When asked about Vs Sonic.exe in a Reddit AMA, ninja_muffin99, the original game's programmer, replied with "pour one out," indicating that he liked the mod and was disappointed that it got canceled.
Madzilla, one of the voice actors for the mod and creator of Demogri and Griatos, voiced his approval of a UTAU cover of "Faker" prior to the allegations, genuinely not expecting his voice to sound so good in an UTAU soundbank.
JoeDoughBoi, an artist for the mod and the creator of Lord X, has also voiced his approval of a fanmade extension of one of Lord X’s unfinished songs, mistakenly believed to be Gatekeepers by the composer.
After the mod's cancellation and The Fatal Files beginning development, AnarackWarriors voiced his approval of a fan-made song related to Fatal Error, which has got him considering making an expansion to the mod containing fan songs after the main mod is finished.
Madzilla, one of the voice actors for the mod and the creator of Griatos and Demogri, voiced his approval of a fanmade extension of Griatos’ song “Haze“, even remarking that some portions were scarily similar to the official version.
Artist Disillusionment: The tortured development of the mod and its eventual cancellation in the face of fan pressure has burned out a number of the developers. Some would take the ordeal as a learning experience and go on to create their own FNF mods, with some heading various Spiritual Successor mods to this mod (i.e. RightBurstUltra, averyavery, AnarackWarriors, GrayAnimates), while others have sworn off FNF mods or even abandoned the Sonic.exe community entirely (i.e. MarStarBro, Jacaris).
A few days after the mod was announced to be cancelled, DumbieDumbie, Starved's creator, discussed the character's inclusion in a short two-tweet thread, saying that she never wanted him to be in the mod to begin with and that other things such as SONIC HAS PASSED and the ghosts from Sonic Gather Battle were more deserving of getting included. She also has disdain towards Starved's design itself, calling it "complete dogshit" that was only intended to be a result from her experimenting with horror art and nothing more. A shame, seeing as Starved's popularity skyrocketed after the Cancelled Build was released.
While thankful for the love the mod has received, creator RightBurstUltra discussed in a Twitter thread how he's ultimately come to regret making Vs. Sonic.exe, feeling the fandom has fixated on it to the point that only mods related to Sonic.exe ever receive any major traction, at the expense of other mods that have just as much time and dedication poured into them.
MarStarBro, one of the mod's main composers and former directors, made it no secret how he wanted nothing to do with the mod or the Sonic.exe community following the cancellation, going so far as to remove all Sonic.exe-related videos from his YouTube channel. After a break, however, it seems this has subsided, with him choosing to finish Final Escape willingly.
A while after the mod's cancellation, Revie, via a Newgrounds post, mentioned that she was appalled by the overall result of v3.0 of the mod, calling out the lack of team control, a disregard for quality, and a lack of overall direction, all of which contributed to the mod's downfall.
JoeDoughBoi, in a community post on YouTube, stated that, while Sonic Villains does have its potential, he feared that implementing the likes of Fatal Error and Rewrite into the animation could prove very risky, considering the state of the community, suggesting to implement pre-2020 EXE takes as a better representation of Sonic.exe in general.
Following mass levels of harassment and destructive criticism from those around them, Kenji vented full-out on Twitter about how Curse was meant to represent real-life horrors that many, including himself, had gone through, but that it only led to full-out low morals from people, several even doing Recursive Fanfiction of Curse solely to spite the original. As such, he outright stated that he's never going to be working on Curse's story ever again, and wished to not be involved with him with anybody other than mutuals.
Creator's Favorite: In the description for the official upload of "Chaos", composer Jacaris remarks they've always been fascinated with Fleetway Super Sonic as a character, and upon hearing the team was considering adding him into the mod, immediately jumped on the opportunity to compose a song for him.
Descended Creator: Composer Jacaris voices both Fleetway Super Sonic and Coldsteel the Hedgeheg, the former of which he composed the song for.
Died During Production: One of the artists for the mod, Divide, passed away during the development of Version 2. His artwork for EXE's songs and the art of the characters for 2.0's freeplay menu were the last things he ever worked on.
Dummied Out: The unfinished 2.5 build originally contained Fatal Error's song "Fatality". It was quickly replaced by another version of the build that removed it, as the devs didn't receive permission from Fatal Error's creator AnarackWarriors. However, several files relating to Fatal Error, including one called FatalError.exe for his pop-ups during the song, remain.
Fanwork Ban: Once enough time had passed, several creators (such as Dumbie, Joe and ASTRA) banned their EXE characters from being able to appear in other people's mods (with those like FNF Lord X Wrath staying up due to proof of permission), alongside putting a ban on any and all mods attempting to "revive" Vs. Sonic.exe in general. Subverted as of today, as JoeDoughBoi has unbanned Lord X as of SONIC 2011's release.
While Vs Sonic.exe isn't the first FNF mod based off of a creepypasta (Sunday Night Suicide and a mod featuring Jeff the Killer predate it, alongside some smaller ones based off of others), it's notable that many more started appearing after the mod gained massive popularity. There were certainly more mods based off of Sonic.exe's own imitators and spinoffs; the most notable of these is Friday Night Funkin': Mario's Madness, which features a large amount of Mario creepypasta characters including Lord X's literal friend-in-arms MX.
Most creepypasta mods released after Vs. Sonic.exe follow the format set by it, having one main week focused on a particular character and then bonus content focused on other characters, with some non-creepypasta mods even following this format as well.
The mod bringing Sonic.exe back into the limelight, plus its own interpretation of Sonic.exe with EXE, led to loads of people creating their own interpretations and reimaginings of Sonic.exe, a lot of which in turn received their own separate mods.
For all of the negative effects within EXE's legacy, one sticking point for future mods was having characters assume a "Faker" disguised form before transforming into a more monstrous form midway through the song, often ramping up the difficulty in the process. This has the odd side effect of every character who does that being labelled an EXE Expy, especially in fellow creepypasta mods.
Most creepypasta mods made after V2's release saw at least one song that redesigned Girlfriend to have more realistic proportions and generally be more titillating following the immense popularity of her appearance in "Faker" and "Black Sun".
Perhaps most controversially; the mod's development history, with updates adding more and more new characters and songs, is majorly cited as kicking off mods ramping up in terms of per-update scale. This has led to a lot of content within said mods... but also a lot of controversy and burnout from numerous developers, where the line between working on a mod for fun and working on one like a job has become heavily blurred. It is telling that a lot of these high-profile mods have indeed burnt out and been cancelled before completion, and it is slowly becoming more and more of a trend.
In Memoriam: A picture accessible in the sound test menu pays tribute to Divide, an artist for the mod who died shortly before Version 2's release. Divide's name also gets highlighted in yellow during the opening credits of the mod.
Keep Circulating the Tapes: As MarStarBro deleted all music related to this mod from his YouTube channel, the only way to even listen to his contributions to the mod was either his SoundCloud page, Spotify or YouTube reuploads. Subverted as of today however as they are back up.
Lying Creator: During the development of the canceled version 2.5, Revie_03, the former director of v2.0 and v2.5, stated that the reason various Sonic.exe takes and well-known Sonic.exe adjacent characters that should be shoo-ins (such as Sally_ALT, Demogri, and Griatos) were not in because the creators didn’t give permission. After Revie was removed from the team following the grooming allegations against her and development of v3.0 began, the creators of some of the characters that Revie said didn't give permission to use came out of the woodworks to debunk those claims.
In "Execution", Lord X's vocals were a heavily manipulated version of Tricky's voice. "Cycles" saw him receive a unique voice done by an unknown individual. The scrapped song "Gotta Go" also saw him with different vocals, with a Sega Genesis-style synth before switching to a Voice of the Legionsinging actual lyrics done by Churgney Gurgney. Churgney Gurgney would also provide his voice for Lord X's Encore chromatic scale, which saw use in "Manual Blast".
Majin Sonic's chromatic scale is taken from samples of a Sega Genesis trumpet synth, used in "Endless" and the unfinished song "Endeavors". The Encore remix of "Endless" swapped these vocals for a chromatic scale done by MarStarBro.
Jackie.exe/DuskieWhy, who charted and coded the fan song "Omnipresent", was hired as a coder for the mod proper.
Nickolas, who had previously composed a fanmade extension of Final Escape, would end up being one of the composers for the official version of the song.
This mod gained not one but three episodes for GameToons's Friday Night Funkin' Logic. The first episode focused on Sonic.EXE, Majin, and Lord X, the second featured Sunky.MPEG, and the final one focused on the Round 2 update.
In DedGrafic's video depicting a battle between Sonic.Exe and Lord X, a direct continuation of a previous video where Exe faced against Devil Mario, when Exe uses the souls of Mario and the Boos he claimed in the last video, his sprites change to a Palette Swap of the removed -EXE.
Revie_03, the director of Vs Sonic.exe and creator of EXE, was falsely accused by KubeiKorg and FalseCow of grooming at least 2 minors and emotionally abusing the fellow developers of the mod in early January 2022, as well as being doxxed by her accusers, leaking her name. She, along with EXE, were removed from the mod, although the art of EXE is kept in game through an art gallery as a tribute to late artist Divide. She was eventually proven innocent however (with the alleged victim confirming the supposed "proof" was hoax), which in turn led to Kubei being exposed as the one who groomed a minor herself, while FalseCow was eventually outed as a doxxer and an identity thief.
JesterFrog, composer of the first version of "My Horizon" and co-composer of "Personel", was exposed for grooming a minor into giving her CP of themselves, which led to her being removed from the team. Additionally, averyavery, a former director for the mod and the director of ILLEGAL INSTRUCTION, would end up having ILLEGAL INSTRUCTION cancelled after it was found out that he had been supporting Jester.
Programmer Jackie.exe/DuskieWhy was removed from the team after creating a fake leak build that showed the user's IP address note Thankfully, this did not log the address of the user to a 3rd party database like Sonic Gather Battle, only showing it to the user and posting it to /funkg/ in an attempt to discourage others from downloading future leaked builds. The sad irony is that a major leak (supposedly by someone who hates the development team) happened in early July 2022 anyway, making the move ultimately pointless. Despite this, she was given permission to release the unfinished 2.5/3.0 build to the public.
Role Reprise: Just_Sammiie, Needlem0use's voice actress, provides her voice samples in "Roundabout".
Troubled Production: The mod's development, somewhat ironically, resembled that of an actual Sonic game. That is to say, it was Hell, and it's surprising it managed to last so long given other mods have folded much sooner under much less pressure. To go down the list of stuff that's happened between 2.0's release and the cancellation of 3.0;
A complete engine change.
Some people had to be evicted from the development team due to being actual criminals. JesterFrog and KubeiKorg were child groomers, averyavery was a supporter of the former, and FalseCow was an identity thief.
Revie_03 was accused of being a child groomer (by the aforementioned KubeiKorg as a deflecting tactic, no less) and subsequently evicted, and although she was proven innocent, she elected not to return on account of all of the bad press the community had gotten. This was a major blow to development as she was one of the primary producers.
Many leaks of incomplete builds and to-be-shown characters and songs were put into the public eye without the developer's permissionnote while an issue with Friday Night Funkin's mod scene in general, Vs. Sonic.exe was subject to more frequent leaks with larger severity than its peers..
A coder was removed after posting a fake leak that showed the player their IP address.
Lots of cut songs and characters due to people joining and leaving the mod, with even characters that were announced very early on, such as Sally_ALT, Demogri and Griatos, being taken out.
The role of director being shared and changed multiple times throughout development due to internal conflict and/or health reasons.
Trolling Creator: Cherribun oftenly likes to say that the main opponent of the mod's Encore mode is actually named Grimbo, not Sonic.exe. But this is technically not true, as Grimbo was made post-cancellation and that he even has a page on the mod's character page on Funkipedia. So that means the Encore versions technically go to Xenophanes as well.
In "Triple Trouble", Robotnik finds it amusing that Sonic.exe is losing to Boyfriend, hence him laughing during his segment of the song.
Jack Gore, Hog's creator, has stated that he and EXE/Faker wouldn't exactly get on well (discounting the allegations) and would be at each other's throats quite a bit.
Word of Saint Paul: Phantom Arcade, the animator for the original Friday Night Funkin', has stated that Sonic.exe would be able to trap Boyfriend and Girlfriend in a nightmare world... but if McDonald's didn't exist in there, they'd kill him and escape easily. Further statements on that matter state that Sonic.exe could be able to keep Boyfriend and Girlfriend in his nightmare world if he made sure McDonald's existed in it, but Burger King didn't... because Boyfriend and Girlfriend would then think the nightmare world would be better than the real world.
Writer Conflicts with Canon: In a Newgrounds post from Revie, she personally rectifies several previously-rumoured information and previous misconceptions around EXE's character.
Despite what wikis on EXE say about him, he actually does not have any cult compared to Lord X.
He's incapable of speaking human English, or rather can only speak in some circumstances.
His game doesn't take place in a Sonic ROM, instead being a game made from the ground-up.
, genuinely not expecting his voice to sound so good in an UTAU soundbank.