Nightmare Fuel / Sonic the Comic

Fleetway/STC Super Sonic... the one Golden Super Mode that you really, really don't want to attain.

• Robotnik's dictatorship turns much of Mobius into a Crapsack World where its citizens can be punished severely for the most minor of offences.
  Trooper: The punishment for non-compliance with the work enterprise scheme is death.
  Mobian: The punishment for doing anything around here is death.
  • Taken further when Robotnik temporarily achieves godhood, rewriting reality so that Mobius is a mechanical wasteland where Sonic never existed and forcing the population to celebrate an annual Robotnik Day with a parade, just to rub it in.
  Robotnik: Today is Robotnik Day, you see!
  Sonic: They don't look very happy to me.
  Robotnik: Happy?! Of course they're not happy! What's the point of being a cruel dictator if people are happy about it?!
  • Upon trying to take the Chaos Emeralds' power for himself, Robotnik turned into a green crystal statue with a look of terror. And then a month later he starts moving again, and nearly strangles Tails.
  • Citizens are required to watch a weekly broadcast from Robotnik crushing their hopes and dreams.
  • The Chemical Plant Zone is depicted as a slave labour camp, with Trooper Badniks whipping Mobians who are too weak to work.
  • An early depiction of the Emerald Hill Zone under Robotnik's rule shows watchtowers with armed guards and propaganda posters with the slogan "Robotnik Is Watching You". And it's accurate, because Robotnik is personally observing the zone with egg-shaped camera drones.
  • Robotnik orders some Badniks melted down for failing him, which he does by forcing said Badniks to jump into a vat of molten metal. The fact that they are still powered on and conscious means that there are still people inside serving as organic batteries and suffering horrendous on-screen deaths... and the fact they praise him for it before they jump pushes it right into all kinds of horrifying.
  Penguinator: (as it leaps to its death) Praise the compassion of Doctor Robotnik!
  • Robotnik observes that some citizens toppling his statue means they no longer properly fear him. And rather than be shaken, decides to make them remember WHY they feared him.
  • Robotnik has a full Villainous Breakdown after his plan to merge Mobius and Shanazar doesn't go as intended, attempting to kill Sonic with his bare hands. He strikes the ground with enough force to crack it and send chunks flying when Sonic dodges him.
  • Robotnik soon attempts to drain the planet of its energy to become a god, and Emerald Hill Zone is rapidly decaying.
  • And when that doesn't work, Grimer unleashes Chaos in an attempt to inspire Robotnik again. Robotnik just notes with mild amusement that there's no way to control the creature and he explicitly has no plan. He just wants to see how Chaos destroys the planet.
  Grimer: You... you're mad...
  Robotnik: So what?
  • Until he becomes aware that Chaos is loose, Robotnik has seemingly spent days in total silence, only speaking to violently remind Grimer that he was warned not to mention Sonic's name in any context.
• Super Sonic. Imagine a being as powerful and nigh-invulnerable as the original Super Sonic, but with a gleefully brutal, sadistic Joker-esque personality that absolutely relishes violence and destruction. Even Sonic himself is horrified by him, and he only unwillingly changes into Super Sonic when he absorbs negative Chaos Emerald energy or when extremely angry and stressed.
  • Once separated from Sonic, Super Sonic displays a twisted sense of humour and an unnerving ability for patience and manipulation, when earlier appearances had him need some sort of target to attack at every moment. It's especially creepy when you see him going after his own allies with full intent to kill.
  Super Sonic: (attempting to get Tails) Come out, come out wherever you are... there's no need to hide from your best friend!
  • Super eventually develops amnesia and becomes a much nicer and kinder person, but is haunted by nightmares of an outright demonic version of himself, taunting him that he's killed everyone and is coming for him. Once he learns who he really is, he becomes paranoid of using his powers in case they drive him to that dangerous state again. He's right.
  • Running Wild features a full page of Super Sonic laughing hysterically (partially pictured above), before transforming back into his normal self, confronted with the sight of the crashed Tornado and the campsite ablaze, thinking he's just murdered his friends.
  Sonic: (slowly changes back to his regular self) No... oh, no...
  • Doomsday and The Final Victory feature Super Sonic breaking free from his prison in the Black Asteroid, using enough energy to make it appear above first Planet Meridian's surface, and then Mobius' surface as a second sun. A prison that forced both him and the Omni-Viewer, who was containing him, to experience time at an immensely slowed-down rate.
    • An earlier story featured Charmy observing Super Sonic trapped within the Omni-Viewer, and noticing that his position has changed slightly from the last time he looked, meaning he's not frozen in there and can still get out.
• Megatox. A horrific-looking monstrosity made of the poisonous Mega Mack chemical, with the consciousness of the chemical's creator, who had fallen into the chemical and had his body dissolve into it.
• Chaos. Unlike his portrayal in the games as seemingly a mindless beast, Chaos is portrayed here as a particularly vicious and cruel Drakon prosecutor with an ability to speak in a distorted voice, the ability to make opponents freeze in terror just by observing him. And he murders Johnny Lightfoot.
  • If the legends and Robotnik's notes are accurate, Chaos has the power to bring about the end of the world. And he's going to.
  • The explanation for Sonic's eyes turning green - he gets trapped inside Chaos during their first encounter, resulting in one of the few times he screams for help, and when he breaks out, both his irises and the whites of his eyes are glowing bright green due to the exposure to Chaos Energy, which fades over time to just having green irises.
  • After Chaos manages to get all of the Chaos Emeralds out of the Emerald Chamber, the Floating Island violently crashes into the ocean and seems to sink, rather than simply resting on the water's surface. And if it wasn't for Amy, Knuckles would have willingly gone down with it.
  • Johnny's death is never directly shown, but we get to see Sonic trying to convince himself through tears that Johnny's okay, he's just fooling around, only for Amy to sadly confirm that he's dead.
    • The next issue opens with a dream sequence where an alive but injured Johnny starts asking Sonic if he can hear him. Sonic's so shaken and guilt-ridden over Johnny's death that he temporarliy retires, and later panics when it looks like Tails got badly hurt during a later encounter with Chaos.
• Shortfuse's origin story - trapped in indestructible armour he can't remove and narrowly escaping the programming that was supposed to turn him into Robotnik's elite Badnik commander. And once Robotnik is dethroned, he's unable to find any sort of employment because he looks like a Badnik.
  • Following the planet-wide electromagnetic pulse, Shortfuse's power supply cuts out as he's flying over a lake of lava. He falls in, but his invincible armour and life support systems keep him alive. He spends months submerged in the lava before his power returns and he can escape.
• Commander Brutus, Robotnik's nigh-indestructible, skull-faced second attempt at a Badnik commander with a digitised copy of Robotnik's own mind and memories. And although Robotnik expects him to defer to him, Brutus had plans of his own.
• The Brotherhood of Metallix, a traitorous Dalek-esque legion of Sonic-based robots with a fanatical, murderous hatred of organic life. They briefly manage to alter history so Robotnik never existed, allowing them to easily conquer Mobius and reduce it into a mechanical wasteland. For context, remember how much of a threat Metallix (see below) was on his own? Now imagine an entire unstoppable army of him as its base soldiers.
  • The way Sonic corrects history: because Robotnik was the one who designed the backup self-destruct mechanism (which is the only thing that could destroy the Brotherhood), he's forced to deliberately cause the accident that turned his original best friend into his worst enemy.
  • The Miracle Planet gets converted into a giant replica of a Metallix head, and unlike Mobius, it stays that way for much longer till the heroes reprogram the Alpha Device to return the Miracle Planet to normal.
  • The aforementioned original Metallix, the "Sonic Terminator", is a relentless, unstoppable death machine — specifically designed and built to exceed Sonic's speed and strength — with the sole goal of killing his organic counterpart permanently. He's only defeated when Sonic uses the Miracle Planet's Time Stones to go back in time and destroy the machinery that led to Metallix being created.
  Metallix: Bring me Sonic the Hedgehog. IT IS TIME FOR HIS EXTERMINATION!
  • Porker Lewis gets trapped on the Miracle Planet for a full month with only the Brotherhood Of Metallix for company. It's never clearly elaborated what Porker went through up there, but it left him with enough trauma to retire from the Freedom Fighters.
• A simulation in Day of the Death Egg shows the Death Egg being powerful enough to wipe out the Emerald Hill Zone, and Robotnik is fully intending to use the real Death Egg for the same purpose.
  • Tails attempts to stop the Death Egg's laser, and is caught point blank in the blast and gets disintegrated. And the same thing happens to Sonic. It's only then that its revealed to be a simulation.
• The Knuckles story Village of the Damned is an homage to The Wicker Man and is just as dark and unsettling as the original. While he manages to uncover the truth and bring everyone to their senses, the story ends on a bleak note as Robotnik taunts Knuckles for being unable to bring him to justice without sinking to his level.
• Travelling through Shanazar with Robotnik, Sonic gets caught in a spiderweb, and is attacked by a gigantic spider. This version of Sonic also has arachnophobia and goes into what Robotnik mockingly calls " a supersonic panic attack".
• As terrifying as Super Sonic is in this universe, he's not the only Evil Twin of the Blue Blur. A one-shot story titled Double Trouble in issue #13 introduces a nameless antagonist that fans have dubbed "Extra Life", whose existence is just full of blatant nightmare fuel and Fridge Horror.
  • Firstly, the story itself; whilst playing with his football ball one day, Tails stumbles across a strange computer-like device with Sonic seemingly trapped inside of it. When he releases the prisoner, however, it turns out to be a horrific, deformed clone of Sonic, with fagged quills, slit pupils, and vampire-like fangs. The clone goes on a rampage through the Emerald Hill Zone, nearly pinning all of the blame on the real Sonic before he is defeated by being sealed back in his prison... which Sonic then launches into space to drift helplessly forever.
  • Where did this evil copy come from? Why, he was created by Dr. Ovi Kintobor — aka, Robotnik, before he became an evil Mad Scientist. Originally, he was supposed to be an ally to Sonic. Which of course raises the question; did his creation malfunction in some manner? Or did he simply go murderously insane, either from resentment over being a copy or just being stuck in his capsule for so long?
  • And if there was one such being like himself... could there be more copies just like him out there, just waiting to be unearthed and released?
• Robotnik tries create an evil clone of Sonic to ruin the latter's reputation. However, because of an error in the cloning process, the clone begins to age rapidly. Robotnik brainwashes the clone (dubbed Old Sonic by the fans) to think that he is the last survivor of a bad future where Robotnik killed all his friends. Old Sonic believes the only way he can save his friends is allying with Robotnik. After most of the Freedom Fighters have been captured, Robotnik reveals the truth to him. Old Sonic betrays Robotnik to save the Freedom Fighters, battling Robotnik with all his strength, defeating Robotnik but dying from his rapid aging afterwards.