Sonic The Hedgehog / Tropes Numbers To B

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Tropes Numbers-B | Tropes C-E | Tropes F-L | Tropes M-R | Tropes S-Z

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Franchise Examples Zone Act 1:

Numbers

• 1-Up: The series features monitors with Sonic logo that give an extra life when broken.
• 11th-Hour Superpower:
  • The Games:
    • Most of the games from Sonic & Knuckles on end with a boss fight in Super Mode, though the ability was unlockable in normal gameplay as well up until Sonic Adventure.

• Generations has the final boss as both Super Sonics, and after that they are unlocked for use in normal stages, as an equippable skill that can only be used on its own. Notably, Sonic & Knuckles, Sonic Generations, Sonic Mania, and Sonic Superstars are the only games to have a Super Sonic final boss and have Super Sonic playable in normal stages.

• Downplayed in Sonic the Hedgehog (2020). During the movie, Sonic regularly demonstrates a "power" which manifests as some form of Blue Lightning that appears to allow him to move faster, deal far more damage to objects he spindashes into, and destroy any electrical devices nearby. This power only manifests when Sonic is showing some form of negative emotion (in particular stress/anger) and he doesn't use it when running from Robotnik during the final chase. However, when Tom stands up against Robotnik and states Sonic was his friend, Sonic suddenly erupts with this electrical energy and is able to actually harness it for the final battle, which both overloads Robotnik's flying machine (which is using one of Sonic's quills) and allows him to deal serious damage to Robotnik's machine.
• Played straight in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022). After Sonic retrieves the Master Emerald after Knuckles knocks it out of Robotnik, it shatters and drops out the Chaos Emeralds. When the Death Egg Robot tries to crush Sonic once and for all, he unconsciously reacts to the Chaos Emeralds, leading to Super Sonic's theatrical debut.

A

• Accent Adaptation:
  • In the Japanese version of Sonic Rush Adventure, Marine the Raccoon is The Idiot from Osaka. In the English version, she has a (hilariously exaggerated) Australian accent. Since Sonic Team is partially US-based, there's no telling which came first.
  • In the Latin American Spanish dub of Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), Sonic speaks with a slight indescribable European accent, probably to make him sound more alien compared with the rest of the human cast. This is quite justified in this case, as his voice actor, Luis Arturo Villar, is Mexican of Czech origin.
• Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal:
  • Most of the male characters in the games wear nothing except shoes and gloves. Chip from Sonic Unleashed wears even less, only a necklace.
  • Before the Continuity Reboot, Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) featured a more diverse mix of this, Fully Dressed Cartoon Animals, and Half Dressed Cartoon Animals compared to the main franchise, even featuring female characters, such as Sally Acorn, wearing more or less the same amount of clothing as their male counterparts.
• Acid-Trip Dimension:
  • The games have various examples:
    • The most prominent examples are the recurring Special Stages, abstract landscapes where the Chaos Emeralds are usually found. The special stages change per game: sometimes they can be a maze of multicolored blocks with a scrolling background of fish which morph into birds and vice-versa, other times they can be half-pipes floating in a colorful void. Sonic CD noticeably has different environments for its special stages and all of them feel surreal, despite being more "grounded" conceptually than most others.
    • In addition to the Special Stages, Sonic Mania has Egg Reverie Zone, a pocket dimension created when the Phantom Ruby malfunctions upon defeating Dr. Eggman's Phantom Egg armor. It has a purple hazy sky, crystals jutting from the floor and the timer is glitched out.

• The Special Zone was portrayed this way in Sonic the Comic. Referenced when a character claimed the part where most of the action took place was the weird part. There are, however, parts of the Special Zone which are "normal". It's a Cloud Cuckoo Land to Sonic, but it's pretty average in comparison to the swirling mass of colours that make up the rest of the dimension.

• Action Prologue:
  • The Games:
    • In Sonic Adventure, the first accessable story campaign, Sonic's, opens with our hero going toe-to-toe with Chaos in the streets of Station Square.
    • Both campaigns in Sonic Adventure 2 pulls this: the Hero story opens with Sonic breaking out of captivity and escaping through the city, while the Dark story opens with Dr. Eggman blasting his way into a military base.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) opens up with Dr. Robotnik in the middle of a mad pursuit of the Blue Blur himself, launching explosive after explosive in several attempts to hit him. Then the scene freezes mid-sequence, and a narrating Sonic proceeds to rewind all the way back to his childhood to show how things got to this point.
• Adaptation Name Change:
  • When Amy Rose originally appeared in the Japanese Sonic the Hedgehog Shogakukan manga, she did not have a surname and her name was also occasionally spelled as "Eimy" (she even wears a blouse with the letter "E" on it in the first issue). Her name was standardized when she appeared in Sonic the Hedgehog CD the following year. She was also given the nickname "Rosy the Rascal", which did not last long.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM):
    • The cartoon treated "Hedgehog" as Sonic's surname, making his full name Sonic Hedgehog. In the games, he has no given surname, with the "the Hedgehog" part of his name being merely a title.
    • In the official Sega of America backstory, Doctor Ivo Robotnik was the Superpowered Evil Side of kindly scientist Doctor Ovi Kintobor. Here Doctor Robotnik (note the lack of "Ivo") was simply the pseudonym of an evil scientist whose real name was Julian.
    • Of the three of Sonic's "Animal Friends" from the Sega of America backstory that were retained for the cartoon, only Sally Acorn had her name unchanged (albeit with her last name never said on-screen):
    • Joe Sushi became Rotor Walrus.
    • Johnny Lightfoot became Bunnie Rabbot.
    • Played With in regards to Antoine. In the show's production bible, his last name was D'Coolette, which was never mentioned in the show's first season, but was mentioned in Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) which had been in development at the same time as the show but due to Production Lead Time would debut months ahead of the first episode. However, the second season of the cartoon would ignore this and instead use Depardieu as Antoine’s surname.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
    • As the comic started out as a tie-in to Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM), Sonic’s name was Sonic Hedgehog, rather than just Sonic with "the Hedgehog" as a title. Later "Sonic" was revealed to be a nickname. His first name was considered too embarrassing to be mentioned, although his father let it slip that his middle name was Maurice. Ken Penders later explained his first name was supposed to be Olgilvie, but this was never actually mentioned in the comics themselves (and he eventually left, with the new writers not particularly eager to capitalize on his idea). According to Ian Flynn, Sonic eventually legally changed his name offscreen, finally making Sonic his real name. Following the 2013 Continuity Reboot, Sonic's name was reverted to what it was in the games.
    • Dr. Robotnik. Originally, his first name was Ivo, like in the games. Then it was retconned into Julian after Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) introduced that name. Later, writers explained this inconsistency as his birth name being "Julian Kintobor of the House of Ivo", which he later changed to Ivo Robotnik upon taking over Mobotropolis. The 2013 reboot simplified things, establishing that his name was always Ivo Robotnik.
    • Probably due to a goof, Metal Sonic was initially called Mecha Sonic, the name of a separate Sonic character.
    • Naugus from Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) became Ixis Naugus pre-reboot, and Walter Naugus post-reboot.
    • In Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM), Robotnik’s nephew Snively had Only One Name and it was never specified whether it was his actual name or a nickname. The comic chose to make it an alias, with his birthname being Colin Kintobor Jr. Following the reboot, he was no longer Eggman's nephew and was instead named Julian Snively.
    • When Eggman Nega made a cameo via silhouette, he was referred to as Dr Nega.
    • King Acorn's name went from Maximillian pre-reboot, to Nigel post-reboot.
    • Muttski – Sonic's pet dog from the Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) pilot and pre-reboot comic issues, became the mobian Ben "Mutt" Muttski post-reboot.
    • Rotor’s father was Sherman Walrus pre-reboot and Tundra the Walrus post-reboot.
    • A couple of characters from Tails' Skypatrol had their names changed:
    • Focke-Wulf became Falke-Wulf.
    • Witchcart became Wendy Naugus, the sister of Walter Naugus.
  • Sonic the Comic:
    • The comic changed Metal Sonic's name to Metallix. The writer of the story that introduced him stated that the reason was that he felt "'Metal Sonic' wouldn't do". The comic still referenced his more common name, though, as he's referred to as "Metallix the Metal Sonic" several times.
    • Later issues revealed that this series' version of Porker Lewis was originally called Oscar the Pig.
  • In the games, Sonic's name is just "Sonic". "The Hedgehog" is a title, not a Species Surname, and his surname (if he has one) is never given. In Sonic Boom, his name is "Sonic the Hedgehog". Yes, that means "the" is his middle name (and it gets poked fun at).
• Adaptation Origin Connection
  • The four-comic mini-series that preceded the actual start of Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog series tied Robotnik's backstory to Sonic's by having him be an orphan boy who visited Uncle Chuck's workshop from time to time until they all had a massive falling-out that resulted in Robotnik swearing vengeance against the hedgehogs. A series of children's story books by Michael Teitelbaum based on the series also uses this as its origin story.
  • An interesting example in that it wasn't meant to be an adaptation (it was originally presented as the canonical backstory for the series in the west) but was basically reduced to one over time. The comic that accompanied the US launch of Sonic the Hedgehog postulated that Sonic was a super-fast brown hedgehog that befriended Dr. Ovi Kintobor, a researcher attempting to contain the world's chaos within the Chaos Emeralds. Through the course of the comic the story explains how Sonic was turned blue (a result of running so fast on a treadmill that he triggered the "cobalt effect", according to Dr. Kintobor) and how Kintobor became the nefarious Dr. Robotnik (through damaging his chaos containment machine and taking on the characteristics of a hard-boiled egg he was holding at the time of transformation), leading to their enmity. This origin story was later used for Sonic the Comic's backstory.
• Adaptation Personality Change:
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) turns Dr. Robotnik from a clownish Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain to a (mostly) deathly serious overlord.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
    • In the comics most of the games cast resembled their counterparts in the DiC cartoons at the time (the earliest comics mirrored Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, while the later more serious stories issues adapted their Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) counterparts). The later issues tend to keep the cast far more loyal to their games incarnations, especially following the Continuity Reboot. For example, Sonic is much sassier (fitting his "dude with a 'tude" portrayal in early American media) and he isn't a Celibate Hero.
    • Outside the games characters, Sally and Antoine lost most of the comedic pomposity of their cartoon counterparts after the early issues and became more lucid, serious minded heroes (Antoine also Took a Level in Badass and became a competent swordsman and far more intelligent).
    • In the games, while Silver is stated to be insecure and naive, it rarely ever popped up. The comics make these traits much more explicit, along with depicting Silver as socially awkward and excitable.
  • Sonic the Comic:
    • Sonic is a heroic, laidback character in the games, and at the time of the comic was written in western canon as being a Totally Radical Mascot with Attitude. Sonic in the Fleetway comics exhibits none of said traits, instead being a bullying Jerkass. He is heroic and does really love his friends but he has a hard time showing his emotions and uses Trash Talk a lot.
    • Tails is usually a genius Child Prodigy but here he's a naive Cheerful Child with a cowardly streak (though he's still a good engineer).
    • Amy is a level-headed Action Girl who doesn't really resemble either the classic or post-Adventure versions of her character. It's never truly specified if she has a crush on Sonic or if she's teasing him, but either way it doesn't come up much. Early on she was closer to her game personality but Executive Meddling caused her personality change.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie makes Sonic into much more of a Knight in Sour Armor instead of being a laid-back Nice Guy.
  • Sonic X:
    • Knuckles is seen as calm and collected though sometimes can get angry when necessary in the games. In the anime, he is very hot-headed, gruff, and is a Butt-Monkey to the heroes and villains alike. The games would later characterize him this way.
    • Amy was sweet-hearted and helpful in the games, but in here, she is obnoxious, temperamental, and overbearing. The games would later characterize her this way, though to a lesser extent.
    • Shadow is more aggressive and villainous than in the games.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul:
  • Amy Rose debuted in the April 1992 issue of Shogaku Ninensei (Second Grade) as a brown hedgehog without a surname. The Shogakukan series depicted her and Sonic (or rather, his manga-exclusive Secret Identity) as an Official Couple. Sonic the Hedgehog CD and all later appearances changed her from a traditional supportive girlfriend to a Clingy Jealous Girl whose affections may or may not be reciprocated.
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics), Eggman describes Maria as his half-sister instead of his cousin. This was changed in order to make the ordeal even more sympathizing. However one interpretation, which is implied, was that he lied in order to garner more sympathy.
  • Sonic the Comic:
    • Sonic acts like a Big Brother Bully towards Tails in the comic, instead of being a nice older brother figure like in the games.
    • Amy and Sonic are on better terms compared to the games as, aside from early issues, Amy isn't a lovestruck fangirl towards Sonic.
  • Sonic Boom:
    • Amy's affections for Sonic are more like your standard crush, rather than the near-Stalker with a Crush obsession seen in many of the games. In return, Sonic isn't constantly annoyed at her affectionate behavior and is actually more reciprocative, as opposed to running away on instinct at the sight of her.
    • Throughout the Sonic series, the brotherly relationship between Sonic and Tails has been a near-constant element ever since Tails debuted in 1992. However, while still often the two closest characters in Boom, Tails is much more independent and the two seem to possess a lot of mutually exclusive hobbies, leading to relatively less character interaction between the two.
    • Sonic and Knuckles' have a frat-boyesque friendship that gained more and more of a presence on the show as it went on. In the games, Sonic and Knuckles rarely interact one-on-one, with their relationship being frosty at best and downright hostile at worst.
• Adaptation Species Change:
  • In addition to renaming Fang the Sniper to Nack, the localization of Sonic the Hedgehog: Triple Trouble changed his species to a weasel. In Japan, he was a Wolf/Jerboa hybrid. That's why he looks nothing like a weasel, having traits and features that belong to wolves and jerboas instead. Sega of America later tried to Hand Wave this by saying that he's a Weasel/Wolf hybrid. During the franchise's recommitment to reestablishing the franchise's continuity, Fang would be changed into simply being a Jerboa, with his different names being attempts to avoid the law.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
    • In the official Sega of America game lore, Sally Acorn was a squirrel. However, she was radically redesigned and re-imagined for Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) with the cartoon's staff never quite deciding what she was meant to be even after the series had ended (head writer Ben Hurst speculated that her father King Acorn might be a fox and her mother might be a squirrel). The comics decided to make Sally a ground squirrel, before this was retconned so that she was half-squirrel via her father and half-chipmunk via her mother, and this was maintained even after the continuity reboot (with the only change being that post-reboot King Acorn now had a tail similar to Ray the Flying Squirrel's, as opposed to the fox tail he'd had pre-reboot as an artifact from SatAm).
    • In the pre-reboot continuity, Doctor Robotnik/Eggman (as well as his nephew Snively from Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM), and his grandfather Gerald Robotnik and cousin Maria from the games) were not human. Instead, they were part of a devolved mutant subspecies descended from humanity called Overlanders. Despite the Sonic Adventure adaptation adding actual humans to the comic, Ian Flynn confirmed that the G.U.N Commander from the games is also an Overlander.
    • In Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) the sorcerer Naugus' species was never identified. In the pre-reboot comics, Ixis Naugus was revealed to be the result of three wizards (a rhino, a lobster and a bat) accidentally merging themselves into one being. In the post-reboot comics this was no longer the case and Walter Naugus was now a troll.
    • Witchcart, the Ambiguously Human witch from Tails' Skypatrol became the troll Wendy Naugus due to being reimagined as the sister of Walter Naugus.
  • The English dub of Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie, referred to Knuckles the Echidna as a mole.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM):
    • Doctor Robotnik. In the original games, he was a silly and childish, yet competent and effective Mad Scientist. Here he's a downright scary Diabolical Mastermind.

• Antoine D'Coolette of Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) series. In the Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) series, he was a Cheese Eating Surrender Monkey who tend to let out a Girly Scream now and then and was pretty much The Load. This changed when issue 46 came out and he ended up dating Cyborg Bunnie Rabbot. By this point, he started growing braver and braver, becoming a competent swordsman, being tough enough to survive over a year in an Alternate Universe, slugging Evil Sonic unknowingly at one point and impressing his dying father enough that he gave his blessings for him and Bunnie to be married. Then he goes and nearly gets killed saving Prince Elias and his family.
• In the games, Amy has always been a fairly realistic character for her age. You don't expect her to be badass or whatnot, she's just a girl who's in love with Sonic. In Sonic the Comic however she's quite The Lancer to Sonic. She's far more lethal than any other version of her to date, and sports some Improbable Aiming Skills.
• The Sonic X anime did this with Shadow the Hedgehog. He's already incredibly powerful in the video game series, but not terribly so. In the anime? He's practically The Juggernaut in that very few characters are even capable of slowing him down, even Sonic himself. He also spends most of the third season as a One-Man Army against the mooks of that season's Big Bad.
• Sonic Boom:
  • Shadow. He's already a strong character in the original games, being about evenly matched with Sonic, Tails, or Knuckles. Here however... He chains Chaos Spears and Chaos Blasts together, not even bothering to wait more than a few seconds between attacks, is still just as fast, uses Teleport Spam even more than his original self (without any Chaos Emeralds), and does a variant of the move he does in Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) to take out an army of Mephiles clones — Only this time, he doesn't even need to remove his Inhibitor rings. He's easily able to fight Sonic, Tails and Knuckles at the same time.
  • Knuckles is more capable here than he in most of the games, sure he acts like Dumb Muscle but Knuckles proves to be more guile and subtly badass than he lets on.

• Adaptational Explanation:
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM), King Acorn and Uncle Chuck unknowingly enabling Robotnik's coup was implied to be merely down to Horrible Judge of Character and complacency with their artillery (bordering on an Idiot Ball moment for the otherwise crafty Chuck), while Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics)' backstory bothers to show Robotnik's slow manipulation of their trust (and ability to cover up his crueller impulses) along with other stressful factors clouding their better judgement.
  • In Sonic Adventure, it's never explained how Birdie managed to escape from the Egg Carrier - it's first seen tumbling out of the sky without explanation. In the Sonic X adaptation of the arc, the bird (now named Lily) is shown escaping during the Tornado's initial pursuit of the Egg Carrier - the Tornado's attacks tear a hole in the Egg Carrier's hull, and Lily falls out of that hole and straight into Amy.
• Adaptational Jerkass:
  • Sonic is a heroic, laid-back, if somewhat cocky character in the games, and at the time of Sonic the Comic was written in western canon as being a Totally Radical Mascot with Attitude. But in here, he's a bullying, immature Jerkass, especially to Tails. Despite caring for his friends, he really has a hard time showing it.
  • Sonic in Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie is ruder, more obnoxious, and less willing to help people than his video game counterpart.
  • Amy Rose from the games could be bratty and over obsessed with Sonic, but otherwise a Nice Girl, while in Sonic X, she was gradually Flanderized to be short-tempered, aggressive, violent, and downright nasty to others, most especially by the third season. This personality in the anime bordered to the games later on, but was still toned down from her worst in the anime and eventually was abandoned.
  • While Shadow is far from a nice guy in the mainline games, in Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric, he is more of a Jerkass. He is an abrasive, bullying Jerkass who calls Sonic weak for relying on his friends. His rivalry with Sonic is a lot more antagonistic as he's only there to fight him for no reason other than to antagonize him.
  • In the games, Dr. Robotnik's a legitimately Affably Evil villain with some positive qualities who is prone to Enemy Mine situations with the protagonists. In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), he's portrayed as a massive Jerkass who is pretty much incapable of being in the vicinity of another living being without being condescending and rude to them.
• Adaptational Nice Guy:
  • Knuckles in Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie. Compared to how Knuckles of the games was usually portrayed back then, he's pretty much just close friends with Sonic and Tails, and there is no hinted animosity past or present.
  • Sonic Boom:
    • The series' incarnation of Eggman is still a villain who antagonizes Sonic and friends. However, rather than having the plan to Take Over the World, he is more of a Punch-Clock Villain, doing it to cause random mayhem for the lulz. He occasionally helps Sonic without any ulterior motives, gives Tails advice on girls, and even befriends Amy after they find a common interest.
    • Knuckles. In the video game universe, he's single-minded, antisocial, and at best is a reluctant ally of Sonic and the gang. Here, he's good buddies not only with Sonic, but a whole group of friends, and is kind and outgoing.
  • Downplayed in Sonic the Hedgehog (2020). While Sonic was by no means a Jerkass in the games, he often displayed a cocky attitude that the film leaves out almost entirely.
• Adaptational Ugliness:
  • Robotnik in the games is round and cartoony looking. He's not attractive but he has an Ugly Cute look to him. Robotnik in Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) and to an extent Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog is a gonk.
  • Doctor Robotnik in Sonic the Comic started out with his Japanese design but after a few issues he was reborn as his less attractive, egghead-shaped Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog design. This correlated with him becoming a much crueler character.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • Inverted in Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog where Robotnik, while still blissfully evil, is instead portrayed as an oafish buffoon who does nothing but get kicked around by not only Sonic and Tails, but also (usually inadvertently) by his own cronies Scratch and Grounder as well.
  • In the games, Dr. Robotnik is villainous, but with a highly affable and clownish demeanor, and in some cases leans into Anti-Villain territory. Robotnik of Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) however, is a monstrous (and far less humorous) dictator that not only has taken over most of the planet but thrives almost lustfully on having any remaining civilians painfully roboticized.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
    • According to their Japanese-only bios, Bean the Dynamite and Bark the Polar Bear from Sonic the Fighters are friends of Sonic's. They're both friendly characters and Bark is an outright Gentle Giant. Here they are villainous mercenaries and part of a Terrible Trio with Nack.
    • In Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Breezie the Hedgehog was a robot Dr. Robotnik made who had a Heel–Face Turn after falling in love with Sonic. In Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics), she was out-and-out a villain who worked with Dr. Eggman as part of a scheme to destroy Sonic and later became a Villain with Good Publicity, messing with everyone while being unable to be touched.
  • Sonic the Comic:
    • Chaos, who is depicted as a transformed and already villainous Drakon Prosecutor with no sympathetic backstory or clear motivation. In Sonic Adventure, he is a mutated Chao who was previously peaceful, only turning violent when all of his Chao friends were massacred by the Knuckles Tribe, under the leadership of Chief Pachacamac. Tikal the Echidna, who Chaos tortures in the comic, was his friend in the game, and the two leave in peace after Chaos is calmed down.
    • Robotnik himself, while still maintaining some of his comical pathos from the games, is far more evil and void of redeeming aspects, gaining a similar dictator role as his Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) and Underground counterpart, then he becomes even worse than his game incarnation by trying to destroy Mobius outright.
    • Super Sonic is a psychopath - in the games, he was an alternate form of Sonic as opposed to a full-blown Split Personality (and a nasty one at that).
  • In the games, Knuckles was misled by Dr. Robotnik into fighting Sonic in Sonic the Hedgehog 3, but quickly made a Heel–Face Turn after realizing his mistake and has generally been a firm ally ever since. In The Sonic the Hedgehog Joke Book, he seems to be one of Robotnik's full-time minions.
  • Shadow the Hedgehog in the Sonic X anime. In the games, Shadow started off a vengeful weapon ready to destroy Earth's population in honor of his murdered friend. Throughout his story however, he is portrayed with a palpable sense of doubt and emotional conflict, before ultimately pulling a full Heel–Face Turn two games later. In the anime, he roughly follows his games counterpart's story, but maintains his more sinister neutral alliance and is The Unfettered to the highest scale (at least once perfectly willing to kill a child in cold blood, along with anyone who defended her, if it meant stopping a villain).
  • While never exactly a saint, Shadow was generally depicted as a Noble Demon and a Pragmatic Hero in the mainstream video games. In theSonic Boom games, he's an arrogant, abrasive Jerkass who openly mocks Sonic for relying on and trusting his friends.
  • In the Sonic Boom cartoon, Shadow is a lone-wolf villain who antagonizes Sonic and friends for no real reason. In the games, while never the friendliest character, Shadow had sympathetic qualities and doubts over the morality of his actions even before his Heel–Face Turn and shows value and trust in his fellow Team Dark members.
• Adopted to the House:
  • In the Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) episode, "The Odd Couple", Sally's house gets destroyed by Dulcy when she crash-lands into it. Sonic lets Sally, Tails, and Bunnie stay in his house and moves into Antoine's until the storm blows over and he can rebuild Sally's. Being a homage to the series of the same name, Sonic is the Oscar to Antoine's Felix. At the end of the episode, Sonic decides to rebuild Sally's house, storm or no storm. However, a tree falls on Antoine's house, quicky turning it into a Here We Go Again! situation.
  • In the Sonic Boom episode, "Can An Evil Genius Crash On Your Couch For a Few Days?" Sonic lets Dr. Eggman stay in his house while the latter's evil lair is being repaired by his robots. However, Eggman quickly becomes a nuisance to Sonic and his friends. It is later revealed that Eggman's base wasn't under renovation and he was deliberately being a nuisance to Sonic and his friends to exhaust them so they'd be too tired to stop his latest giant robot, the Obliteratorbot. However, the Obliteratorbot malfunctions and prepares to destroy Eggman's base, forcing the latter to team up with Sonic and his friends to shut it down. When Eggman's base is destroyed for real, Sonic decides to just drop Eggman off at his destroyed base.
• Aesop Amnesia:
  • The Games:
    • Amy Rose seems finally ready to give up her Sonic-chasing days and become her own person at the end of Sonic Adventure. By Sonic Adventure 2, not only was she back in full Sonic-chasing mode, she had in fact gotten worse about it. However, it should also be noted that she had decided she should be more independent and not rely on Sonic to rescue her as much anymore, and became a full-on heroic Action Girl at the end of her story. In this area of her Character Development, this trope is averted; she retains her Action Girl qualities and rarely - if ever - plays the damsel in distress again after Sonic Adventure. Granted, the Sonic-chasing thing is still an issue, but at least she kept some of her growth intact.
    • Tails himself gets hit pretty hard with the trope. He learns to become independent and more confident in himself during Sonic Adventure and is able to take on Dr. Eggman by himself in the final level, thus proving to Sonic that he can kick ass without having to rely on him all the time. As the series went on, Tails slid right back to his pre character development where he is content to being Sonic's sidekick and letting him do all the work while Tails himself provides support. Tails hits his lowest in Sonic Forces where he cowers in fear as some enemies approach him and calls out to Sonic for help, despite the fact that Tails should have the experience and know how to fight by this point.
    • Doctor Eggman is more or less completely incapable of retaining knowledge of the fact that Evil Is Not a Toy, despite having unleashed Sealed Evil in a Can only for it to turn on him and require his turning to Sonic for help about a half dozen times by now. He seems to have learned this by Sonic Colors... only to backslide into it by the time of Sonic Lost World (though in that instance, the issue was more or less kick-started by Sonic knocking the conch controlling them out of Eggman's hand; before that, he actually had the situation under control and ended up staying as the Big Bad anyway, at the end).
  • In Sonic X, there have been several occasions where Knuckles has been duped by Eggman faking a Heel–Face Turn, but no matter how many times he falls for it, he'll readily fall for the same trick again. Amy even lampshades this in the Season 2 episode "An Enemy in Need," reminding Knuckles of all the other times Eggman tricked him into thinking he wanted to reform and asking him just how many times he has to fall for it before he accepts that Eggman is nothing but a liar who will never change his ways.
• Affably Evil:
  • Dr. Eggman from the games has his moments of this.
    • In Sonic Adventure 2 he acted very pleasant and, though he came close to killing Sonic, he was shown almost regretting it, showing profound respect for him after all the years that they were rivals. He had also been seen getting along with Tails at the end of the game. It also showed that he had the deepest respect for his grandfather, Gerald Robotnik.
    • The best example was probably Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), where he's shown acting politely and gently most of the time, especially in front of Elise (except for the whole kidnapping part, of course).
    • In the ending of Sonic Generations: The classic version, having learned that he never defeats Sonic, ponders upon pursuing a career as a teacher instead.
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), Agent Stone in stark contrast to his boss, bears no real malice towards the heroes and only opposes them out of duty.
• Affectionate Nickname:
  • Miles Prower from the games was given the nickname "Tails" by Sonic as a sign of brotherhood... and to make things less confusing.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM):

• Bunnie tends to call Sonic "sugah-hog", Sally "Sally-girl", Antoine "sugah-'twan" and Tails "sugah-Tails".
• Tails calls Sally and Bunnie "Aunt Sally" and "Aunt Bunnie". The former more than the latter.

• In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), Sonic refers to Tom Wachowski throughout the movie as 'the Donut Lord,' because Sonic observed that he "talks to donuts, then eats them if they step out of line." He also refers to Maddie Wachowski as "Pretzel Lady", because he thinks that she was born with no bones during one of her yoga sessions.

• Ageless Birthday Episode:
  • Sonic the Hedgehog celebrates his birthday in his Milestone Celebration-game Sonic Generations. However, there are no candles/banners to indicate his age.
  • Initially averted in Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) when one issue has him celebrating his 16th birthday. When another issue has him celebrating a birthday, Rotor questions if he should be 16 or 17 (thanks to adventures in space, Mobius went through a year of changes while Sonic didn't age at all). Sonic replies he should be 16 forever and ever, thus invoking this trope should another birthday issue come up.
  • Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • An episode had Sonic celebrate his birthday. Tails spends the entire episode trying to find a birthday present for him but Sonic's age is unmentioned.
    • Sonic had ANOTHER birthday episode later on, as well, whereas Tails somehow remains 4 1/2 throughout the entire show, with no mention of his birthday at any point.
• Age Lift:
  • In the games, Sonic's original age was either a "15~16" estimate or 18 depending on the source, Tails and Amy were 8, and Knuckles was 15. When Sonic Heroes was released, Sonic was narrowed to 15, Tails stayed 8, Amy became 12, and Knuckles became 16.
  • In Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Tails was 4 and a 1/2, whereas his game counterpart is 8.
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM), Tails was 10 years old, whereas his game counterpart is 8.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
    • Tails in the games is eight years old. He is ten in the comics, in order to match his age in Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM).
    • Amy's classic design from Sonic the Hedgehog CD is eight however — for Sonic Adventure she was retconned as twelve. Amy in the comics was initially ten, not eight. Her body itself was aged up to sixteen in order to match her game redesign (making her a preteen in a teenage body). By the end of the pre-reboot comic, Amy's biological age is seventeen and her chronological age is eleven.
    • Charmy is sixteen, not six in the comics, because he was listed as sixteen in the American Knuckles Chaotix manual. He had a Vague Age in Japan, and Sonic Heroes later established Charmy as being six.
  • Sonic the Comic:
    • Sonic and Knuckles are implied to be at least eighteen in later arcs, as they can visit bars. At the time their ages were sixteen and fifteen in the games respectively (Sonic Adventure would later switch this around so that Sonic was fifteen and Knuckles was sixteen). The Sonic Adventure adaptation would reveal that Knuckles is Really 700 Years Old instead of being an actual teenager.
    • Amy's age is unstated, but she isn't treated like the eight-year-old she was when introduced in Sonic the Hedgehog CD.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (2020):
    • In the games, Sonic is 15. According to director Jeff Fowler, this film’s version of Sonic is either 13 or 14.
    • In the games, Pachacamac lived 4000 years before Sonic was born. Here, he's alive when Sonic was a toddler.
• Agitated Item Stomping:
  • At the end of Sonic the Hedgehog for the Sega Genesis, Eggman is shown stomping on the words "The End".^note But only if you get all the Chaos Emeralds. Otherwise, he tosses around the ones you missed, and it says "Try again" instead.
  • In the Sonic Boom episode "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Worse-er," the failure of one of his traps to catch Sonic (and the condescending pat he gets afterwards) causes Tails to snap his binoculars and angrily stomp on the pieces. In the next scene, they're taped back together.
• Agony of the Feet:
  • The "foot stomp" is an actual move that can be pulled off in Sonic the Fighters.
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), the first pair of shoes Sonic's shown wearing are falling apart, held together with duct tape and with large holes in the bottoms. When Maddie removes Sonic's shoes, there are also large holes in his socks, and Maddie's niece Jojo notes that Sonic's feet must really hurt from all the running he does. Jojo fixes this problem by giving Sonic a pair of brand new shoes, and some fresh socks, that closely resemble his game counterpart's. It's also a plot point, as part of why Robotnik is able to realize what he is, as the resulting footprints allow show his strange feet and give Robotnik a lot of details about him.
• Airborne Aircraft Carrier:
  • In the games, Dr. Eggman loves building these.
    • In the Sega Master System/Game Gear version of the first game, the last level, Sky Base Zone, is the franchise's first example of the trope.
    • It started showing up in the 16-bit games with Sonic the Hedgehog 2's Wing Fortress Zone.
    • Sonic 3 & Knuckles featured Flying Battery Zone as the second level of the expansion.
    • The massive Egg Carrier from Sonic Adventure. It's also the first one whose abilities other than flying and being really big are shown. It's armed with missile launchers, a fleet of robotic jet fighters, laser cannons (tons of these damn things in Sky Deck), robot staff, transformation capabilities, and to top it all off, a Wave-Motion Gun. He has a second one in reserve, even.
    • In Sonic Heroes, he really ups the ante with an entire fleet, with the flagship being at least as twice as big as the original Egg Carrier, and twice as armed.
    • Altitude Limit Zone from the first Sonic Rush game would be an example if it had some actual structure and was more than a flying rail system. It still has plenty of aircraft, though.
    • In Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), Eggman uses a redesign of Adventure's Egg Carrier. It's mostly seen in cutscenes, and there aren't any levels on board, although Sonic's final boss is fought on it.
    • The opening of Sonic Unleashed features a whole fleet of these similar to the Heroes example, only they're in space. Sonic still has no trouble destroying them, despite the lack of air. The first boss, the Egg Cauldron, is a less exotic example.
    • In Sonic Generations, another one of these is seen terrorizing Spagonia. If you're really skilled, you can even destroy it on foot.
    • Sky Fortress Zone in Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode II is very heavily based on the aforementioned Wing Fortress Zone (acts 2 and 3) and the level immediately before it, Sky Chase Zone (act 1 and the boss). It also contains elements of Flying Battery Zone.
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog in Robotnik's Laboratory Sonic and Tails revisit Wing Fortress from Sonic the Hedgehog 2. After making is self destruct the find that Robotnik is already in the middle of building a new one.

• Alien Invasion:
  • In the games, Sonic and his allies have dealt with a few:
    • Inverted in Sonic the Hedgehog CD: Doctor Eggman and his robot army invade the Little Planet in order to take it over. Eggman succeeds, covering the planet in a metallic shell, requiring Sonic to travel to the past.
    • The Black Arms invade in Shadow the Hedgehog, though the all-out assault on Earth had been planned out at least fifty years prior. The purpose, however, is not so much to conquer or destroy as it is to obtain the Chaos Emeralds.
    • The Marauders in Sonic Chronicles, though not strictly aliens, do arrive en masse from an alternate dimension, and their attempt to conquer Earth plays out very much like one.
    • The Zeti attempt an invasion in Sonic Lost World, though the invasion force consists of only six members. They each can psychically hijack an unlimited number of machines to do whatever they want, making them a major threat anyway. Sonic immediately takes the fight over to their planet, the Lost Hex, and stops them before they can do any significant damage.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): in the distant past, Mobius, then known as "Earth", was home to humanity, who killed an envoy of the Xorda race. In revenge, the Xorda invaded Earth and bombarded the planet with Gene Bombs with the hopes of devolving humanity back into a primitive state. In doing so, they inadvertently created the Mobian races (such as Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, etc.). When they discovered that they hadn't succeeded in wiping out life on Mobius, the Xorda invaded again, this time intent on destroying the entire solar system it inhabited.
• Alien Sky:
  • All of the Special Stages in Sonic the Hedgehog CD are set in exotic locations seemingly on other planets. The first Special Stage has an Earth-like planet, only the black sky itself has ripple-like waves alternating red and blue. The sixth Special Stage has a sky consisting of a pattern resembling sine waves that rapidly shifts through the colors of the rainbow. The seventh Special Stage has a speckled green sky with a planet covering much of it.
  • In the Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie, a large planet with Saturn-like rings is visible in the sky over the North Pole.
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), we catch a brief glimpse of the Mushroom World's sky as Robotnik is stranded on it, which appears to have an enormous eclipsing sun and moon. The planet also appears to receive an abnormally heavy amount of sunshine.
• Alliterative Name:
  • The games have quite a few. Every level in Sonic 3D and Sonic the Hedgehog CD has an alliterative name (e.g. Rusty Ruin in the former and Collision Chaos in the latter), and many other levels from games that don't have this for every level (Mystic Mansion, Sky Sanctuary, Eternal Engine, Coral Cave, Jungle Joyride).
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) has Officer Wade Whipple.
• All There in the Manual:
  • The Games:
    • According an official Sonic website, ZERO from Sonic Adventure is the "zeroth" E-Series robot with the official designation of E-100 Alpha.
    • Sonic Adventure 2:
    • According to several strategy guides, Project Shadow was meant to figure out a way to achieve Immortality, which the then-President of the United Federation wanted to use for war. Gerald Robotnik didn't want to be a part of it at first because he thought that it wasn't something that mankind needed, but changed his mind because Maria contracted a Soap Opera Disease that believed he could cure with the research.
    • The ARK was shut down because the GUN higher-ups did not trust Gerald or his research. When they heard about the violent tendencies of the Biolizard, they used it as a cover-up for their massacre of the personnel, placed the blame on Gerald, and forced him to continue working under their scrutiny before executing him. This is only explained in full in the Japanese version of the strategy guide.
    • Ever wonder why Sonic inexplicably turns into a werehog in Sonic Unleashed? The manual had the answer, the whole time.
      "Dr. Eggman then, from the safety of his control panel, reversed the polarity of the Chaos Emeralds releasing the dark energy within. The energy was then fired as a powerful beam towards the world...Due to his proximity to the Chaos Emeralds as the dark energy was expelled, Sonic underwent a new transformation. His muscular density increased, his claws sharpened, his teeth grew into fangs and his body became covered with a lush heavy fur. Sonic had transformed into a Werehog."
    • The manual for Sonic Mania explains a bit more about the Hard-Boiled Heavies, including their names, personality traits, and even their genders. It also refers to the game's Mineral Macguffin as the Phantom Ruby.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
    • When Sonic Universe released the Silver Saga storyline (in which Silver the Hedgehog aided the alternate universe daughter of Knuckles, Lara-Su, against her power mad father), they released a number of blogs that told the story of Lara-Su before and after the storyline.
    • As well, Archie released the Official Sonic The Hedgehog Comics Encyclopedia Guide that revealed a whole set of new information about the characters and events that the comic itself didn't explain, such as Amy Rose's minor Reality Warper powers and that the events of Sonic Shuffle and Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) did occur.
  • The junior novelization of Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) expands on Longclaw's character and what the echidnas want, and includes an extended scene of Sonic and Longclaw before he finds his way to Earth.
• All There in the Script:
  • In the crossover between Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) and the Image Comics super heroes, the bad guy of the issue is never named in the story proper. The only way you'd know that is name was Dr. Ian Droid was by looking at the boring copyright material on the first page!
  • As noted in a message to a fan podcast, Nigel Kitching's original description of Sonic's hideout in the early years of Sonic the Comic included equipment monitoring the Zones for trouble and an explanation that the Kintobor Computer was initially going to be The Mentor to Sonic, as this was the Computer's first appearance. It's also noted that it's intended to be the same place as Dr Kintobor's lab, allthough strips released much later would also make this clear.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (2020):
    • Dr. Robotnik's first name is never said in the movie, but a Nickelodeon TV Spot suggests that it's still Ivo like in the games.
    • Although Robotnik's hoverjet is never named on-screen, concept art and the modelling schematics for the CGI rendering call it The Eggpod.
• Aloof Ally:
  • The Games:
    • Shadow the Hedgehog. He helps out every now and then, but he's a pretty standoffish individual, even to his own friends. He lampshades this in Sonic Chronicles:
    Shadow: Don't expect me to join in on your group hugs and picnics!
    • Knuckles the Echidna (apparently) prefers to work in solitude and keep his distance from the others. But that's understandable since he is destined to live alone, guarding the Master Emerald.

• Sonic X:
  • Knuckles prefers to do things alone and tends to get pretty annoyed with Sonic's reckless ways and the group worshiping him. It was only in later episodes, that he grew more attached to the group.
  • Shadow in season 3. He helps Sonic and his friends out when they need it, but he remains distant and is not an actual member of the team and sometimes ends up in conflict with them due to his extreme measures.
  • Downplayed and mostly averted with Sonic himself. He is friendly and cheerful, but not very expressive and tends to prefer being beside himself until a threat appears.

• Alternate Continuity: The Sonic series has many, many different continuities in it.
  • The animated miniseries Sonic Mania Adventures appears to be an alternate take on the events of Sonic Mania Plus.
  • Both the video game(s) and cartoon of Sonic Boom has its own distinct continuity from the main series video games.
  • The 2019 live action/CGI Sonic movie is also set in its own distinct timeline.
  • The Sonic the Hedgehog OVA, aka Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie has its own self-contained timeline.
  • The three DiC Sonic the Hedgehog cartoons which each have their own distinct continuity; Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog (unofficially called Satam Sonic), and Sonic Underground.
  • The Archie Sonic the Hedgehog continuity, which technically consists of two continuities in itself due to undergoing a Continuity Reboot late in its run. And thats not counting the fact that the Archie comics prior to the reboot had its own established multiverse with a potentially infinite number of alternate Sonic universes).
  • Subverted with the the IDW Sonic the Hedgehog comic series, which is set in the same universe as the games.
  • The UK-exclusive Sonic the Comic is likewise its own distinct timeline.
  • Various Sonic-related manga with little to no consistent canon between them.
  • And then there are various non-canon one-off stories (i.e. the Sonic the Hedgehog Promo Comic, the Sonic the Hedgehog Story Comic) storybooks (i.e. Stay Sonic) and non-canon crossovers with other video game franchises like Super Smash Bros.
• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife:
  • A lot of the game characters fall under this category:
    • Sonic in particular is famous for being a "blue hedgehog" ("The Blue Blur" being his nickname), but there are also pink, black and silver hedgehogs, purple cats, red echidnas, yellow polar bears, green tufted ducks, black armadillos with red shells, green hawks, the list goes on and on. Originally, Naoto Ooshima drew Sonic with black fur, but quickly changed it to blue so it would match the Sega logo.
    • The small animals found in the badniks of certain games are also oddly colored, such as purple peacocks with red tails, pink and purple elephants, pink seals, purple penguins, and blue gorillas.
  • Subverted in Sonic the Comic. Yes, Sonic is blue, however he was Locked into Strangeness. He was born brown furred. One issue implied that the pink furred Amy was born brown too, however it is dubiously canon due to its numerous Series Continuity Errors. Most other characters are realistically coloured or are based on actual colours.
• Ambiguously Human:
  • Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik from the games has always been a little... off. Even when the humans are all just as cartoony as he is, or when he is made more realistic-looking to fit the setting, he has caused many a raised eyebrow.
  • The Iron Queen in Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) was this at first. She looked like an Overlander, but was married to the Iron King, an ox. Word of God claimed she was a badger at the time. However, when Ian Flynn brought her back, he reversed this. The Queen is indeed human, and the titles are purely honorary.
• American Kirby Is Hardcore:
  • The Games:
    • Inverted with Sonic himself. Early in development he was the lead in a rock band with an electric guitar, had a slightly fanservicey Token Human girlfriend named "Madonna", apparently had fangs and a spiked collar, and fought monster-looking creatures (instead of robots with cute animals inside). Sonic Team was asked to soften him up for American audiences. Sonic's Mascot with Attitude personality stayed in western media though, while Japan had a more laid-back Sonic which transferred elsewhere starting with Sonic Adventure.
    • The original boxart for Sonic the Hedgehog gave us a fairly confident looking Sonic with a tasty palette of colors surrounding him. The US boxart gave him a chubbier redesign with mohawk-like quills ^note said quill style was also carried over to the DiC cartoons and Sonic Spinball, the art has him posing for a 'tude expression, and they sprayed him with a coat of airbrush. Even the original members of Sonic Team said they despised this Americanized Sonic design—there were especially baffled as to why the American branch of the company decided he needed the redux in the first place, considering Sonic was designed to appeal to Western audiences right from the start. Sonic's Western redesign has tellingly appeared in-game precisely once, on the title screen of the Europe-only Master System release of Sonic Chaos, and nowhere else. In Sonic 2 and especially Sonic 3, Sonic has a larger smirk and bolder color shading on the American box art than the Japanese.
    • Dr. Eggman/Robotnik's classic design looked like a happy smiling spherical fellow◊ in the Japanese games. The American games made him a constantly scowling spherical fellow with... no eyes.◊ This isn't even taking into account the weird cartoon-based design they switched to for some of the later boxart.
    • Eggman's Dub Name Change to Robotnik is in itself an example of this, changing from a goofy Beatles reference to the more menacing Czech word for "slave." Also, while Eggman was always seen as comical in Japan, Anglophone Sonic media often made him a more malevolent character. Then the series reverted the Doctor's name back to Eggman from Sonic Adventure onward, with SEGA establishing that Robotnik was the character’s given name and Eggman a nickname.
    • The Sonic the Hedgehog CD boss music and game over music go from being upbeat in the Japanese version to downright frightening in the American version.
    • The EU covers went in and out with both the Japanese and American styles. Interestingly cases such as Sonic the Hedgehog Chaos actually used Japanese promo artwork not related the region's original cover.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie zigzags this. The "movie" was originally sold as a two-episode miniseries in Japan, with the first episode's boxart featuring Sonic, Tails, Sara, and Metal Robotnik/Black Eggman striking poses while the second episode's boxart prominently features Sonic and Metal Sonic duking it out. The VHS release of "The Movie" in the west featured Sonic with a stern-looking Tails and Knuckles behind him against a dark background (along with the laughable Tag Line: "Scrape your Knuckles, Catch some Tails"), but the DVD release in the west only has Sonic against a much brighter and more colorful background.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (2020):
    • Promotional media for international markets focus on Sonic as a teenager (as he appears for most of the franchise) and primarily center on the action scenes and comedy bits. Japanese promos for the film (including promotional posters, meanwhile, focus on the younger "baby" version of Sonic who appears at the start of the movie, and play up his moe appeal for all it's worth. In fact, baby Sonic's first appearance anywhere was in a Japanese TV spot for the movie.
    • Inverted with one American movie poster◊ showing Sonic smiling at the camera, with Robotnik's face in the background. The Japanese movie poster has Sonic looking determined at the camera, with Robotnik's ship looming behind him. The Japanese poster also has more missiles firing at Sonic than the American poster.
• Amnesiac Resonance:
  • In Sonic Heroes, Shadow makes his return to the series after his Heroic Sacrifice in Sonic Adventure 2, but suffers from amnesia. That didn't stop him from recognizing some of the people he met. One, the first thing he does after being awakened by Rouge is rescue her from Omega. Then, when seeing Team Sonic at the jungle, Shadow says "Look, it's that hedgehog.", implying that he remembers Sonic, and lastly, when Rouge talks about stealing the Master Emerald, Shadow remarks that some things never change.
  • In the Sonic Underground episode "Who Do You Think You Are", Sonia loses her memory when Dingo in small robot mode collided with her. When two of Robotnik's robot showed up, Sonia instinctively used her strength to defeat them, even though she didn't know how she did it. After more showed up, Sonia said her phrase when she does the Sonia Spin, but question where that saying came from.
• Amnesiacs are Innocent:
  • In Sonic the Comic, the Axe-Crazy Super Sonic temporarily loses his memories after being separated from Sonic himself. He finds himself haunted by his past as his repressed destructive impulses gradually begin to return to him, though he initially interprets them as being recurring nightmares of a demonic entity destroying the world. Sadly, his newfound pacifism doesn't last, and he ends up merging back with Sonic.
  • In issue 5 of Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW), Sonic and his friends come across Dr. Eggman, who lost his memory after the final battle of Sonic Forces and is living under the name of Mr. Tinker. As Mr. Tinker, Eggman is the exact opposite of his usual self: a humble and modest Nice Guy and Friend to All Children who enjoys helping people. Sonic even decides to let him be and go about his new life. Sadly, that all comes to an end when Dr. Starline tracks Eggman down and brings his memory back, restoring him to his old villainous self again.
• Amplifier Artifact:
  • The Games:
    • Chaos Emeralds. It's been commented by the writers of SEGA that they don't simply grant new powers, but amplify what one already had, as well as modify a few powers occasionally.
    • The Chaos Emeralds had the Amplifier Artifact treatment pulled on themselves by the master Emerald to form the Super Emeralds.

• Animal Is the New Man:
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) says that the planet Mobius is actually Earth in the future. The alien Xordas dropped gene-bombs on it intending to devolve but uplifted the animals into Funny Animals as well.

• Animated Adaptation: The franchise has had six completely different TV series:
  • Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM)
  • Sonic Underground
  • Sonic X
  • Sonic Boom
  • Sonic Prime
  • An OVA: Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie
• Animesque:
  • Inverted with the games deliberately so to appeal to the Western market. The Funny Animal characters are designed in Inkblot Cartoon Style (with a mix of anime in the Modern incarnation), an emphasis on techno, rap, and rock for a lot of the music throughout the series, and the general "attitude" was to appeal to the "rebellious" nature commonly associated with countries like the United States.

• Anthropomorphic Shift:
  • Although the Sonic characters in the games were always anthropomorphic, they have become more so over the years. Their proportions have changed a bit, and they've become more likely to wear clothing beyond the traditional shoes and gloves, with some characters who were introduced later on always being fully clothed. This also leans into Humanoid Female Animal, since it's mostly female characters who wear clothes. Even Sonic himself has acquired additional clothing on occasion - in some early concept art for Sonic Riders he was fully clothed, and in Sonic Boom he wears a scarf.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
    • Strangely inverted with Drago Wolf; before, he was just as humanoid as the other prominent Mobian characters. In a later comic, though, he was redesigned to be more feral and werewolf-esque, complete with more animalistic eyes and digitigrade feet instead of plantigrade like he normally had.
    • Played straight in that issue with Lupe, who almost looked human. On the other hand, every other wolf in that issue were similar to their classic design, and Drago had received cybernetic implants, so it's possible those were just cosmetic modifications.
    • A drastic version took place after Worlds Collide and the resulting Cosmic Retcon: Muttski, Sonic's ordinary pet dog, was changed into a full-fledged anthropomorphic character. Similarly, the Egg Boss Akhlut went from a realistic orca with cybernetic parts to a bipedal, stylized one.
  • In Sonic the Comic, Sonic's allies Porker Lewis and Jonny Lightfoot start off as cute little animal critters like those busted out of Badniks in the games. They talk, but they're small, animal proportioned, without clothes and tend to go on all fours. Their shift, however, is anything but gradual: in issue #21 of the series, they are totally bipedal, human-proportioned and fully clothed (in biker jackets and jeans, to be precise). Within a few more issues, Porker's hooves became ordinary human hands. This also occurred to minor characters like Sally Acorn, who cameoed as a humanoid news reporter issues after being seen as a small squirrel.
• Anti-Villain:
  • The Games:
    • It varies from game to game, but Dr. Eggman sometimes fits this. He is forced to become an anti-villain whenever he realizes he's bitten off more than he can chew - in some occasions he has teamed up with the good guys to save the planet, because he'd have nothing to conquer if the planet was destroyed. Notably, in Sonic Heroes, Eggman does nothing villainous at all other than building the Egg Fleet ("The Eggman" seen throughout the game is Metal Sonic, the real one doesn't turn up until the end of Chaotix's story).
    • Shadow started off as one in his debut appearance in Sonic Adventure 2. His goal was to use the Chaos Emeralds to destroy the world with the Space Colony ARK crashing down towards it in order to avenge the death of her best friend, Maria. This was until Amy convinced him to save the world, which made Shadow realize Maria doesn't want him to destroy it after all.
    • Merlina from Sonic and the Black Knight is a noticeable exception to the standard Big Bads in that she has a legitimately good desire but horribly misguided ways at going at it. She wants to prevent the fated destruction of the Arthurian kingdom. Her method of doing so, however, is to cast a spell of immortality upon the land that will cause the world to stagnate and plague it with monsters from the Underworld, and she's perfectly willing to kill Sonic if he stands in her way. She's also completely honest about helping Sonic defeat the corrupted King Arthur and save the kingdom as doing so will allow her to get her hands on his immortality-granting scabbard and ensure her plans of a "utopia". Sonic essentially spends their final battle having to beat it into her head with words and swords that her idea of "eternal salvation" isn't good for anyone in the long run.
  • In the Sonic X comic book, Dr. Eggman is presented as a genuinely good person who, aside from really wanting to rule the world, has a strong sense of morals and is willing to do the right thing most of the time.
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), despite being Robotnik's henchman, Agent Stone never really does anything villainous and is shown to be quite a Nice Guy.
• Appropriated Appellation:
  • The English-language localizations of the games introduced the name "Eggman" for Dr. Robotnik this way; in Sonic Adventure, it was an insult used against him by the heroes, but in all later games he used it himself. That's actually because his name in Japan is Eggman; early games, feeling the name wasn't imposing enough, named him Dr. Robotnik and kept Eggman as an insult. Later games stated "Robotnik" was his family name and Eggman being the nick-name he normally uses, making his full name Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik.
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW), Dr. Eggman creates a Metal Virus that roboticizes organic life. Sonic dubs them Zombots (zombie robots) due to their soulless behaviors, and Eggman starts calling them that himself, admitting it's catchy.
  • Sonic's "Donut Lord" nickname for Tom Wachowski in Sonic the Hedgehog (2020). Tom initially doesn't like it, but adopts it for himself much later.
    Tom: (to Robotnik) I'm the Donut Lord, you son of a b-!
• Arc Words: "Chaos" comes up a lot.
• Armed Females, Unarmed Males: Amy Rose is the only female hedgehog in the games and the only one who regularly uses a weapon, namely her Piko Piko hammer. The male hedgehogs Sonic, Shadow and Silver don't use weapons, save for a few games.
• Armor-Piercing Question:
  • In Issue 179 of the Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics), Sonic and Tails get into a massive fight. Initially it's believed to be because Tails's is trying to protect his family from Sonic for turning them to the authorities, but it quickly reveals that it's much deeper than that...
    Tails: You would've let my dad rot in prison!
    Sonic: He tried to oust the king! You can't just give Elias the boot!
    Tails: He's trying to save the city, and you won't give him a chance!
    Sonic: He wasn't in jail for a day! You didn't give me a chance to do anything!
    Tails: The great Sonic the Hedgehog wasn't quick enough?!
    Sonic: Dude! You're taking everything I've done to help you and skewing it!
    Tails: So you hooked up with Fiona to help me?!
    Sonic: Wait... Is she what this is all about?
    Tails: Don't say it like that! You knew I loved her! And you went out with her! I don't care if the Fiona I knew was a robot! I don't care if she ended up choosing Scourge over me! You knew I loved her, and you went with her anyway! I thought you were my friend! I thought you were my brother! But everything I care about, you take away from me!
  • : In issue 6 of Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW), Sonic and his allies come across Dr. Eggman, only to discover he's lost his memory since his defeat in Sonic Forces and become Mr. Tinker, a Nice Guy and Friend to All Children. They're perfectly willing to let bygones be bygones and let Eggman live his new life... and then Shadow shows up, determined to kill Eggman on the grounds that he's a liability and needs to be dealt with lest he regains his memories. Sonic actively fights him to stop him from doing so, pointing out Shadow's hypocrisy by reminding him of everything he did prior to his Heel–Face Turn and questioning why Shadow should be forgiven for his own sins if Eggman cannot. This convinces Shadow to back down.
    Shadow: Have you forgotten that he made you suffer? That he's tried to destroy you multiple times? How can you even suggest leniency for him after all that?
    Sonic: You tried to destroy me in the past too, remember? You even tried to obliterate an entire planet. So, what? You want me to take you out with Eggman? After all, if he can't be forgiven, can you?
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), Sonic asks Tom one when he learns Tom is planning to leave Green Hills.
    Sonic: What could possibly be more important than protecting your family?
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
  • The Games:
    • Inverted in Sonic Colors, when Dr. Eggman gives his copyright notice, he provides these rules:
      Dr. Eggman: All unauthorized photography, video reproduction, or shutting down of generators is strictly prohibited. Thank you.
    • Played straight in Sonic Lost World, during the cutscene where the Deadly Six turn against Dr. Eggman:
      Dr. Eggman: "I hone your abilites, I equip you with the most powerful mechs I can create, I even give you a giant sandwich, and you still disappoint me!"
  • Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • In the official first episode "The Super Special Sonic Search and Smash Squad", Robotnik lists to his robots Sonic's offenses; ruining his schemes, escaping his traps, and helping nice people.
    • From the episode, "Spaceman Sonic":
      Dr. Robotnik: "You lost my rocket ship, you let the hedgehog foil my plans again, AND NOW YOU'RE RUNNING UP MY LONG-DISTANCE BILL!"
    • From the episode, "Birth of a Salesman":
      Dr. Robotnik: "Listen, Weasley, you are brash, arrogant, obnoxious, pushy, rude, and you dress funny. You're my kind of guy!"
    • The weapons detector in the episode "Mass Transit Trouble" has settings for bombs, guns, knives and spitballs.
    • In the episode "Coachnik", Robotnik puts every kind of explosive in his long bomb, with the final one being a well-shaken can of soda.
  • Sonic Boom:
    • The robot fireman at the beginning of the episode "Buster" does the exact opposite of everything a good fireman does. He sets things on fire, puts a baby walrus in a burning house, and puts a cat in a tree.
    • At the beginning of the episode "My Fair Sticksy", Sticks has defense systems for meteors, wildfires, floods, and people trying to read her thoughts.
    • In the episode "Don't Judge Me", Sticks claims that Dr. Eggman's machines destroy mountains, level cities, and put songs in your head that you can't get out.
    • In the episode "Mayor Knuckles", when Knuckles abuses his power as mayor by approving too many laws, Sonic and his friends team up with Dr. Eggman to stop him. As retribution, Knuckles outlaws boomerangs, hammers, inventions, spin attacks, and mayonnaise.
    • From the episode "Unnamed Episode", when Sticks finds out that the unnamed village used to be named by her great-great-grandfather, Jebediah Badger:
      Sticks: Jebediah Badger stood for everything I hate in this world; abuse of power, oppression, shoddy sign construction...
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), Rachel confronts Tom upon hearing he's wanted by the government, threatening to call the FBI, the CIA and his mother.
• Art Evolution:
  • The Games:
    • In Sonic Adventure, Sonic was remade to be taller, have green eyes, and have longer limbs and quills. He has since become more compact,◊ and his limbs more shorter, to the point where in the Sonic Unleashed beta he was his classic design with green eyes; his fur color was also darker in the early to mid 2000s. From Sonic Unleashed onwards, his looks are now a hybrid of the "Classic-Era" and "Adventure-Era" designs. This is Lampshaded in Sonic Generations, where the current-style Sonic teams up with his very different-looking Genesis-era self.

• Ken Penders for Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics), his earliest work resembled official artwork from SEGA, but later drifted towards a more personal style.
• The first trailer for Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) had a radically different design for Sonic, given a more "realistic" (smaller eyes, human-like body musculature, highly detailed fur, furry white hands). Shortly afterwards it was announced they would redesign Sonic entirely, and the second trailer introduced a new look for the movie that is almost directly taken from the modern games (bigger eyes, longer legs, muted fur detailing, White Gloves).

• The Artifact: The series has a very bad habit of introducing new concepts, and then dropping them off quickly, with this trope being the usual result.
  • The series as a whole was meant to be Sega's answer and antithesis to Nintendo's Super Mario series, during a time when Nintendo was the dominant name in the industry. With Sega retiring from creating competing hardware and due to a change in target demographics in gaming, the series and character mostly remain as Sega's flagship series due to how iconic and popular the series still is.
  • The franchise has never managed to commit to any of Sonic's rivalries. No less than three characters have served as The Rival—the serious, stoic, solitary rival—for Sonic: Knuckles, Shadow, and Blaze. In all three cases the rivalry ends up being resolved or cast aside within the first game it appears, only to return in spinoffs if at all—Knuckles in particular has been an ally if not an outright sidekick of Sonic's since Sonic Adventure 2. The only ones who really still gets treated as such are Metal Sonic and Shadow, neither of which really get much focus in later games.
  • The games, outside a few exceptions, have not particularly gone out of their way to develop or even use franchise lore, which leaves major plot devices in the margins—often this includes powerful items or devices like the Master Emerald on Angel Island with Knuckles, the Space Colony ARK and its Eclipse Cannon, or the Time Stones from the Little Planet.
  • The Babylon Rogues from the Sonic Riders series have also become this, even within their own spinoff. Part of their story involves their connection with the Floating Continent called Babylon Garden, but since Babylon Garden's story appears to have been concluded, they've been reduced to token opposition in Extreme Gear competitions and comic apperances.
  • Starting with Sonic and the Secret Rings, the franchise began to streamline the games to focus on Sonic the Hedgehog alone—which nudged the franchise's massive cast into being mere supporting cast members if not completely Out of Focus. Admittedly, there are audiences for both games featuring the expanded cast and for Sonic-specific games, but the franchise is in a hard spot to cater to both at once.
  • Sonic Colors featured the Wisps as a major plot element and an aspect of the game's powerups, and they were rather clearly written into the plot in that game. Colors also ended with the Wisps leaving Earth, putting a pretty hard cap on their usability. However, they've featured in several later games, with only a mild handwave to explain their existence, even though their presence opens up a pretty massive plothole for why Eggman hasn't tried to harness them again.
• Artistic Age:
  • The Games:
    • Amy is only eight in the classic games and is twelve in the post-Adventure games, but looks like as a teenager like Sonic.
    • Many characters like Espio, Knuckles, and Shadow (physically speaking in Shadow's case) seem like adults due to their demeanors and deep voices, but are only in their late teens. Rogue is only nineteen but looks ten years older. It doesn't help that her second English voice made her sound like she was in her thirties.
    • In the classic games, Sonic and Amy look the same age. They're almost the same height and there's no noticeable difference between the two. However, Sonic was between 16 and 18 while Amy was 8. The Adventure redesigns make their age difference (which is only 3 years now) more clear.
  • The characters in Sonic Boom look older than their main continuity counterparts but Word of God is that they aren't. Amy is still twelve, Tails is still eight, and both Sonic and Knuckles are still sixteen, but they seem a few years older.
• Artistic License – Biology:
  • Knuckles does not really have the beak echidnas have.
  • Charmy does not have 6 limbs that bees have.
• Ascended Glitch:
  • The Games:
    • In Sonic the Hedgehog 2, the flickies that appear when the player destroys a badnik share the same palette as Sonic, so when Sonic transforms into Super Sonic, any flickies on the screen are also golden. While this extends to Sonic 3 & Knuckles for the same reasons (and also applies to Knuckles if he's chosen as the player character), it is acknowledged when Tails collects the seven Super Emeralds and becomes Super Tails. Upon him doing so, four golden Super Flickies immediately appear onscreen and follow him everywhere, attack any enemy on screen, and turn back to their usual default blue when Tails loses his power.
    • There were glitches that let you turn Tails into Super Tails in Sonic 2 and the first-released half of Sonic 3 before the combined Sonic 3 & Knuckles added an official version of this form.
  • Two cross-medium examples from Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
    • Scourge the Hedgehog's coloration is based on the "Ashura" glitch in Sonic 2.
    • A morphing animation glitch from Sonic & Knuckles, resulting in a purple hedgehog/echidna sprite, inspired the appearance of Thrash the Tasmanian Devil.
• Ascended Meme:
  • The Games:
    • The Tails Doll fandom seems to be shaping into this. Originally a one-shot playable villain in Sonic R, the fans turned him into the subject of countless Creepypastas. The devs then released a rather... dark remix of Tails Doll's theme song.
    • Shadow the Hedgehog was known for its Narmy lines, and perhaps the biggest one was "Where's that DAMN fourth Chaos Emerald?!" In a nod to this, Sonic Generations has him holding that damn fourth Chaos Emerald.
    • Ever since Aaron Webber took over Sonic's social media accounts in 2014, he's been dedicated to ascending as many memes as possible, including Sanic, Sonichu, appending "& Knuckles" to the end of things, and various memetic phrases such as "Get a load of this!" When fans started coming up with new memes - such as a humorous-looking smear frame in the Sonic Mania intro - Webber started turning those into Ascended Memes as well.
    • Sonic Mania
    • The game has an unlockable "& Knuckles" mode, which makes Knuckles the character that's following the playable character, like Tails. The best part is, this works even when that playable character is Knuckles!
    • The message you get when you unlock this mode also references another of Knuckles's memes: "Knock Knock! & Knuckles mode is now unlocked!"
    • Edit Mode being referred to by its Fan Nickname, Debug Mode.
    • The special stage in which you get that damn fourth Chaos Emerald is That One Level.
    • Sonic Forces now features a Sanic shirt.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
    • The comic canonizes the Creepypasta depiction of Tails Doll as an Eldritch Abomination.
    • An insane Dr. Eggman catches Snively sneaking around and declares that he is "Snoo-ping as usual!", a call back to the infamous PINGAS meme. The same issue depicts Eggman saying "It's from the show!", a reference to a popular YTPMV (YouTube Poop Music Video).
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (2020):
    • Early in the film, when Sonic is hiding from the people of Green Hills, Crazy Carl keeps trying to catch him. He draws a picture of Sonic, and the drawing happens to look exactly like Sanic Hegehog.
    • Several of Robotnik's dance moves are taken directly from the Doctor Robotnik Dance viral video.
    • Sonic says "Gotta Go Fast!" when Maddie wakes him with smelling salts, referencing the heavily memed line from the theme song of Sonic X. Later on, Jojo, Tom’s niece, is seen running around the coffee table repeating the phrase ad nauseam.

• Aside Glance:
  • The Games:
    • In the Genesis games, if Sonic stood still too long he would look at the player and tap his foot impatiently.
    • In Sonic Generations, when Amy is rescued by Classic Sonic, and she gushes over him, Classic Sonic gives the most appropriate Aside Glance ever.

• Asteroids Monster:
  • Some forms of Artificial Chaos in Sonic Adventure 2 (and all of them in Shadow the Hedgehog) are of the re-forming variety; to destroy them you have to break them apart and destroy the smaller ones, then attack the core, but if you don't destroy the small ones quickly enough, they reattach to the core.
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), the robot tank that Robotnik sends after Sonic and Tom has four different forms, each of which are launched when the prior one is neutralized.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!:
  • The Games:
    • Sonic has issues with staying still for extended periods of time.
    • Also Tails, to a certain extent. He's a bit more focused and patient than Sonic is, usually, but he's VERY easily distracted by things he finds interesting. Which, since he's a Child Prodigy Gadgeteer Genius, mostly includes killer robots.
  • Bean the Dynamite from Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics), occasionally. In his first appearance, Fiona distracts him by throwing some shiny keys away. Later, Sally does almost exactly the same thing with one of his own bombs.
  • In Sonic X, Sonic spends a lot of the time he isn't running around lying on rooftops and snoozing, yet goes utterly insane when cooped up on a ship for ten days and nights. This may be because he's somewhat aquaphobic and can't swim.
• Autobots, Rock Out!:
  • The games, from Sonic Adventure to Shadow the Hedgehog fall under this, as the final battles of these games feature Super Sonic and/or Super Shadow fighting the final boss as the game as (usually) the main theme of the game plays in the background^note  "Open Your Heart" for Sonic Adventure, "Live And Learn" for Sonic Adventure 2, "What I'm Made Of" for Sonic Heroes and "I Am... All Of Me" for Shadow the Hedgehog. This changed with the fifteenth anniversary game, as since then the final boss battle takes place to an orchestral version of the game's theme song. Until the twentieth milestone, in which they used an original song. Granted, Generations didn't have its own theme song anyway.

• The original Japanese version of Sonic X used "Live & Learn" from Sonic Adventure 2 in their adaptation of that game's storyline; specifically when Super Sonic & Super Shadow fight the Final Hazard, which is the same place the song is played during the game. The 4Kids dub replaced it with a generic piece of music instead.

• Ax-Crazy:
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
    • Rosy the Rascal, the Mirror Universe version of Amy Rose. Like her counterpart, she used a magic ring to age herself up so that her beloved Sonic would finally notice her; unlike Amy, the ring drove her completely fuckin' nuts in the process and now she wants nothing more than to smash anything that breathes into a pulp.
    • From the same universe, "Super Scourge". While regular Scourge is just a more arrogant and cruel Sonic, Super Scourge is just non-stop violence and gleefully plans to destroy TWO whole planets. Because he CAN.

• In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), Dr. Robotnik is already insane to begin with, but his growing frustration with Tom and Sonic worsens his insanity. By the end of the film, he's arguably long gone off the cliff.

B

• Babysitting Episode:
  • In the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog episode "Baby-Sitter Jitters", Sonic and Tails wind up babysitting a trio of baby beavers — Tails made the offer to the parents because Sonic "loves babes".
  • In the Sonic Boom episode, "Three Men and My Baby!", Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles accidentally injure Lady Walrus, and volunteer to babysit her infant son, Chumley, until she's healed.
• Backhanded Apology:
  • In Sonic Lost World, Zeena gripes to Sonic that she has to reapply her nail polish because of him. Sonic says he's sorry, which Zeena takes at face value until Sonic explains that he's sorry that she "has nothing more important to do in life."
  • In Sonic X, Knuckles tells Eggman to release Amy from his clutches or he'll be sorry. Eggman then says that he's sorry that the heroes are still alive in the other world.
• Backported Development:
  • The Games:
    • In the first Sonic Adventure game, Tails and Amy have flashbacks dating back to the times of the classic Megadrive games. In them, Sonic, Tails and Amy are depicted in their modern designs. The devs apparently didn't feel like making alternate models for a few seconds worth of footage. This wasn't really a problem until Sonic Generations came out and established that the characters used to look like their classic designs in their younger years, though.
    • In Sonic Adventure 2, there are numerous cutscenes which show Shadow fifty years ago. Throughout the game, he acquires numerous bits of equipment, and the items you've got are visible on his character model even in the flashback cutscenes.
  • The 1998 story "Amy's Secret Past" from Sonic the Comic depicts a tomboyish Action Girl Amy even prior to her becoming a Freedom Fighter. In early comics, Amy had a more chipper and girly personality. It also depicts Robotnik with his "evolved" design despite that not appearing until several issues into the series.
• Badass Adorable:
  • The Games:
    • Tails. In case you don't know him already, he's a young two-tailed fox who likes to invent things and also likes to go on adventures with his bestest buddy Sonic. Take this moment from Sonic Adventure 2, for example:
      Tails: ... Sonic...
      Eggman: Huh?
      Tails: Sonic has asked me — for the first time — to do something for him. I won't let him down; I won't give up!

• Blaze is every bit as cute as the other examples here, but if you mess with the Sol Emeralds, she will burn you to death.
• Argument could be made for most of the cast, including Shadow◊. The resident badass Anti-Hero is three feet tall and fluffy.

• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
  • Julie-Su. A fearless and cunning cyborg experienced in hand-to-hand combat and capable of knocking down crocodiles twice her size. In addition to that, she’s one of the few good guys in the series who has no qualms about carrying a laser and using it. She’s also absolutely adorable.◊

• Amy Rose, wielder of the Piko Piko hammer, is also hyperactive, and adorably in love with the protagonist, Sonic.
• And then there's Cream, while an Actual Pacifist, will get really angry and stare down bullies. When she flipped out over how Team Hooligan (Nack the Weasel, Bean the Dynamite and Bark the Polar Bear) were making their search for the Sol Emerald even tougher, even they had to recoil back in shock.

• Badass Boast:
  • The Games:
    • Sonic Adventure 2

• Sonic himself has a particularly awesome one near the end of both Hero and Dark Stories:

Sonic: "What you see is what you get, just a guy that loves adventure. I'm Sonic the Hedgehog!"

• Then, there's this from Sonic and the Black Knight:

Sonic: "I'm Sonic, Sonic the Hedgehog! I have no master except the wind that blows free!"

• There is also the fact that nobody so far has contested Shadow's claim to being the ultimate life form. He introduces himself as such at least once in every game he appears in, including the game where he had amnesia for the entirety of it and didn't know who he was.
• Sonic spouts one in Sonic Colors when Eggman issues a public service announcement on Planet Wisp.

Eggman: All of the planets found in Eggman's Incredible Interstellar Amusement Park are, as far as you know, wholly owned by Eggman Enterprises and its subsidiaries. All unauthorized photography, video reproduction, and shutting down of generators is strictly prohibited. Thank you.
Sonic: Eggman! I am going to save this planet, and I am going to free these aliens! No copyright law in the universe is going to stop me! We can save ourselves a lot of time and broken robots if you just quit now!

• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) has Shadow deliver one to Snively once he figures out what his true purpose is:
  Shadow: "I am Shadow the Hedgehog. I am the union of ideals dark and benign but ultimately built in the name of love. I am the Ultimate Life Form. I am the protector of Mobius. Run home to your master and tell him. This is who I am."
• In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020):
  • Sonic delivers one to Robotnik after he recovers from his Disney Death.
  Sonic: I think you have something that belongs to me.
  (Sonic proceeds to tap into his electric powers, nullifying the quill power from Robotnik's aircraft in the process)
  Sonic: This is my power. And I'm not using it to run away anymore. I'm using it to protect. My. FRIENDS.
  • Despite completely losing his mind after being stranded on the Mushroom Planet for seemingly 87 days, Dr. Robotnik makes a highly confident vow to return:
  Robotnik: Here's the sitch. Uninhabited planet. No resources. No supplies. No apparent way home. A lesser man would die here. (whips out one of Sonic's quills) I'll be home by Christmas.

• Badass Bookworm:
  • The Games:
    • Tails. He is a freaking genius, even making a robotic suit that rivals Eggman's, while at the same time being fairly fast, having the ability to fly, and, in some games, being able to take out Eggman by himself. Not through intelligence, though. No, through beating the ever loving crap out of him! In Sonic Adventure, he has to go and beat Eggman to a missile then take on one of Eggman's mechs by himself, saving the city SINGLE HANDEDLY.

• Badass Normal:
  • In the world of the games, which is home to, among other things, hedgehogs with Super-Speed, an echidna with Super-Strength, and a two-tailed fox that can fly, Amy Rose is this: her entire claim to fame is that she has a big ol' hammer and is really good at using it.
  • Princess Sally in Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) doesn't have Sonic's Super-Speed or Bunnie's Super-Strength, much less any superpowers at all. But she is the leader of the Freedom Fighters who is a skilled strategist, excellent hacker, and of course, a competent fighter (although she has her moments where she ends up a Damsel in Distress).
• Bad Boss:
  • Dr. Robotnik in Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, big time, albeit Played for Laughs. He abuses Scratch and Grounder both physically and verbally on a regular basis, and has been shown on more than one occasion to find them quite expendable.
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics), while character Dr. Eggman's status as one would have been debatable since, while sentient, his machines are also easily reassembled and evil by nature, lately this has become more apparent.
    • In particular is when both times the Dark Egg Legion were the only forces he had available to him. The first time he told Dimitri that since Echidnas were in such short supply, he intended to "use" them to the last man, and hoped they proved durable enough that he didn't run out of them too quickly. The second time, when Lien-Da asked him why he would brutally attack them one minute, then rehabilitate and upgrade them the next while praising Lien-Da's ruthless and traitorous practices, he says, with a psychotic grin, "Because it's all part of the game!"
    • In one issue, Espio is infiltrating a base belonging to Eggman. When he confronts the head robot running the place, it begs for mercy and expresses fear despite the fact that only a small few of Eggman's lieutenant robots are sentient in any way. Espio grimly notes that this means Eggman explicitly programs his robots to simulate fear just so he can have fun tormenting them.
  • In Sonic Boom, while Eggman isn't physically abusive to Cubot and Orbot, he does belittle, demean, and insult them constantly.

• Bad Butt:
  • The titular character of the games is famous for his attitude, though everyone got to go to swearing and a large body count, especially Shadow in his game. The characters around Sonic tend to get exasperated by his cocky, larger-than-life way of carrying himself and mildly Jerk with a Heart of Gold behavior sometimes.
  "He can be such a brat sometimes!"
  -Amy Rose
  • Mister Stuart in Sonic X. He is the teacher of Chris who can give a group of agents a beating. This was cut out by 4Kids, but the Mister Stuart in the Japanese version is an all-around badass.
• The Bad Guy Wins:
  • The Games:
    • In Sonic Riders, Dr. Eggman wins the final race and technically beats Sonic. However, the treasure he sought out turns out to be just a carpet, making the victory empty for Eggman.
    • In Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), Mephiles succeeds in his plan to kill Sonic, causing Iblis to escape from Princess Elise so he can merge with it to become Solaris. Fortunately, everyone's able to revive Sonic and hit the Reset Button to stop Solaris from destroying all of creation.
    • Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood ends with Eggman having taken over the world.
    • The plot of Sonic Forces revolves around Dr. Eggman successfully conquering the world, and Sonic and his friends have to take back control.
  • "Endangered Species", the final major storyline for Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) prior to Sonic the Hedgehog/Mega Man: Worlds Collide, ends with Thrash the Devil successfully banishing all echidnas except for Knuckles into another dimension.

• Balloon Belly:
  • In the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog episode, "Boogey-Mania", Tails is forced to eat a lot of junk food (although he's clearly happy to do so) in order to create a dream creature to combat Robotnik's nightmare monster. He ends up massively bloated and promptly triggers the Growling Gut to happen to him.
  • At the end of Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), where Dr. Robotnik is banished by Sonic to Mushroom World. Bored with nothing to do all day and all by himself, Robotnik ate up several mushrooms and gained a lot of weight, indicating that when he returns to Earth he'll be morbidly obese.
• Bar Brawl:
  • There is one in episode 17 of Sonic X, "The Adventures of Knuckles and Hawk", but it's very short because... well, Knuckles is the one fighting so the guys fighting him never stood a chance. This extremely short fight occurs when Knuckles starts looking for his human friend Hawk.
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), Tom and Sonic get in one that Sonic solves in Bullet Time. Later, he checks being involved in one off of his bucket list.
• Barefoot Cartoon Animal:
  • The Games:
    • Inverted, since most of the characters wear nothing but shoes and gloves. (Some of the characters, such as Ix, Charmy, and most females do wear actual clothes, but also have shoes and gloves.)

• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
  • Several characters go barefoot, including a fair portion of the main cast (Rotor, Bunnie pre-and-post-roboticization, Dulcy, Nicole when in furry form, even Tails when he was very little) and a great deal of minor and background characters (Rosemary Prower, the alien Ceneca-9009). Official, straight-from-the-game characters generally end up as the ones who wear shoes in all cases, albeit not the only ones.
  • After the second Genesis Wave that began Sonic the Hedgehog/Mega Man: Worlds Collide effectively rebooted the universe, everyone who had previously regularly gone barefoot now regularly wears shoes, including Rotor, Nicole and Bunnie (who regained her robotic limbs, but whose robotic feet now look more like white, pink-striped boots). However, another barefooter, a Fish Person named Coral the Betta, was introduced later on, in issue #260, as part of a Sonic Unleashed adaptation.

• Batman Can Breathe in Space:
  • The Games:
    • It varies in the games; most stages set in space don't have a problem with breathing, but there are some exceptions, especially any stage where only Super forms are permitted. Whether the need for Super Mode is due to problems breathing or need for the power of hovering/flight generally granted by such forms can be somewhat unclear. It may be possible that the other space station-based stages have artificial atmosphere. Strangely, even though they can survive in a vacuum, Sonic and co. can still drown if they stay underwater for too long.
    • In Sonic Adventure 2, even though characters can get sucked out of the space station through broken windows, none of them have any trouble breathing in the vacuum when they venture outside.
  • Sonic X:
    • Early in the first season Sonic wing-walks the Blue Tornado into space, and promptly freezes when outside of Earth's atmosphere. He is fine when they re-enter it. Their own universe must have different laws, or something...
    • The third season. All the furries and alien beings can breathe, speak, and generally not die while strolling or freefalling in space without wearing anything other than their fur or clothes, but human characters (Chris and Eggman) have to wear space suits when space walking.
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • In the Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) comic Mina Mongoose, after being traumatized by the Iron Dominion's occupation of New Mobotropolis and of NICOLE's brief Magitek-induced Face–Heel Turn, uses her status as a music icon to send a message across the city to inspire them and raise awareness concerning possible problems should NICOLE become compromised again. In comes Ixis Naugus, who uses his magic to augment all existing feelings of anger and fear in the public to turn NICOLE into a Hero with Bad Publicity and eventually get her exiled from the city altogether, which, combined with the revelation that NICOLE was acting as The Mole proceeding Sonic and Sally's departure from the city, leaves Mina guilt-ridden. When Mina goes to Freedom HQ, the place of NICOLE's exile, to speak with her and apologize, NICOLE explicitly informs her that with her exile, she got what she wanted.
  • In Sonic the Comic, after having beaten back Metallix, Sonic and Amy find themselves on the Miracle Planet (which had recently been covered in Dr. Robotnik's machinery in an inexplicably short timeframe). Amy revels at the prospect of getting to be alone with Sonic, while Sonic himself dismissively states that he'd rather fight Metallix again. No prizes for guessing who appears behind Sonic and starts shooting at him.
    Metallix: As you wish.
• Beauty Is Bad:
  • Rouge is the best example of this being a Femme Fatale Spy. Somewhat downplayed since she's constantly switching which side she's on.
  • Wave the Swallow is a pretty skater who is a part of the Babylon Rogues.
  • Zeena is the sassiest member of the Deadly Six.
• Behind the Black:
  • The Games:
    • Used once in Sonic Advance. After the fight with Mecha Knuckles, Eggman is revealed to have been just to the right of where the fight took place. The second he gets scrolled on-screen, he panics and drops the level's animal capsule.
    • In one cutscene from Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), Dr. Eggman is standing alone, in the middle of a large window. There is nothing in view that could possibly be hiding a person. Sonic asks Eggman where Princess Elise is; the camera zooms in on Eggman, and without moving from his position, he pulls Elise into view from just off-camera.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (2020):
    • When Sonic throws one of his rings off the Transamerica Building to head to the next world. The ring collides with one of Robotnik's drones, and Sonic and crew act surprised even though it would have been straight in his field of vision.
    • When Tom and Maddie are discussing the next steps of their plan in Rachel's house. They decide to take Rachel's car since Tom's would draw too much attention. Cut to Rachel tied up in her living room through a doorway they can both see protesting this decision.
• Berserk Button:
  • The Games:
    • Sonic's berserk button is calling him a rat and bullies. Erazor Djinn pushed it in Sonic and the Secret Rings and... Sonic gave him a lava bath for his treatment of Shahra.
    • Knuckles will flip out if you steal/are trying to steal/he believes you are going to steal the Master Emerald.
    • Rouge found out the hard way that Tails does not like it when people flirt with him.
    • Do not tell Amy Rose that Sonic doesn't feel the same way about her or that she doesn't have a snowball's chance with him, unless you want a hammer to the head. Not even the object of her affections himself is safe from this.
    • Infinite from Sonic Forces does NOT like being called weak! 'Episode Shadow' reveals that, after a humiliating defeat at the hands of the titular hedgehog, Shadow rubs salt in the wounds by telling him how pathetic he is. This drives Infinite to insanity and is what causes him to go From Nobody to Nightmare.
  • Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • Robotnik has a lot, such as serving him some other food besides his traditional eggs:
      Robotnik: Hotcakes! Isn't that nice! You know what I like on my hotcakes?! *pulls Scratch over*
      Scratch: Wh-What?
      Robotnik: CHOPPED CHICKEN BRAINS!
    • Having his dishes smashed:
      Scratch: Dr. Robotnik's going to be very unhappy!
      (Robotnik appears in the kitchen doorway)
      Robotnik: Robotnik isn't unhappy. In fact, he's... EXTREMELY TICKED OFF!!! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY CHINA?!?
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM), cowardly Antoine will not let you get away with mangling French cooking. Especially if you try to make escargot... with margarine.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
    • After beating the everloving snot out of him, Dr. Robotnik claims that Sonic isn't strong, smart or fast enough to truly defeat him. This ends up activating Sonic's Heroic Second Wind, causing him to orbit the world in less than a minute to attack from behind in what can only be described as a "Sprint of Fury."
    • Do NOT harm Snively's hair. Not unless you want him to come after you with an Egg Lobster.
  • Being punched in the face for Dr. Robotnik in Sonic the Hedgehog (2020). It reminds him of unpleasant childhood memories. When Tom does it, he makes it personal with Robotnik, making the doctor want to ruin Tom's life as much as capture Sonic.
• Be the Ball:
  • Turning into a ball is a game staple. Sonic Spinball is a full game based around him acting as a pinball, and other games have pinball-themed zones.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (2020):
    • When Robotnik's mini-drones are scanning Tom's attic, Sonic tries to blend in with a soccer and basketball. Right before the red scanner came in, Sonic aborted on that plan and rolled away, making a ruckus in doing so which alerted Robotnik himself.
    • Sonic's used as one in his spinball form by Tom in an in-door basketball game machine, allowing Sonic to manipulate the system into reading hundreds of hoops when he pounds on the basket.
• Betty and Veronica:
  • The games have a few cases of this, most notably with the outgoing and flirtatious Amy (Veronica), to the shy and reserved Blaze (Betty). In Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), shy and introverted Elise is the Betty to Amy's outspoken and independent Veronica.

• Beware the Silly Ones:
  • The Games:
    • Dr. Eggman. The patron saint of Hoist by His Own Petard, he even ends Sonic Adventure 2 on surprisingly amicable terms with the heroic members of the cast. Considering how useless he seems to be, you almost start to feel sorry for him. And then you turn around and take a look at his track record. His original shtick of sealing animals inside his robot minions, either to provide power or AI or just plain For the Evulz (or some combination of these reasons) already catapults him far past the Moral Event Horizon, and has demonstrated enough Offscreen Villain Dark Matter to construct his very own Death Star-esque Doomsday Machine ^note which took Sonic two-three games to stop... after which Eggman went ahead and built a second one, as well as two Airborne Aircraft Carriers in the same game. Consider also that Sonic Unleashed starts off with Sonic tearing his way through Eggman's space fleet. Let's read that again: Eggman's space fleet. It's not that Eggman sucks as a villain; it's that Sonic is just that good (that, and Eggman has an unfortunate habit of trying to harness the power of Eldritch Abominations that are far beyond his control). And even then, he eventually gets complete control of one!
    • In Sonic the Hedgehog CD, Eggman single-handedly conquered Little Planet, reducing it to a post-apocalyptic dystopia with no organic life in sight in the future. That should give you an idea of what the Earth's fate would be if Sonic wasn't around to put a stop to his every scheme.
    • Dr. Eggman in Sonic Adventure 2 starts off the plot by personally destroying a big chunk of a top secret military installation and hacking the computer security system surrounding the Sealed Evil in a Can. And the first thing he did after getting the ARK and the Chaos Emeralds was blow up half the moon and give the entire world a 24 hour "surrender-or-die" demand. Eggman is over confident, but his track record kind of warrants it.
    • The aforementioned Sonic Unleashed opening shows what happens when anyone —Sonic included— underestimates Eggman, as it ended with him nullifying Super Sonic and breaking the Earth in pieces.
    • The ending of Sonic Chronicles. Eggman doesn't go with the rest of the gang to stop Ix, claiming he needs to operate some groundside machine to let the others through. Thanks to the differential time flow inside Ix's prison, by the time Sonic et al get out, Eggman's rebuilt Eggmanland and may well have taken over the world.
    • And then there's Sonic Colors. Not only was he the Big Bad for the entirety of the game, but had it not been for a broken piece of a robot damaging a vital component of his latest weapon, he would've succeeded in his ultimate plan to mind-control the entire population of Earth with Sonic and Tails none the wiser.
      
      Eggman had also managed to enslave three planets and an inhabited Asteroid Thicket, as well as build the largest space fleet seen yet, completely under Sonic's nose, and covered much of the land on all of the planets and asteroids with his own metal facilities. He would've completely snuffed Planet Wisp of life as well had Sonic not caught on in time, and he may have succeeded with Sweet Mountain.
      
      Really, Colors would have ended up as a victory for Eggman if it weren't for one simple fact: The hero was actually being proactive rather than atypically reactive. Rather than wait for the villain to begin his rampage, the hero decided to investigate his machinations without any reason other than he is an irredeemable villain!
    • There's also Sonic Forces. In that game, Eggman has actually taken over the world, thanks to a mysterious gemstone called the Phantom Ruby. With the help of a former mercenary named Infinite, they have defeated Sonic and took him to the Death Egg's prison cells. He even shows up with a Phantom Ruby-powered Death Egg Robot near the end of the game; but was defeated by a trio consisting of Sonic, Classic Sonic, and the Avatar.
    • Sonic. He is generally a plucky, carefree guy who often searches for the thrill of excitement, spends most of the time cracking jokes and is hardly ever serious, in which his silliness usually annoys his more serious rivals, like Knuckles or Shadow, or even the aforementioned goofy Eggman himself. And where he goes he's usually wearing a grin on his face... all while plowing through destructive forces of nature. And when he gets all of the Chaos Emeralds...
  • Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • Dr. Robotnik as he appeared in is regarded as less competent than his deadly serious Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) counterpart. But he and his robot minions Scratch and Grounder execute any number of formidably dangerous plans to take over Mobius that only fail because of Sonic, and they often succeed at capturing or otherwise incapacitating Sonic. It often happens that Sonic's actions do nothing more than undo the damage that Robotnik had already done. The Chaos Emerald storyline ends with Robotnik getting all of them and achieving godlike power. It takes multiple versions of Sonic to take him down.
    • Sonic, he's prone to wacky diguises in order to get past Scratch and Grounder or trick them into defeating themselves, purely for fun while he's being the hero.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (2020):
    • Sonic pretty much acts like a hyperactive teenager with an insanely short attention span, but as seen in several scenes, when he has to deal with a serious threat, he can become crafty and downright dangerous.
    • Dr. Robotnik is silly, obnoxious and quite childish, but also a corrupt mad scientist with sinister plans, genuinely dangerous machines, and no empathy to care who ends up hurt in the crossfire of either. He even manages to nearly kill Sonic in their final fight.

• Big Bad Ensemble:
  • The Games:
    • Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) has three Big Bads: Eggman for Sonic's story, Mephiles for Shadow's story, and Iblis for Silver's story. All three serve as final bosses of their respective nemesis's story, but in the last story, Mephiles and Iblis merge into Solaris, the final boss, and Eggman joins forces with the heroes to defeat him.
    • Sonic Unleashed has both Eggman and Dark Gaia serving as the Big Bads, with Sonic fighting Eggman by day and Dark Gaia's monsters by night, though Dark Gaia defeats Eggman once awakened and serves as the final boss.
    • Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity has Eggman and SCR-HD/Master Core: ABIS, though ultimately ABIS is the sole Big Bad of the game as Eggman doesn't have a true antagonistic role beyond creating ABIS and his robots in the first place.
    • Sonic Mania has Eggman and the Heavy King. BOTH of them are fought as the final boss in a sort of three-way battle.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
    • Dr. Robotnik/Eggman has always been the Arch-Enemy of the heroes and premier Big Bad of the series. However, over the years, more and more villains of equal or greater threat have shown up to rival the doctor — Ixis Naugus, Mammoth Mogul, Enerjak, Dr. Finitevus, Scourge, the Iron Queen, and most recently, the Battle Kukku — so you can't call him the sole Big Bad anymore. This has been most apparent in the issues leading up to and following the Genesis arc, wherein Naugus has currently become the villain most equal to Eggman for the position.
    • However, as of the Cosmic Retcon at the end of the Sonic the Hedgehog/Mega Man: Worlds Collide event, most of the above have been retgoned out of existence leaving Eggman as the sole Big Bad. However, the Battle Kukku and Walter Naugus (formerly Ixis Naugus) are still around ( the former was created and is owned by Sega, the later was from Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM), whereas the retconned characters were lost due to a lawsuit from a writer who had made some of them) and are hinted to be potential future rivals, and right now Dark Gaia is another potential Big Bad who's just as big of a threat as Eggman.
  • In Sonic the Comic quite a few villains try to take the role of Big Bad from Robotnik. The first to try is Emperor Metallix then Commander Brutus, after that Super Sonic.
• Big Bad Wannabe:
  • Dr. Eggman from the games has evolved into this starting in Sonic Adventure, since he constantly tries to use sealed evil in cans but fails to learn that Evil Is Not a Toy, so he constantly helps his enemies defeat it before unleashing the next evil. Sonic Colors rectified this though, as he does his old-fashioned scheme of using his Mecha-Mooks to defeat Sonic. Except in the DS version, where he unleashes a brainwashed and Nega-fied Mother Wisp.
  • Anti-Sonic from Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics), Sonic's Evil Twin from Moebius, was this for a long time, as he liked to talk tough, only to be pushed around by the other villains and get beat up easily by the heroes (a pre-Character Development Antoine once knocked him out cold. By accident.). Then, a dose of Chaos energy directly from the Master Emerald transformed him into Scourge, granting him several dozen levels of badass and making him one of the series' most powerful villains. He's still not on the level of Dr. Eggman or Finitevus, but he's definitely a credible solo threat these days.
• Big Badass Rig:
  • The GUN Truck from Sonic Adventure 2. It's big enough to fill a whole street, agile enough to make sharp turns at said size, and fast enough to keep up with Sonic. The truck chase is absolutely exaggerated in Sonic Generations; there, it has rockets for added mobility (including driving along walls), it's constantly dispensing GUN robot troops, and it has three gigantic buzzsaws that it tries to puree you with.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) has Doctor Robotnik's self-described "evil lair": an enormous matte-black truck that contains the launching and recharging points for his numerous Badnik drones, a self-contained highly-sophisticated laboratory with which he controls said drones and conducts the testing on Sonic's dropped quill, and even its own self-contained hangar for his hoverjet.
• Big Ball of Violence:
  • An old issue of Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) had Sonic involved in a stationary version of this with Geoffrey St. John the Aussie British skunk. It had the whole cloud of dust, poking out arms-and beneath it, Sonic and Geoffrey's feet, standing firmly on the ground, killing the illusion that anything's actually going on in there.

• Big Damn Heroes:
  • The Games:
    • In Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Tails gets such a moment in the normal ending by flying the Tornado to catch Sonic in the sky after the Death Egg's explosion. If playing as Tails alone, Sonic gets this moment instead. If all seven Emeralds are collected as Sonic, he goes Super after leaving the Death Egg and flies alongside the Tornado instead.
    • In Sonic Adventure 2, Shadow (who was a villain at that time) manages to teleport Rouge (and three of the Chaos emeralds, of course) off of Prison Island mere seconds before the whole island explodes.
    • Sonic the Hedgehog (2006):
    • As Princess Elise was being under attack by Eggman, Sonic spins around like a whirlwind, makes a one-liner, destroys Eggman's robots, and takes Elise to safety while escaping from Eggman's other machines.
    • In Sonic's first two confrontations with Silver, he is ultimately incapacitated and at Silver's mercy, only for one of his allies (first Amy, then Shadow) to arrive just in time and distract Silver long enough for Sonic to get away. Later in the story, Silver would turn from attacker to rescuer as he jumps in to save Sonic from an army of robots, after he learned that Sonic isn't responsible for his future's destruction.
  • The final part of Sonic the Hedgehog/Mega Man: Worlds Collide has the original eight Robot Masters jumping in to save Dr. Light, Proto Man and Sonic's friends from the other Robot Masters. In turn, Proto Man, Knuckles and Dr. Light race in to save Sonic and Mega Man.
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), Deputy Wade and Crazy Carl lead the residents of Green Hill to protect Tom and Sonic from Robotnik during the final battle.
• Big Dam Plot:
  • In the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog episode, "Baby Sitter Jitters", Dr. Robotnik plans to destroy the Beaverville Dam to flood the valley and make room for Lake Robotnik Golf and Fishing Estates. His first attempt to destroy the dam is foiled by Sonic rebuilding it, and his second is foiled by a trio of baby beavers that Sonic and Tails were babysitting.
  • In the Sonic Boom episode, "Guilt Tripped", when Sonic and Tails finally get back home from the Gogoba Village, they find four messages on their answering machine, all of which are from Dr. Eggman, who tells them that he is planning to blow up the dam. However, because they spent a long time trying to get out of the Gogoba Village, Eggman thinks they're not showing up at all and promptly goes to their house to find out why.

• Big "NO!":
  • The Games:
    • In Sonic Adventure 2:
    • In the Dark Side story, Sonic busted the Restraining Bolt on the Egg Golem boss. After throwing a small fit, the Golem turned to Eggman and attacked him in dramatic slow-mo, accompanied by Eggman shouting in a deep voice, "NOOOO...!!!"

• Sonic the Hedgehog (2006):
• Sonic and Shadow both yell "No!" (the latter much more dramatically) upon dying, while Silver cries "No... not now..."

• In an issue of Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) (#135), this is Sonic's reaction to the apparent (and brief) death of his father, represented by him screaming helplessly with a big "N" and "O" to either side.

• Big "SHUT UP!":
  • The Games:
    • One of the last cutscenes to the story mode of Sonic Unleashed has one from Eggman after his servant Orbot unintentionally tears him a new one for losing to Sonic again
      Orbot: You can simply begin your plans anew. Even if all of your efforts this last time were utterly wasted. Even if it was a complete and utter humiliating loss. Even the most pathetic loser in all the world would surely have the chance to—
      Eggman: OOOOOOOOOOH SHUT UP!!!!!!!!!!
    • He does again at the end of Sonic Colors while being sucked into a black hole.
      Eggman: [over the PA system] We at Eggman's Incredible Interstellar Amusement Park ensure that safety is our number one priority.
      Eggman: [about to be sucked in] Oh, SHUT UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUP!
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM):
    • A funny moment in the "Secret Scrolls" episode. The heroes' plane is diving out of control and Antoine is yelling manically.
    All: Antoine, SHUT UP!
    • From the same episode:
    Antoine: BUNNIE! WOULD YOU PLEASE TO BE SHUTTING UP YOUR OWN FACE?!'''
• Big, Thin, Short Trio:
  • The Games:
    • Sonic Heroes:
    • Team Chaotix features Vector (Big), Espio (Thin), and Charmy (Short).
    • Team Rose has Big (err, Big), Amy (Thin), and Cream (Short).
    • The Babylon Rogues of Sonic Riders follow this pattern as well, with Jet the Hawk (short), Wave the Swallow (thin), and Storm the Albatross (big).
    • In the first Zone of Sonic Lost World's final world, Zazz (Thin), Zomom (Big) and Master Zik (Short) attack Sonic sequentially in a Boss Rush.
    • In the Sonic Boom video games (as well as the cartoon of the same name), as part of the character redesigns, the main trio of Team Sonic consists of Knuckles (Big), Sonic (Thin), and Tails (Short).
  • Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog: Dr. Robotnik (Big), Scratch (Thin) and Grounder (Short).
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • The Games:
    • In Sonic Adventure, Sonic got Perfect Chaos to calm down and stop being the destroyer of worlds... but by this point, Station Square was already flooded and in ruins. And it gets worse, the city was flooded/destroyed over the course of a few minutes, so it's likely that most, if not all, of the people living there couldn't get away in time.
    • Sonic Adventure 2 has Shadow sacrifices himself to save the Earth and to accomplish his promise to Maria. Subverted in later games, when it turns out Shadow survived and Eggman's robots found him. The worst that happened to him afterward was a case of Laser-Guided Amnesia, from which he recovered.
    • In Sonic Unleashed, after Dark Gaia is stopped, Chip/Light Gaia seals himself along with the beast in the Earth's core.
    • Sonic Mania: Super Sonic defeats Eggman and destroys Heavy King, but the Chaos Emeralds react with the Phantom Ruby, cutting off Sonic's transformation and tearing a hole in time and space that pulls Sonic in. The Titanic Monarch is destroyed and the Little Planet is liberated once more, but Sonic is nowhere to be found...which leads into the events of Sonic Forces.
    • In Sonic Forces, after defeating Eggman and his Phantom Ruby-powered Death Egg Robot, Classic Sonic begins to fade away, about to go back home to the past. He offers one last fist bump to Tails before he disappears. Sure, the world may be saved from Eggman's rule, but he has left quite a mess, so the Resistance has to clean it up; one at a time.
  • Sonic X. The cute little kid who spent most of the series in a state of perpetual Survivor Guilt was dead after sacrificing herself to save the galaxy (Because Destiny Says So), while making her potential love interest the one who had to shoot her, the human cast member had to go home, had no time to say goodbye and would probably never see any of them again. Plus, Shadow is off somewhere brooding in space — again — but hey, at least the universe was saved.
  • The ending of Sonic the Hedgehog/Mega Man: Worlds Collide is this: Mega Man's able to restore his world to how it was, but Dr. Eggman, refusing to let Sonic win, interrupts his Chaos Control, then attacks it, transforming Mobius to a version never seen before. A few issues later, we learn that it did worse than that: the entire multiverse collapsed upon itself and then rebuilt then, Mobius shattered.
• Black Eyes of Crazy:
  • In both Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) and Sonic Underground, Dr. Robotnik is shown with black eyes and red pupils.
  • Doctor Robotnik/Eggman and Doctor Finitevus from Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics). Interestingly enough, Robotnik's crazy red-on-black-eyes were first revealed in issue #200, when he was defeated by Sonic one too many times. The Bride of the Conquering Storm also has black sclerae with visible circuits after being legionized, but she's not really crazy, just power-hungry.
• Blessed with Suck:
  • Bunnie Rabbot from Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) has a laser cannon and energy shield built into her bionic arm. Very useful, but completely drains her if overused.
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), Sonic was constantly hunted down on his home planet due to his powers. This led him to flee to Earth, only to find himself chased by Robotnik (and by extent, the United States government) for the same reason.
• Blinded by Rage:
  • The Games:
    • Knuckles is sometimes depicted as blundering and reckless as a result of his short temper.

• In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), after Tom learns of Robotnik's Berserk Button, Tom invokes it to make Robotnik angry enough to slip up. Tom warps up to Robotnik's hovership with a Ring and starts punching him repeatedly in the head, angering Robotnik enough to lose focus on Sonic at a critical moment and set him up directly for his defeat.

• "Blind Idiot" Translation:
  • The Games:
    • Before the developers had settled on a name for Sonic, he was referred to as "Mr. Needlemouse". The Japanese word for "hedgehog" is "harinezumi". Guess what a literal translation of that would yield.
    • In the Spanish instructions of Sonic games, Sonic was often referred to as Sónico, adding the male suffix, and made liberal use of the verbs "Salvar"^note which gets a pass for becoming a neologism, although more proper "Guardar" and "Grabar" were already there and "Remover" (as in, to rescue or shake your save file).
    • The Italian instructions for the original Sonic the Hedgehog called the main character "the Sonic" all the time.
    • Sonic Adventure 2:
    • The English dub has problems. Unlike the original Sonic Adventure, the dialogue was not rewritten for English, but translated. This led to various odd-sounding sentences in the game. One example is near the end of the game, where the Biolizard teleports outside of Cannon's core. Shadow then exclaims "Is that what Chaos Control is?" as if the Biolizard teleporting somehow gave Shadow a knowledge of how Chaos Control worked. The intended context was "Was that Chaos Control?". One line that really screamed that out was 'But, there's no way you could use the Chaos Control using an emerald that is fake!' And then there's the message that appears on-screen at the start of the battles with the Biolizard and FinalHazard: "The Prototype of the Ultimate Life".
      
      This also extends to Eggman's English voice actor using the word "yosh" when clearing a level or petting a Chao. "Yosh" can be translated from Japanese as "Yeah!" or "All right!"
    • The French subtitles are horribly mangled. "Le prototype est resté en vie et a placé la station sur une course de collision course de collision avec la planète !", which roughly translates as "The prototype has stayed alive and located the station on a collision race collision race with the planet !". And yes, they did repeat "course de collision".
    • The English version of Sonic Heroes had Tails saying "Look at all those Eggman's robots!". The translators also mixed up "robot" and "clone" in Team Dark's ending.
    (Omega is about to destroy a room full of Shadow clones, on Shadow's orders)
    Rouge: Hey Omega... did I ever tell you that... Shadow is a robot... and... oh, never mind. Good luck.
    Omega: You know about cloning. The original must exist somewhere.
    • In-universe in Sonic Colors. Tails' uses a translator to speak to Yacker properly. Unfortunately (or for us, fortunately), it keeps screwing up the translation, leading to phrases like watering flowers with dances.
  • The Mexican Spanish dub of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog made Tails a female character. To this day, many people who grew up during the 1990s in Spanish-speaking American countries still believe Tails (or Colitas) to be female. Additionally, Tails' real name (which he claimed he disliked in the cartoon) is Miles Prower. In the Spanish translation, it became Bibi Gavilán (Bibi Sparrowhawk).
  • A bootleg of Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie called Dr. Eggman "Machine King", and transcribes Tails' name as "Dillus". One line in said bootleg has Sonic's yelling "Shut up, Tails!" transcribed as "Dillus, you're too noisy!" While the Japanese word "urusai" (often used to mean "Shut up!") does literally mean "noisy" or "annoying", it doesn't quite have the same meaning as the original line.
  • Sonic X:
    • A bootleg translated Sonic himself as "Sonic Rat" (possibly confusing the Japanese "nezumi" (rat) for "harinezumi" (hedgehog)) for about the first couple of episodes and constantly called Dr. Eggman "Machine King".
    • The official 4Kids dub contains a notable instance in that they thought Chaos Control was the name of Eggman's base in the opening episode, rather than the time-space-warping power that engulfed said base and transported them all to the human world. References in the first few episodes to "destroying Chaos Control" still just manage to make sense, but when the power itself is later introduced in the Sonic Adventure 2 arc, those new to the Sonic franchise would probably get thrown for a loop.
  • The Russian dub of Sonic Boom contains a typo in the intro, saying: "A Sega/OuiDO! Presents" instead of "Sega/OuiDO! Presents" or "A Sega/OuiDO! Production". Then there's Shadow, whose name had been actually literally translated, as opposed to transliterated. Metal Sonic suffered a similar fate, becoming Iron Sonic.
• Blood Knight:
  • The Games:
    • Sonic can be considered a very heroic one, as he's "the guy who loves adventure". In other words, he loves the thrill of cheating death many times over and facing impossible odds for the adrenaline rush. This is why he has Dr. Eggman as his nemesis, because Sonic and his addiction to combat and danger wouldn't be complete without that overweight mad-scientist and his robot-armies (many of whom are mindless machines so he's not killing them) feeding as much of his suicidal tendencies as possible. This and his sense of justice.
    • Knuckles is of a similar mold, if not even more so than Sonic since Knuckles just enjoys picking fights and punching things in contrast to Sonic. Despite the fact he's job is to guard the Master Emerald, sometimes Knuckles lets strong foes grab it so he can have fun getting it back, Knuckles of course finds a worthy rival in Sonic, and later, Rouge.

• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
  • Like his video game counterpart, Sonic is this, though for a completely different reason (he gets bored and restless when there's no new challenge or threat, and will often deliberately go seeking one out).
  • E-123 Omega, who has gone so far as to unload his payload on a Physical God and complain when he still had ammo to hit him with. He's even fallen in love (or close to it) with Blaze the Cat because of her own actions!
• In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), while not as prominent as his game counterpart, there's still shade of this trait as Sonic loves a good fight due to him watching too many action movie. Best shown when he face the thugs in the bar or when he insist to take down Robotnik's drone despite his rather weakened condition as Tom take him away.
  Sonic: Aww, don't tell me that's all you got. I'm just getting started! Let me know if you want to go round 2 with the blue!

• Bloodless Carnage:
  • The Games:
    • Maria Robotnik died of a gunshot wound. Despite this, her death is consistently depicted as bloodless. There's not a single drop of blood in any canon depiction, even in the uncensored version of Shadow the Hedgehog. It's made more noticeable because her dress is baby blue, which should stain very easily.
    • In Shadow the Hedgehog there is no blood OR gore. Sega planned on adding it in, but decided not to add it so the game would be rated E10+ instead of a T rating. You can't even actually KILL anyone besides the aliens (GUN soldiers just lie on the ground and call out for help.) Even though it is implied that in a few of the endings you killed Eggman by breaking his neck or destroyed the human race.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) is considerably more violent than most versions of the series, but they lack any blood whatsoever. Several characters are caught in explosions, but appear only bruised - one example is when Antoine is caught in an explosion and goes into a coma. We only see his limp hand in the last panel, and later on, there are lots of bandages covering up his injuries. In the Sonic Universe arc "Total Eclipse", Shadow is beaten almost to death, but only takes scratches.
  • Maria Robotnik's death is repeatedly depicted in Sonic X without a lick of blood. She was a little girl shot with a bullet, so some blood should be expected.

• Blue Is Heroic:
  • Sonic the Hedgehog from the games. His blueness represents freedom and clear blue skies, as well as his generally easy-going nature. This is put in contrast with Eggman's redness as well as Knuckles' intense red and Shadow's red accents.
  • Sonic is a blue hedgehog who is the hero of Sonic the Hedgehog (2020). Contrast with Robotnik, who wears black and later red.
• Bluff the Impostor:
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) had Sonic bluff a robot imposter of Sally with a long and rather complicated handshake that they tended to use. However, he changed the last part from a thumbs-up to a thumbs-down. When Sally followed along and didn't correct him, Sonic knew she was an impostor.
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), Tom is immediately suspicious when Dr. Robotnik announces that he's from the electrical board, so states that he must know his friend who is also a killer baseball player. Robotnik confirms that he does... and Tom stops him from entering because said friend works for the gas company, and is a frisbee player. Also the electric company usually checks outside the house.
• Bond Villain Stupidity:
  • The Games:
    • Doctor Eggman's specialty. Constantly hatching up crazy world domination schemes and brilliant inventions, he tries to kill Sonic time and time again to the point that his Villain Song in Sonic Adventure 2 has him declaring his yearning of victory over the blue hedgehog. And in many cases, he does trap the blur blur or get the perfect opportunity. Except time and time again, his inventions have a glaring weakpoint, his Evil Gloating leaves himself wide open for retaliation, there's a significant issue that Sonic can take perfect advantage of, or he flatout spares Sonic in his few moments of victory which bites him in the ass rather quickly every time.
    • In the 8-bit version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Eggman actually rescues Sonic from falling to his death — in order to try killing him his preferred way, in a Sarlacc pit. Justified in that, at this point, Sonic was supposed to have one of the Chaos Emeralds on his person, so letting him fall into a pit of lava would definitely put a bit of a wrinkle in Robotnik's plans. Said Sarlacc pit is also one of the hardest boss fights in the entire franchise.
    • In Sonic Adventure, Eggman ambushes Sonic and Tails as they leave Casinopolis. He sprays them with Knockout Gas instead of deadly poison gas, steals one of the two Chaos Emeralds they're carrying, then just leaves them there to wake up instead of finishing them off. Arguably justified in that he spends most of the game using the heroes as a MacGuffin Delivery Service.
    • A glaring case would be the beginning of Sonic Unleashed. Eggman lures Sonic (in his Super Mode) into a trap, and uses the chaos energy to split the Earth apart in his efforts to unleash Dark Gaia. With Sonic now in his werehog form and weakened at his feet, Eggman's response is to.. drop Sonic out of an airlock along with all the depowered Chaos Emeralds. Sonic survives the fall with no issue (which Eggman entirely expected but didn't care for), while the Chaos Emeralds that avert the infamous Bag of Spilling serve to let Sonic both put the world back together and simultaneously regain his Super form for the Final Boss. Orbot, one of Eggman's personal robots, points out this major oversight, to which Eggman attempts to (poorly) proclaim it was for the sake of a challenge.
    • Zavok of the Deadly Six in Sonic Lost World. Instead of personally supervising the roboticization of Tails, he and Zomom just leave him all alone in the lab. Being The Smart Guy he is, Tails successfully modifies the machine he's bound to to his own advantage.
    • Sonic Forces has two instances:
    • The villains finally have Sonic in their clutches, but instead of killing him, they instead choose to imprison him aboard the Death Egg for six months, which allows Sonic to eventually break out and stop them. Zavok mentions that Eggman wanted to show Sonic his completed empire before jettisoning him out into space. (In other words, they wanted to rub Sonic's failure in his face, then kill him.)
    • Infinite gets a moment of this after his first boss battle. After defeating Sonic, Infinite arrogantly deems him Not Worth Killing and leaves. Eggman later chews him out for doing so, correctly predicting that Sonic will continue to be a threat to their operations as long as he's still alive.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
    • In the Knuckles Chaotix special, the original Robotnik manages to successfully trap Sonic and all of the Freedom Fighters inside glass mirrors. However, Knuckles, who also fell into said trap, doesn't get trapped in a mirror. Instead, Robotnik takes away his special abilities (like his gliding and his spiked knuckles) just so he can still have someone to gloat over. Naturally, since Knuckles is still free, this gives him a perfect opportunity to build together a resistance to take him down. A minion even lampshades the obvious stupidity of this moment.
    • Taken to extremes in one issue. Dr. Eggman decides he's sick of fooling around with Sonic and launches an all-out attack on his hometown. His forces manage to blast nearly every single good guy (except three) with powerful lasers that seem to vaporize them on contact. He then beats the crap out of Sonic for good measure. Looks like Eggman has finally won... except that those lasers didn't kill Sonic's friends, they were just teleport beams, which sent them all to cells at Eggman's HQ. Eggman announces he'll kill them all THERE… even though he could have killed them much more easily by simply making his lasers lethal in the first place. This is doubly stupid because Sonic believes everyone is dead... until Eggman TELLS Sonic that his friends are alive, and where to find them. Then he's actually surprised when Sonic mounts a rescue and frees them all. If he'd just kept his trap shut, Eggman would have had plenty of time to kill everybody.
  • At one point in Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie, Tails is using a bit of Applied Phlebotinum, about the size of a wrist watch, to mess with Metal Sonic's programming. From off-screen, Dr. Robotnik whips out a laser gun and shoots the machine right off Tails' wrist, then he orders Metal Sonic to kill Sonic and Tails. Logic dictates that Robotnik could have just as easily saved a step by shooting Tails in the head.
• Book Ends:
  • The Games:
    • Sonic 3 & Knuckles begins with Sonic and Tails riding the Tornado across the ocean at the end of an adventure, with Sonic utilizing his Super Form to fly alongside the plane. It ends the exact same way, except with Sonic utilizing his newly discovered Hyper Form.
    • Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), due to a Reset Button Ending, ends by showing how the opening cutscene plays out differently in the new timeline.
    • Sonic Unleashed ends the same way it began, with Sonic crashing face-first into the ground from a great height, except this time Sonic is cured of his werehog problem, and the unconscious Chip is just an illusion.
    • The first thing you'll see in Sonic Colors is the title character running along side the Wisps. In the final battle, just before dealing the final blow, Sonic and the Wisps run side by side, ready to bring their powers together.
  • The Sonic Boom episode, "Three Men and My Baby!" begins and ends with Knuckles driving his monster truck through the desert, with Sonic and Tails in tow.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), begins and ends with a character being sent to another planet, unable to return, and going a bit crazy from the isolation. It's Sonic at the beginning, who is sent to Earth by Longclaw to keep him safe, whereas Robonik is exiled to the Mushroom planet to get rid of him.
• Border-Occupying Decorations: Playing a game in Classic mode in Sonic Origins fills the leftover space from the 4:3 aspect ratio with rings and shapes, a picture and colors representing one of the six major characters, or sprites and colors representing one of the four games in the collection.
• Bound and Gagged:

• In Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie, Sara is tied up with ropes and gagged with tape by Dr. Robotnik during one scene.

• In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), Rachel spends the remainder of her time tied up to a chair.

• Bragging Theme Tune:
  • The Games:
    • Sonic Adventure 2 brings us Eggman's theme:
      The story begins, with who's gonna win
      Knowing the danger that lies within
      Aboard the Ark, a genius at heart
      Wanting to unlock the mysteries of life
      
      I am the Eggman, that's what I am!
      I am the Eggman, I've got the master plan!
    • Shadow the Hedgehog provides Shadow's theme All hail Shadow! Seriously, just listen to those lyrics without thinking at any point that Shadow must be a force to be reckoned with.
    • Sonic Forces has the theme of Infinite. Even if it emphasizes the character's Inferiority Superiority Complex, it's still a menacing Villain Song.
      I'm the tallest of mountains, I am the roughest of waves
      I'm the toughest of terrors, I am the darkest of days
      I'm the last one that's standing, don't try to stand in my way
      'Cause I've been up against better, just take a look at my face
      
      'Cause if you're messing with me, I am a dangerous weapon
      I am the sharpest of blades, I'll cut you down in a second
      'Cause I was born in this pain, it only hurts if you let it
      So if you think you can take me, then you should go and forget it
  • The Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) intro:
    Sonic! He can really move!
    Sonic! He's got attitude!
    Sonic! He's the fastest thing alive!
• Brainwashed and Crazy:
  • The Games:
    • The "Story" mode of Sonic Pinball Party begins with Dr. Eggman having kidnapped Sonic's companions, Tails and Amy, and hypnotized them against him. This leads to Tails and Amy acting violent towards Sonic and having red eyes and a Slasher Smile. Knuckles is the only one not to fall under this, as he simply wants to beat Sonic. Sonic is able to snap Tails and Amy out of the trance by beating them.

• In Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM), anyone roboticized by Dr. Robotnik is compelled to follow his orders no matter what. To make it even worse, Uncle Chuck reveals that all roboticization victims are fully aware of what's going on and everything they're doing, but they can't do anything about it.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
  • During the "Enerjak Reborn" arc, Knuckles was brainwashed by Dr. Finitevus into absorbing the Master Emerald's power and becoming the new Enerjak. It took his father's Heroic Sacrifice to snap him out of it.
  • This happens twice during the Iron Dominion arc: First, the Iron Queen uses her Magitek powers to take control of Monkey Khan and use him to destroy the Dragon Kingdom Freedom Fighters. Then, she uses those powers to reprogram NICOLE and use her to effortlessly take over New Mobotropolis. Khan was released by the Queen when she didn't need him anymore, and NICOLE was soon returned to normal by Sally (though she continued to pretend to be brainwashed for a while).

• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick:
  • Sonic Colors:
    • The Wii version of has this exchange.
    Tails: ...oh there you are. Where'd you run off to?
    Sonic: I did a little shopping, grabbed a bite to eat and trashed a giant killer robot.
    • Bonus points for Tails' reaction being "Oh, really? They've got shopping here too?"
    • A few of Eggman's PA lines have this as well.
    Please refrain from throwing coins, trash, or small children into the reflecting pools.
    Next stop, the Tropical Resort. Here, you will find: breath-taking views from our giant Ferris wheel, amazing deals from our shopping mall, and constant risk of bodily harm.
  • In the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog episode, "The Robot's Robot", after Robot runs away from Robotnik's fortress, Scratch and Grounder post an article in the newspaper, claiming he left carrying a toothbrush, two pairs of extra underwear, and a highly unstable BLAMMO ^note standing for "Butal Lepton Atomic Material Modification Oscillator" device that could easily implode the entire planet.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • The Games:
    • When you beat a boss monster in some games, Sonic or any other character you're controlling will salute you for succeeding.
    • In most games, if Sonic is kept still for a long time, he will look at the player and tap his foot. In Sonic the Hedgehog 2 he also looked at his hand (as if he was looking to a watch), and in Sonic 3 he would even point to the player and then point forward. Special mention goes to Sonic CD, where if you leave him sitting for 3 minutes, Sonic will yell, "I'm outta here!" and jump out of the screen, resulting in a Nonstandard Game Over.
    • Sonic Chronicles:
    • The ending cutscene. After the heroes exit Nocturne and return to their own world it turns out that Eggman played the heroes for fools and had deliberately helped them to get to Nocturne in order to get all the necessary time to take over the entire world without the meddling of Sonic and his friends. Tails and Sonic then end up having a conversation about how they didn't expect such an ending, how impressed they were of it and how they'll have to wait for the next episode in order to see what happens next. Tails then ends up telling Sonic about the makers of the game, BioWare, and ends up listing the whole cast credits at which point you can, as Sonic, tell Tails that you want to skip it.
    • Tails would in fact break the fourth wall a few other times before when he constantly reminded you to save your game unless you tell Tails to stop reminding you.
    • In Sonic Colors (Wii version), when Tails tells Sonic the aliens are called Wisps, he turns to the camera and says "Yeah, I'll just stick with 'aliens' if that's okay with everybody."
  • Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog with its "Sonic Says" shorts, in which Sonic and occasionally Tails teach a life lesson to the audience. (Including, in one infamous incident, what to do if you're victimized by a child molester.)
  • Done from time to time in the Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) comic books back in the 90's, before the onset of the title's Cerebus Syndrome. For example, in Super Sonic Vs. Hyper Knuckles, Tails at some point tells Sally that "Knuckles will punch Sonic on Page 7". Guess what happens...
  • The first Sonic the Comic annual published in the UK in 1993 featured a story where Robotnik adds a turbo booster to his Egg-O-Matic and chases Sonic throughout the Spring Yard Zone. Eventually he cranks the device to full power, and promptly crashes through the edge of the panel and out of the comic itself. Sonic then joins in the fun by talking to the reader directly!
  • Sonic the Hedgehog and the Silicon Warriors does this constantly throughout the book;
    'Oh Great' Sonic grated, ' We've only just started this adventure, I've no idea of what I'm meant to be doing yet and I've got a sidekick who's going to be talking Martian at me for the whole of the rest of the book.'
    'What book?' Tails asked.
    'You're too young to understand,' Sonic smoothed hastily.
  • Sonic X:
    • The showdoes it a few times, particularly Charmy finding out what happened when the Chaotix team were away by watching Sonic X on DVD, Eggman becoming the "main character" of the series and renaming the show Eggman X, and Eggman denying Sonic's claim that he (Sonic) is the main character.
    • Consecutive to the DVD scene above, the Chaotix introduce themselves directly to the audience. After Vector and Espio finish up, Charmy is ready to start when Vector informs him that they're low on time. Charmy tries to start his introduction anyway, and is promptly cut off by a commercial. Only in the dub - in the original, the Eyecatch features his information.

• Sonic Boom LOVES to break the 4th wall, whether its by the characters looking directly at the viewer, talking to them, or even 4th wall breaking comments. Some examples below.
  • In "Cowbot", Tails will occasionally look directly at the viewers, pretending he's a commentator for "Coconut Hurl".
  • "Sole Power" features Eggman revealing the power source of his giant robot. After saying "Gee, I wish I thought about that." he turns to the viewers, before saying "Oh wait, I did!"
  • "Battle of the Boy Bands" is full of hilarious meta jokes, including Justin Beaver's producers conveniently revealing their whole plans while Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails watch. Knuckles had this to say, while looking at the viewers. "Talk about lazy writing."
  • "It Takes A Village to Defeat a Hedgehog" has a hilarious example from Eggman, when he's asked who Shadow is. His response is "He's only the 2nd most popular character in the whole canon!" Later, Orbot and Cubot directly tell the audience to start an online petition for a second season.
  • Also in season 2: "The Biggest Fan", being about an overly obsessed Sonic fanboy, obviously does this in spades, from jokes about Sonic's arms and sports tape to Mark (the fanboy in question) having several fanfictions, quite a few of which are hinted at not being work safe.
  • In "Give Bees A Chance", Sonic calls in Tails for an assist and Tails replies "Roger!" When Knuckles asks "Who's Roger?" Sonic replies, in Roger Craig Smith's voice, "He's talking to me."

• Brick Joke:
  • Sonic Generations:
    • The game has Silver throwing cars at you for him being a moron because of him thinking you're an impostor. At the end, the cars he threw at you land on him when he's defeated.
    • Also, at the very start of the game, Sonic's birthday chili dog gets sucked up by the time rift that kicks off the plot. The very first thing that happens in the ending? Sonic catches the falling chili dog and joyfully notes that it's still warm because he hasn't been gone for long in the real world.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie features a scene halfway trough the second act where Robotnik attempts to blow up Tails using 2 rockets modelled after a tortoise and hare. The hare speeds off and lands a direct hit, but the tortoise of course is incredibly slow (and Robotnik even wonders aloud why it was a failure). At the end of the film, the main characters are all reunited when Robotnik turns up again, revealing the next part of his plan to conquer the world. Naturally, the tortoise crawls up to him from off-screen and explodes!
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (2020):
    • Tom mentions the only app on his phone that didn't come preinstalled is the Olive Garden app. Much later, he receives an Olive Garden gift card from Commander Walters.
    • Sonic expresses his love for the word "guac" when ordering at the bar. Guess what he says when Robotnik asks if he has any last words.

• Bullet Time:
  • The Games:
    • The "Chaos Control" abilities introduced by Shadow in Sonic Adventure 2 allow the user to warp space and time including slowing it down.
    • Sonic exclusively can slow down time with a "Time Break" ability introduced in Sonic and the Secret Rings which was later used in Sonic Generations, but it slows Sonic down as well.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), Sonic's Super-Speed allows him to practically move so fast that everything appears to stand still or move in super slow motion. He uses this ability first to save himself and Tom from irate patrons at the western-themed bar, messing around with all the participants of a Bar Brawl he accidentally started. The second time is when he pushes Tom & Maddie off the Transamerica to face Robotnik and his drones who immediately fire a Macross Missile Massacre at him and escapes them all. Unfortunately, Robotnik uses Sonic's dropped quill to enter Bullet Time himself and his jet now moves at the same speed as Sonic does.
• Bullying the Dragon:
  • The Games:
    • In her childhood, Blaze the Cat was bullied for her pyrokinetic powers.
    • Goes double for anybody stupid enough to intentionally piss off Shadow.
    • Heck, Sonic himself counts as this. As one of the most powerful beings in his world, with only a handful of others that can even match him, Sonic treats saving the world as an exciting adventure at best and like a day job at worst and is surprisingly difficult to genuinely anger. Erazor Djinn manages to do just that by pressing every single Berserk Button he has at once and calling him a disgusting rat along the way. The No-Holds-Barred Beatdown he gets from Darkspine Sonic and Cold-Blooded Torture afterwards leaves him pleading for even a shred of mercy. He gets none.
  • Do not test Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)’s Robotnik.
    • Robotnik mentions that back in his childhood, he was bullied by another male student who assaulted him and gave him a concussion to his head which left him humiliated in front of the whole school. Robotnik retaliated by building a robot to strike back at the bully hard enough leaving him paralyzed for well over a year that forced the bully to get all his meals through a tube.
    • Robotnik claims that because Tom punched him in the face, he wants to do the same thing to Tom.
    • At the "Piston Pit" bar, the violent, burly biker who tried to pick a fight with Sonic is asked by Agent Stone for where he thinks Tom could've gone. The biker doesn't know, but rather than admit he doesn't know, he just insults Stone. Robotnik asks him the same question and the biker insults him too, prompting Robotnik to hurl him through a window.
• Burning Rubber:
  • In Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, this was how Sonic's speed was frequently shown. The episode, "The Mystery of the Missing Hi-tops" reveals that Sonic's shoes are friction-proof, and thus Sonic's feet would literally burn up if he tried running without them.
  • Spoofed through Epic Fail in the Sonic Boom episode, "Into the Wilderness". Sonic runs laps around a pile of leaves Knuckles set up in an attempt to create a fire; the only thing that gets burning are Sonic's shoes.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Coconuts from Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog (who actually was a monkey). He appeared the least out of the Badnik Trio, and when he did appear, he would always get defeated by Sonic and Robotnik would demote him to janitor duty. His catchphrase is even, "I hate (insert noun here)! Hate it, hate it, hate it, HATE IT!!!"
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM), Antoine was the usual butt of Sonic's jokes, constantly reprimanded, and only Tails ever listened to his stories. Then came the episode "Ro-Becca", which was an entire episode dedicated to having him get injured or humiliated in hilarious, cartoonish, and slapstick-y ways.
  • Tails in Sonic the Comic. He's frequently the victim of Sonic's "strange sense of humour" and the people he rescues tend to complain that they wanted to be saved by Sonic.
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020):
    • Agent Stone's only purpose is to be the doctor's punching bag both verbally and, in at least one instance, physically.
    • Rachel spends the entire second half of the movie tied to a chair where nobody, not even her own daughter, will listen to her. Given her nasty behavior, it's hard to blame them.

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