Well, we’re just about at the end of another Spooktober season, and once again it went all too quickly, don’t you think? I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I rather enjoyed this year’s festivities! So much so that I found myself thinking back a few years to our Zeldaween event and just how many scary places there still to talk about or even just revisit. One of the biggest ones we missed at the time was The Bottom of the Well dungeon from Ocarina of Time, which is kind of crazy because saying this place is messed up would be an understatement!
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time isn’t without its scary parts in the hours leading up to Link’s adventures into one of the most cursed wells in all of gaming. Heck, the game practically opens with with a spooky one by sending players through the Skulltula-infested Inside the Great Deku Tree. Then, there’s the House of Skulltula, home of many a gamer’s first jumpscare (thanks to the crazy loud sound effect on the cursed dudes living there). Yeah, this game is kinda messed up.
It’s not until Link reached the Bottom of the Well that horror mask fully comes off, though. There’s no beating around the bush here; this is an actually evil place with a history just as dark and twisted as that of the Shadow Temple’s. Basically, the Bottom of the Well is exactly what it looks like: a torture and burial site for enemies of Hyrule’s royal family operated by their body guards: the Sheikah tribe. It’s apparently been a long-abandoned dirty little secret, but its existence alone shows that Hyrule isn’t the 100% idyllic place it’s made out to be.
This is a place that’s absolutely filled with skulls and bones, enough for hundreds and perhaps thousands of victims. Seriously you can’t have entire chambers will floors, ceilings and walls being nothing but bones without some serious numbers. It even seemed to be seeing some sort of recent use in the original N64 version of the game too, as there was still plenty of fresh blood around to stain the walls and floors. Seriously, this is in a Zelda game??
The spirits are absolutely restless here too, having endured as Green Bubbles, Wallmasters, Floormasters and Gibdos. Link’s on all their hitlists too since his arrival is probably the first chance they’ve had in ages to try and get some revenge. Of course, the thing everyone remembers from The Bottom of the Well is its boss monster: Dead Hand.
When I first encountered this thing as a kid, I was NOT ready for it. Not only is the Dead Hand an ambush monster, but it waits for you to get curious enough about the funny stalks poking out of the skull floor to get close enough to be suddenly grabbed by what actually a tentacle hand before emerging! I had to pause the game! It was such a surprise! Yikes!
Dead Hand doesn’t have a ReDead’s scream or even an actual sound effect. Instead it just makes a (bone) grinding sound as it writhes its way around and a low, exhaling moan as it bends down to bite! Just…just no! And that’s not even the worst of it! We know that all those hands are connected to the thing, and we never see its full body emerge from the ground. There could be an even bigger body just underneath the surface with all of those appendages branching out from it! Absolute eldritch nightmare fuel!
The monster’s presence makes the whole of both the Bottom of the Well and the Shadow Temple all that much worse too, as you don’t get evil amalgamations like that without some serious resentment from tons of people getting killed in horrible ways. Ganon and Ganondorf may be the ultimate in evil in the world of Hyrule, but, after seeing this, I can’t help but wonder just how much blood had to be spilled for the royals to take over and keep control.
There’s still a little more to come this week with Duck and Cary’s final looks into the Horror That Surrounds! So stay tuned and celebrate Spooktober with us right up until midnight on the 31st! For now though, what was your experience at the Bottom of the Well like? What assumptions do you draw from it?
Image captured from gameplay
VIRTUAL BASTION 