Fishman

A Fishman as seen in The Wind Waker.
Fishman
Type	Fish
Debut	The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

The Fishman is a type of talking fish that is featured in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.

Information

The Fishmen are described as being "honorable, dutiful and surly". They resemble a type of catfish, but with more emotive faces in addition to being sentient and capable of human speech. There is one in each sector of the Great Sea, which makes a total of forty-nine within The Wind Waker. Each Fishman of them has information about the local islands such as gossip and some secrets, but their information is sometimes inaccurate. They are cartographers of sort and always carry a paintbrush in their mouths.

During "The Wind Waker", they agreed to help Link as a way to repay the King of Red Lions for some unspecified past favor. As long as Link threw out some All-Purpose Bait near a Fishman, it would swim up and offer him help. This came in the form of filling in the matching spot on Link's Sea Chart with a picture of the area and offering advice or rumors that they had heard before. After Link gets the bow, they ask for a little help in some acupuncture, as they suffer from stiff necks. The Fishman would pay Link ten rupees for each time Link managed to fire an arrow into him and claim that living in the sea has made them tough enough to not be hurt by the arrows.

Other Appearances

Video Games

• In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the Fishman appeared as a Novice Support Spirit, represented by its art from The Wind Waker. Its Support effect was to raise the player fighter's resistance to water and ice attacks. When fought in a Spirit battle, the Fishman possessed a Squirtle, and the battle's conditions included the player's buoyancy being reduced and the controls for left and right sometimes switching.

Trivia

• The presence of the Fishmen creates a contradiction with Ganondorf's statement near the end of the game that the Great Sea contains no fish. It is possible that this is just referring to normal fish, and that the Fishman's intelligence disqualifies it from that classification. Notably, the Fishman's figurine describes their birthplace as the Great Sea.
• They have a habit of referring to Link as a "small fry", or more commonly as just "fry".
• A relationship between a Fishman and human is implied at some point in the game. The Fishman from Rock-Spire Island talks about how he used to gaze at the lighthouse with 'dear Gillian'. This is complemented by Gillian's figurine description, which says that she used to have a boyfriend but this information is kept "top secret".