There is a second Temple of Time under the Temple of Time!

When you first entered the Temple of Time, you probably noticed the reflective, shiny, new floor that Grezzo added. Then you probably noticed something else. Link isn't reflected in it. Now why would that be? I figured out the answer while trying to TSC in the Temple of Time today.

The reflective surface isn't actually reflective like the water in the Dark Link room. There floor is actually semi-transparent, which allows the player to see that there is, indeed, a mirrored Temple of Time below the walkable one that Link can normally access.

So... naturally, my first impulse was to figure out a way to reach it. I haven't had any luck with TSC. In fact, I can't seem to find a single angle that's actually TSCable in the Temple of Time, so if anybody knows of one, I'd like to hear about it. I've heard that somebody was almost able to do a DoT Skip with TSC, also, so there must be at least one spot were you can do it.

There's indeed a mirrored ToT underneath, by rolling in front of the pedestal with the three gems and interupting the roll by pressing "View", you can see through the wall and see the mirrored ToT, however I highly doubt there's collision data down there so getting here would be pointless IMO.
There's also no DoT underneath.

Uhm.
The reason it is there is because of the floors "reflection".
The floor is half transperant so that you get the illusion of reflection when you look at the floor.
This is why everything except for Link is reflected, and that is because the mirrrored one below isnt complete, it is just parts of the temple.
I am 100% sure there isnt any collision for it.
That would just be dumb and isnt required whatsoever.
We shouldnt be able to get there either, it is not like the gravity turns around when we are below ;)

You can get a clear view of it by walking into a 90degree corner that points towards you, and then use the camera view before it pulls you out.
Links head will be inside the wall, and you can see through it so that about half the screen can see below.
This trick is also used to hookshot through some walls, you just stand inside of a corner.

I thought it was quite obvious :)

Yeah, I noticed this the first time I got there by just rolling around. Pretty strange method of having a reflection, though...

LakesideLaboratory wrote

Yeah, I noticed this the first time I got there by just rolling around. Pretty strange method of having a reflection, though...

It is an easy and fast method to create reflection.
Keep in mind that the game is based on an engine from back when the N64 came out.
Adding good quality reflection and stuff into the engine would probably take longer than just mirroring a model and remove uneccessary parts from it.

I never paid attention to the floor.
I didn't even notice the reflection.
But, indeed, putting in a mirrored model is much easier to implement and less processor-costly than using an actual reflection algorithm. (And a pretty cool trick to do from a game-making standpoint.)
Also, I bet the reflection in the Dark Link room is probably a similar trick. (Except they also put reflected models of Link and Dark Link below.)

Anyone play Paper Mario? Remember the room with the mirrors? They did the same thing there, except as a twist, it turned out they were actually just glass windows, and Mario's reflection was an enemy imitating him.