Tingle's effeminate mannerisms have caused many fans to assume the character is supposed to be gay, and so much so that in 2006, GayGamer named Tingle as gaming's #1 "gayest character". The Legend of Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma would say to Kotaku in 2015: "He's not gay. He's just an odd person." The Tingle spin-off games very overtly portray Tingle as a heterosexual man, with Ripened Tingle's Balloon Trip of Love being a combination of a dating simulator and point-and-click adventure where every date is female, while in Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland, part of Tingle's motivation is that he wants to be with beautiful women.