A List Of Weird Little Guys In Ocarina Of Time I Can’t Wait To See In The Remake

By Kotaku | Created at 2026-06-09 19:53:57 | Updated at 2026-06-09 22:39:40 2 hours ago

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is widely regarded as among the greatest games of all time. It’s a classic. It set a standard for 3D adventure games at the time of its release, and is still being referenced by the greats to this day.

It is also a primo Weird Little Guy game.

What is a Weird Little Guy? It’s just what it sounds like. Little gremlins. Funny-lookin’ dudes, creepy fellas, monsters of various sorts. Guys that stand in the shadowy corner, rub their hands together, and go “heh heh heh.” Not all Weird Little Guys are male, and not all of them are little. Even a woman or a large creature can still be a Weird Little Guy, if they have the correct energy for it. A lot of them are conniving, a few are evil, some are just misunderstood, and some are good guys with a sort of “hey, what’s going on with you?” aura about them. They’re always at least a little bit comical. Ganondorf is not a Weird Little Guy. Ganondorf is incredibly serious. Bongo Bongo is a weird little guy because, despite being the very grim product of Sheikah torture, his name is Bongo Bongo because his hands play the ground like bongos. Like, come on.

I played Ocarina of Time for the first time earlier this year, and one of the things that struck me throughout was how many Weird Little Guys are in that game. Seriously, there are so many. Most of Hyrule is populated with Weird Little Guys. We’ve now seen just the tiniest glimpse of the Ocarina of Time remake, limited just to its hero, Link. But what I want to see isn’t Link, or Zelda, or Epona, or whatever. I want to see every freaky weirdo this game has to offer. I want to know if Nintendo still has the Weird Little Guy juice almost 30 years later. I’m not 100-percent confident they do! Not like they did in the ’90s! I’m kind of worried they’re going to sand down the edges on some of these guys!

So in the spirit of celebrating Ocarina of Time, let’s go through a list of some Weird Little Guys that I very much hope are just as weird in the remake as they were in the original. I make no claims that this is an exhaustive list. I will definitely miss several. Please comment below with your favorite Weird Little Guys from Ocarina, because I want to remember them all.

Oh, and I guess I now have to disclaim stuff: this will contain spoilers for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, a nearly 30-year-old game that I nevertheless only played just this year. Can’t believe I’m putting this on here, but here ya go:

Spoiler Warning

Redead

I know, I know, courting controversy immediately. I agree, these guys are pretty terrifying, and their genuine scariness probably should disqualify them from Weird Little Guydom. But the thing is, after the first few encounters with them in the gravesite and after the time skip, Redeads eventually become trivial to deal with, even sort of humorous. They’re slow, they freak out at the slightest hint of sunlight, and when you actually get a look at their faces, they look kinda silly. Are they definitely horrifying zombie-fied human corpses that Ganondorf has cursed to walk the earth and do his bidding? Yup! But they can sure be weird guys while they do it.

This guy

Who is he? No idea. But he sits under a tree in Kakariko Village and complains about how disgusting everyone else is. Looked in the mirror lately, bub?

Happy Mask Salesman

Oh, you knew this guy was making the list. The Happy Mask Salesman is one of the preeminent Weird Little Guys of Majora’s Mask, but it’s easy to overlook his presence in Ocarina if you don’t make it to his shop to participate in his MLM (multi-level mask) scheme. Two games of this, and we still don’t really know what his whole deal is, apart from being a Weird Little Guy.

Great Fairy

Every single Great Fairy is automatically inducted into the Weird Little Guy Hall of Fame. This is one of those characters I am terrified they are going to sand down somehow in the remake and under no circumstances should they do that. She should stay exactly this polygonal.

Deku Business Scrub

I’m just kind of obsessed with the idea of a businessman who sets up shop in a dungeon, tries to murder you, then when you fight back offers to sell you some sticks. Is this a viable model? Does he have steady year-on-year revenue growth with this strategy? How’s his share price doing?

Cojiro

It’s Cojiro! The blue Cucco! What else needs to be said?

Dead Hand

Dead Hand is, like the Redead, a creature that’s terrifying the first time you meet it in Bottom of the Well. Its many hands poke up out of the ground and can grab you and hold you still while the main body of it tries to…bite you, I think? Honestly, if you only encountered the Dead Hand once, I’d say it wouldn’t make the Weird Little Guy list by virtue (or vice) of being too scary.

But you fight it a second time, in the Shadow Temple, and something about seeing it a second time just kind of trivializes it. Second time around you know what to do, you’ve acclimated to the creepiness of two dark dungeons back-to-back, and the Dead Hands’ weird, lurching movements and floopy hands flailing around just become a bit silly. What is this guy’s deal? Where did he get all his hands? Why are the nails on them so perfectly manicured? Very weird!

This face in the wall

I don’t know what this is and I’m not going to ask. These weird faces in the wall talk to you while you’re in the Shadow Temple and give you hints on how to proceed. They’re extra creepy in the lower-poly atmosphere of an N64, but like the Dead Hand, they eventually lose their genuine terror and gradually become a bit comical as you interact with them and their vague goofy riddles. What even are these? Are they guys? Ghosts? Just…magical paintings? They could be any of those things, and in addition are Weird Little Guys.

Bongo Bongo

Sorry for including another Shadow Temple guy in here, but I had to. It’s Bongo Bongo! Why on earth is this guy the way he is? Nintendo came up with an absolutely god-awful scary backstory for him: he’s a messed-up corpse that was tortured by the Sheikah, split apart, hands severed, and left to rot in the well. He’s also a major pain in the butt to defeat, and caused me to become rather upset during my playthrough due to not fully understanding what I had to do and subsequently getting bounced all over the place.

But that’s just it; it’s very hard to concentrate on his gruesome fate and awful attacks when he’s a pair of big hands playing a giant bongo drum that you just happen to be sitting on. His name is Bongo Bongo. For the bongo drums. I am trying to imagine how he, in universe, got this name. Was he a bongo player in life and the Sheikah just had enough of the noise? Or is the bongo stuff incidental and some poor sap found him down here, got bongoed around for a bit, escaped, and then told the story of Bongo Bongo to anyone who would listen? Did Link name him as some cruel joke?

Nintendo can and most likely will make Bongo Bongo genuinely very scary in the Ocarina remake but there’s a tiny part of me hoping he remains a Weird Little Guy.

Eyeball Frog

Sorry, the Weird Little Guy list was getting a little too creepy there for a second. Here’s Eyeball Frog.

Biggoron

Every single Goron is a Weird Little Guy. Every one of them. I didn’t want this to just be a list of Gorons, so I have brought in Biggoron, the biggest Goron and also the most Weird Little Guy of all the Gorons, to represent his people.

Rauru

Obviously.

Mario

In actual Super Mario games, Mario is not a Weird Little Guy. He’s little, and a guy, but not weird. However, in his cameo in Ocarina of Time, he is exceedingly weird in addition to being a little guy, so he makes the list. I think it’s sort of odd that they cast him as Mr. Lon Lon, but who am I to criticize a classic?

These frogs

I never ran into these guys during my Ocarina of Time playthrough, and I was briefly convinced that everyone telling me about them on social media was doing some sort of elaborate bit in making up a Weird Little Guy to fake me out with. No, they’re real, and I hope they’re as stupid-looking in the remake as they are here, big googly eyes and all.

This list is going on too long and Ethan probably wants me to hurry up and finish it, so let’s rapidfire these next few:

Skulltula-Man

There was no way these freaks weren’t making the list.

Scarecrow

Look at that vacant smile.

This…thing?

?????

King Zora

Mr. Zora sir your majesty respectfully what in Hylia’s name are you talking about.

Okay one more for the road:

Koume and Kotake

It’s a shame Ganondorf didn’t inherit his…mothers’? grandmothers’? aunts’? whatever—penchant for Weird Little Guydom, because Koume and Kotake are experts. Please Nintendo, just pull out every Weirdness stop ya got for these ladies in the remake, because I can’t stand it if they aren’t absolutely off the charts.

Actually, you know what, I just remembered that Ganondorf is banging on a huge organ in his creepy chamber just waiting for Link to get to him. Who knows how long he’s been doing that? He’s also the king of popping into rooms, going “heh heh heh,” and then disappearing.