Actor-Inspired Element: Jim Carrey had the idea for the keypads on Robotnik's gloves, which were inspired by the finger-and-thumb movements of texting.
Adored by the Network: Nickelodeon used to love airing this movie, especially on weekends. You can tell by looking at the movie's Nickstory page here.
Having played Sonic the Hedgehog games in his college days, Dwayne Johnson tweeted his approval of the "Is the Rock the president?" line in one of the spots, which is in a different context from the final film.
Upon the release of the movie, Haruki Satomi, the president of Sega Sammy and one of the film's executive producers, made this special message as an honor.
Despite his initial criticism of the trailer, when Yuji Naka eventually saw the finished movie in June 2020, he tweeted that he "thoroughly enjoyed it" and that his kids loved the film too.
Author's Saving Throw: The initial design of Sonic in the teaser trailer and posters received a universally negative reaction, saying that Sonic's design fell hard into the Unintentional Uncanny Valley. Paramount, Sega, and the filmmakers put the brakes on as hard as they could, and delayed the film's release by three months to redesign and reanimate Sonic. Fortunately, they called in Tyson Hesse to provide the new design, which ended up being much closer to his video game counterpart's design. This second design was rapturously received when finally unveiled to the public, and the movie would go on to be a modest hit and successfully launch a new film franchise for Paramount.
Ben Schwartz, Sonic's voice actor, is not named at the top of the movie's poster, although Jim Carrey is. Meanwhile, James Marsden is given top billing, even though he isn't on the poster, which might lead some to think that he's voicing Sonic. Schwartz does get a "Ben Schwartz is Sonic the Hedgehog" poster, though, and gets top billing during the scrolling closing credits.
In the movie, Carrey gets an "and" credit behind Neal McDonough as Bennington, who is only in one scene, much of which is seen in the trailers. Even then, Bennington hardly says anything because Robotnik constantly interrupts him.
California Doubling: Green Hills is set in Montana, United States, yet the film was filmed in Vancouver, Canada.
In the Latin American Spanish dub, YouTuber Luis Arturo Villar, a.k.a. Luisito Comunica, provides the voice for Sonic.
The Japanese dub features actor Taishi Nakagawa as the voice of Sonic.
The German dub features the German YouTuber Julien Bam as his voice.
The European French dub features comedian Malik Bentalha as Sonic.
Content Leak: The months before the first trailer were strife with design and story leaks.
Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: An awkward Access Hollywood interview with Jim Carrey had the reporter under the impression that Carrey was voicing Sonic, and that his repeated insistence he was playing Dr. Robotnik in the flesh was just another Carrey Mind Screw with the media.
Creative Differences: Sega shared the fans' disdain for Sonic's first movie design, specifically the decision to make him look more realistic, with the changes to his eyes and hands being their biggest complaint.
Plus given that’s there’s no credit for Paramount and Sega in Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022) where the old design is used as Ugly Sonic, it’s likely they want to stay as far away from the design as possible.
Deleted Scene: There are extended sequences of two scenes in the movie featuring Crazy Carl, first with Carl setting up the traps for Sonic and using batteries at bait, and second the scene at the Green Hills bar with Carl elaborating what happened that night, and ending with Tom offering to take Carl home. Both scenes were drastically shortened in the proper release, but are included as extras on the Blu-ray release.
Directed by Cast Member: The Canadian French dub was directed by Sébastien Reding, who also voiced Tails in the second end credits scene.
Disowned Adaptation: Sonic's three founding fathers and other developers who previously worked on the franchise have criticized the film's direction before Sonic's redesign:
Naoto Ohshima, Sonic's original character designer, also voiced his disapproval on Twitter. He stated that like Mickey Mouse, Sonic does not need to be depicted as a realistic hedgehog in live-action to be a believable character.
Upon the trailer's debut, Naka, Ohshima and Yasuhara tweeted along the lines of Sonic's design feeling familiar if one squinted at it for long enough (Ohshima even drew fan art in goodwill), and looking forward to Jim Carrey's performance. Yasuhara and Naka later praisedthe fans for getting their criticisms heard enough for the film's staff to promise changes for Sonic's appearance.
DVD Commentary: With director Jeff Fowler and Sonic voice actor Ben Schwartz.
According to story co-writer Van Robichaux, Sony was aiming to give the movie a Darker and Edgier look in the hopes that it would snatch a PG-13 rating to boost its box office chances. However, when the film jumped ship to Paramount, a re-write of the screenplay was ordered in order to make the film more family-friendly. The action-oriented sequences were kept in, however.
The budget was initially set at $100 million, but Paramount trimmed it to $90 million. Thanks to the costs of redesigning Sonic, they found a happy medium at $95 million.
Robichaux was said to have frequently clashed with then-Sony Pictures head Amy Pascal during the early stages of production, before the move to Paramount.
According to one CG artist, Sonic's first, more "realistic" design was an active decision by Paramount executives, with them hoping to imitate the aesthetics of the live-action Transformers Film Series and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films. They openly knew that fans would hate it, but they believed that it would be liked and accepted by the general public, similarly to how the aforementioned franchises had been received. However, the massive, almost universal backlash that followed the first trailer led them to immediately delay the film to allow Sonic to be redesigned to look more like his cartoony game design. The original vision and concept art for the movie shows that the director and team's vision was for a more traditional Sonic. The artist even quoted a tweet with the trailer of the redesign saying "yeah, pretty much what we wanted to do in the first place".
Sonic was originally going to say the line "We're total badasses", but the writers were informed by the studio that they couldn't use the word "badass" and still keep a PG rating. So the line was changed to "We're a couple of loose cannons" in the final film.
When Tyson Hesse came on-board for Sonic's redesign after the backlash to the initial trailer, one rule he gave the animators was that they were not allowed to show Sonic's bare feet.note This likely refers to the scene where Sonic is lying unconscious on the table being attended to by Maddie. The original design for Sonic didn't have him wearing socks so when his shoes are removed he would have been totally barefoot; whereas in the final movie he has very worn-down socks under his shoes, where part of his foot is visible but you can't see the entire thing. This also reflects a similar edict handed out by Sega themselves concerning how Sonic is portrayed. The closest we get to seeing his bare feet is when Robotnik constructs an artificially recreated image of his foot based on Sonic's shoeprint.
In June 2018, Johnny Gioeli, the head singer of Crush 40, claimed that Sega had nothing to do with the film's production aside from licensing the characters. Shortly after he said this, Takashi Iizuka, the head of Sonic Team, revealed that he was working as a supervisor on the film. After the backlash from the first trailer, Sega backtracked on this and clarified that Iizuka only had a minor advisory role with no real say over the film's development.
After the backlash against the first trailer, Sega distanced themselves from the film as much as possible, repeatedly going out of their way to establish they had nothing to do with the movie's production and that its success or failure laid solely in Paramount's hands. Following the second trailer and its positive reception, Sega embraced the film to the point of selling merchandise based on it on their official online store, having Movie Sonic alongside his baby counterpart (with Longclaw eventually added to the roster later on) as unlockable characters for a limited time in both Sonic Forces: Speed Battle and Sonic Dash, and even playing the trailer in Phantasy Star Online 2’s lobby during its long-awaited Western release’s closed beta.
Harpo Does Something Funny: Jim Carrey has admitted that he was allowed to go wild with his performance and remarked that very little of the dialogue written for him from the script got into the movie.
Two trailers were privately shown off during Paramount's panel at CinemaCon 2019. One was the film's much maligned first trailer and the other was one that focused on Dr. Robotnik and was scored to "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)". Both trailers were promised to be released publicly, but due to the poor reception of the first trailer and the ensuing redesign, it's unlikely the Robotnik trailer will ever see the light of day.
The original cut of the film with Sonic's first design was near completion before the redesign took place. This means that an almost finished version of the film's first iteration exists somewhere within Paramount.
Missing Trailer Scene: A few things didn't make it from the trailers to the final movie:
The most obvious would be every scene with Sonic's older design, and several of his lines in later trailers and the final product were redone to sound more energetic to fit his new design.
The scene where Sonic is dancing next to Robotnik's overturned tank is shot from a different angle in the final movie than it is in the trailer, where the camera is closer to Sonic's front. Also, instead of doing the casual dance as in the trailer, he's flossing, and doesn’t respond "I have no idea" until the next cut.
Sonic's line "Oh look at this. I took 9 million steps today" did not make to the final film. Other missing lines include Sonic's "Basically, it looks like I'm going to have to save your entire planet" and Robotnik declaring that he'll use Sonic's power to take over the world. Sonic's remark of "Smells like body spray and old ham sandwich." also didn't make it.
Many trailers and commercials took Sonic's lines from elsewhere in the movie and overlaid them on multiple scenes, such as adding "Here comes the boom!" over Sonic Spin Dashing into the tank. Some TV spots appear to use a modified or alternate take of Robotnik's reaction to the continual defeat of the tank-bot, rendering the line as simply "Give me a break!"
A later trailer (after Sonic's redesign) shows several clips on Sonic's homeworld with him as a fully-grown hedgehog (including one where he jumps through a ring and into Green Hills). In the final movie Sonic left his homeworld as a toddler and has never been back (and the actual animations from most of these clips were repurposed in the end product to take place on Earth, such as the scene where he slides on his knees, which was set in Egypt during the climactic chase with Robotnik).
Network to the Rescue: When Sony was on the verge of cancelling the movie outright, co-producer Neal Moritz began to negotiate a new first-look contract with Paramount, who had just appointed former Fox chairman (and long-time rival to Sony head Tom Rothman) Jim Gianopulos to replace Brad Grey as Chairman and CEO. Gianopulos was so impressed by early test footage produced before Sony halted production that when he signed Moritz to a new contract, he reached a deal with Sony to take the film rights out of their hands, thus allowing production to continue. Ironically, the last movie to be greenlit at Fox by Gianopulos was Deadpool, which was another project about a character who debuted in 1991, in which Rothman didn't see great potential and ended up a smashing hit (both had the involvement of Tim Miller and were released on Valentine's Day to boot).
Orphaned Reference: The movie starts In Medias Res with Sonic attempting to outrun Dr. Robotnik and his Eggpod, the scene freezes and after some narration from the title character, the film rewinds to the beginning of the film's story. During the rewind, there's a brief blink-and-you'll-miss-it shot of Tom Wachowski's truck driving past an "Oregon Welcomes You" sign, except there's no point in the movie where Tom or Sonic ever visit Oregon, suggesting it's a remnant of a Deleted Scene.
Taishi Nakamura replaces Junichi Kanemaru as the voice of Sonic.
Kōichi Yamadera provides the voice for Dr. Robotnik, replacing the character's usual voice actor Kotaro Nakamura. However, with the way live-action dubbing works, it's worth noting that an actor who appears physically in a film will almost always be voiced by the same voice actor in other regions for consistency's sake, and Yamadera is Jim Carrey's usual Japanese dub actor.
The Other Marty: A rare instance where this happened with a CG character and not a flesh-and-blood actor; the original design of Sonic in the first trailer was so universally disliked that the filmmakers postponed the release so they could properly re-design it. Sonic Mania lead animator and Fandom VIP Tyson Hesse was brought on by Sega to assist.
Pop-Culture Urban Legends: Some people believe that the infamous early design for Sonic and Paramount caving into fan pressure to redesign him was an intentional publicity stunt for the movie. This is disproven by not only the movie being delayed from November 2019 to February 2020, but merchandise being made using the original design.
Production Throwback: Even though Robotnik's allusion to Charlotte's Web seems strange, there is the fact that twofilms were released by Paramount, who also released this film. Also, Sega previously published a video game adaptation of the 2006 live-action version for Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, and PC.
Ben Schwartz is a huge fan of Sonic the Hedgehog, and aspired playing the title role for years before finally getting the opportunity to do so.
His Latin American Spanish voice actor, Luis Arturo Villar, mentioned on an announcement video that he is a fan of the character and was honored to have the chance to do his voice.
Lee Majdoub, who plays Agent Stone, is also a fan of the games.
Prop Recycling: Eagle-eyed Transformers fans have noticed that the customized truck cab pulling Robotnik's evil lair is almost identical to the customized truck cabImage context From left to right; Base model, Galvatron, Robotnik's truckused for Galvatron's vehicle mode in the Transformers: Age of Extinction. Not only do both have identical modifications, both films were made by Paramount and the Galvatron truck cab was supposedly never sold/disposed of — as such, it's almost certainly the same truck cab.
Release Date Change: Sony originally intended to release the film in 2016 to coincide with the franchise's 25th anniversary, but got pushed to 2018 when production stalled. After Paramount picked up the movie, the studio settled for a November 15, 2019 release date, on the weekend before Thanksgiving. Then, due to Top Gun: Maverick getting delayed by a year, its release was moved up a week, on November 8. Then after that, due to substantial backlash towards the design of Sonic himself, the film got pushed back again to February 14, 2020 in order to facilitate a redesign of the character. It turned out to be good thing in another way: by being released in the Dump Months, the movie became the first big kids film of 2020 with little competition in that demographic, whereas it would have had to compete against Frozen II and other big films in November 2019.
Following the release of the first trailer, streams of "Gangsta's Paradise" by Coolio, memetically used in the trailer, and views of the music video exploded. "Weird Al" Yankovic's parody, "Amish Paradise", also was affected.
The scene of Robotnik dancing to "Where Evil Grows" by The Poppy Family gave the once-obscure Canadian hit a surge of popularity in America nearly 50 years after its release.
In the Brazilian Portuguese dub, Manolo Rey returns to voice Sonic in the movie. He has been voicing Sonic since Sonic Underground. Amusingly, Tatá Guarnieri, who voices Robotnik, was Sonic in the original VHS dub of Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM), as well as in this commercial for the 8-bit version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
In the Taiwanese Mandarin dub, Sonic is voiced by Lin Guo, reprising his role from Sonic Boom.
In the Hungarian dub, Máté Szabó reprises the role of Sonic from Sonic Underground.
Colleen O'Shaughnessey reprises her current role from the video games as Tails in The Stinger. She was initially uncredited in the theatrical release to prevent spoilers, but was later given credit in the home video release. This carries over with some foreign dubs of the character, as in the Japanese dub, Tails is once again voiced by Ryō Hirohashi, who voiced the character in all of his appearances since Sonic X; in the Italian dub, Tails is voiced by Benedetta Ponticelli, who has played the character since Sonic Generations; in the Polish dub, Tails is voiced by Lidia Sadowa, who also dubbed Tails in Sonic Boom; and in the European French dub, Tails is voiced by Marie-Eugénie Maréchal, who has been his voice in everything since Sonic X.
In the Italian dub, Renato Novara reprises his role as Sonic from the games.
Saved from Development Hell: A Sonic the Hedgehog movie has been on and off in production since the early 1990s, but it seemed as if it would never be realized. The rights were first picked up by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer only for the studio to run into financial trouble and conflicts with Sega. Eventually, MGM lost the rights and the film went into hell, only for Ben Hurst, a head writer for Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM), to negotiate the rights so that he could do a continuation of what was supposed to be the third season. This ran into problems when Ken Penders, then-head writer of the Archie Comics series, tried to intervene and make the movie himself. It was placed in hell once again when Sega decided to place more interest in Sonic X. The movie rights were acquired by Sony Pictures in 2013, but Tom Rothman's arrival axed the project, which ended up at Paramount and finally got off the ground.
Shipper on Set: Lee Majoub is a very vocal shipper of Dr. Robotnik and his own character, Robotnik's henchman Agent Stone, having made several posts on Twitter in support of the pairing and liking shippy fanart of them.
Spoiled by the Merchandise: Two weeks before release saw the release of the track listing for the movie's soundtrack, which was to be released the same day of the movie. One of the tracks listed is titled "A New Home". Welp...
Studio Hop: The film was originally in production with Sony Pictures. However, in October 2017, the production and cast moved over to Paramount after Sony lost faith in the project due to the loss of their financing partner and executives at Sony not liking where the project was going. This is a strange case of coming full-circle as Paramount and Sega were once sister companies. Back in 1969, Sega, then primarily an arcade game company, was sold to industrial conglomerate Gulf and Western, which had acquired Paramount three years prior. The two remained sister companies until 1984, when Gulf and Western began to focus mostly on its Paramount-related assets (resulting in a rename to Paramount Communications in 1989, which in turn merged with Viacom — now known as Paramount Global — in 1994) and Sega was sold to its current Japanese management.
Throw It In!: Given that the film includes Jim Carrey, it's not surprising a few of these made it into the movie.
The song Robotnik dances to ("Where Evil Grows" by the Poppies) while experimenting on Sonic's quill was suggested by Carrey, who listened to it a lot when he was growing up in the 1970s.
From the same scene, Carrey has stated that he didn't ad-lib the line "Of course I want a latte, I LOVE THE WAY YOU MAKE THEM!" on his own. It was suggested by his assistant, Nicole, and they just ran with it.
Additionally, the "steamed Austrian goat milk" line was thought up by Lee Majdoub, who plays Stone. He thought it fit that Robotnik's drink order would include something pretentious.
Most of the scenes between Robotnik and Agent Stone were ad-libbed by Carrey and Majdoub simply playing off each other, including Robotnik shoving his fingers into Stone's mouth, and when he punches him after leaving the Piston Pit saloon. The latter was done in one take.
The line "They don't need time off to get DRUNK and put the boat on water" was Carrey's idea.
Troubled Production: The film was a victim of extensive studio meddling, so much so that it took years to get it off the ground. Even then, the post-production phase wasn't any smoother either.
Earlier attempts to adapt the franchise not withstanding, Sonic was originally set up at Sony Pictures in 2014, just before the studio's devastating cyber attack resulted in a management shakeup, thus delaying its planned 2016 release. Before then, Sony had a turbulent time trying to negotiate the rightsnote If the leaked Sony Pictures emails are to be believed, Sega reportedly threatened to pull the film rights from Sony if they decided to sell their film unit to a competitor, a condition Sony never dealt with in prior projects such as the Resident Evil Film Series. Story co-writer and former co-screenwriter Van Robichaux also got into a number of fights with Sony executives, most notably Amy Pascal (who left the studio not long afterward over the hack fallout), over the film's creative direction.
The film's producer and Sony executive Neal Moritz didn't get along with new studio head Tom Rothman, who didn't see Sonic as a top priority as he wanted to focus on rebooting older Sony franchises as well as continue to milk the Spider-Man movie license for all its worth. Rothman sat on the film for more than a year before deciding to let Moritz start working on the film in late 2016. Tim Miller, who had just bailed from Deadpool 2, was hired by Moritz as executive producer, bringing frequent Sonic collaborator Blur Studio into the movie. After a script rewrite to make the film more family-friendly, things seemed to be moving forward until the failure of Passengers and the loss of financing partner Lone Star Funds resulted in Sony canceling the movie via turnaround before a release date could be announced. Moritz got tired of Rothman's antics and left Sony altogether in favor of a new contract at Paramount, who then bought the Sonic movie rights and finally moved the film out of pre-production. The budget cuts Paramount imposed upon the movie shortly thereafter resulted in filming being moved to Canada, instead of Atlanta as originally planned.
After filming wrapped up, Sega, whose contract stipulated they would co-finance the movie and own half of the film's copyright, had to oversee every aspect of production to ensure it stayed faithful to the franchise. In particular, they frequently sent notes to the visual effects team expressing dislike towards Sonic's realistic, muscular body in the movie, with their biggest criticism being towards Sonic's eyes. They also initially forbade the producers from referring to Dr. Eggman as his former North American name, Dr. Robotnik, though in the end the producers and Sega worked out a compromise to allow the name to be used.
When the trailer was released, fans and critics complained over the original look of Sonic as being unfaithful to its source material and looking downright horrifying for children, the film's intended target audience. It turned out that the original design for Sonic in the movie was entirely ordered by Paramount because they wanted to replicate the aesthetics of their prior Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films, openly knowing full well that the fans would hate it yet feeling the rest of the general public would be more open to it. The backlash ended up being so strong that director Jeff Fowler decided to go back and redesign Sonic altogether, which ended up adding additional months to the production schedule and forced the visual effects artists to work overtime. The release date was pushed back by several months so Paramount could properly compensate the visual effects artists. The redesign was rumored to have increased the movie's budget by $35 million, but in reality, it ended up costing only $5 million.
Naturally, crunch was involved. According to a VFX artist who worked on the redesign, a large load of work still in progress was thrown out after Paramount changed course, with artists being forced to work up to 10-12 hours during a 70-hour work week for six weeks. And to add salt to the wound, just after the redesign was sent to Paramount, the VFX studio (Moving Picture Company’s Vancouver branch) was shuttered abruptly as part of a corporate restructuring, resulting in all of the artists who were involved in the redesign finding themselves out of work just several months before release.
However, it ended up succeeding despite all this. The film opened to surprisingly decent reception, outperformed box office expectations with a record $58 million opening, and made over $300 million worldwide while also beating out Pokémon Detective Pikachu for the highest domestic gross ever for a video game-based movie, finally giving Paramount a solid hit after massive flops such as Terminator: Dark Fate, Gemini Man, and The Rhythm Section and starting a new franchise for the studio.
Paul Rudd, Chris Evans, and Chris Pratt were also in the running to play Tom Wachowski. Concept images exist of a movie poster and the bar fight scene featuring Pratt and Evans (respectively), specifically (the movie poster also features an earlier rendition of Sonic before the first trailer's design).
Brad Bird, David Berenbaum, Phil Johnston, and Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick submitted screenplays for the movie when it was being developed at Sony Pictures.
MGM's original idea for the movie in 1994 was for the film to have a Roger Rabbit Effect plot where a 12-year-old boy uses his father's computer to bring the hedgehog to life from his Sega Saturn, which inadvertently allows Dr. Robotnik to escape, turn every kid in the real world into badniks and plots to steal the world's landmarks to create virtual reality experiences he can profit from. This forces Sonic and Josh to team up to defeat Dr. Robotnik and restore things to normal. The screenplay, written by Richard Jefferies and titled Sonic the Hedgehog: Wonders of the World, was well-received by Sega and MGM executives, but after the treatment was submitted MGM pulled out of the film, and after DreamWorks SKG rejected his pitch the film was canned. According to Jefferies, Sega intended to tie the film in with the ill-fated Sonic Xtreme, which is featured prominently in the treatment. A script was never written.
The next plan for a movie was a continuation of the Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) series via a full-length feature, titled Sonic Armageddon, which would've been based on what was to be the cartoon's third season. Ken Pendersmade a pitch reel to Sega executives outlining the concept of the film, which portrayed Mobius in a post-apocalyptic setting with a Darker and Edgier depiction of roboticization. DreamWorks Animation was considered to produce this, but Sega decided to focus more time on developing Sonic X, thus dropping Sonic Armageddon entirely.
There was talk that the film would be shot in Atlanta, but budget cuts and a crowded production scene there led to the film shooting in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Sonic's design had a list of things that could've been:
The leaked concept art of Sonic showed him wearing Nike sneakers. Then in the first trailer, Sonic is shown wearing PUMA sneakers. However in the second trailer with Sonic's new design, Sonic is now wearing the same sneakers he wears in the games, though a tag with the PUMA logo can still be seen on them if one looks close enough.
Sonic also wasn't originally going to wear his trademark White Gloves and was instead going to have white hands, as seen in the first trailer. In the movie, however, this was changed where he does wear his white gloves. An artifact of this might be the reason one scene in the final movie seems to be hit with the Idiot Ball.
Finally, Sonic's design was a bit more humanoid and slender, not to mention quite ugly, in the first trailer (lacking his iconic gloves as well), but its negative reception from fans and Sega alike forced Paramount to change his design again to look more like his video game counterpart, sourcing out Tyson Hesse to provide the revised design.
According to Van Robichaux, the original script written prior to Patrick Casey and Josh Miller's hiring had Robotnik owning a coffee machine which he refers to as the "Mean Bean Machine" and subsequently using it to make coffee. It's rumored that this scene ended up being rewritten into the iconic Deranged Dance sequence in the final film, ending with Agent Stone offering him latte. A reference to Mean Bean Machine ended up making it to the sequel, in the form of a coffee shop named "Mean Bean Coffee".
Yuji Naka claims to have approached the film makers about making a Stan Lee style cameo in the movie but they never responded back to him.
According to Ben Schwartz, he recorded a harmonized version of the famous SEGA chant that unfortunately did not make it into the film.
Fowler explained that Super Sonic and the Chaos Emeralds were going to be in the movie, as well as Knuckles playing a major role, before the decision was made to focus on Sonic and Robotnik's rivalry.
Writer Pat Casey said that there was a draft that had Tails as a major character with Sonic, but "that kind of fell by the wayside".
Longclaw was originally going to travel with Sonic to Earth in this alternative opening.
Gotta Go Fast" by Chizzy Stephens was considered for the movie's theme before being passed over for "Speed Me Up", most likely due to its samplings of Green Hill Zone. (See Screwed by the Lawyers above)
The SEGA logo shown in the early trailer is very different from the one in the final film. It is not the SEGA IP mosaic logo and is more akin to the older Evangelion/Utena version of the logo, albeit with the SEGA logo appearing out of a ring.
Riff Raff was cast in an undisclosed role, but his scene and contribution to the soundtrack were cut.
There used to be a bigger chili dog reference, with Tom offering Sonic one at the bar when he started feeling sad. He ate his and Tom's chili dog in two seconds.
Originally, the townsfolk were going to help in the final fight, but it was deemed too absurd.
Concept art by Bayard Wu reveals multiple alternate designs for Longclaw, as well as a lizard character named Rava, tying into an early description found on a copyright record mentioning Sonic being chased by and battling a lizard warrior character (interestingly, another alternative design for Rava was found only a day after the movie released).
The mid-credits scene in which Tails appears was apparently a last-minute addition to the film, made after the decision to redesign Sonic. So, there never actually was another design for Tails to match the original design for Sonic. The short time before release may have also been a factor in bringing backColleen O'Shaughnessey from the video games to voice Tails, rather than spending time looking for someone new.
Word of Saint Paul: According to Tyson Hesse, the echidna that shot Longclaw is Pachacamac. He's also confirmed that the original Japanese game lore for the 16-bit games was studied by the film's crew members, and that Longclaw's design is indeed based on the bird tiles seen in the original Labyrinth Zone.
Working Title: "Casino Night," a reference to the level "Casino Night Zone" from Sonic the Hedgehog 2. The sequel's working title is "Emerald Hill", another level from the same game.
Other trivia
The movie is the second known time a Western company did a redesign of the titular character, and was rejected by Sega. The first time was around the development of Sonic Boom, when Big Red Button tried to offer the character and his cast complete redesigns but were rejected by Sega, asking for something closer to the original modern design.
The film got delayed after the backlash of Sonic's initial design, making it the third time Paramount has had to completely redesign a character in the middle of movie production due to negative reception. The first was Megatron from Transformers (2007) after fans complained he looked nothing◊ like the original design. About a decade later, the movie Monster Trucks had to be postponed for a full year due to Creech's original design being so visually frightening that it terrified children in the test audience.
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