Ganon vs Ganondorf explained - who's who ahead of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

gamesradar.com:

The latest trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom promised the return of Ganondorf - albeit in a sexier form than ever before. But with so many new Zelda fans coming in after Breath of the Wild, you might not know who Ganondorf is, or how he relates to Ganon, Calamity form or otherwise. For you, here's a quick explainer on what you need to know.

If you're new to Zelda lore, you must remember this before you go any deeper: very little of it truly fits together. Nintendo takes a gameplay-first approach to its games, and it's more than happy to contradict established details to justify a new setting or character for the latest release. It's better to think of the Zelda series as more of a collection of legends and fairy tales than a cohesive modern franchise story in the vein of, say, Star Wars or Marvel - but honestly, that might be why Zelda lore enthusiasts have so much fun trying to fit all the disparate shards of story together.

With all that being said, Ganon is one of the elements of the Zelda series that has consistently recurred since the very start. In the original 1987 NES game, he appeared as a piglike monster. In the manual for 1993's Link to the Past, we learned that he was once a man called Ganondorf Dragmire, king of a band of thieves.

In Ocarina of Time, we learned that Ganondorf was the king of the Gerudo - the one male child born every century to the otherwise all-female Gerudo race. During the events of the game, Ganondorf gets ahold of the Triforce of Power, and uses it to conquer Hyrule. In the final battle, he uses the Triforce to transform into the demon beast Ganon before he's defeated by Link and sealed away.

So Ganon and Ganondorf are the same entity. Ganon is the piglike monster,