being the most potent one if I remember correctly.

It's been... 84 years

@@MonsterMaze “Now I think you are ready to know what happened 84 years ago…”

The Dark World in Link to the Past (Link Between Worlds was Lorule, not the Dark World) is the Sacred Realm corrupted by Ganon's wish on the Triforce, and it was returned to normal at the end of Link to the Past by Link's wish. So I doubt it and the depths are the same.

@@RyujishidaTrue but it’s an extremely large nod to it with how the depths are a sort of inverted mirror of the surface

@@M33f3r Oh, definitely, intentional or not, it's hard to argue that point. And to be honest, if it wasn't so easily countered by the information provided in LttP, I'd have thought that the depths and the Dark World being the same would be a really interesting theory.

There's even a name for that dimension in the game's files - it's called the Illusory Realm.

It really feelks like the Sheikah started out as "copycats" who eventually evolved the Zonai's technology to something even more sophisticated. I can't wait to go in-depth on this connection

I'm sure NBC is on it ;)

Yeah, things like 3d models and their names are far more interesting to me

Sure am!

I think people just cleaned it up. If they destroyed all the sheika tech, they could easily clean up some swamps. They are pretty organized.

​@@FierceDeity35 link and zelda were going to investigate vah ruta at the end of botw, so maybe the zora were using it to clean up the mess the various pools of malice created, and in the process also cleaned this

@@jotasietesiete4397 as much as I want to believe that it’s simply not possible, vah ruta stopped working and there’s too little a gap between beating dark beast ganon and the true ending

Yes! I even recorded that part of the water temple, but I couldn't fit the footage in. Next video though!

That is a very good question, and one I've been curious about as well

People in the comments are saying it, he'll see it.

Couldn't agree more. "Purification" also indicates that it's filtering something out, leaving you with a new substance. Perhaps the Ancient Energy the Sheikah tapped into in BotW? It would be amazing if the Sheikah turn out to have been established in the way you describe it. I also see the resemblances. I even expected them to go there in TotK, where it turns out Paya would take up the role of the 5th sage or something. I think that would've been more interesting.

@@MonsterMaze I wholly concur that the Purification unit must be responsible for synthesizing the corrupted/raw energy from Ganondorf, (fitting that he is the holder of the Triforce of "Power") and it could be that that is the case regarding the energy source utilized by the Shiekah, after all the towers, shrines, even the furnaces were connected to the ground where its sourced. Which also leads me to believe the reason why for example the bombs were almost instantaneous when recharging as there is ambient energy everywhere coming from [hypothetically] the towers, and could also be one other reason why and how Ganondorf was able to posses or infect the ancient technology as it was already feeding off of him. Whereas, when in the present, said energy got cut short, we are then forced with the need to expand the Zonai batteries or wait for them to fully recharge before being able to use again or use the expendable Zonai charges. The way it panned out in my head regarding the establishment of the Shiekah is as follows: Of her time spent in the Founding Past, Zelda must surely be talking about the future Hyrule she is from, coordinating with King Rauru and the other sages, learning to hone her divine skills from Queen Sonia, and Mineru being the wise and inquisitive sort must have also learnt much from Zelda and both hatched a plan to establish a sect of select individuals to become the Shiekah tribe. Thus resulting in them being more cognizant and adept at using technologies similar to the Zonai and creating their own version. As for Paya, I agree it would have been truly interesting of a twist is she became the Sage of Spirit. Her character became more developed in ToTK and she became more studious per se about the Ring ruins and the Zonai. However, she was under the guidance of Impa and was already wearing the hat that looks like it has a tower on top in BoTW, which led me to believe that she will be following the footsteps of Impa.

@@MonsterMaze PS. Thanks to auto-correct by the way, when it corrected Zonai to Sonia... you reckon that is the reason why Rauru chose her to be his and Hyrule's founding Queen? Haha! Also I hope that you are feeling much better and continually recuperating. We as a community appreciate your videos. Thank you again.

Oh yeah, Jerome is an extremely talented concept artist! He made this artwork long before the game was even out

No u

@@Mr.G_717 u 🫵

I sure am, thank you!

Aah, good catch. Yeah the chasms must've exited long before Ganondorf became the Demon King. Their placement is also way too coincidental for them to be random holes.

Perhaps they were created by, or for, the dragons long ago, since they seem to enjoy using them now that they've reopened. It's funny, because when I first stumbled upon the Yiga pit in BOTW, it was before I found the front of their hideout, and I thought that must be where the dragons come out.

An angry champagne is probably the best analogy to describe Ganondorf in this game xD

​@MonsterMaze there's a stone tablet saying something similar under the spiral staircase in the royal passageway. It calls the castle a seal and the condition of the castle is directly linked to the effectiveness of holding Ganondorfs power back. Since the original calamity, the castle has fallen into ruin... leading to the malice seeping out.

@@MonsterMaze can’t take credit for it, I quoted from Zeltic