Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland contains a 100% completion bonus cutscene where Tingle rescues Pinkle, and Spoiler:she gives him an unspecified reward, portrayed as Tingle's balloon covering the two of them while Pinkle's sultry theme and voice clips of Tingle fantastically grunting are played - seemingly implying oral sex. After this point, Pinkle transforms into a fairy, and leaves a hologram of her human form in Tingle's house. If Tingle rematches the final boss Spoiler:Uncle Rupee, he will dress in pink and be able to see the true ending.

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.