I always knew that Shigeru Miyamoto, the video game luminary behind Mario and Zelda, drew his inspiration from unusual sources. No, not giant mushrooms – Shigs is famous for turning banal facets of his everyday life into some of the most fantastical experiences in gaming. Mario was the name of his landlord, Pikmin came from working in his garden and Zelda was inspired by his childhood trips to rural Japan.

Zelda fans like myself, however, owe credit to an even less-predictable source of inspiration.

It turns out the TV drama “Twin Peaks” played a small but important role in Zelda’s development as Miyamoto guided the series to its golden age in the midst of the Clinton years. According to interviews leading up to E3 and the 25th anniversary of the series, Miyamoto made David Lynch’s antiquated serial drama such a water-cooler topic at the office that he and longtime series creators Takashi Tezuka and Eiji Aonuma could hardly help its influence from creeping into their games.

Even by Shiggy’s standards, that revelation warrants a few head scratches or raised eyebrows. I’ve seen a few reruns of “Twin Peaks” myself, and I’m not sure how schoolyard murders, campy humor and creepy one-armed dudes translate into the bright and quirky land of Hyrule.

But if we zoom out a bit – and take these gentlemen’s words at face value – there’s a reasonable justification, both vague and specific, for “Twin Peaks” having a rightful place in the Zelda-verse.

“At the time [we made Link’s Awakening], ‘Twin Peaks’ was rather popular,” Tezuka explained at a recent “Iwata Asks” discussion. “The drama was all about a small number of characters in a small town…I wanted to make something that, while it would be small enough in scope to easily understand, it would have deep and distinctive characteristics.”

“I thought, ‘You really want to make Zelda like that?!'” Aonuma said in response. “Now the mystery is solved (laughs). When I was reading Tanabe-san’s comments in the strategy guide, I saw, ‘Tezuka-san suggested we make all the characters suspicious types like in the then-popular “Twin Peaks.”’”

If you’ve played Link’s Awakening, you’ll know it as a major turning point for the series that took Link out of Hyrule, ditched Ganon and the Triforce, and broke the fourth wall whenever it could. Characters like Marin and the shopkeeper aren’t what they seem, and the secrets hinted at by the Owl and the Ocarina keep players guessing at what mysteries may be lurking just under the surface. The isolated, quirky setting of Koholint Island suspends the player’s disbelief; this isn’t Hyrule, anything could happen here. The main draw of Link’s Awakening – and the legacy that’s earned it a couple remakes and re-releases – isn’t so different from the sense of wonder that kept viewers coming back for the next episode of “Twin Peaks.”

But that’s an exceptional example, isn’t it? Link’s Awakening is remembered fondly, but it falls outside what many gamers consider the “core” of the Zelda series. Surely the anchors of the entire franchise – games like “Ocarina of Time” – are immune to such outlandish influences.

Nope.

It took a bit of a paradigm shift, but I’m actually surprised at how natural it feels to view Ocarina through this new lens. Most of its presentation is basic, and its compelling material comes more from the player’s imagination than the game itself. Mysterious characters fit right in with that dynamic, and their low-res textures and voiceless dialogue only add to the player’s personal concept of who they are.

And ultimately, the series is better for it. We think of Zelda as an epic experience, but in so many ways it’s really not – it’s a simple story with classic setup. It’s not the clash of nations or Patrick Stewart voiceovers that bring us back again and again, but our own sense of wonder and imagination. A game like Zelda gives us just enough backstory to send our childish dreams downstream and just enough freedom to flesh them out with eddies of our own design, emergent byproducts of an interactive medium that feel epic for their context and intimate for their detail.

Given how much we cling to great games as beacons of true originality, it’s funny to see some of the biggest names in the industry talk candidly about their inspirations from obscure or unremarkable parts of everyday life. But if you’re willing to accept that games, like anything else, are part of a back-and-forth exchange of creative ideas, it makes the development process itself that much more inspiring: men like Miyamoto, of course, have no communion with gaming gods that spark billion-dollar ideas into their minds. They’re not crazy people, drug addicts or geniuses. They’re normal people like you and me, and the fact that they can deftly translate a family vacation or a day in the garden into a moving, engaging experience is damned impressive.