Bizarre, unexpected connections are woven throughout The Legend of Zelda. It's a franchise with dense lore, a story which has only gotten denser as its timeline grows more complicated, and has begun to stretch hundreds of thousands of years. Skyward Sword HD lies at the very beginning of the Zelda timeline and even precedes Hyrule's founding. It serves as the origin story for Hyrule and the curse which lays over the land. So, whether surprising or not, the heaster of the Knight Academy has some strange connections to a Sage in Ocarina of Time.
Gaepora is Zelda's father and the heaster of Skyloft's Knight Academy, where Link and Zelda both study. He ends up being of immense help to Link as the game's action progresses, and turns out to have a wide knowledge of Skyloft's legends. With his helpful guidance on Link's journey, Gaepora plays a similar role to Kaepora Gaebora, the giant owl from Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, and Four Swords Adventures.
Kaepora Gaebora's own story is complicated, because he's Rauru, the Sage of Light, in an alternate form. Rauru is the one who constructs the Temple of Time, in order to protect the Triforce with the Temple of Light within. He builds the Temple of Time on top of the ruins of the Sealed Temple, from Skyward Sword, which had been destroyed in a brutal, ongoing war. Rauru remains in the Temple of Light to safeguard the Triforce, and only leaves to watch over Link in his owl form.
Why Rauru Might Be an Incarnation of Gaepora
The physical resemblance between Gaepora and Rauru, and Gaepora and Kaepora Gaebora in turn, is difficult to miss. In particular, Gaepora's and Kaepora Garbora's eyebrows look very similar, and also like Rauru's mustache flipped upside down. Gaepora's nose, too, is noticeably beaklike. His laugh is even, "Hoo hoo hoo!," which openly invites the parallel to Ocarina of Time's owl. The trio's names, too, share an obvious resemblance, but their similarity means even deeper if one looks at the Japanese. The only difference between the words "Gaepora" (ゲポラ), "Kaepora" (ケポラ), and "Gaebora" (ゲボラ) is the presence or absence of a tenten. A tenten is a marking next to a hiragana or katakana character, which changes its sound if present. In this case, the tenten changes "kae" to "gae," or "po" to "bo."
Rauru is likely the reincarnation of Gaepora, according to this evidence. The Legend of Zelda has raised the question of reincarnation elsewhere, especially when it comes to cosmically important people. In Skyward Sword, for example, [spoiler] Zelda is revealed to be a reincarnation of the goddess Hylia. So Ocarina of Time's creepy owl could certainly be the reincarnation of Skyward Sword's Sage-like heaster.
