Fake Flippers

Fake flippers is a glitch that makes it possible to swim in deep water without having the flippers in Link's inventory.

The speedrun community categorizes it as a minor glitch, and its function is exclusive to the Japanese 1.0 version of the game.

Technical Details

When Link jumps into deep water, the game spawns a "splash" ancilla. At the end of the splash's animation, the game will check to see if Link has the flippers in his inventory. If he doesn't, the game will kick him back out to where he jumped in from, and if he does, it will continue allowing him to swim. But what if there were ways to interrupt the splash animation or prevent it from happening entirely? In that case, the game won't end up checking for flippers, and Link will be able to continue swimming.

Using a Screen Transition

If Link jumps into deep water near the edge of a screen transition and then takes the transition after landing in the water, the splash ancillae won't reach its check for flippers. This will allow Link to swim.

If Link is jumping into the water and taking a transition to his right, Link will need to jump in the water while being 1 pixel from the screen transition. If the transition is to his left, Link can be either 1 or 2 pixels from the screen transition.

Applications

• Hylia fake flippers to the northwest pond—an important application used in many NMG categories
• Castle moat fake flippers to Smith's house—a component of some major glitch routes

Splash Delete

Infinite Scroll

If Link is fake flipper swimming and is damaged by an enemy, the game will spawn another splash effect, and you'll be unlikely to have an available setup for avoiding the game's flipper check. This will result in one of two things:

1. If Link jumped into deep water on the screen he's currently on, he'll be kicked out of the deep water and sent back to the position he jumped from.
2. If Link jumped into deep water on a different screen from the one he's currently on, the game still tries to send him back to the position he jumped from, but there's a problem: that position doesn't exist on the current screen. This results in a situation where the player can't move without triggering an infinite scroll glitch. This is effectively a hard lock.

This can be a common pain point in NMG speedruns with the Hylia fake flippers. Link jumps into water on the Lake Hylia screen, but he may take damage from the zora near the whirlpool on the Hylia waterfall screen. If he's damaged by that zora, the run will be lost as there's no way to escape besides using a save and quit, which is banned in most NMG categories.