Dead Hand fucked me up in 1998. I don't think I've been quite right since.

To be fair, this is using an HD Texture mod and a higher render resolution, which increases the "scare" factor. The game didn't quite look like this originally. It lacked a lot of detail and was slightly blurrier.

Kinda like how people in the past talked about how realistic graphics looked, but then comparing them to today's graphics advancements makes that seem rather silly. Or how "realistic" DOOMs violence was, compared to the violence in DOOM 2016.

Also thiss is a screenshot from Ocarina of Time, not Majora's Mask.

This monstrosity and the gibdo from OoT will forever haunt my nightmares.

To piggyback on your point, I also think this came out when congress was balls deep fighting the music industry because those devil musicians like Eminem, Korn, Limp Bisquick were ruining the youth.

Not sure about ESRB, but for Europe, PEGI has revised their ratings since then.

3D Zeldas used to be rated 7, but nowadays they're 12. Including remakes of old games. OoT and MM 3D had their rating raised.

Being 3D automatically bumps ratings up, even Mario Odyssey and 3D World got a 7 vs Wonder's 3.