Trivia / Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM)

• Acting for Two:
  • Kath Soucie as Sally and NICOLE.
  • In the French dub, Tails, Bunnie, and Dulcy are all voiced by Françoise Blanchard. Also, Antoine and Uncle Chuck are both voiced by Marc Bretonnière in Season 1, with Thierry Mercier replacing him in both roles in Season 2. Lastly, Robotnik, Snively, and Rotor are all voiced by Patrice Baudrier.
• All-Star Cast: In addition to Jaleel White voicing Sonic again, the series boasted some of the best voice actors in the business: Kath Soucie, Jim Cummings, Rob Paulsen, Christine Cavanaugh, Charlie Adler, Cree Summer and Frank Welker. Bradley Pierce even qualifies having previously voiced Chip in Beauty and the Beast, and Tim Curry appeared a couple of times.
• Approval of God: Naoto Ohshima, the creator of Sonic the Hedgehog, has said in Twitter posts that he enjoys Sonic SatAM. The DiC staff gave him a poster of the show's characters, which he keeps framed in glass:
  "Sonic was born in the image of the United States. I love American Sonic. Thank you." - Naoto Ohshima
• Ascended Fanon: The SatAM nickname made it onto the cover of the DVD box set.
• Children Voicing Children: Tails was voiced by then-ten-year-old Bradley Pierce.
• Creator's Favorite: Ben Hurst's favorite characters according to this Newsgroup interview were Sally, Sonic, and Dulcy:
  Sal's also one of my favorite characters — although Dulcy will always have a special place in my heart. The wonderful thing about Sal is that, not only is she strong and capable, she can give as well as get in any exchange with Sonic. She doesn't order him around — she cajoles, persuades, convinces him to go in the direction she suggests — but as we all know — if Sonic really doesn't want to go in her direction — it just plain old ain't gonna happen. To me, what truly sets Sally aside is her heart. She has a deep well of compassion she draws from - and though Sonic is equally compassionate, Sally has the ability to articulate her heart-felt feelings (which Sonic will then agree to with a, "Yeah, that.") I fell in love with the characters. All of the characters. But my favorites were always Sonic and Sally — and the relationship between them was a joy and pleasure to keep alive.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Ben Hurst named "The Doomsday Project" as his favourite episode of the ones he wrote:
  I used to think it was "Blast to the Past". But now, I'm leaning towards "Doomsday". I love the interaction between Sonic and Sally — and the kiss at the end. :) And the "You'll always be my hero" line.
• Creator's Pest: The reason Season 2 saw Rotor Demoted to Extra was due to creator and producer Len Janson's vague dislike of the character.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: In the French dub, Tails is voiced by Françoise Blanchard.
• Deleted Scene: The DVD contains deleted scenes from "Drood Henge" and "The Doomsday Project".
• Directed by Cast Member: The French dub was directed by Françoise Blanchard, who also voiced Tails, Bunnie, and Dulcy.
• Edited for Syndication: When the series re-aired on the USA Network, many scenes were cut for commercial time.
• Executive Meddling:
  • Sega Enterprises was known to make frustrating and seemingly-arbitrary demands. For example, like many American cartoons, the characters were all originally designed with four fingers instead of five. The designs were approved by Sega of America, but were rejected by Sega Enterprises, who were reportedly afraid that it would be associated with the Yakuza's tendency to chop off victims' fingers. This resulted in DiC having to reanimate a number of already-completed scenes to include additional fingers.
  • Almost all of the writing staff who worked on Season 1 were removed sometime before development of Season 2 began, leaving Ben Hurst and Pat Allee essentially in charge of the series going forward.
  • The remaining staff were pushed to create Dulcy to balance out the gender ratio of the Freedom Fighters.
  • The four Antoine shorts were also a request of executives, as a part of their demand to lighten up the series by adding more comedy.
• Fake Nationality: The French-analogue Antoine, as voiced by American Rob Paulsen.
• God Never Said That: Ken Penders claimed that Ben Hurst, head writer for season 2, passed the torch to him to carry on with Sonic after the cartoon ended. This turned out to be not the case:
  Just for the record: Ken has often said (paraphrasing here) that "Ben Hurst says the torch has been passed to me for Sonic the Hedgehog" - usually expressed in a way to make it appear that I passed the torch to him. Not true. I was just trying to be nice. What I said was that since the comic was ongoing and the animated series was over, the torch had been passed [by default] to him. I was just trying to prevent a flurry of inquiries from fans pitting his opinion against mine on how the Sonic Universe should be sculpted after SatAM ended. The way he has expressed it in the past seems to convey the impression that he has my approval of his work. He doesn't. I've not read a single comic.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Shout! Factory released the entire series on DVD in 2007, although it went out of print a few years later after they lost the rights. Box sets can turn up anywhere from $50 to $100. Episodes can readily be found online, and iTunes has the entire series for sale. A new DVD set was made by NCircle in 2023, though the episodes used the broadcast order, and the special features from Shout! Factory's older DVD remain missing.
• No Export for You: Although the first season was dubbed and aired in Spain, the second and final season didn’t for some reason.^note For some weird reason, the show’s Mexican Spanish localized dub is completed, aired, and rereleased online in it’s entirety, which was weird back then since Sonic didn’t gain any popularity in Mexico until the Adventure era.
• Official Fan-Submitted Content: The US DVD box set uses fanart◊ for everything except the logos and spine.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Cam "Buzz" Brainard (better known as the Disney Channel announcer, the narrator of Maximum Exposure and This Week in Baseball, and the host of Music Row Happy Hour on SiriusXM channel The Highway) replaced Mark Ballou as Rotor in Season 2. Ballou was asked to reprise the role, but opted out at the last minute for personal reasons. Years later, Ballou stated in an interview that he regretted making that choice.
  • In the French dub, Sally is voiced by Laurence Dourlens in Season 1 and by Annie Milon in Season 2. Also, Antoine and Uncle Chuck are both voiced by Marc Bretonnière in Season 1, who was then replaced in both roles by Thierry Mercier in Season 2.
• Out of Order: Season 1 was aired in a completely different order than it was produced, to the point that "Heads or Tails", the pilot episode, was aired at the end of the season. The second season, by contrast, merely swapped the first two episodes. Notably, the Shout! Factory release uses the production order, while the NCircle DVD uses the broadcast order.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Tim Curry, who earned his spurs playing arch-villains, provides the voice of the kindly and just King Acorn.
  • Even when voicing villains, Jim Cummings tends to be known for his comedic roles. Robotnik is played mostly-straight, apart from the odd Surrounded by Idiots moment. To punctuate this, he also voiced the far more comical version of Robotnik in the original pitch for Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog.
• Screwed by the Network: Despite pulling in solid ratings against Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers^note Upon cancellation, the cartoon ranked #9 for all of Saturday Morning with a 5.2 rating, an estimated 4.8 million viewers during its second season, according to the Media Studies Journal, Volume 8, Issues 3-4. and being connected with a mega-hit game series, the show got cancelled for two reasons: Disney had just bought ABC and decided to clean house concerning their Saturday lineup (which would lead to One Saturday Morning emerging a couple years later), and many of ABC's stations tended to delay the lineup or preempt it entirely to air local news or sports. As a result, despite its popularity, some people didn't even know the show existed until USA Network put it on as part of their Action Extreme Team block.^note For those who were lucky to not suffer total preemption, the show either was dumped to an independent station, or, as WSB in Atlanta did, aired early Sunday mornings along with other rejected shows.
• Unfinished Episode: Storyboards had already been made for a third season, in which Naugus and Snively would alternate as Big Bad and Tails would develop into a hero.
• Voices in One Room: A variation was used: Most of the cast, who were largely composed of veteran voice actors, performed in the same room, with the sole exception of Jaleel White. While this made it hard to play off of the rest of the cast, he also had more takes to work with. This was especially true for Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic Underground, because those two shows did their recording in Canada, while White was in Los Angeles.
• What Could Have Been: Has its own page
• Word of God: The answers to questions about the Season 2 Sequel Hook were eventually uncovered in interviews with the writing staff.

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