The game began life as DLC for the original The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. However, producer Eiji Aonuma elected to make it a full-fledged sequel, because there were too many ideas the team wanted to include:

When The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom launched, a player who acquired the game early posted an image of them playing it on Twitter and tagged multiple accounts associated with Nintendo to provoke them. Former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime responded to this with a quote from the movie Taken:


While the gaming press and fans thought this was humorous, it also received backlash from people who had grown to dislike Fils-Amie (particularly because of comments he made about the blockchain and the police force, and allegations of Nintendo's corporate culture during his tenure) because he directly quote-retweeted the post to increase its reach and then reposted a screenshot of it after it was deleted without censoring the player's username to prevent potential harassment. On top of that, the quote when seen in its original context in Taken was part of a death threat, which caused the backlash to intensify when it was discovered that the user in question was 16 years old at the time.

On September 8, 2022, the United Kingdom's Queen Elizabeth II died, starting a national mourning period of ten days. In that time, rumors began to circulate that Nintendo had postponed a planned Nintendo Direct in response to the news. On September 12, the Direct was formally revealed to air worldwide the next day, although it was not livestreamed in the UK. Instead, it was published as an on-demand video on Nintendo UK's YouTube channel at a later time. This Direct featured the full title reveal for the then-untitled "Sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild", revealing the game's subtitle to be "Tears of the Kingdom". This led to even more speculation that the poor timing of this subtitle being the name of one of Nintendo's most anticipated games at the time coinciding with the Queen's death was what resulted in the Direct being delayed, rather than doing so purely out of respect. It wouldn't be until October 3 that Nintendo UK began their own promotion of the game, long after the mourning period ended.