Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood: After successfully defeating Ix and saving the universe, Sonic and co. return to Earth to find Eggman conquered the world in their absence. And then right as it looks like the Blue Cyclone is about to crash, Sonic, Tails, and Omega interrupt the scene with a credits roll. The game's title and Sequel Hook suggested that Sonic Chronicles was planned to be a full-fledged series, but BioWare becoming a part of Electronic Arts and closing down handheld game development prevented them from making a sequel. Poor sales and the Ken Penders lawsuit (though Sega won the case) killed any chance of it being put into the hands of anyone else, and the game has rarely been acknowledged by Sega since its release (and has since been declared non-canon).
During the events of Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 2, the Little Planet ends up being transformed into the Death Egg Mk. II. At the end of the game, no matter how many Chaos Emeralds you collected throughout the game, the Death Egg Mk. II does not revert to its original state, as Sega had moved on from Sonic 4 since then, and the franchise has yet to address the Little Planet's fate.
The Sol Dimension was originally coined as such by an unknown editor at Sonic News Network — officially, it was only generically known as Blaze's world, contrasting Sonic's world. It was picked up by the Sonic the Hedgehog Sticker Collection.
Author's Saving Throw: The series created some confusion over whether the name of the series villain is Robotnik or Eggman, owing to dub discrepancies. "Eggman" was always this character's name in Japan, but America localized his name as Ivo Robotnik. Sega eventually settled the issue by saying both names are official — Ivo Robotnik is his real name, and Eggman is the nickname everyone uses for him. The Sonic Adventure series phased out the Robotnik name in favor of calling him Eggman, and the finale of Sonic Generations has Classic Eggman referred to by his real name, noting that "nobody calls me that anymore".
Cash-Cow Franchise: Even after Sega got out of the console business, it's still Sega's premiere franchise, one of the very few of their original series that still has games regularly made for it, and it has the most supplemental material and tie-ins out of all their series.
Blue Bunny has a blue raspberry and cherry flavored version of Sonic's head. It's also one of the longest running Character Ices, first released in 1995 and still in production to this day. Over the years, the only major change has been the gumball eyes changing from black to green after Sonic Adventure. Of note, the bar's packaging was once changed to advertise the ultimately unreleased Sonic X-Treme.
Australia briefly had a Sonic ice cream consisting of milk ice and shock rocks. It was released by Toppa the same year that the Blue Bunny ice debuted and was a simple, bar-shaped ice.
Up until 2005, Tails was voiced by prepubescent boys in the 3D games. This started with Corey Bringas in Adventure 1 and Shuffle with his brother Connor taking over for Adventure 2 after his voice changed. William Corkery was the last child to voice him, voicing Tails in Heroes, Battle and Advance 3.
Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: There are a small number of fans who, be it out of ignorance, research failure or a schism between fans of the newer and older games, take the dub induced naming scheme of Robotnik having the nickname of Eggman with his real name put off to the side as meaning they're both two separate charactersnote Ironically, this is the case in the Archie Sonic comics, because the old Robotnik and new Eggman are in fact two separate characters, the new one being an alternate dimension counterpart of the former, with a similar enough backstory and personality to where he serves as an interchangeable replacement with the original Robotnik, who was permanently killed off in issue 50 and, as of the timeline reboot, literally erased from ever existing. This also saved the writers the trouble of giving exposition about the two different Robotniks, which they felt would risk confusing or alienating new readers., or, if they're really, really on the ball, say that Robotnik is Eggman's grandfather, both of which are completely contradicted by canon, not only because it's blatantly two names of the same character, but because Eggman already has a grandfather in canon—whose surname is Robotnik granted, but Gerald is obviously a separate character from his grandson Ivo in both appearance and personality (both before and after his tragic descent into veangeful madness), and had died long before Sonic was even born.
Creative Differences: Tom Kalinske, former CEO of Sega of America, said in an interview that he believes that Sega of Japan hated all the changes Sega of America was making to the series. He states that Sega of Japan resented that they had "softened" the character, as Sonic was originally envisioned as having sharp teeth, a busty girlfriend and was the front for a rock band, but Sega of America changed his appearance to better market the series globally.note Ironically, it would be the western Sonic shows and comics that would establish the character as a rebellious but heroic teenager who loved rock and roll. Furthermore, Sega would later make a rule stating that there would no true romantic couples in the Sonic franchise. Kalinske also believes that this resentment is part of the reason why the series had a weak presence on the Sega Saturn despite its massive western audience.note though the real reason was that Sonic Team was creatively burnt out on the franchise after Sonic 3 & Knuckles and wanted to make original titles, with the proposed Saturn mainline Sonic game, Sonic Xtreme, getting assigned to a B-Team and then cancelled after a serious Troubled Production. By the time Sonic Team had come back to the series and were beginning to start development on their 3D Sonic game, Sega had already began to shift development to the Sega Dreamcast, which, combined with hardware limitations, would cause that 3D Sonic game to get moved to the Dreamcast, becoming Sonic Adventure.
Mild, but Yuji Naka said that he feels the more recent Sonic games aren't as fun as the older ones, his main complaint being that they're too easy.
Sega is not too fond of Sonic '06 and the black mark PR damage it gave them, even apologizing for its multiple issues. Despite including (refined) elements of it in the series Milestone Celebration, Sonic Generations, Sega was modest enough to joke about its mixed reputation in one ad; while it was very impartial to the previous Sonic games it celebrated, once it got to Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), the music stopped and Sonic got an angry look on his face.
The development staff of Sonic Team admitted in Nintendo Power in a preview feature on Sonic Colors that the were-hog elements of Sonic Unleashed and the swordplay of Sonic and the Black Knight were not good ideas, and based Colors largely around the well-received day stages of the former.
Sonic Team openly despised the early American "Mohawk quill" redesign of Sonic featured in box and promo art, even seeing it as redundant because Sonic was designed to appeal to western audiences in the first place, and only relented when they felt that it and other Americanized changes to the series did help Sonic get off the ground in the long run. It became a moot point when the redesign was retired in artwork in favor of the original Japanese design by the mid-1990s.
Simon "Stealth" Thomley of Headcannon openly vented his frustrations with how Sega handled the mobile remasters of Sonic 1, 2, CD, and his work on Sonic 3 & Knuckles for the Sonic Origins compilation on twitter due to being rushed for release Sonic's 31st Anniversary and the internal development team at Sega introducing more bugs and issues in said ports. He demanded more time to work on the ports to correct the errors and oversights that occurred during development, but he was denied of approval from the higher ups from Sega.
This trailer showing clips of the various Sonic console games throughout the years, with Sonic himself looking pretty exasperated once they get to Sonic Heroes (around the time the critical backlash of the games began). Also, much more polished beta footage of '06 is used, as well as only the daytime stages of Unleashed. However, Sonic and the Black Knight is completely omitted from the video, whilst its predecessor, Sonic and the Secret Rings notably wasn't.
Jon St. John voiced Big in Sonic Adventure, Sonic Shuffle and Sonic Heroes. He later regretted doing so, going as far as deliberately forgetting how to do Big's voice just so he wouldn't get any call backs. However, he later clarified on his Facebook that he only hates the voice of Big, not the character himself.
Tails used to be voiced by young boys, but since Sonic X, he has been voiced by women. In the Japanese versions, he has been voiced by one single woman since Sonic Heroes and Sonic X.
Directed by Cast Member: The French dub for every game since Sonic Generations has been directed by Antoine Nouel. The latter is also the voice of both Espio and Big, reprising his roles from Sonic X (whose French dub he also directed).
Dummied Out: Can be considered a Trope Codifier. Every game in the series has something major in it missing, and sometimes new games are born from those scrapped elements. For examples, see here.
Just one cause of many for Sonic X-Treme's Vaporware status, as well as the reason for replacing all the English game voice actors with their Sonic X counterparts.
Executives often meddled to get games out for a Christmas release. It happened, but not too consequently, in some of the classic games. The original Japanese Sonic Adventure was particularly buggy, and that's why they made a re-release there with all the fixes made in the English version.
This is the reasoning behind the unfortunate state of Sonic 2006 also; it was rushed out to release in time for both the Christmas period and Sonic's 15th Anniversary, and as a result is wrought with bugs and is quite obviously unfinished.
In contrast to the far looser grip they had in the 1990's, Sega has become infamous since the 2010s for the amount of mandates they have imposed over any property or company that tries to use Sonic, including themselves, although the exact truth on just how overbearing these mandates typically are may have been distorted. The likely reason for why SEGA's given tighter restrictions may be due to how certain adaptations such as the original Archie comics universe were known for diverging greatly from their original source material, with SEGA wishing to rectify this following the legal mess that led to those comics' Continuity Reboot. With the new comics' continuity more closely following the games, SEGA put stronger rules on what Sonic comics were allowed to show— such as that game characters cannot have romantic relationships or family members that are not already present in the games— with a few fans arguing that this contributed to the Archie books' cancellation due to a stifling of creative freedom (although Archie's own poor management and business practices are likely greater factors). The following IDW books have a similar relationship with SEGA guidelines, of which is described in detail here.
The reason Classic Sonic rarely appears in newer games is because SEGA has a mandate that Modern and Classic Sonic can't appear alongside each other unless time travel is involved (such was the case with Sonic Generations and Sonic Forces). Classic Sonic was considered for an appearance in Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, but Sega shot it down for this reason. Their style guide also says that Classic and Modern Sonic artwork cannot be combined in any product, likely due to SEGA wanting to give the two brands distinct identities.
Any content or characters created from outside the main series games are not allowed to be used in them or in future Sonic media. This is due to a combination of legal issues (at least in the case of the nasty legal battles regarding the Archie Sonic comics, since their entire character roster is now hanging in legal limbo) and, per word of Ian Flynn, Sega simply not being keen on giving attention to past incarnations of Sonic that aren't their own (i.e. the three DiC cartoons, the OVA, Sonic the Comic, etc.) and wanting to keep the focus on Modern Sonic product, and have thus forbidden using them. So, don't expect seeing characters like Sally Acorn, Fleetway Edition's version of Super Sonic, or even Cosmo to show up.
Characters restricted to classic-era works (e.g. Mighty, Ray, and the Hooligans) cannot be used in modern-era works, due to Takashi Ilzuka considering them as "classic" characters and not wanting them to show up in modern-era works.
According to Ian Flynn during a BumbleKast in October 2023, Lah, Su and Uh from Sonic: Night of the Werehog are considered Marza characters rather than Sonic characters (despite debuting in a Sonic short), making any return appearances of the ghost trio in the Sonic series beyond Sonic Unleashed tricky to arrange. While the trio did cameo in Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW) issue 63, it took a lot of work to make that happen, and giving them bigger roles would require a lot more negotiation.
Fandom Life Cycle: Has hovered around Stage 5 (full mainstream status) since the beginning, even though it is not as big as in the early 1990s.
Sonic's age has been prone to flip-flopping over the years. Back in the Classic era, Sonic was originally listed as being 18 in the Sonic Technical Files before he was later listed as 16 in Sonic Jam. Beginning with Sonic Adventure, however, he would be listed as 15 years old, which would stick for most of the 2000s and The New '10s, before Sega decided to retcon that and give him (and the rest of the cast) a Vague Age beginning in 2022.
Blaze's origin has flip-flopped between an alternate dimension and the future. Sonic Rush was released first, and established Blaze as the princess of the Sol dimension who guarded the Sol Emeralds. Then Sonic 06 and its supplementary material dropped her princess status and said she was from the future with Silver, only for her to be sealed into another dimension at the end of the game (the game's writer assumed it was the Sol dimension and she was integrated as its princess). Then at Sonic Boom 2012, Takashi Iizuka confirmed that Blaze is originally from the Sol dimension and that her 06 backstory should be ignored. He still didn't explain why she was in the future with Silver in Sonic 06, though at this point it's likely that it's not pressing enough of a question to get answered.
Many Sonic Team employees will tell you conflicting things about the Sonic universe: The manuals can't seem to decide whether Sonic is calm, loves relaxation, and loves nature, or is excitable and unable to sit still at all, let alone enjoy the scenery. They also go back and forth on if Sonic and his friends live on a fictional version of Earth alongside humans, or if they live in another dimension and occasionally visit Earth.
Sega employees and the games go back and forth on whether Classic Sonic is Modern Sonic's younger self from the past (as per Sonic Generations) or is from another dimension (as per Sonic Forces). And in the latter, they can't decide whether it's truly another dimension or a split timeline. Further muddying the waters is the fact that in all cases, Modern Sonic is treated as having experienced Classic Sonic's adventures in the past (or at least the classic core games).
Sonic himself, despite being made as a direct competitor to Mario, was unmistakably inspired by it. Although the series did maintain its own feel instead of being a mere copycat, certain games such as Sonic Lost World clearly show an attempt to emulate elements of the Mario series, Super Mario Galaxy in particular, while mixing it with the series standard gameplay elements.
Franchise Zombie: After the series hit its peak with Sonic 3 & Knuckles, Sonic Team, burned out on their namesake series, focused on making original titles. Meanwhile, Sega, not willing to retire their cash cow, tried to continue the Sonic franchise without them to no success. After Sega Technical Institute'snote Who made Comix Zone for the GenesisSonic X-treme - Sonic's intended Video Game 3D Leap on the Sega Saturn - failed to make it to shelves, Sega finally got Sonic Team back to give the series a proper 3D title for the Sega Dreamcast. Even then, Sonic Adventure (which had Yuji Naka and Naoto Ohshima on board) was the last game any of Sonic’s creators worked on directly until Sonic Superstars. Ohshima left Sega after Sonic Adventure finished development in 1998 to form Artoon for unknown reasons. Yasuhara didn't participate in Sonic Adventure because he had quit Sonic Team after Sonic 3 & Knuckles, ultimately leaving Sega for Naughty Dog in 2002. Naka himself left Sega in 2006 to form Prope as he was tired of being stuck with (executive) producer roles for original IPs made by Sonic Team. The series sticks around as it is one of Sega's few remaining cash cows, but it has had wild ups and downs since then.
Genius Bonus: Planet Mobius was named for the Möbius strip, a reference to the loop-de-loops founds in the original Sonic game and its sequels. Neat, eh?
Keep Circulating the Tapes: The bulk of the original games have seen a re-release in some form, but there are a handful of titles that haven't and probably won't get ports anytime soon:
The Sega Pico games Sonic the Hedgehog's Gameworld and Tails And The Music Maker and PC game Sonic's Schoolhouse also remain in limbo.
A number of 7th generation games were delisted due to poor critical ratings, which also means they would not be rereleased in any capacity. Sonic Unleashed was later relisted in 2014 and 2018 for PSN and Xbox Live, respectively (with the latter port being backwards-compatible with newer Xbox systems), and Sonic '06 would shockingly follow suit with an Xbox Live rerelease in 2022.
While the Game Gear versions of the 8-bit platformers remain easily accessible, the same can't be said for their Sega Master System equivalents as they've never had an official re-release outside of the Wii Virtual Console, which is now defunct, making them currently impossible to legally obtain outside of buying the original cartridges.
The original Genesis versions of Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and the 2011 remaster of Sonic CD were delisted from digital distribution for the 7th generation of consoles and Steam in preparation of Sonic Origins which contains new remasters of the aforementioned games. The mobile versions of Sonic 1, 2, and CD, and the 3D and SEGA Ages versions of Sonic 1 and 2 by M2 for the 3DS and Switch respectively are the only surviving releases, leaving the only way to legally obtain Sonic 3 & Knuckles is through Sonic Origins. Sonic 1 and 2 are also included in the Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Classics for the 8th generation consoles (along with Sonic 3D Blast and Sonic Spinball), the Sega Genesis Mini, and the Sega Genesis Mini 2 has the original Sega CD version of Sonic CD.
Killer App: The original Sonic games for the Sega Genesis, and arguably the Sonic Adventure games for the Dreamcast.
The Merch: There are possibly hundreds of Sonic The Hedgehog plushies out there, because who doesn't want to hug a Badass AdorableInkblot Cartoon StyleAmazing TechnicolorAnimal Superhero? Most notable are the plushies of characters such as Bean and Bark, who haven't been seen in over a decade, plushies of non-animal characters, like Metal Sonic and Gamma, plushes of non-game characters, plush Chao, and life size plushies of Sonic. There are even one or two of Dr. Eggman. Disappointingly there isn't an official defictionalization of the in game plushie of the Tails Doll from Sonic R.
No Origin Stories Allowed: Sonic is restricted by Sega to not have a backstory, Origin Story or a reason on why the titular hog has Super-Speed. In fact, the original story for Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric was "Sonic Origins", exploring the origin of the character. No official reason has ever been stated, but corporate decisions have been suggested. That said, there are some versions of the character that have an origin story: Sonic the Comic, Sonic Underground, and Sonic the Hedgehog (2020). Sonic The ComicOrigin Story of Sonic being friends with Doctor Kintobor and due to an accident turning him into the evil Doctor Robotnik/Eggman, was based on early drafts of the Sonic Bible, which is completely ignored by the games continuity.
The Other Darrin: The series has gone through a veritable revolving door of voice actors throughout the years, some more controversial than others. Tails, in particular, has gone through more voice actor switches than any other character, in both the English AND Japanese versions.
Science Imitates Art: A group of proteins that control growth in embryos are referred to as the hedgehog proteins due to their removal causing the growth of spiky structures in subjects. The first two variants identified were named desert hedgehog and Indian hedgehog; the third is called Sonic hedgehog. Its inhibitor was then called robotnikinin.
The reason the original Sonic the Hedgehog theme is so rarely heard is because the rights to the song are owned by Dreams Come True, and Sega has to pay royalties to them for using it. They almost ran into trouble with this in Sonic Spinball, which originally used the theme without authorization from Dreams Come True under the assumption that Sega owned the song—they found out it was not the case just days before shipping, so the song was hastily Dummied Out of the game and replaced with new music. Additionally the original soundtrack CDs for both the first and second game itself didn't see any release until 2011 by Masato Nakamura himself.
There also had been some lawsuits and legal situations involving the franchise:
In November 2010, Archie Comics filed a lawsuit against Ken Penders, which ended with Penders winning the lawsuit.
There also was a lawsuit involving Sonic Chroniclesnote Which also was where the game's controversy came from. that began all the way back in 2011. In which, former Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) head writer Ken Penders filed a federal lawsuit against Electronic Artsnote BioWare's parent company and Sega of America, for copyright infrigment, deeming that the Nocturnus Clan was too similar to Ken's Dark Legion echidnas. September 2011, the case was dismissed. (only for Ken to refile the case days later before it was dismissed for a second time in February 2012). And in October 2013, Sega ended up winning the case against Ken and EA, so they have full ownership of all the Chornicles-made characters, and Ken was left banned from filing the lawsuit of his own again, unless Sega brings back any of the Chronicles characters back. Ever since this, it's very unlikely that Chronicleswill ever receive a sequel, and that Shade, Ix and the Marauders will ever be seen in anotherSonicmedia again.
Whether or not Sonic and humans share a world has changed over time. According to twointerviews, Modern Sonic's world is said to be split into two "separate worlds"—the human world and Sonic's world. TailsTube elaborated on this in 2022; Sonic and humans live on the same planet, with Sonic and his kind living on small islands and humans living on the larger continents.
As far as Sega is concerned, both Robotnik and Eggman are official, canon names for Ivo in the west, but they still insist on using the Eggman moniker.
Both Metal Sonic and an unknown robot resembling a form of Mecha Sonic can be seen in tubes in the Final Egg section of the Mystic Ruins in Sonic Adventure. In Archie Comics, the latter was called Silver Sonic II.
Want to know which version of the original Sonic the Hedgehog you're playing? Check out the clouds in Green Hill Zone. In most Japanese versions, they scroll, but in most U.S. versions, they're static.
Also from the original game, there was originally supposed to be a sound test menu with an animated band "playing" the music while Sonic partakes in some breakdancing. It was nixed so the game could meet deadlines, and its space was replaced with the famous "SAY-GUUUUH!" choir heard at the end of Sega's Japanese adverts for the company logo.
Furthermore, the synthesis player of the band, Vector the Crocodile, would go on to become a supporting player in the series.
Yuji Naka reportedly added the seventh emerald and Super Sonic to Sonic 2 as a Shout-Out to Dragon Ball Z. To make it even more obvious, in Sonic 3, Super Sonic had green eyes.
Also introduced in Sonic 2, the Death Egg was a Shout-Out to the Death Star from Star Wars. Supposedly this was to balance out the Japanese fanservice with some American fanservice.
The giant skeleton platform seen in Mystic Mansion resembles the character select screen of Golden Axe II.
There's an infamous "bug" in the original Sonic Genesis game where, if you land on a group of spikes after being hit without wearing a shield and without landing on the ground first, you will die regardless of the fact that you're supposed to have Mercy Invincibility, at that point. "Bug" is in Scare Quotes because digging into the code eventually revealed that it was a deliberately programmed behavior. In any case, all sequels and future releases of the game eliminate this behavior, and spikes respect Mercy Invincibility like anything else.
Almost all Badniks in Sonic the Hedgehog CD are based on bugs. The exception is Bigbom, a Giant Mook version of the first game's Bomb Badnik.
In the games and in Japanese promotional artwork, Sonic characters do not have toes. However, in Western adaptations, they do. And if Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed is anything to go by, they seem to have toe bones despite not having toes.
Amy Rose was originally brown and called "Eimi" in her debut manga, and instead of being Sonic's "self-proclaimed" girlfriend, she actually was his girlfriend (or at least, in love with hisSecret Identity). Additionally, Amy is nicknamed "Rosy the Rascal" in the Japanese manual of Sonic the Hedgehog CD as well as her character card in Sonic the Fighters.
Despite the fact that Sonic Team was explicitly put together by Sega to create a game to compete with Mario, two of Sonic's co-creators, Naoto Ohshima and Hirokazu Yasuhara, have made contributions to the Mario franchise. Ohshima's two companies, Artoon and Arzest, contributed Yoshi's Island DS and Yoshi's New Island, while Yasuhara helped on a few of the Mario vs. Donkey Kong games.
that he believes that Sega of Japan hated all the changes Sega of America was making to the series. He states that Sega of Japan resented that they had "softened" the character, as Sonic was originally envisioned as having sharp teeth, a busty girlfriend and was the front for a rock band, but Sega of America changed his appearance to better market the series globally.note Kalinske also believes that this resentment is part of the reason why the series had a weak presence on the Sega Saturn despite its massive western audience.note 