This Very Serious Writer Accidentally Included Monsters From ‘Zelda’ In His Historical Novel
Don't always trust Google for historical accuracy.
The Boy In The Striped Pajamas author John Boyne has been caught accidentally referencing monsters from The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild in his new novel, after a bit of seemingly lazy Google-based research led him astray.
The acclaimed Irish author’s latest novel, A Traveler At The Gates Of Wisdom, is a historical drama which spans 2000 years — in one section, a character goes to create a red dye for a dress, prompting Boyne to list off ingredients such as “keese wing, Octorok eyeball, the tail of the red lizalfos and four Hylian shrooms”.
These ingredients will be familiar to anyone who has wasted hours cooking in Breath Of The Wild, a Wii U and Nintendo Switch game from 2017 considered one of the best within the 20+ year history of the Zelda series.
Author Dana Schwartz saw a post on Reddit pointing out the recipe, and tweeted out the page to her 175,000+ followers. “If those ingredients look weird to you, it is because they are straight of out of the Zelda game Breath of the Wild,” she tweeted.
“Is it an homage? An Easter egg? Hmm. The book is *not* a fantasy. It’s a historical drama set in the real world.”
If those ingredients look weird to you, it is because they are straight of out of the Zelda game Breath of the Wild pic.twitter.com/JpebdXJqP1
— Dana Schwartz (@DanaSchwartzzz) August 3, 2020
Schwartz then did a little Google, typing in “red dye clothes ingredients” — and boom, the first result was a rip of ingredients from an article by video game site Polygon called “how to dye your clothes and armour in Breath Of The Wild“. She then put two and two together.
“So while John Boyne was doing a perfunctory Google search for how to dye clothes red he found a site listing monster parts and accidentally put them in his Very Serious book,” she wrote. “I am very embarrassed for him and this is my nightmare but it’s also very funny.”
After the Twitter thread picked up traction, Boyne himself saw it and was willing to laugh at himself.
“That is actually kinda hilarious. I’m totally willing to own it,” he replied. “Something tells me I’ll be telling this anecdote on stage for many years to come.”
He then said he wouldn’t edit out the mistake in future editions of the novel, and that while he didn’t remember how he landed on the Zelda ingredients, he must have just Googled it.
“Sometimes you just gotta throw your hands up and say, ‘yup! My bad!'”