Harassing a chicken will soon send an endless flock of angry birds attacking Link. The only escape is to get out that area fast, if the player is lucky. While this game requires a lot of strikes in order to do so, later games reduced it to three strikes minimum to call for chickens to attack Link.
The theme from Kakariko Village is inspired by the music from O Serviço de Entregas da Kiki (1989) directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli.
The subtitle of the Japanese version was Triforce of the Gods. However, Nintendo of America had very stringent policies towards religious themes at the time, and thus it was changed. Furthermore, Agahnim was a priest in the Japanese version, but a wizard in the English version; the 'Megami' (Godess) became the Fat Fairy, the Church became the Sanctuary, and the Seven Priests became Seven Wise Men (Sages in the GameBoy Advanced port). Lastly, while the Hylian language was based on Egyptian symbols in the Japanese version, these were replaced by random symbols for the English version. Nintendo has changed its policy since, and references to deities have become widespread in the series.
First Zelda game in which an Ocarina appears (although it it still called the Flute. The name "Ocarina" didn't enter the Zelda franchise until Link's Awakening.)
The Chris Houlihan room is a secret room in A Link to the Past. Chris Houlihan was an avid reader of and subscriber to Nintendo Power magazine. Around the early 1990s, Nintendo Power held a contest where the winner would be included in a secret room in this game, and Chris Houlihan won the contest. Nintendo made it extremely difficult to find, and it wasn't discovered for a long time; some believe the room only appears in response to detection of software errors. The Chris Houlihan room has a message on a tile on the wall, and 45 blue rupees (225 rupees total). The Chris Houlihan tile was removed in the Game Boy Advance version of the game, and the room was renamed the Top Secret Room. However, the Top Secret Room is not known to be accessible outside of emulation. There are a number of known ways to reach the room through ordinary play. The Pegaus Boots are the only item required for all of them. One popular way is this:
- Load a game, and start the game in the Sanctuary. Immediately run out of the building, and keep running south until you're out of the Sanctuary's garden. Run west and turn south on the next screen as soon as you can. Navigate through the heavily-wooded area and head east. Once you're at Hyrule Castle, run south and then east, past the front of the castle gates. When you approach a wall, head north, and run into the bush covering the hole leading down to the dungeon, the one you entered at the beginning of the game. With luck, you will fall into the Chris Houlihan room instead of the dungeon.