YMMV / Sonic the Hedgehog 2: Special Edition

• Alternative Character Interpretation: In-Universe, how much of the Let's Play is genuinely from the game and how much is just clips docfuture added for fun? While parts such as the graphics and some of the cutscenes seem to be real, other cutscenes, such as Robotnik and Silver Sonic’s backwards conversations and the Failure Cresh news report, seem to be added in as docfuture’s commentary gets cut off while explaining something (in the case of the former, it even cuts back to him as if he was still explaining) as if he added them in post-production. That many Let’s Players today are prone to adding random gags in the middle of their videos can support this theory.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: A Sonic Special Edition actually was planned for one of the Genesis add-ons, but it was for the original Sonic the Hedgehog, and on the Sega CD.
• Annoying Video Game Helper:
  • Hint Mode. The tips are useless, frequently distorted, unskippable (unless you remember to turn them off in the options menu), and, according to docfuture, written in Chinese.
  • Exaggerated even further with Tails in Hill Top Zone and later levels. His advice grows from passive-aggression to outright insulting you, and in the final levels he betrays and tries to kill you. Granted, this happens if you mistreat Tails and abandon him in Casino Night Zone—so presumably he's actually helpful if you treat him better.
• Anti-Climax Boss: In Sky Chase Zone, the game gets completely derailed into Tails breaking the fourth wall and trying to kill docfuture. This so completely overshadows the conflict with Dr. Robotnik and Silver Sonic (which until this point, the game had been building up to) that their boss fights in Wing Fortress Zone and Death Egg Zone just feel like Dénouement. It doesn't help that these boss fights are hilariously easy, too.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The entire LP is a long string of these.
• Funny Moments:
  • In the Oil Ocean episode, the zone starts out with a parody of the old MGM cartoon opening titles (for a cartoon called Oil Ocean Follies). And then you see the hilarious pictures of Sonic and Tails that ensue.
  • The story of "Failure Cresh", a baby with a Ring monitor for a head, interrupting the gameplay and just being ridiculous.
• Game-Breaker: Knuckles is broken beyond belief, able to clear entire stages by just leaping into orbit and summoning the bazooka-toting police officer from Streets of Rage to One-Hit Kill bosses. Fortunately, there's a cheat code to Nerf him and make the game more fair, and even then he still jumps noticeably higher than anyone else.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The joke about Knuckles being a Game-Breaker—because he can jump too high and bypass entire levels—is even funnier in the wake of Sonic Boom, where a glitch allowed Knuckles to Double Jump indefinitely and Sequence Break the game five ways past Sunday. The cartoon even shows Knuckles jumping into space, just like in this LP. No bazooka, though, but you can't have everything.
  • His reference to Sega being "a fanfic company anyway" becomes especially funny with the release of Sonic Forces, a Sonic game with a character creator.
  • The joke about Ray being the "least employed squirrel" is funnier after the release of Sonic Mania, which included Ray as a playable character in the downloadable Plus DLC.
  • The characters unlocked for beating Metropolis Zone include Mega Man. Both characters would later crossover in Super Smash Bros. 4, and get their own dedicated crossovers in the Archie Comics miniseries Worlds Collide and its sequel Worlds Unite.
  • In Oil Ocean Zone, the sky turns blue instead of yellow early on, a change that would also occur in the Encore mode of the level in Sonic Mania.
• One-Scene Wonder: Failure Cresh made a big impression on the players, considering that he only shows up for five minutes in No Blood For Oil Zone (and a brief mention in the epilogue).