Fridge / Sonic Unleashed

Fridge examples for Sonic Unleashed.

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Fridge Brilliance

• I was always confused as to why exactly the Werehog looks so odd, and why he's able to stretch his arms. Then it occured to me when replaying Sonic Battle: he's not a wolf at all, he's a sea creature. His body, nose in particular, takes the shape of a shark and his arms can flail about like octopus tentacles. Chaos transforms into sea creatures when exposed to the NEGATIVE energy of the Chaos emeralds, why shouldn't Sonic also? - Not a troper, but was sitting in front of a fridge.
  • Would've worked, if not for the fact that the Werehog isn't the result of the negative energies of the Emeralds. It's rather that during the blast that woke up Dark Gaia, part of the Eldritch Abomination shot back up to the satellite and infected Sonic. So, with that logic, his body was rather possessed by Dark Gaia, hence why the form only appears at night, has the ability to stretch arms (I've seen the other creatures do it), and since he's an anthropomorphic creature, it can pretty much justify why it affected him differently than the humans affected by it. If you're wondering how he retains his mind, think Kingdom Hearts. Following the earlier would make ever more fridge logic on how he breathe on land, and have fur.
    • Because werehog only made him gain traits, not lose them. He already had hair and lungs and genitals and stamina.
    • Didn't lose traits?!? The Werehog is noticeably slower than Sonic's default form, and his vector-manipulation abilities are modified — he loses his signature Jump Dash/Homing Attack and gains a Double Jump instead.
    • Actually, I thought of a better way to explain this. When Sonic absorbs the negative energies of the Chaos Emeralds, he gains stretchy limbs, super strength, a loss of speed (but retains his aerial agility), his attacks glow, and he gets a shark-like mouth of teeth. Chaos gets these same abilities when absorbing negative energies from the Chaos Emeralds. Sonic isn't a Werehog at all, he's simply becoming one with Chaos. Why only at night? No fuckin' clue.
    • Sonic was transformed into the Werehog via a combination of both the negative energy of the Chaos Emeralds and Dark Gaia's force. Since Dark Gaia is active only in the dark, Sonic would have the same restriction.
    • There is no such thing as negative Chaos Energy to begin with. That was just a myth that stemmed from a weird mistranslation in Sonic Adventure. Chaos Energy is neutral, its effect just varies depending on the emotions you use to "channel" it.
    • One could argue that "Negative" Chaos Energy does exist, in the form of residual darkness from the Emeralds being used with dark emotions behind them (Shadow's early uses of them, fueled by anger and darkness, other ancient uses, Chaos itself using them in its tainted rage, etc)
  • Sonic the Werehog can stretch because his blood has been replaced by magma.
• In the PS 360 version, if you pause the game in one of the hubs, everything freezes in place except for Chip. Why? Because Chip is Light Gaia; a god. You merely pressing the pause button is not enough to freeze him in place.

  • It's a lot less noticeable, but neither does Sonic. He'll just be standing in place, but he still has really slight movements when you pause the game. Could this be because he's the fastest thing alive?

• Another realization that I've just had from Sonic Unleashed: Why couldn't Dark Gaia just have taken Sonic's power away from the start? Even as he was awakening, he should still have enough energy to siphon away his energy from Sonic, if he had the energy to summon minions the size of towers. Answer: He couldn't, even if he had tried. Since the Werehog was formed by a combination of both the negative energy of the Emeralds and Dark Gaia's power, this formed some kind of bond between the two powers. And since the Chaos Emerald's power is "unified by the controller", and Sonic obviously had not much objection to his new form, the bond was even stronger. Once Sonic and Chip restored the last Emerald, all of the negative energy had been sapped away by the Temples, leaving Sonic with pure dark energy. This... led to an easy takeaway.
• Yet another Sonic Unleashed moment. A lot of people were wondering how Eggman knew that releasing Dark Gaia by cracking the planet into seven pieces wouldn't just destroy Earth. Well, this is not the first time Eggman ripped the planet apart with the Chaos Emeralds. Sonic Advance 3 has Eggman use the gems to rip the planet into seven zones much like this time, only they were Genesis-era style zones instead of the more realistic continents in Unleashed.
  • However, the post-boss Zone transitions in Sonic Advance 3 suggest the world may not be physically broken apart, or at least not to the degree that it is here, conveniently explaining how Dark Gaia wasn't released in that game in-universe.
  • However, it's quite likely that Dark Gaia would have come out if the fully-powered Eclipse Cannon (or the ARK itself) had hit Earth back in Sonic Adventure 2.
  • Didn't he mention something about manuscripts?
• In Sonic Unleashed, a lot of characters (Sonic's friends included) are very skeptical when the Werehog claims to be Sonic. Then it hit me — the last time people accepted that someone was Sonic when he really wasn't, the events of SA2 happened. This means that everyone has learned from their mistake, and are less trusting when someone claims to be Sonic.
• Possibly, Sonic becomes the Werehog by absorbing the dark energy from the Chaos Emeralds (and a bit of Dark Gaia). Only one other character has ever drained the dark energy from the CE's and that was Chaos who, like the "Werehog", grew sharp teeth, bulkier, and had the ability to stretch. One wonders why they didn't call him Sonic Chaos...
  • Probably because the name Sonic the Hedgehog Chaos already belonged to something else.
  • One may also be reminded of Ristar.
  • There's also the fact that some of the Dark Gaia spawns also had stretchy arms, meaning he could've just gotten the ability from absorbing part of Dark Gaia's essence, which only takes effect at night, triggering the involuntary transformation into the werehog. As expected, Sonic loses the Werehog transformation just before the final battle when Dark Gaia takes that bit of essence back to complete itself.
• I'm adding this here because this is the first place it showed up. Beginning in Sonic Unleashed, Sonic is able to safely skydive by using his quills to catch air. It seems like simply a new trick in Sonic's bag at first, but then it dawned on me, Sonic learned the technique from Knuckles in Sonic Heroes! In Sonic Heroes, Knuckles led Tails and Sonic in Triangle formation skydive to slow their descent and ride air currents. Sonic can't actually glide like Knuckles can, but the technique is enough for Sonic to, once he mastered it, be able to safely control his descents. If Sonic Lost World is anything to go by, Sonic's perfected the maneuver to the point that he's able to ride air currents solo.
• Why can Sonic ride on top of Tails' airplane with no trouble? He's already used to super-high speeds.
  • Plus he's been doing that for a long time. Since Sonic the Hedgehog 2 at least.
• When Chip is urging Sonic to go rescue the professor, he says he'd rather be dead than go on without food. Instantly his body drops limb to the ground and he becomes a ghost. Then we later discover that he is actually Light Gaia. Astral projection is probably one of his powers.
• Some fans found it pretty puzzling that Angel Island is seemingly nowhere to be seen in the world as depicted in this game. However, as mentioned by Tails, the Earth displayed in the level select screen isn't the planet itself, but a miniature model made by him, explaining this inaccuracy. He probably didn't account for it when he created the model due to the fact it's technically not part of the planet, being a Floating Continent. Or he could deliberately have left it out due to the fact it was irrelevant to their current journey, and/or to avoid any confusion with the Earth's actual continents, what with all of them having become Floating Continents in this game. The latter is also likely the real-life reason it wasn't included; seeing that there's still a floating landmass (besides Eggmanland) after clearing the game would have confused many players.
  • That would be the doylist reason. The watsonian reason is likely because the developers themselves can easily make up new places without having to think too much. With the islands out of the way it creates less distractions.
• Why is Sonic in his Hedgehog form able to destroy almost all non-boss Eggman robots (save for the large Interceptors in the Wii/PS2 version) with just one hit, when the physically stronger Werehog has to hit them several times to take them down? Force = mass X velocity. Sonic the Hedgehog is able to move much, much faster than Sonic the Werehog, and the Hedgehog's main means of attack is ramming into enemies at supersonic speed via his Boost or Homing Attack. The Werehog fights with stretchy claw swipes, kicks, and grapples — while he has enough skill with his offensive motions that his fighting style could legitimately qualify as some form of martial art, he generally isn't using his entire physical mass in his attacks, and he's also moving at subsonic speeds. Thus, even though the Werehog form has superior physical strength and combat finesse, the Hedgehog form hits much, much harder due to the laws of physics working in its favor. (It also helps that the Eggman robots in this game are rarely much bigger than Sonic; the one exception, the large Interceptors that chase Sonic around in a few daytime levels, do require several Boost impacts to defeat. Presumably, if Sonic encountered any Dark Titans during the daytime, he would have to hit them with at least 3 Homing Attacks or Boosts to take them down.)
• Why is the Egg Dragoon battle so simple despite its intimidating look and variety of weapons? Because Dr. Eggman specifically designed it to be the ultimate counter to Sonic—as in, normal daytime Sonic, not the Werehog. The fact that Sonic is in his Werehog form during the fight gives him the upper hand since he's able to dispatch of the machine in the one way Eggman didn't account for: A physically stronger and more enraged Sonic that doesn't have his trademark speed, which is what the Dragoon was specifically designed to counter. Supporting this is the Generations version of the fight is fought as regular Sonic, and the fight is much longer and more difficult than the Unleashed version.
• Eggman is always fought as Sonic, while Dark Gaia is always fought as the Werehog. In Eggmanland, Eggman is fought as the Werehog, and Dark Gaia is fought as Sonic. They are also both fought back-to-back with both of Sonic's forms, like how Eggmanland is a combination of both a day and a night stage.
• Why did Dark Gaia simply swat Eggman away but went all-out on Sonic? Because Sonic was with its mortal enemy Light Gaia, making him a significantly bigger threat to its existence. Eggman was simply a minor annoyance that it didn't want to waste time on when its sworn enemy was right in front of it.
• Why is Eggman so ruthless and bloodthirsty in the Egg Dragoon battle, when that behavior has very rarely (if ever) been seen anywhere else? As Eggman explains, the Dragoon is designed to run off of Dark Gaia's power. Dark Gaia, as shown at several points earlier in the game, is able to possess and influence people with negative emotions, causing them to be much more aggressive and miserable than normal. Perhaps Dark Gaia was messing with the doctor's head by amplifying his hatred for his arch nemesis, particularly because said nemesis was also tearing apart one of his proudest machines.