March 3rd brings a rare, striking, and rather ominous spectacle to the nighttime sky in the form of a blood moon, a total lunar eclipse that occurs when Earth passes directly between the Sun and the Moon. For many cultures throughout history, blood moons have served as an omen, often an ominous one.
For fans of The Legend of Zelda, they can also represent a grim portent, but also an opportunity. The real blood moon and its video game counterparts share striking imagery and emotional power. But scientifically, and existentially, they’re worlds apart.
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The science of the blood moon
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When Earth passes between the Sun and the Moon during totality, it entirely blocks direct sunlight from reaching the lunar surface. Rather than disappearing from view, the natural satellite instead turns a dramatic, rusty red hue. This blood moon phenomenon occurs as a result of the light-filtering qualities of Earth’s atmosphere.
Shorter blue wavelengths of sunlight are scattered away — in much the same way Rayleigh scattering turns the sky red at sunset — while longer orange and red wavelengths pass more easily, only to get bent, or refracted onto the moon’s disk, turning it a muted, bloody crimson.
It’s the equivalent of every sunrise and sunset on Earth being projected onto the moon, but the resulting shade depends on atmospheric conditions. Dust, volcanic ash, or other particulates in the atmosphere can result in a deeper red, while clear skies yield a lighter amber color.
Total lunar eclipses happen roughly once every one to two years, and despite the mythos that’s accumulated around them, they are remarkably predictable (astronomers can forecast them centuries in advance). And the good news is that, unlike solar eclipses, they can be viewed with the naked eye without risk.
The real-world mythology of the blood moon
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Unsurprisingly, given a blood moon’s ominous hue, a vast codex of mythology and legend has accumulated around them from various cultures throughout history. Ancient civilizations across Mesopotamia, China, Mesoamerica, and Europe often interpreted eclipses as cosmic warnings. In some traditions, a celestial beast was believed to be devouring the Moon.
In ancient China, the eclipse was interpreted as a cosmic dragon or dog attempting to swallow the moon whole. During an eclipse, people would bang drums, shoot arrows, or create loud noises to scare the dragon away, as a red moon was seen as a sign of impending misfortune or celestial imbalance.
For others, a red Moon signaled impending war, famine, or the death of a ruler. Ancient Sumerians, for instance, believed that an eclipse was the result of demons attacking or eating the moon, and feared it foretold the death or downfall of a king. To protect their sovereign, priests would install a substitute king or perform ceremonies to intercept the curse.
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The Christian Bible and biblical texts also reference red or bloody moons in ominous tones. The Book of Joel in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, for instance, includes the following passage (from Joel 2:30–31):
“The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes.”
Joel returns in the New Testament with further bloody moon imagery, as quoted by Peter in Acts of the Apostles 2:19–20:
“The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.”As you’d expect, the Book of Revelation also takes a big swing, probably the most dramatic in the Bible itself, in 6:12:
“The sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood.”
Psychologically, this reaction is understandable. The Moon is one of the most stable features of the night sky. When it changes dramatically, particularly when it shifts to mimic the color of blood, it disrupts that sense of permanence. Before scientific explanations, that kind of radical change demanded interpretation.
The blood moon in Hyrule
Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – Blood Moon Cutscene – YouTube
Nintendo takes that ancient sense of foreboding and weaponizes it for gameplay.
The blood moon appears in both of The Legend of Zelda games on Nintendo Switch: Breath of the Wild and its sequel, Tears of the Kingdom. On the surface, it’s a reflection of the ominous tone of real-world mythology surrounding a total lunar eclipse; the sky turns a foreboding red, an unnatural light blanketing the terrain, imparting the sense that something is terribly wrong.
When the blood moon rises, so do fallen enemies. The event respawns all slain enemies in Hyrule, and it also regenerates all of the weapons and items (at least those outside of chests) that have been destroyed or picked up by the player.
Blood Moons also provide a handy boon for enterprising players: between 11:30 PM and 12:15 AM on the night of a blood moon, any cooking you do is guaranteed to be a “Critical Cook.” Dishes will receive a helpful upgrade, like additional healing power or a boost to the duration of their stat buffs.
(Image credit: Nintendo)
Related: Could the floating islands in ‘The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’ exist?
Behind the scenes, blood moons are a helpful tool for developers to prevent memory overload. Resetting the world ensures that the environment doesn’t become too cluttered and complex to fit in the Switch’s relatively limited system memory, preventing crashes.
Blood moons will normally occur on a regular schedule, once every 168 minutes and 15 seconds of real-world gameplay, though certain player actions can slightly delay them. However, if the game detects a memory overload, it will trigger a “panic Blood Moon,” which can happen at any time of day or night (not just at midnight, like standard Blood Moons). They’ll often be triggered if a player kills an enormous number of enemies in a short time, or overloads the screen with complex physics like hundreds of items or explosions.
In Tears of the Kingdom, you can force a panic blood moon by using a multi-shot bow to fire lots of Opal or Topaz arrows at a breakable rock wall in bullet-time. The resultant explosion of particle effects will overwhelm the game engine and immediately trigger a blood moon.
The falling moon of Majora’s Mask
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While not a blood moon, Majora’s Mask also taps into a rich vein of lunar paranoia by way of its grinning apocalypse moon. Everything the player does is on a timer, as the orbit of this grotesque moon decays and it comes hurtling towards the planet’s surface. Every three days, it collides with the planet, annihilating it and resetting the timeline.
There is no astronomical realism here. The Moon’s orbit would never decay so neatly, nor would tidal forces wait until impact to cause massive devastation. In reality, a moon-sized body approaching that closely would trigger catastrophic gravitational effects long before collision.
But realism is beside the point. The falling Moon in Majora’s Mask represents inevitability and dread. It is a visual countdown timer, a cosmic guillotine suspended in the heavens. Where real eclipses inspired ancient anxiety because they disrupted normalcy, this fictional Moon weaponizes disruption as the game’s central emotional driver.
Shared themes: why a crimson moon unsettles us
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Despite obvious differences between the fictional moons that hang above Hyrule and the real world’s red moons, there are a number of revealing parallels.
Both phenomena act on humanity’s instinctive reaction to celestial phenomena. We often don’t recognize how connected to, and reliant on, the spheres that hang in our skies we are until something about them changes, or goes wrong. Across cultures and eras, the Moon has symbolized constancy, the comforting cycle of tides, months, fertility, and agriculture. When it turns red, that constancy appears threatened.
Whether consciously or intuitively, the developers at Nintendo understand this instinct. When the sky turns red, and the moon is altered, there’s an immediate sense of peril and unease, even though the associated game mechanics aren’t actually that dangerous for the characters (unless you happen to be standing next to a Hinox you just killed). As with a real lunar eclipse, which really only results in some shifting shadows or some mild upset in animals, the sensation of a blood moon is often more intense in Hyrule than the consequences.
Gazing skyward without fear
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The March 3rd blood moon offers an opportunity to appreciate both astronomy and storytelling.
In the real sky, you are witnessing Earth’s atmosphere acting as a lens, bending sunlight across space. It’s a vivid spectacle of orbital mechanics in motion. In gaming, red moons serve different purposes: systemic reset, narrative tension, and emotional dread. They borrow from ancient fears and amplify them for dramatic effect.
One reminds us of the reliability of celestial physics. The other reminds us how easily that reliability can be subverted in fiction. When the Moon turns red on Tuesday, March 3rd, you can admire the science, and perhaps feel a flicker of the same awe that inspired myths, prophecies, and some of gaming’s most unforgettable skies.
Just don’t expect monsters to respawn.