"My name is Chris Houlihan. This is my top secret room. Keep it between us, OK?" — Chris Houlihan

Chris Houlihan is a character from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. In the original Super Nintendo version of the game, an error condition may occur while loading, that sends Link to a Top Secret Room owned by Chris Houlihan. Here, Chris Houlihan telepathically communicates with the hero, informing him that the room belongs to him. The room itself contains 225 Rupees for Link to collect, with a cave-like appearance.

Origin

In the early 1990s, an individual named Chris Houlihan won a contest held by Nintendo Power, in which the winner would be allowed to have his name appear in the game if they snapped a photograph of a rare and elusive Final Fantasy boss named Warmech. The winner was announced to have been Chris Houlihan; however, the game his name would subsequently appear in was not announced at the time. Because of the contest, the North American version of A Link to the Past contained Chris as a character and owner of the aforementioned secret room. In all later ports of the game, any mention of Chris Houlihan is removed, but his secret room remains, only with the room labeled "Top Secret Room". Why Chris' name in particular was removed, and why the room still remains in future ports is unknown, with speculators believing it would be simpler to re-write the text of the room, rather than scrap its entirety.