Fridge / Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022)

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Fridge Brilliance

• It makes sense Robotnik was so confident in his beacon attracting someone to the Mushroom Planet: he basically recreated the EMP that made the government send him to Green Hills in the first place.
• Robotnik's "upgraded" self comes across as creepily out of character ("I'm more than okay...") before he reveals he's still the same eccentric villain he was before (as evidenced when he played around with his new synthesized voice). This could be seen as a set up for later when Super Sonic comes across as being not the Sonic we know before a fake-out reveals he's still the affable, go-lucky hedgehog the audience knows.
  • Additionally, he states he can now smell the electrical inputs of people's brains and later claims to be "All-seeing", so he probably just needed a minute to adjust to his new Super-Senses.
• Shadow existing in this continuity explains a lot about the world Sonic is living in:
  • Why did Commander Walters get Robotnik, of all people, to catch Sonic? He knows what kind of power Sonic has firsthand from his own experience with the ultimate lifeform.
  • This also explains why in the first movie Robotnik had such a big reaction to first meeting Sonic. Seeing him confirmed to himself the existence of Shadow until he got sidetracked after learning about the Master Emerald.
• Sonic using punching abilities similar to Knuckles may seem a bit odd, but in the games, many Sonic characters are able to use most of Sonic's trademark abilities, such as his spin attack and boost.
  • Also, let's talk about Sonic and Knuckles' differences in power. Knuckles has spent plenty of time focusing on training his strength, so while he can move pretty fast, he can't turn corners very well, and his power is more focused in his punches. Sonic, on the other hand, doesn't have any training in close combat aside from learning to use his Spin Dash offensively in a very dire situation with Robotnik, and he spent pretty much his entire childhood running to avoid attention, so his powers are more focused on speed and evasion. This easily explains how, while Sonic's combat abilities heavily surpass anything Robotnik can make, he's still easily outmatched by Knuckles, who's trained his powers far longer than Sonic has.
  • Sonic and Knuckles's first fight in the Wachowski home and their rematch in the temple shows the difference in their respective powers and fighting styles quite well. In the first fight, Sonic rushes head on at Knuckles who is a much more direct fighter and the battle takes place in a relatively closed space. In the temple, Sonic has more freedom to move around, allowing him to take advantage of Knuckles's relative slowness.
• In the temple labyrinth, Robotnik's GPS tells him and Knuckles to turn left, but the path ahead turns right (and we pan away to see Sonic tumbling down an impromptu water slide before we see which way they go). Only after we see Knuckles break a wall to the chamber with the Master Emerald can we infer he did that to many other walls along the way.
• Robotnik being able to use the Master Emerald to make himself into a God may come off as strange, but it makes sense given the world it comes from.
  • On one hand, the echidna tribe wanted to use the power for their own ends to rule the universe and control those with the power to oppose theirs.
  • On the other hand, the owl tribe sealed the power away from the world and what was left of those that were powered up by it (as we see with Longclaw and the owl statue in the runes).
  • This is all balanced by Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, who are given extraordinary powers and use them to ether increase or decrease the ongoing conflict in their own ways.
• "Speed Life", the theme for the French dub of the movie, lifts the main chorus from Rockwell's Somebody's Watching Me. This may seem rather odd at first, but given that Michael Jackson provided guest vocals for the original song (and it's his portion specifically that's lifted), not unlike his contributions to the soundtrack of Sonic 3 & Knuckles, it can be considered a full circle tribute.
• Why does Sonic attempt to punch Robotnik instead of using his Spin Dash if he was planning on potentially killing him? Getting punched is Robotnik's Berserk Button.
• Rather than strictly adapting Sonic 2, or Sonic 2 and 3, the sequel covers everything clear to the end of the Genesis Era events, capping off with a Super Sonic vs Death Egg Robot fight for the Master Emerald akin to that of Doomsday Zone, albeit on terra firma rather than in space. This might seem that they're leaving out no potential for a third movie — but wrapping up the Genesis era plot clears the way for what the third movie is set to adapt: the Adventure Era, specifically Sonic Adventure 2.
• Sonic shows no signs of being weirded out by the fact that Tails has been watching over him since the giant power outage incident in the previous movie. Of course he doesn’t find this behaviour odd; he basically did the same to the people of Green Hills while having to hide himself from everyone, and can relate to feeling like an outcast as Tails did due to others disliking him for his twin tails.
• Maddie and Rachel manage to use the gadgets Tails made with extreme ease, which seems kind of weird — but Tails is not only a child, so designing easy-to-use gadgets for him or people like him (aka Sonic) is kind of a smart move, but he's also got several single-use gadgets to be used for utility when he needs them. Of course they're easy, find out the main purpose and they do it automatically.
• When Sonic goes Super from absorbing the Chaos Emeralds, he seems to be even more powerful than Super Robotnik was. For example, Robotnik had to physically build the Death Egg Robot from whatever metal he could find in the Green Hills area, while Super Sonic seemingly manifested his chili dogs from nothing at all. Why is it that Sonic is that much stronger compared to Robotnik in the end? Well, Sonic only went Super after his Dying Declaration of Love to his family. Think back to Tikal's prayer from Sonic Adventure, the one that Robotnik even partially quotes in the film when absorbing the Master Emerald. "Chaos is power. Power enriched by the heart."
  • Tikal's prayer goes, "The servers are the 7 Chaos. Chaos is power... Power enriched by the heart. The controller is the one that unifies the Chaos." In Sonic Adventure, Perfect Chaos came about from unifying the Chaos Emeralds, but with a heart consumed by rage, sorrow, and loneliness, and this corrupted the emeralds so their power could no longer be used. It was Sonic using the positive energy brought on by his friends and the citizens of Station Square that allowed him to enrich the emeralds and give them back their power. Likewise, in this movie, Sonic's Super Form is superior because it's drawing on something greater than what his enemy was using. Chaos was consumed by anger, and Sonic was enriched by friendship. Dr. Robotnik was consumed by his own greed and arrogance, whereas Sonic was enriched by the power of a family's love.
  • There's also the difference in who the Emeralds are powering up. Both Robotnik and the echidna in the flashback had great power, but neither had any special powers themselves, so they lost that power when they took one good hit. Sonic has his own powers and can take a similar hit without an extra powerup. The stronger the host, the stronger the power up.
• Of course Stone is so insistent on joining Robotnik in the final battle; the last time Robotnik went head-to-head with Sonic, he ended up disappearing for nearly a year with no sign of if he was still alive.
• Despite how Sonic getting his trademark running shoes was a significant development in the first movie, Tails shows up already wearing Earth-like sneakers and an Earth-like backpack on top of it, despite his own gadgets taking on a more unique appearance. If he is from the same home planet as Sonic and Knuckles, it seems that Tails wanted to emulate Sonic's look as best he could through these accessories, and either designed them himself or took a quick trip to Earth at some point to pick them up (legally or otherwise).
• Robotnik is still a complete dick, but he is a bit nicer to Stone this time around. Perhaps spending nine months alone on the mushroom planet forced him to realize he does like having Stone around, at least a little.
• Why does Knuckles become more hammy and boisterous at the climax and at the end than he was at the beginning, Cold Ham and all? It's because spending time with Sonic, Tails, and the Wachowskis have allowed him to be more open with his feelings.
  • Bordering on Fridge-Heartwarming, Knuckles in the games continuity is often known as the lone guardian of the Master Emerald. In this continuity? Knuckles no longer has to guard the Master Emerald alone. He's got Sonic, Tails, and the Wachowskis to help. It's as Sonic himself said it; he doesn't have to be alone anymore.
• Tails' translator failing in Siberia makes a lot of sense when you realize that he's never been to Earth before, and thus is unfamiliar with any foreign languages from Earth (aside from English, of course).
• Robotnik in this movie seems more unhinged than he was in the first one. While you can brush it off as Jim Carrey being Jim Carrey, the guy has been stranded on a mushroom planet for 8 months with no human contact.
• Randall wanted Tom to get on Rachel's good side because if the two are on bad terms it will be difficult to get close to Sonic.
• Several of the moves used by Team Sonic in the fight against the Badnik horde are callbacks to earlier scenes. Knuckles grabs and throws Sonic's spin attack, just like when he caught him in their first fight. Tails also spins around with Sonic in a wheel, similar to a move they pulled off during the dance battle in Siberia.
• When Sonic fights back against Knuckles in the backyard, he gets into a running start stance before launching himself. This is the same pose he pulled just before he took out Robotnik in the previous film, showing how seriously Sonic was trying to end this battle (too bad Knuckles simply caught the attack).
• Both in the games and in this movie the emeralds are said to give the wielder the power to turn thoughts into reality. With this in mind, Sonic and Robotnik's actions whilst wielding the power of the emeralds make an extra layer of sense, given that both of them do things they've been thinking of doing before being empowered. Robotnik had already discussed his twisted power-fantasies with Stone and Sonic was already fine with employing lethal force against Eggman, considering his first response upon seeing him return to Earth was to aim a punch at his head.
  • Furthering this point, Robotnik being so easily distracted by Sonic whilst forgetting about Tails and Knuckles. He's had eight months to build up his hatred for the hedgehog, whereas he's only known the other two for a few days.

Fridge Horror

• Knuckles points out that he "lost everything that day" when his tribe finally chased down Longclaw, the same as Sonic losing everything. Except Longclaw was already wounded and weakened when she forced Sonic through the portal to Earth. That means either Longclaw did one hell of a Taking You with Me moment to ensure none of them ever had the chance to hunt down Sonic, only short of self-defensive genocide because Knuckles wasn't present, or something else took everyone involved out and no one has any idea what.
  • This gives Longclaw's separation from Sonic a potentially darker implication: Longclaw didn't want Sonic to see what kind of mass-scale murder she was capable of, forever tainting his perception of her.
  • The fact that there's a memorial at Longclaw's house in the Pre-Quill comic does imply that others, whether of her Owl kind or those that saw her as a hero, did leave a tribute.. but that also means that the Echidnas who explicitly hate Longclaw and her kind with every fiber of their being were not locals, but from another world to find the Master Emerald and kill her out of spite for taking it, turning Knuckles' entire tribe into murderous, inter-planetary thieves and far from their supposed heroic brotherhood.
• Going back to the first movie, Commander Walters' visit to Tom and Maddie's house becomes this when you realize he wasn't there to meet Sonic and congratulate him, but to capture him!
• Project: Shadow is a thing and it explains a lot.
  • Assuming it went down similar to how it did in the games, Gerald Robotnik was taken into custody and executed while Maria was killed during GUN's attack on the Ark. Recall that Robotnik stated that he was an orphan in the first movie; were his parents killed to tie up some loose ends? The reveal implies that the information about the project was in Robotnik’s possession. Did Robotnik know that the government not only killed his grandfather and his cousin, but also orphaned him by killing his parents? Before the first movie, was his motivation to join the government to take his revenge from the inside?
  • Part of Robotnik's motivations for taking over the world seem to do with the fact that he firmly believes machines will never betray you, unlike friends or people in general, so therefore he'll conquer the whole multiverse so they service his machines. Something happened to utterly shatter his faith in humanity, besides being bullied as a child, and it could very well be tied to Project Shadow.
  • Also, assuming that things did play out as they do in the games, then there may also be a version of the ARK in this universe, complete with the infamous Eclipse Cannon...
  • On top of that, assuming Shadow's origins aren't altered, that could also mean that the Black Arms exist in this universe.
  • This could also mean things like Robotnik's egg robots, his measures for capturing Sonic and the like were probably all planned around knowing that Shadow existed from his grandfather's research, just that he never expected a direct encounter with an alien hedgehog and all. And even worse, if he survived his Disney Villain Death, Robotnik's probably gunning straight for Shadow to fight fire with fire after Sonic's foiled him twice.
• With the Master Emerald breaking in the second film, the possibility of Chaos being released is there.
  • Also, given that the echidna tribe from the first movie were already the last of their kind before Longclaw killed them, then it means that Chaos' rampage may have still occurred as in the games.
• In this film, the Chaos Emeralds were held inside the Master Emerald. When Robotnik absorbed the Master Emerald, he also absorbed the Chaos Emeralds. "Super Robotnik" is all too apt a description!
• Knuckles implies that Sonic could easily lose himself whilst being powered by the Chaos Emeralds. Were Sonic not as strong willed as he is, it would have been very likely that he could have very well turned into a certain take on Super Sonic from another continuity.
  • Even with it not happening, despite the subversion being Played for Laughs, it adds a scary undertone to the fact that, no, Sonic was not under any influence or change of personality. Eggman just pissed him off royal, so he coldly humiliated and defeated him, with clear intent of killing him, and then immediately laughed it off. That was all Sonic.
• While constructing the Death Egg Robot, Eggman steals a moving freight train. One could hope the people inside were okay...