Sonic.exe / Fridge

Fridge Brilliance:

Tom has a poor understanding of what glitches do. Considering that he has never played a glitchy game before, it makes some sense.
- ...which launches it back into Fridge Logic territory when you realize that even if he didn't understand what glitches did he obviously knew what glitches were, and that what was going on wouldn't be the effect of any sort of glitch.
- Since Tom has a poor understanding of what glitches do, it's quite possible that he's Hopeless with Tech, which would explain all of his dumb moments with technology.
This was most likely unintentional, but remember that an exe file is short for an EXECUTABLE file. To execute something can also mean to kill. Now, remind me what Sonic.exe does again.
The way X kills everyone. Tails has always been able to keep up with Sonic, so fittingly X kills him after forcing him to try running away from him(and, inevitably, failing), likely to convince the poor fox that he was only ever holding Sonic back. Knuckles was always able to give Sonic a proper fight, so X makes him try to fight him and then kills him once he finally gives up(and in the game's remake, he kills him with brute force to show Knuckles was way out of his depth). And Eggman and Sonic are mortal enemies, so X doesn't waste any time with how he deals with him; he just kills him from the word go after tracking him down, proving that Eggman only lived for as long as Sonic allowed him to.

"Round 2" notes that the victims have been put in a comatose state when X got them, even outright describing them as not dead, but left in a Persistent Vegetative State, e.g. still alive. Well, at least until they were finally done in by the live autopsy, and no one bothered to call the doctors out on that!
- Even worse, this means Derek's sister was buried alive after she was left in a vegetative state.
Tom's lack of concern about Kyle compared to his reactions to the Sonic characters getting murdered is disconcerting, to say the least.
Consider the You Bastard! element of "Anti-Sonic.dll" wherein the real ones to blame are anyone who makes fanart, fanfiction, or commentaries about Sonic.exe, thus spreading its influence. That includes these very TV Trope pages.

How did Kyle even get the chance to write a message and mail off the disc before X got him? For that matter, what was stopping him from destroying the disc himself?
- Fridge Horror: A bit of a stretch, but could it be that it was actually X that sent the message and game using Kyle as a guise?
  - Maybe, if this spinoff is any indication.
  - If it was Sonic who sent it, then why did he send it with explicit instructions to not play the game?
  - Reverse Psychology
If Tom knew that Kyle was missing for a long time, why did he do the one thing that Kyle said not to do?
Tom noted the title screen change well enough to describe it in detail, so why the frick didn't he just shut it off and destroy the disc?
- Deer in the Headlights syndrome? Too scared to think of any good ideas.
Regarding the adaptation of the original creepypasta. Why would a haunted version of a Sega Genesis game have assets stolen from a SNES game (Kefka's laugh, Giygas' theme, etc.)?
- The official remaster does rectify this by introducing completely new assets in place of the ones taken from other sources, thankfully.
Considering Tom says he hasn't played "glitchy or hacked games" prior to playing Sonic.exe, does that mean he completely missed out on the second Audience-Alienating Era the Sonic franchise had from 2005 to 2007 and ignores the large ROM hacking scene of the Genesis games?