Green Tunic

The Kokiri Tunic as shown in Ocarina of Time.
Green Tunic
Owner	Link
Debut	The Legend of Zelda

The green tunic (also known as the Hero's Clothes, the Green Jerkin or the Kokiri Tunic) is the primary clothing worn by Link throughout the Legend of Zelda series.

Information

Link's ensemble usually consists of a green tunic with a pointed cap. It usually offers only the barest of protection against danger. However, the clothes act as a powerful symbol in some games, due to the tales of the previous Links wearing the same garb. One wearing these clothes would in some cases be assumed to be a hero or laughed at for being bold enough to dress as one (such as Ashei's reaction in Twilight Princess). Links usually start the games with their tunics, with little explanation for their coincidental choice in clothing in the early games. Ocarina of Time was the first to provide an origin for the tunic, as it was shown to be the standard clothing worn by the boys of the Kokiri forest. The girls instead wore green skirts and tunics. However, later games would show that this was not the first example of a Link wearing a tunic and Skyward Sword would later form an earlier example.

The Wind Waker was the first game in which Link starts off with a different set of clothes, which were a blue set of pajamas. The Hero's Clothes were given to him by his grandmother on his birthday. It was established that children received clothes identical to those of the Hero once they reached a certain age so that they could follow his example. It could be inferred from this instance that similar legends provided reasons for other Links' unexplained attire. The next interesting example was The Minish Cap, which was set early in Hyrule's history. Although Link had the usual green tunic for the duration of the game, he did not have the accompanying green hat. Ezlo, trapped in hat form, acted as Link's hat for the entire adventure, and at the end he gave Link a green cap to wear. The preceding Link shown in a stain glass window also lacked a hat, which implied that this game was intended to be the historical origin of Link's hat, but this would also later be contradicted by Skyward Sword.

Link also started Twilight Princess with a unique set of clothes. He received the Hero's Clothes when Faron restored Link to his true form after Link saved the province from twilight. In Spirit Tracks, tunics similar to Link's were the uniforms worn by Hyrule's military, likely due to the lingering inspiration provided by the Hero of Time, the Hero of Winds, or both of them. Link started the game wearing an engineer's uniform, but he was given the green tunic after he became a recruit of the Hyrulean guard. In Skyward Sword, tunics of different colors were shown to be the uniform worn by the knights of Skyloft. The color of the tunic differed depending on the year in which knighthood was attained. Link was the only character to get a green tunic, and it was given to him by Gaepora after he won the Wing Ceremony. Gaepora noted that he was apprehensive about the color green for the knighthood clothes, but he saw that it suited Link to the point where it seemed like he was born to wear it.

In A Link Between Worlds, Link did have his tunic from the beginning of the game, but it was shown that the blacksmith he worked for, as well as his wife and son Gulley, also wore green tunics, implying that the outfit may have been connected to their trade. In Tri Force Heroes, Link initially wore simple clothes known as the Bear Minimum. After Sir Combsly confirmed Link's potential to act as a Tri Force Hero, he gave him Hytopian Silk which Madame Couture used to fashion a Hero's Tunic for Link.

Breath of the Wild would later mark the first game in which Link's standard clothes were not available to him for most of the game's duration. Instead, there was a variety of different types of armor that could be obtained. Link could only obtain his set of green clothes for this game, known as the Wild Set (the Cap, Tunic and Trousers of the Wild) by completing all 120 of the game's shrines. Link could also gain green tunics based the designs from The Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time, The Wind Waker, Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword through the scanning of certain amiibos.

Other Tunics

Although Link usually starts off with the green tunic, and it is the most emblematic of his outfits, in most cases he winds up getting upgraded tunics with special abilities later in the game game. The basics are the Blue Tunic and the Red Tunic, which were preceded by the Blue and Red Rings that changed the color of Link's tunic when equipped in The Legend of Zelda. Another special version is the Magic Armor. Different colored tunics are important in the Four Swords subseries for tellling multiple Links apart. Link always starts out with a green tunic, but when he is split into four as an effect of the Four Sword, each Link has a different tunic. One Link still has green, while the others wear red, blue and violet. This was foreshadowed in The Minish Cap, where Link could use charms from Din, Nayru or Farore to temporarily change his tunic to one of the three tunic colors used in the Four Swords.

As a bonus in a second playthrough of The Wind Waker, Link will instead receive something called the Hero's New Clothes at the beginning of the game. This is apparently identical to the green tunic, but it is said that it can only be seen by the honest. The player and most other characters only see the blue pajamas Link is wearing underneath until the game's final scene.

Other Appearances

Video Games

• Since it is his basic costume, Link wears the tunic for his appearances in the Super Smash Bros. series as well as Soulcalibur II. All these games also have ways for Link to change the color of his tunic which match the alternate tunics in the series (as well as some original colors that do not match with existing tunics).
• In the Legend Mode of Hyrule Warriors, Link started off wearing a knight's Trainee Tunic and was given the Hero's Clothes by Impa after it was discovered that the had the Triforce of Courage. The game also included downloadable or unlockable tunics from The Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword.

Trivia

• Link is not the only character who wears a green tunic, aside from the Kokiri children. The Wind Waker implies that giving the Hero's Clothes to children was a tradition practiced by the cultures of some of the islands of the Great Sea. Phantom Hourglass also shows Nyeve, who acts as a parody of the Hero of Winds and wears the same clothing, and who is likely another product of that tradition. Additionally, a man wearing a green tunic was depicted in official artwork for Zelda II.
• Tingle also wears green clothes that he considers to be similar to Link's attire, although his outfit is more of a skintight costume with red briefs on the outside.
• In official artwork for the early games, Link was usually depicted with bare legs under his tunic. Starting in Ocarina of Time, this was changed and Link has been consistently shown wearing some type of white trousers under his tunic.
• The Hero's New Clothes seem to be based on the folk talk of the The Emperor's New Clothes, in which con men trick an emperor into thinking that they made a special robe that can only be seen by those worthy of their position, so the emperor is forced to go along so that he does not risk revealing his incompetence.
• In Phantom Hourglass, a set of the Hero's New Clothes are used in the trading sidequest and are traded to Nyeve, as an extension of the character's The Wind Waker parody.