About

Cucuí Ganon is an exploitable meme taken from TerminalMontage's Something About Zelda web series. The meme involves Ganondorf dancing to various Latin songs, such as "Suavemente."

Origin

"Cucuí Ganon," as he would come to be dubbed, first appeared at the end of TerminalMontage's video titled "Something About Zelda Ocarina of Time: The 3 Spiritual Stones"^[1], which was posted to YouTube on June 15th, 2020. In the video, Link draws the Master Sword from the Pedestal of Time and vanishes. Afterward, Ganondorf enters the Temple of Time and dances to the opening theme to Ronaldinho Soccer 64 (shown below, left). In his next video, titled Something About Zelda Ocarina of Time: The FOREST TEMPLE^[2], posted on October 1st, 2021, adult Link fights Phantom Ganon. During the fight, Ganon sings and dances to a cover of Elvis Crespo's "Suavemente" that uses MIDI music and Loquendo for the song's lyrics (shown below, right). The movement appears to be rotoscoped from Crespo's video for "Suavemente."

A full music video of Ganon singing and dancing to Elvis Crespo's cover of Suavemente was posted to YouTube^[3] by TerminalMontage on October 2nd, 2021, which received over 3 million views before it was copyright claimed, audio muted, and later unlisted (reupload shown below, left)^[4]. A version that uses the actual Elvis Crespo cover of Suavemente was reuploaded to YouTube^[5] by Just Dreemurr on October 14th, 2021, which received over 511,000 views in over one year (shown below, right).

Spread

Over the following years, the clip of "Cucui Ganon" dancing inspired multiple videos featuring the character dancing in various contexts. On October 3rd, 2021, YouTuber jay4gamers1 posted a gameplay montage of Ganondorf in Super Smash Brothers Ultimate set to the video's music, gaining over 381,000 views in two years (shown below).

In May of 2023, Splatoon ran a Legend of Zelda-inspired Splatfest, where each team represented a corner of the Triforce. On May 7th, 2023, Twitter user @It_Be_Lancifer posted a video of Ganondorf dancing to celebrate the "Power" team's victory, as "Power" represents Ganon's side of the Triforce. The tweet gained over 160 retweets and 500 likes in two weeks (shown below).

Crappy edit celebrating the winning team.#Splatoon3 #Splatfest #Zelda #TeamPower https://t.co/122NHiY9A3 pic.twitter.com/eQchGyyb2Y

— Lancifer on funny Bird-app (@It_Be_Lancifer) May 8, 2023

On May 3rd, 2023, Terminal Montage uploaded a YouTube Short featuring Cucui Ganon, gaining over 2.8 million views in three weeks (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References