Headscratchers / Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog

• Honestly, Robotnik doesn't seem like he's in a position of authority in this world. He's just some evil guy who lives on top of a spiraling mountain. Given that, it's weird nothing's ever been done about him for his various terrorist acts. Sonic's always there fighting him but the people of Mobius shouldn't be tolerating it either.
  • Isn't there an episode where somebody doesn't recognize Robotnik and he says something along the lines of "Well, I've conquered most of the known world," or am I just confused? If I'm right, it's probably just an inconsistency (because I know he does talk about Sonic preventing him from conquering Mobius in some episodes), but I like to look at the Robotnik in this series as a deluded supervillain who thinks he's conquered the world, but in actuality all his "subjects" are just too loony and carefree to do anything about him. Read between the lines in some episodes and it really does seem like Robotnik might hold all the strings in Mobian government: in the episode "The Last Resort," it turns out the mayor of the city Sonic lives in is a robot secret agent working for Robotnik. Robotnik's just a crazy guy whose influence stretches farther than you'd think, and the Apathetic Citizens of Mobius just plain don't care enough to prosecute him for his terrorism. That's what makes all of Sonic's heroic acts so important.
    • I get the distinct feeling that Robotnik and his mooks aren't so inept against people less superpowered than Sonic. Any mortal fool enough to stand up to him would likely be captured and imprisoned in short order.
  • I wouldn't call the Mobians apathetic, exactly; they all seem to know Robotnik is a "bad guy" to be hated and feared, although they can be persuaded otherwise. You'll even hear the occasional comment about Robotnik's "reign of terror". It all comes down to a combination of general stupidity and naivete, very poor government (the "four leaders" seen in "Super Robotnik" are so incompetent it's pathetic), and that Robotnik and his minions really are capable of harming "ordinary" citizens.
• I know Status Quo Is God here, but there should be a real reason why Robotnik hasn't just scrapped Scratch and Grounder already, especially considering how often he threatens to and that he definitely seems to be aware they're only slowing him down. What's worse, Coconuts, their predecessor, is consistently shown as more competent than them, yet Robotnik always gives him the shaft in favor of two bozos he has to know will only fail him again. And is Robotnik really so lazy he can't take care of Sonic himself? He may not be the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, but he's a lot more effective than Scratch and Grounder, and he has the technical know-how to make some legitimately dangerous stuff.
  • Scratch and Grounder are probably as good as it gets for Robotnik. Most of the other robots he sends against Sonic are either equally/even more incompetent and much more fragile (like the bounty hunters in the first episode), tend to undergo a Heel–Face Turn (Breezie and Robotnik Jr), or are nothing more than mindless automations. And his organic minions generally leave him.
  • It's also likely because since he designed them to capture and destroy Sonic, he can't really be rid of them until they complete that task. Robotnik says as much in one episode where he angrily expresses his hope that Scratch and Grounder will succeed in catching and eliminating Sonic as soon as possible, so he can finally dismantle and be done with them.
• In the episode "Sonic's Song" the Music Destroyer Robot (appropriately called M.D.) uses his super hearing abilities to find music, but is also super vulnerable to music at the same time.
  • Well, he was given super hearing so that he could find music to destroy. It's also possible that Robotnik intentionally built him to feel pained by music as an incentive to destroy it.
• Why didn't the Music Destroyer from "Sonic's Song" go after Robotnik to stop him from making music?
  • Because Robotnik's singing was so bad that it wasn't registered as music at all! That's the joke :)
• How is it that Robotnik didn't get a full blown Villain Song that didn't have Stylistic Suck? Seeing as how Long John Baldry was a professional singer.
  • While it's a criminally wasted possibility, it's very likely that that's the joke behind Robotnik's bad singing.
• In "Subterranean Sonic", how did Robotnik, Scratch, and Grounder get out of the pit? According to Spelunk, the pit is bottomless.
  • Perhaps Grounder managed to use his helicopter some time after remembering he had it.
  • The pit wasn't just bottomless,it was ''cyclical''.
• One thing that always bothered me about the Chaos Emerald arc: the fate of Black-bot the Pirate. Not only is Blackbeard callously roboticized by Robotnik, he's shredded to pieces and left unchanged by Sonic as he and Robotnik escape elsewhere into the timeline, his human form never to be achieved again. Sure, he's a vile and nasty pirate, but it seems like an awfully scary fate for a guy who was more or less set up by Robotnik to do what he did. The fact that Sonic didn't even try to changes Blackbot back really makes me question his character!
  • Sonic could possibly not haven even known about his human origin and forgot about than one robot that attacked him. Anyway he was a nasty and vile pirate.
    • Blackbeard was never shown to be evil in his short appearance, all he wanted to do was find an Emerald he had himself buried.
  • Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog is no stranger to Black Comedy, so its likely that Blackbot being destroyed despite being a roboticized victim was a joke. If it makes you feel better, Blackbot appeared alive and well in the Sonic Sez segment of the episode.
• Why were Scratch and Grounder cheering for Edgar Eagle, a good guy, in "Blank-Headed Eagle"?
  • Throughout the series, it’s established that the two of them have consciences, occasionally questioning Robotnik’s acts of evil. They’re just to afraid and too stupid to defy him because he’s their master, and they probably think that they might as well have a little fun with their villainous acts.
  • Besides the two badniks occasionally doing stuff like worriedly out point out that Robotnik's plans can hurt people on occasion, Edgar Eagle is everything they want to be. He's strong, smart, competent and beloved by all, all things Scratch and Grounder would secretly like to be.
• In "Tails' New Home", why are the robots sent to pose as Tails' parents designed to look like insect things? Why not just make them look like foxes so they don't have to put on costumes? Also, what was the point of having the robots dramatically unmask themselves? Why not have them keep manipulating Tails until he's in Robotnik's grasp?
• In "Slowwwwww Going", how did Tails know that the reversed Slow-Mo gun would make Robotnik's Egg-O-Matic go out of control, instead of making him fast enough to catch Sonic instead?
  • This is just a headcanon assumption, but... well, have you ever tried playing one of those old MS-DOS games that runs too fast on modern computers unless you deliberately slow the machine down? Yeah, the game is faster, and very often that makes them uncontrollable because your human reaction speeds just can't keep up with it. I imagine something like that is what Robotnik was going through... he had to have faster-than-split-second reactions just to stay alive.
  • As for how Tails knew... well, he had met Dr. Robotnik before, or may have been in a position to find out this sort of thing on his own. The show does demonstrate he's pretty clever for a four-year-old. He also may have just been shooting and hoping for the best.
• Why is Mobius so bizarre in this cartoon? It's pretty much Wonderland with Sonic and Tails in it. A talking, chilli dog obsessed hedgehog with super speed doesn't seem weird compare to the other things we see on the planet.
  • Probably the same reason everything is so bizarre in this cartoon. The producers didn't seem to care about being faithful to the games' tone, characters or universe, so they likely just handed some animators and writers who never played Sonic games some concept art and a series bible and said "Have fun!"
  • Keep in mind that when this cartoon came out, the Sonic series didn't really have a "canon," which was done intentionally so writers could make up whatever they wanted, which is why Japan, America, and the UK wound up with incredibly different takes on the character and setting. Seriously, imagine you're a writer, you only have Sonic 1 and 2 (Genesis and Master System) to work with... how do you MAKE something out of this? In fact this is something one of the writers mentions in a bonus feature on the Sonic Sat AM DVD set by Shout Factory, that when he saw footage of the game he drew a complete blank for ideas. It was only seeing some initial concepts by Archie that things finally clicked for him. Sorry for getting long-winded, but it annoys me how video game based cartoons constantly have fans misinterpreting them as "ignoring the canon" when in actuality its usually that they were made before much of the canon even existed.
• What was the point of redesigning Robotnik into his infamous AOSTH design? His game design was already goofy looking, so it wouldn't have felt out of place in AOSTH.
  • Sonic Mega Collection contains within its extras the model sheets used by Sega of America for promotional material outside of game covers. Dr. Robotnik's design in Adventures isn't too far off from the Sega of America design. Neither, for that matter, is the one from SatAM, except HIS overall look is altered to match the less comical surroundings.
    • Plus, if you look closely at AOSTH Robotnik, he has the same colors as his game counterpart (red, black, and yellow).
• It's implied many times in the show that this version of Robotnik is wealthy. How did that come about? Did he rob some banks off-screen? He doesn't strike me as a guy who would sell his robots and inventions to people. Did his mother marry some rich guy and took everything he owned after the divorce?
  • If she didn't kill him outright!

• In "Hedgehog of the Hound Table", it was explained that holding the Chaos Emerald of Invincibility alone wouldn't activate its power—to use it one must be crowned king, as Robotnik discovered earlier. But when Tails holds the Emerald he uses its powers with no problems at all, despite not being the king.