A lot of people seem surprised by the existence of durians, but durians are at least somewhat common enough that you don’t have to spend two hours googling random foodstuff to determine whether or not they’re real.

What a lot less people know is that EVERY consumable in the game has at least one IRL counterpart and/or lookalike. (This was originally just one big picture but I had to cut it into smaller segments to upload it)

Additional info:

• there are IRL plants called “armoranth” but they do not look like the in-game variant at all. I guess the devs just selected that name as a pun (“armor” plant)

• mirror carps are a variety of the common carp. They get their name from the huge, shiny scales that reflect the light like tiny mirrors. They’re rarely as blue as the in-game variant tho, but I guess the devs didn’t want two different plain brown carps in the game and the Mighty/common carp has the same color as the in-game variant.

• the “bird eggs” depicted here are seagull eggs, but really any spotted egg wil do.

• Lily of the Valley is extremely poisonous! You should never eat it IRL.

• “blue trout” is not a separate species, but blueish variants of regular trouts created via selective breeding, usually only availiable in great fisheries but never in the wild.

• Indigo milk caps are edible, but taste bland and have a grainy texture. Not exactly a culinary delight.

• I originally thought that Goron Spice was just chili powder, but nowadays I think it’s more like a Hyrulean version of baharat - a spice blend that may contain anise and cinnamon amongst other things. If you take a close look at a bottle of Goron Spice in-game, you can see two tiny items inside the bottle that look like dried anise and a cinnamon stick respectively.

• I spent way too much time trying to figure out what the common name of the “blue and yellow grouper” was, as I thought this was just its description. Turns out that this is its literal name.

• the mexican “turbo” snail isn’t exactly fast. That name actually derives from “turban” because of their turban-like shape/built.

• durians are edible but they reek to high heaven. The smell is absolutely rancid and pungent, something like rotting onions and hot sewage mixed together. For this reason, they’re even banned in public transit in a lot of places where they’re locally grown. Noone wants to sit in a windowless appartement with something that smells like the southern end of a Hinox.

• only the male sockeye salmon gets this weirdly deformed hook-like maw, the female ones stay somewhat normal. The in-game variant only has the “male” model.

• I originally thought that Hydromelons were just regular watermelons, but they are yellow/orange on the inside. Turns out that there is also a variant with yellow flesh that’s even older than the pink variant we know.

• “Tender” coconuts are just regular coconuts that haven’t matured yet. Their shell is still thin and soft, the flesh not flaky/crispy but rather rubber-like, and they have a lot more coconut water than the fully matured versions.

• Ube extract consists mainly of purple yam without artificial flavor/coloration, and turns any dish bright purple just like the in-game variant can produce purple food (monster cake, monster curry etc.)

• the Striped Love Beetle is also called Flamboyant Flower Beetle and I strongly suspect that the scientist naming them was an IRL Beedle / total fan of beetles

• Restless “Cricket” is likely a translation error, as they’re called grasshoppers in the Japanese original and all other translations. Crickets are a lot smaller, pitch black, round and have a stinger at the lower abdomen - they do not look like grasshoppers at all.

• Sanke Carps aren’t even named differently, as this particular color scheme is literally called “Sanke” IRL.

• There are people selling seeds and bulbs for allegedly “Blue Heart Lillies” online, but the pictures on those sites are always badly photoshopped stargazer lillies. I am unsure what was first; either the Silent Princess came first and some crooks tried to profit from BotW’s popularity by selling fake seeds, or the fake ads came first and one of Nintendo’s environmental artists took it as an inspiration for the Silent Princess.

• I have no idea whether Entoloma hochstetteri has a common name. All I found was the scientific name. It’s not edible and very rare tho, so it might just not have one. There are also other mushrooms that actually glow at night like the in-game variant, but those usually aren’t edible either.

Back in the day when I made that compilation I had only watched the very first ever trailer for the sequel (the one that said “the sequel is now in development”) and nothing else, so the “spoiler” for the sequel in the next picture only applies to things that are shown in that same trailer.

It has been quite some time since I first created that compilation, and I have found a couple more fitting items / animals in the meantime than the ones depicted here, and turned the “updated” compilation into a mini series on youtube. If you’re interested in watching it, here you go:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwUZrVZs1EQ&list=PLy0sOa5_nRO6XR-3Axmx4J6SbgI4SSKYI