>>5620
>>5622
>>5647
He turns into a tree, which is what they later say happens if you get lost in the Lost Woods. Skull Kid seems like he might be inspired by that idea. Plus of course Kokiri literally evolve into tree people by Wind Waker. And Skull Kid is tied up with the Kokiri since they're tied up with the Lost Woods. The Flute Boy probably evolved into both ideas.
The area where Flute Boy is found, The Haunted Grove, is in the same location that the Lost Woods are in in Zelda I. Link to the Past is supposed to be the same location in general, just in the distant past. The Haunted Grove became the Lost Woods, and Kakariko Village became a graveyard. Many key locations, like Zora's Waterfall, and of course Death Mountain and Spectacle Rock, stay in the same locations throughout every game, but Kakariko Village keeps dying out and being rebuilt somewhere else (in Twilight Princess you can even find an old Kakariko Village in the location where it was in Ocarina of Time), and the Lost Woods just moves around a lot, but the location that is the Lost Woods in one game is usually a forest of some sort in another game. The Lost Woods from Link to the Past is left as something like the rotting remains of a forest in Zelda I.
In Japanese, the location where that character is found is called Dobutso no Mori, or in English, Animal Forest, which is the Japanese name for the later series Animal Crossing. Nintendo butchers a lot of neat things like this in localization. Another example is how in Mario World, we got "The Forest of Illusion," but in Japanese it has the same name as the Lost Woods (which is sort of an okay translation, but was also translated as "Forest of Maze" in the original game, for a more literal but also more Engrish translation). Actually, maybe Zelda's location should have been called the Forest of Illusion the whole time. I kind of think that translation sounds just fine, and seems a bit closer to the original Japanese.
Also Manhandla is a Pakkun, AKA a Piranha Plant from Mario. Later enemies in the series are also in manuals and enemy bios said to be Pakkun.