Tears of the Kingdom, like Breath of the Wild before it, is filled with Easter eggs and references to Nintendo and Zelda history. Many are obvious, like the Lon Lon milk bottles in Hateno Village or when Link hums Saria’s song while cooking, but others are more obscure. For example, the Ultrahand ability is a reference to an old Nintendo toy from the 60s. But the best Tears of the Kingdom reference isn’t a Zelda game, or even a Nintendo one. On the way to the Wind Temple, you will find a temple dedicated to a famous scene from Resident Evil.
It’s called Sachirou’s Shrine, and you can find it by traveling east from the Rospro Pass Skyview Tower, which is the tower north of Rito Village. If you’re heading in a straight line from the village of Rito to the Hebra Mountains, it’s almost impossible to miss, perched near the summit of Corvash Peak.
As my colleague Andrew King explains, All Tear Realm shrines are designed to teach you valuable lessons. Sahirow Shrine Lesson: “Lasers are bad.” You might have guessed this, but this shrine does a great job of teaching you different ways to avoid laser beams, so when you encounter them in the future, you’ll know exactly what to do.
It all starts out easy enough. At the entrance there is a single laser that you need to run and jump over. Hopefully you’ve mastered the claw grip you need to run and jump in Tears of the Kingdom, but this is a topic for a separate article. If you touch any of the lasers in this temple, the floor will open up like a hatch and Link will fall into an infinite chasm, so don’t do it unless you want to see your little buddy screaming for his life as he’s swallowed by the void. you sick bastard
The next section has a series of criss-crossing lasers that will have you dodging and diving under Catherine Zeta-Jones style, before climbing stairs and sliding across a series of lasers on the floor. So far, everything is simple. The final challenge is a reference to Resident Evil, but it might not be the Resident Evil you’re expecting.
After climbing the moving platform, you will find yourself in a long corridor that ends with a treasure chest of a shrine. Enter the corridor and a horizontal laser will appear at the opposite end and start moving towards you. You just have to jump over the laser as it approaches and proceed to the next section of the hall. There, another laser will be moving towards you at chest height, so crouch as it approaches.
As you enter the last part of the corridor, the door will close behind you, preventing you from escaping. A full grid of lasers will appear in front of you, which will begin to move towards you. You cannot jump, duck, or otherwise dodge these lasers as they approach. All you can do is stand there and wait to die.
I have no doubt that this is a reference to the 2002 film Resident Evil. The transition from one laser to another, up to a whole grid of lasers, matches the same comedic moment as the film. I don’t think it’s just a coincidence. Even the grid pattern of the lasers is the same. The only difference is that touching the lasers doesn’t cut Link into 100 perfect dice.
Three years after Resident Evil, Resident Evil 4 also paid homage to the famous scene by placing Leon in his own death corridor with a laser beam. However, instead of a grid, the laser wall is formed by a random spread of inevitable lasers. For these reasons, I would argue that the temple in Zelda is a reference to the movie, not RE4. Interestingly, this year’s remake of Resident Evil 4 cut a laser corridor. For fans of the original RE4 who missed this scene in the remake, at least Zelda was able to bring it back.
In Resident Evil 4, Leon escapes by running over the wall behind him and easily flipping back through the laser wall. Unfortunately, Link isn’t quite the gymnast that Leon is, so wall jumps and backflips are out of the question. However, the solution is still quite simple. All you have to do is back up against the wall as the laser approaches you (it won’t be able to get close enough) and then follow it to the end of the corridor. The lasers will turn off for a split second when they reach the end of the hall, giving you the opportunity to run to the exit and receive your blessing of light. Hopefully this is the only Resident Evil reference in Tears of the Kingdom. With the way the weapon breaks, I don’t think Link can survive a confrontation with Mister X.