this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2025
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Alright, but I have yet to see a game character that’s left handed though
Just checked in game and he actually does swing with his left. Never noticed until now. Apparently newer games retconned him to be right handed
They changed it because of the Wii controls.
Swinging with your left doesn't necessarily mean you're left handed.
I'm right handed, but I play sports like baseball and golf left handed.
That's called cross dominate.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-dominance
I think mine is partially because the vision in my right eye is worse than my left, because I shoot left handed too (clay pigeons)
I'm the opposite but I think it's mostly because much of the tools being mass produced are mostly made for right handed people. Computer mice, golf clubs, guitars, catcher mitts, etc. It's not impossible to find left handed versions of these things, but you usually have to go out of your way to get them and most people don't teach these skills in a left handed mindset.
It's not a retcon if it's a different person. Most games introduce a new Link. We're currently at twelve unique Links.
Yeah, Link surprised me, he's left handed in most games before BOTW, which is neat.
He is right handed in the Wii games with motion controls for the benefit of the majority of right handed gamers, but left handed everywhere else.
Twilight Princess was crossgen between GameCube and Wii. The two games are mirror images of each other because it made it simpler to port the game than mirroring the character animations alone.
Weird that they never bothered to swap him back to left handed for the Switch games, though.
Isometric Link (Link's Awakening remake) remains left handed at least, but Switch era 3D Link is right handed.
I'll just chalk that up to the Switch games wanting to switch (heh) it up a bit, with his primary color association also switching from green to blue. Maybe if they decide to make an older style 3D Zelda again, they'll go back to left handed Link.
It’s not even that they “didn’t swap him back”.
Twilight Princess for the Wii U uses the original left handed link from the GameCube version (it swaps to the right handed version of the game in the harder difficulty).
Link is left handed in all of the 3DS entries, Hyrule Warriors, and Smash 4. In Smash Ultimate, both “Young” and “Toon” Link are left-handed while “Link” is right handed (he’s based off of BOTW in this entry).
In The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, you primarily play as Zelda, but Link is left-handed when he appears.
It was a very deliberate decision to make BOTW/TOTK Link right handed, and it’s not as simple as “not changing it back”.
They are different characters. OoT Link has always been a leftie, BotW Link has always been a rightie
Almost all of the Links between different games are different characters, but they were all still left handed until the Wii era. That includes Wind Waker Link, Twilight Princess (GC) Link, Oracle Link, and even NES OG Link who are all distinct from OoT.
BotW Link is right handed either because they forgot he was originally left handed before the Wii era, or because it was a deliberate choice to break convention from older games (like also having BotW link wear blue instead of green).
I wouldn't be surprised by either possibility, just given that BotW deliberately had relatively few series veterans working on it.
They probably made BotW Link a rightie so that when using a bow, our 3rd person view can see the bow while keeping him on the left side of the screen, as is convention in most games (not Zelda games but all games)
Here's a couple random ones, outside of the obvious (Link from The Legend of Zelda).
Some of the character models in Warcraft 3 were left-handed, like the Footman and the Grunt. The weird implication in this is that in the Warcraft universe, left-handed is the default, because while the common Footmen were lefties, the heroic Paladin was right-handed.
Some of the party members from early Final Fantasy games were left-handed: Leila and Leon from FF2, and Kain and Palom from FF4. Because of the 2D sprites it didn't show very well during battles, but it did affect the way their equipment was arranged in the menus.
The necro in Diablo 4 too.
Artorias from the Dark Souls 1 DLC is left handed.
Doomguy
He holds the pistol with his left but holds the shotgun right-handed:
He probably holds the weapon with stronger kickback with his dominant hand.
Conclusion: he's right-handed but trained to hold the pistol with his left
Or he was trained to hold the shotgun with the right (for example because of which side the spent shells come out of)
As a leftie, shooting rifles in the military was not terribly fun because of the ejection port being on the right. Luckily the rifle was well enough designed that I didn't have any casings grazing my cheek.
Yep. Got one shell stuck on the right inside of the elbow. Not fun!
This can be explained by him being left eye dominant.