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"Sonic is washed up and out of work. He needs cash fast and will do anything to pay the rent. Hangouts, murder, jobs, third-parties—it doesn't matter. Is there anything Sonic won't ever do for a buck? Short answer: No."
Lowbrow's description of the series

Sonic for Hire, temporarily known as Hedgehog for Hire under Rooster Teeth, is a parody series made by Lowbrow Studios. The series stars Sonic as washed up and in need to find various jobs to pay debts such as his rent. Almost all of the jobs he is involved in the end in failure and several episodes have even ended in a few cliffhangers. Some of the recurring characters he encounters include Tails, Dr. Eggman, Earthworm Jim, Knuckles (Who works at BurgerTime), Kirby, Gilius Thunderhead, Mother Brain, Link, the Star Fox crew, Mario, and even Mega Man.

The series was seen on Machinima.com's YouTube channel and lasted from February 13, 2011, to December 22, 2013. The show ran for seven seasons, which were usually uploaded on Sundays (except for Season 6's premiere, which was shown on a Friday) around the mid-afternoon. There were also had a few mini-shorts related to the series that aired separately but are non-canonical to the main story. Unfortunately, numerous episodes for Season 7 were set to private or removed from Machinima's channel following an unknown situation, making the whole of season 7 a lost relic until Rooster Teeth picked the series up.

A teaser image on the show's social media pages, depicting the script for a season 8 episode, was posted on June 15, 2018, with a later post announcing that the show would return sometime in 2019, under the name Hedgehog for Hire due to copyright. The 8th season, along with the previous episodes, premiered on Rooster Teeth's website on March 19, with eight new episodes. Additionally, Rooster Teeth has uploaded every episode into eight season compilations, allowing people to once again watch all the episodes that went dark on Machinima's channel.

In 2020, Lowbrow Studios got the rights to the series back, where they returned to the original name and reuploaded each season via remastered compilations on their YouTube channel. On January 23, 2021, Lowbrow Studios confirmed production of a ninth season, with the season planned to premiere on November 28, 2022 (November 21 for Patreon Early Release).

Now providing original content on the Lowbrow Studios Channel.


Sonic For Hire provides examples of:

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     A-J 
  • Abusive Parents: Sonic originally wanted to kill Soniqua off so he wouldn't have to pay Mother Brain child support anymore. Subverted later on when Soniqua saves his life and begins seeing her as a useful asset to the team. That said, Sonic did still wipe his and Lucca's children out of existence by replacing himself with Eggman.
  • Actor Allusion:
    • In "The Avengers," Tails and the narrator have the exact same voice actor and voice. Sonic calls him the narrator and Tails looks at the screen and says "Cut to a new scene."invoked
    • And poked at again in "Rebuild" after Tails says they could say the right things to evolve from single pixels. Sonic, vexed, says "Ugh, must you narrate everything we do?"
  • Adaptational Jerkass: It'd be easier to name those who didn't undergo this.
  • Adaptational Villainy: For starters, we have Mario, who in this series is the head of a mafia division whom he generally assigns jobs to others that involve killing and other morally questionable actions. He also has close ties with numerous other villains as well, using them in case if anyone pisses him off somehow.
  • All Just a Dream: Episode 3 has Sonic team up with ToeJam and Earl and it seems like he finally found the best job in the world. Unfortunately for him, the whole thing turns out to have been an acid trip. Speaking of which, all of the characters recreate this experience in Season 6... with the same consequences.
  • All Men Are Perverts: About half of the male characters that appear in the series are extremely perverted, though Sonic and Thunderhead are probably the worst out of all of them. Then again, most of the women aren't really any better.
  • Alternate Self: The Dracula and Dr. Wily that's with Mario's Mafia in Season 2 are different than the Dr. Wily in Mega Man Dies at the End, which appears to be a Shared Universe with this show, and the drunkard Dracula that Sonic and Co. encountered in Season 7. The ones with Mario's Mafia are 8-bit and do not speak at all, while the ones encountered are 16-bit and speak rather zany lines. note 
  • Ambiguous Gender: Initially, there was a Running Gag with the characters being unable to tell if Soniqua was a boy or a girl. Eventually Soniqua was confirmed to be a girl.
  • And the Adventure Continues: How the series originally ended.
    Sonic: Okay, I'm bored. Let's get Eggman and Jim and go fuck up Q*bert's stupid pyramid house.
    Tails: Let's go!
  • Animated Shock Comedy: The series is filled to the brim with bloody violence, sexual content, drugs, alcohol, excessive swearing, Comedic Sociopathy, and a small amount of Toilet Humor.
  • Animation Bump: After the series was revived for an eighth season, the animation noticeably became more fluid and newer frames are added to the character models.
  • An Odd Place to Sleep: In Season 8, after Sonic leaves to take care of Soniqua with Mother Brain, Tails decides to take a nap in the bathroom, more accurately, in the hole where the toilet used to be.
  • Apocalypse How: The paradox that happened after "This Can't Be Good" was implied to cause a Class X-5 Scale of Destruction... or possibly even an Class Z, had Sonic not pressed the literal reset button.
  • Arc Villain:
    • Season 1: Eggman with Earthworm Jim as his dragon. The "villain" part is downplayed since Eggman is more of an annoyance than an outright threat, whereas Jim's reason joining Eggman was because he was pissed at Sonic for stealing his suit. They both become allies in Season 2, however.
    • Season 2: Mario, introduced about halfway through the season, runs The Mafia and Sonic is forced to work for him due to being in debt.
    • Season 3: This was the only season to not have a recurring villain, seeing as how most of them were just one-shots: Shredder ("Casino Zone"), Darth Vader ("The War"), and finally Tails in the finale after he took Sonic's position when he was hospitalized in "Duck Hunt".
    • Season 4: Tails, who turned into a complete jerkass after blowing up Sonic's mafia cash and getting rich off an app and makes Sonic's already miserable life even more miserable.
    • Season 5: Though they don't appear until the very end, Fox McCloud and Falco are the closest the season has to actual antagonists, seeing that they were pretty pissed about what Sonic has been doing to their ship. Andross, the antagonist of the Star Fox crew, was killed off in the first episode of Season 5 pretty quickly by Sonic (though he was considerably more sympathetic compared to McCloud or Falco).
    • Season 6: Mario, who was revived in "Thunderhead" thanks to time traveling. Seemingly dies by his own weapon, but because of time travel once again, he apparently gets turned into a chicken farmer.
    • Season 7: The so-called "Creator of all Video Games" might be this, seeing as how they submit Sonic to a bunch of completely random paradoxes. Although it is hard to tell if they're being genuinely malicious or if they're punishing Sonic for his behavior. Ultimately subverted, as the Creator turns out to be Dominique Wilkins, who Sonic kills before he could get any answers as to why he was doing it in the first place.
    • Season 8: Dr. Eggman's daughter, Eggette, quickly appears and establishes herself as this for Season 8. Though she forces Eggman to try taking over the world again and they act as a Big Bad Duumvirate.
  • Arc Words: "Something is fucking with us!" and variations thereof for most of Season 7.
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In the Season 2 finale, Mario blames Sonic for ruining his business, letting Luigi get run over by a bus, and somehow managing to program his DVR so it records each episode of Bachelor Pad three different times. The last of which he considers the worst.
  • Art Evolution: Later seasons add more frames to the character sprites, giving them more range of angles and expressions to appear in.
  • Artifact Title: The series kind of went through a loop with this. The first two seasons revolved around Sonic looking for work, hence the "For Hire" part. It drops by Season 3, where Sonic becomes the new mafia boss and therefore doesn't need to find work anymore. Season 4, however, has Sonic resort back to finding work and Season 5 had Sonic and Co. aboard the Great Fox while being given missions in the absence of Fox McCloud and Falco. Then Seasons 6 and 7 dropped the working aspect again both for different reasons; the former season involved Sonic traveling through time to make himself rich while the latter season involved the gang looking for this so-called "Creator of all Video Games" who keeps messing with them for whatever reason. Season 8, in particular, goes even deeper and instead features Sonic and Tails wanting to restart their lives by creating the perfect game only to have to deal with Eggette and Eggman wanting to take over the world.
  • Art-Style Clash: Every character is designed to resemble the art style of their respective games, so they can occasionally look out of place when interacting with each other. Soniqua, Princess Potato, and Eggette are exceptions, as they are completely original characters, but they're clearly designed to resemble sprites from old school consoles such as the SNES.
  • Ascended Extra:
    • Zigzagged with Earthworm Jim, Kirby, and Thunderhead. They became recurring characters in Season 3, but eventually get Demoted to Extra in Season 4. However, Earthworm Jim comes back again in Season 5, and Kirby has a major role in the second half of the fourth season. As of Season 6, Earthworm Jim is the only "Ascended Extra".
    • Princess Potato and Knuckles have slightly bigger roles in Season 6. Princess Potato, thanks to time travel, is now president of the United States while Knuckles generally has the most number of appearances in this season compared to other seasons.
  • Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: In the series finale, after killing the Creator of all Video Games, Sonic becomes God alongside Tails (who Sonic believes is "Gods' secretary"). Season 8, however, immediately subvertes this when Sonic gets bored and gives up being God in favor of going on wacky adventures with his friends again. Sonic apparently then gave the position of God to Princess Potato.
  • Ash Face: Tails delivers Sonic a bomb at the end of "Cash Explosion", which gives this to Sonic. Oddly enough, it harms him enough to where he has to go to the hospital.
    "That's Tails, folks! (cue Iris Out, before reversing) Seriously, what a fucking asshole, I have to go to the hospital now."
  • Aside Glance: In Season 8 when Tails tells Sonic about the existence of Sonic Mania, Sonic tells him that's a dumb name, and suggests the name Hedgehog Mania. Tails then tells Sonic "Replacing Sonic with Hedgehog? That's a dogshit idea." Sonic and Tails then stare at the camera.
  • The Assimilator: The Zerg assimilate Eggman in "Star Craft", but spit him back out because it resulted in lazy, gluttonous zerglings far more interested in deep-fried pizza than fighting.
  • Ass Shove:
    • In the original final episode, Sonic uses his new god powers to make a statue do this to Mario.
    • Thunderhead also apparently likes to keep condoms full of wine shoved up his ass, which he calls "asswine".
  • Asshole Victim: Most of the characters who die in the series act like rude, obnoxious and hostile jerks towards the main characters (sometimes unprovoked). So it's easier to not feel bad for them when they're killed.
  • Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Sonic is a subtle version of this. The main reason he fails most of his jobs is because he gets quickly focused on other stuff instead of his actual work.
  • Ax-Crazy:
    • Kirby. You will never play another Kirby game the same way again.
    • Sonic and Mother Brain's child Soniqua is also this, though she's significantly less sociopathic than Kirby.
  • Back from the Dead:
    • Mario at the end of "Thunderhead", thanks to Princess Potato bringing him back via time travel. He proceeds to also do this to his mob minions as well.
    • As this is set in the same universe as Mega Man Dies at the End, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, who were all murdered by Sonic in the final episode of said series. They are revived near the beginning of season 7 only to be murdered again by Eggman. In the eighth season however, at least Raphael is revealed to have gone back.
  • Bait-and-Switch Comment: During the Casino Zone robbery after Sonic made the mistake of getting caught before the heist, Shredder shows up to cut him loose.
    Shredder: When I'm through with you, you're going to be a lot less of a man!
    Sonic: Oh man... you're gonna do the chair rope thing from Casino Royale aren't you?
    Shredder: No, my friend, I have something special planned for you. Have you ever seen The Human Centipede?
    Sonic: Yeah...?
    Shredder: It's fucking gross right? Anyway my plan is nothing like that.
  • Behind the Black:
    • Eggman and Earthworm Jim in "Joust" for a brief moment.
    Earthworm Jim: "We stood an hour and a half off-screen... for THAT? [shitty one liner]"
    • Later, in “Eggman”, Sonic and Tails somehow manage to miss Eggman sitting in the centre of the room their entering despite them facing in his Direction, and him being rather hard to miss…
  • Beneath the Mask: To most people, Knuckles is a Large Ham, but on the inside, he is very discontent with his life and actually hates Burger Time (seeing as how he would rather join Sonic and his crew). In Season 4, he sounds very depressed after his restaurant burns down, and in Season 7, he is Driven to Suicide from how boring oblivion is, but failed to kill himself and still remains a red pixel. Though in Season 8, he seems to be back to usual hammy self (albeit with a sudden obsession Huey Lewis and the News).
  • Berserk Button:
    • Do anything to Sonic's Dominique Wilkins Poster (or Wilkins himself when Sonic had him frozen in carbonate)... and It's Personal!
    • You mess with Sonic, and Soniqua will beat you senseless and even eat your flesh.
    • Additionally, don't try to offer to have a shared spotlight role with Sonic, as he will kill you.
    • Deny Earthworm Jim water, and he'll murder you straight up.
    Earthworm Jim: GET ME SOME FUCKING WATER!
  • Big Damn Heroes:
    • Eggman, Earthworm Jim, Kirby and Gilius Thunderhead arrive right when Mario's goons are about to kill Sonic in the Season 2 finale. Soniqua comes later and Tails, although hoping for Sonic to die, knocks out one of Mario's goons.
    • In the Season 8 finale, Soniqua saves Sonic from Eggette trying to crush him in the nick of time, and ends up burning her to death.
  • Bittersweet Ending:
    • Season 3's ending gives off some bittersweet vibes... Sonic loses his mafia after Tails blows up his money and Sonic is now back to being broke as ever. Even though he says that his life is down the shitter, he still tries to remain upbeat by finding more jobs. A 16-bit rendition of "Here I Go Again" even plays in the background.
      Sonic: Well Gerald Wilkins Poster, things are certainly in the fucking shitter... Guess it's time to get to work.
    • Season 6 ends with Sonic pressing the literal Reset Button in an attempt to save everybody from the universe collapsing. It works, except the gang have been reduced to a singular pixel stuck in a white void.
  • Black-and-Gray Morality: The main characters are complete jerks who have no problem screwing each other over and committing crimes, including murder. Despite this, they're not outright psychopaths (except Kirby) and will jump to saving the world if it comes down to it.
  • Black Comedy: Sonic murdering random video game characters for his own amusement is just the tip of the iceberg. A lot of the action is Played for Laughs too.
  • Book Ends: The whole entire series started at Sonic's apartment. The starts of Seasons 2 and 6 take place at Sonic's apartment. The Season finales (except for Seasons 1 and 8) somehow have Sonic's apartment as a location.
    • Season 1: The series starts at Sonic's apartment.
    • Season 2: Season 2 starts at Sonic's apartment and Mario's Mafia Crew and Sonic's allies battle it out in Sonic's apartment.
    • Season 3: Sonic ends up back in his apartment after Tails blew up all of his cash.
    • Season 4: An exception to the rule, although "Two Bad Characters" shows Sonic's apartment.
    • Season 5: Sonic and Co get thrown back right at Sonic's apartment.
    • Season 6: Starts at Sonic's apartment. After time traveling and facing paradoxes left and right, Sonic's apartment is the initial setting for some of the last few episodes, and is the very last place Sonic and Co are at before Sonic presses the Reset Button.
    • Season 7: Guess what? The episode starts off in oblivion, but as the pixels develop into 8-bit, it turns into Sonic's apartment with the couch and everything. The VERY last episode involves the same apartment and couch at the beginning.
  • Bond One-Liner: Sonic to the Creator.
    Creator: And there'd be this whole, tense emotional breakdown like will he, won't he, can he-
    [Gunshot]
    Sonic: Yeah, he can.
  • Brain in a Jar: Mother Brain. She tends to have a... slightly different personality from her Metroid counterpart.
  • Brick Joke:
    • Soniqua for some reason loves to yell "AVOCADO!" all the time. In Season 7, Mario gives her a crate of Avocados to get her to stop yelling the word.
    • The Dominique Wilkins Poster. Sonic worshiped the poster so much from Seasons 1-3, that Wilkins himself became the Creator of all Video Games.
    • In the Season 2 finale, Mario tells Sonic to call Princess Peach a bitch right before he dies. This is exactly what Sonic ends up doing when he finally meets Peach in Season 3.
    • Sonic's "special sauce" (actually semen) for Eggman's burger in the "Burger Time" episode. A couple episodes later, turns out Eggman thought it was just something extra salty to increase his blood pressure, and ultimately spat it out to spite Sonic. Knuckles, on the other hand, wasn't amused by it since, as stated in "Restart", he was still cleaning it off his deep fryers.
      • From the same episode, Eggman wanted Knuckles to make sure Sonic washes his hands after seeing how he cleans toilets. A few episodes prior, Sonic had to clean Eggman's toilet via spindashing through a giant clogged up pipe.
    • Eggman calling Blanka "Matt Le Blanca" in Season 1 comes back briefly in the Season 2 finale.
    • "I think you mean rings" in the later "Scribblenauts" episode, originally in episodes 2 and 4. note  This was brought back again in Season 8, except reversed as Sonic says "I think you mean coin" when Eggette complains about the lack of rings on Sonic's possession.
    • In "Chrono Trigger", Eggman (in a Sonic costume) had sex with Lucca so Sonic wouldn't have to deal with having another kid. In "Things Get Messy", we get to see the results of that.
    • In one early episode, Sonic insults Earthworm Jim by telling him to go have sex with himself (since earthworms in real life are hermaphrodites). Much, much later, when the gang goes back in time to kill their past selves to stop the universe from collapsing (long story), Jim actually sex with himself, albeit a past version of himself.
    • In the above mentioned episode where Sonic first meets Jim, Sonic steals Jim's TV as "payment". At the end of the next episode, Sonic plays security footage of him adding "special sauce" on burgers on a TV that suddenly appears in his apartment. Tails happens to put 2 and 2 together.
      Tails: Hey, isn't this Earthworm Jim's TV?
      Sonic: Ha, ha, ha! Yeah, I'm a dick.
    • In Season 7, Eggman suggests they all go to College for the season plot. Sonic immediately puts the kibosh on that. At the end of season 8 where the characters are standing around trying to figure out what to do next, Sonic says they're going to College and everybody cheers.
  • Burning Bag of Poop: In Season 6, when Tails and co. arrive at Mario's office to rescue Sonic, they decide to drop a flaming bag of poop to mess with Mario. They end up screwing around so long they forgot to ring the doorbell and the building got set on fire.
  • Butterfly of Doom: Season 6 has a bunch of butterfly effects and plotholes due to Sonic (and eventually everyone else) messing with the spacetime continuum. One example is how "sliced bread" doesn't exist in Crash Bandicoot's and Eggman's timeline (it's called "torn with your hands bread" instead).
    Sonic: Time travel is so annoying!
  • Butt-Monkey:
    • Sonic and Tails. By season 4, Tails ends up living the good life while Sonic is even more miserable than ever. By Season 5, however, Tails goes right back to this status and it's much more deserved too.
    • Earthworm Jim and Eggman are this too, the latter moreso than the former. However, Jim gets his status ramped up for seemingly little reason in Season 8, where he gets turned into the No-Respect Guy.
    • Heck, any Sonic character (besides the main cast, who are considered butt monkeys anyway) gets a huge treatment of this big time:
      • Knuckles got his restaurant burned down and had to end up working for a fancy restaurant. Then he gets stuck as a pixel, and remains working 39-hour shifts at Burger Time. Season 8 tones it down significantly, but it was still.
      • Amy, who gets dumped unceremoniously by Sonic right before getting hit with a chair by Soniqua.
      • Shadow gets shot in the spine by a policeman... and everyone acts cool with the loot Shadow stole.
    • Luigi is one too. In the VERY first episode on the newspaper headline, it says "Luigi still sucks". Then in Season 2's episode, Mario sends him thinking he'll make sure Sonic gets the job done, but instead, Luigi gets killed by a bus. Mario seems to get upset about it the first time, but in Season 6, Luigi is revived alongside with Mario and he watches as Soniqua dies. However, Soniqua fails to die and Soniqua blows fire at Luigi, instantly killing him. Mario's reaction this time, though, is a very mildly annoyed "Well shit."
  • Camp Gay: Link. Oddly enough, he makes gay jokes about Tails.
  • Caper Crew: The main gang (and Princess Potato) attempt to pull of a heist in Season 3, and Eggman assigns each of them specific duties:
    • Kirby - The Muscle
    • Jim - Tech Expert
    • Princess Potato - The "Sexy Distraction"
    • Soniqua - The Demolitionist
    • Sonic - Disguise Expert
    • Tails - Refreshment Duty
  • Catchphrase:
    • Tails: "Dipshit!"
    • Knuckles: "Fryin' and buyin'!"
    • Soniqua: "AVOCADO!"
    • Kirby (in Season 4 only): "Love it!"
    • Crash Bandicoot: "No way, bro-say!"
  • The Cavalry: Mario, his Mafia gang, and Darth Vader serve as this, as they show up at the climax of the showdown against Eggette, as they're fed up with her taking over the world.
  • Cheat Code: The Season 7 finale reveals that the title screen has a level select (which Sonic accesses with the level select code from the first game), showing every single episode of the series.
  • Cerebus Retcon: Inverted. Initially, Sonic seems to be quite sociopathic who willingly kills anyone in his way. Then season 8 firmly establishes that most characters can respawn as long as they died in their game world (which is why Mario didn't come back to life).
  • City of Gold: Tails's new place after he gets rich. He even takes a shower with gold!
  • Cliffhanger:
    • The first Season finale, where Sonic gets turned into an eggplant and, out of nowhere, we learn Tails has gone into a coma.
    • The first part of the Season 2 finale, with Mario and his gang about to kill Sonic.
    • The "Casino Zone" and "The War" arcs of Season 3 had various cliffhangers as well. The former had Sonic getting captured by the Shredder while the latter had the gang being challenged by Darth Vader to a game of Family Feud.
    • Season 6 has a lot of cliffhangers, before and after Mario's revival. Most of these involve "who" stole the Epoch and what's going to happen to Sonic next.
  • Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: When the series was still owned by Machinima, the episode thumbnails used to be color-coded to represent their respective season. Season 8, due to originally being uploaded on the Rooster Teeth website, broke this trend.
    • Season 1 = Blue.
    • Season 2 = Red.
    • Season 3 = Yellow.
    • Season 4 = Green.
    • Season 5 = Black.
    • Season 6 = Purple.
    • Season 7 = Orange.
  • Comically Missing the Point: Sonic does this so many times that it would be easier to list the times he doesn't.
  • Continuity Nod: Became increasingly present from the Season 1 finale onwards.
    • In the Season 2 finale, Mario calls forth not only actual villains, but also certain character that hated Sonic, specifically Blanka, Pit and Taizo Hori.
    • In the episode, "Ice Hockey", the monsters Pooka & Fygar from Dig Dug end up in jail chasing after a nude Alex Kidd after Sonic sets them loose four episodes prior (though he did honestly have good intentions for doing so, since he thought they were harmless looking and that Dig Dug was being bit of a jerk towards them). They also appear in "Tapper" and "It's On".
    • If you watch Mega Man dies at the End, it's revealed that Bomberman has an evil brother who brings up the Bomberman's death and the taco place he mentioned before being killed by Soniqua. He also had a wife (who was at Bomberman's grave) that Soniqua killed in "Casino Zone Part 1".
    • The entire episode of "It's On" includes references from multiple episodes from Seasons 1, 2, and 3. Sonic and Tails chase and fight each other through different places that Sonic has been involved with. Even some of the whereabouts of the other characters are continuity nods to previous episodes.
    • If you pay attention in "Tecmo Bowl", it shows that "Sonic on Ice" has a revival done by Crash Bandicoot. In "It's On", Kirby ate the entire cast.
  • The Cameo:
    • Sonic and Thunderhead appear in Mega Man dies at the End, another series made by LowBrow), digging their way out of prison and escaping outside by the next episode.
    • Some characters from other video games that don't have their own episode make cameos in certain episodes:
      • Q*bert showed up in "Robotnik".
      • In "Metroid", a montage of images featuring Sonic and Mother Brain involve them watching two dolphins from Ecco the Dolphin jump out of the water, visiting the Eiffel Tower which has George from Rampage on it holding a woman while he is surrounded by Helicopters, and then going to a strip club from Grand Theft Auto.
      • Mecha Hitler is seen as a member of Mario's mafia goons in Season 2 and reappears briefly in Season 6 where he gets killed by Soniqua.
      • Alex Kidd makes cameos being naked and being chased by the Dig Dug Monsters Pooka and Fygar.
      • Bub from Bubble Bobble was killed by Sonic in "Frogger", presumably to compensate for the fact that he failed to kill the Lee brothers in the prior episode.
      • In the episode "Link", when Sonic & Co. travel with Link, they go by the worlds of Shaq Fu and Odd World, where characters from those respective games can be seen.
      • The Noid from Yo! Noid also showed up in "Casino Zone Part 1", since he was hired to break into Casino Zone. he was killed by Sonic, however, when the team realized they didn't actually need him.
      • In "Kung-Fu", characters from GeGeGe no Kitarō appear when the lady with Sonic starts shapeshifting.
      • Characters from The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings make cameos in "Mass Effect".
      • Lara Croft from Tomb Raider makes an appearance in "Movie Magic" as a replacement for Mother Brain.
      • Sonic & Co. are seen carrying the space bug enemies from Galaga at the beginning of the episode "Falco".
      • The ball and paddle from Pong make an appearance in "Crash Bandicoot". Some characters from Metal Slug also make cameos in the same episode.
      • A CEO President named Alan Patterson makes an appearance in "The Creator".
      • Five video game characters from Sonic Blast Man make appearances as forms of Sonic & Co.
      • Some of the girls from Dead or Alive make cameos in "Gears of War" and "The Creator".
  • Consolation Backfire: In Season 4, Episode 1, Sonic burns down Burger Time (which was being managed by Knuckles) with his crack pipe. Knuckles tries to reassure himself by saying that he still has his moped, only for Sonic to drive off with it, planning to sell it for crack.
  • The Couch: Sonic has on in his apartment, which the characters very frequently sit on whenever the episode features his apartment.
  • Couch Gag: At the end of almost every single episode, there are some outtakes from the recordings of the episodes, such as saying a line (usually different from the episode). There are a few episodes though that add something to the end and a few that don't even do the line:
    • "Kid Icarus": Did have it but added a "cliffhanger" segment.
    • "Double Dragon": Sonic comes in instead and said that Sonic gave Earthworm Jim his suit back, expecting YouTube comments that would bring it up.
    • "Donkey Kong Country": Nothing happens. Mario climbs out from the pit and says "Dun dun dunnnn! Mario's still alive!"
    • "The Battle Part 1": Sonic comes in and says that it was a short episode, but says that he might die the following one. Also, a trailer for Taco Man: The Game Master plays after that.
    • "Peach": "Pretty Woman" played instead, along with showing a picture of "Super Italian Labor Plumbers".
    • "The War": Different music is played alongside showing the couch gag at the end.
    • "It's On": Mega Man dies at the End teaser showed instead.
    • "The Red Carpet": Sonic flatly says "Hilarious Outtake".
    • "Blaster Master": Instead shows the whereabouts of Sophia III, but it didn't turn out to be an effective combat machine...
    • "Star Craft": Shows Tails at a building instead, stating he has to poo while the other characters are at a Zerg base partying.
    • "Falco": When Falco gets killed, Fox says that "[Sonic and co. are] going to pay for killing Falco" before walking offscreen to clean shower after having sex with Mother Brain.
  • Chekhov's Gun: The Dominique Wilkins poster. Sonic loved it so much that the real Dominique Wilkins becomes the Creator of all Video Games after Sonic pushes the Reset Button.
  • Compilation Movie: Several have been made by Rooster Teeth, and versions are being made by Lowbrow on their channel, with several edits to it such as some lack of censorship and audio changes.
  • Crapsack World: Mario quickly turns the world to this once he sees that there is world peace and there's nothing to stop him... except Soniqua. However, she ends up getting captured, in which Tails, Eggman and Earthworm Jim end up stopping Mario... but it was almost accidental as they were all really drunk at that point.
  • Creator Cameo:
    • Cliffy B himself shows up in "Gears of War", and "Lowbrow" has... well...
    • Michael William and Mike Parker show up in "The Creator" when Sonic and Tails are looking for God. However, although they admit they're the creators of the show and are techically their Gods, they're not actually the God they're looking for, but they give Sonic and Tails a hint on how to do so.
  • Crossover: Mega Man dies at the End is made by the same creators, so not surprisingly, this has happened.
    • The episode "Mega Man" is self-explanatory. Becomes sort of a parody of bad crossovers, as the whole episode is them just standing around talking awkwardly. Mega Man himself even calls it a "gratuitous crossover episode".
      • From Mega Man dies at the End:
      X: Oh, wouldn't it be awesome if he teamed up with Sonic?
      Zero: We did that already.
      Proto Man: Yeah, It wasn't great.
    • The series finale of MMdatE is this between Sonic and Eggman. We also know that Wily and Eggman are friends, despite the fact that they didn't notice each other during the Season 2 Finale. Sonic also ends up killing Mega Man, thus being responsible for the Title Drop.
      Sonic: I don't share the spotlight.
  • Crossover Alternate Universe: In this crossover of many video game characters, there is a ton of differences between this series and the main games the creators add in. Examples include Mario being a mob boss, Sonic living in an apartment, Eggman being less evil, no sign of the Chaos Emeralds (except for a brief gag in Season 5), Knuckles working at Burger Time instead of watching the Master Emerald, etc.
  • Curse Cut Short: Twice.
    • In "Punch Drunk", after Sonic uses the money he got from fighting Mike Tyson to "invest" in a frame for his Dominique Wilkins poster.
      Tails: You stupid fu- (end theme).
      • Interestingly, in Lowbrow's version of the episode in the Season 1 compilation, there's no cut-off for the curse.
    • In "Casino Zone part 3".
      Jim: Wait a second... isn't Sonic on Ice cancelled? YOU MOTHERFU- (end theme).
  • Cute Monster Girl: Soniqua can occasionally come across as such, at least when she's not being Ax-Crazy.
  • Date Rape: Implied in "Temco Bowl", as Sonic apparently spiked a cocktail with roofies that were intended for the cheerleaders. Earthworm Jim mistakenly drank it.
  • A Day in the Limelight:
    • The episode "Soniqua Mad" is one, where Soniqua goes on a rampage after Mario kills Sonic. Too bad Soniqua fell for a trap.
    • Eggman and Jim get their own episodes in "Contra", where Tails hires them to get into El Padrino's drug cartel and in "Asteroids" where they a mission to destroy oncoming asteroids.
    • "Cash Explosion" is one for Tails (though this was in Season 4 when Tails was the villain).
  • Deity of Human Origin: Sonic, in the final episode of Season 7.
  • Demoted to Extra:
    • Kirby essentially becomes a minor character by Season 5. The same thing happens to Thunderhead in Seasons 6, 7, and 8 since he was limited to cameos and one-shot appearances.
    • Eggman and Earthworm Jim for the first half of Season 4 due to being in South America at the time.
  • Denser and Wackier: The show gets progressively more outlandish with each season.
  • Description Cut: At one point, Sonic has four girls fighting over him. Sonic suggests settling this "like adults," followed by a scene in which they are in a wrestling arena.
  • Didn't Think This Through: In Season 2, Sonic is asked by Ghosts to take out Pac-Man. After bashing himself into a rock and becoming a ghost, Sonic does the job until he's told the Ghosts can't change him back, leaving him a ghost along with his own corpse, lamenting how taking the job was poorly thought out.
  • The Dog Bites Back: Tails at the end of Season 3. Sonic shouldn't have mistreated him. Amusingly, it's reverse in Season 5, where Tails was such an asshole that Sonic's mistreatment of him becomes cathartic.
  • The Dog Was the Mastermind: The Creator's identity is revealed to be Dominique Wilkins, who was hardly mentioned again since the end of Season 3.
  • Do Not Adjust Your Set: In the eighth season, while Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles are at the BurgerTime restaurant, Eggman has taken over most of the world and broadcasts his domination on TV. This gets lampshaded when Tails notices a television appearing out of nowhere when Eggman makes his announcement, and Eggman manages to predict what Sonic and Tails would be doing in the restaurant.
  • Double Subversion: In "Burger Time", Sonic talks to Eggman as if to imply that he did something to his burgers, only to then yell out loud that he hopes he chokes on them, causing Knuckles to fire him. However, looking at the restaurant footage shows that Sonic indeed did something to Eggman's burgers, lacing them with "special sauce".
  • The Dragon: Eggman serves as this to Eggette in Season 8.
  • Drinking Game: Two drinking games have been made. One that is official and one that was made by a troper.
  • Driven to Suicide: Knuckles at the VERY beginning of "Rebuild". The others don't seem to mind though. Ultimately subverted, however, since the finale revealed he was unable to.
  • Early-Bird Cameo:
    • Dr. Wily is one of Mario's mafia members that he sends to kill Sonic in "The Battle: Part 1 & 2". This was before his appearance in the show's sister series Mega Man Dies at the End, where he becomes one of the main characters.
    • Crash Bandicoot is also mentioned as early as Season 3, where he stars the new "Sonic on Ice" revival. Kirby ate the whole entire cast though, so it is possible Crash either escaped or was revived through time travel.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • In "Kirby", Sonic is driven to tears from killing creatures, something he is seen to be less adverse to in later episodes.
    • For that matter, "Golden Axe" has Sonic extremely reluctant to engage in Thunderhead's perverted antics. Although he still displays signs of this in later episodes, it's safe to say he probably wouldn't care now.
  • Eating the Enemy:
    • In this series, Kirby is portrayed as an Ax-Crazy psychopath who murders without remorse and more often than not he does it by simply eating people just like he does in his series.
    • In the episode "Mortal Kombat", after Soniqua brutally runs down Goro of who was pummeling Sonic, she then devours his flesh.
  • Enemy Mine: During the showdown between Sonic and Eggette/Eggman, it seems that Sonic's about to be taken down ... until Mario, his mafia gang, and Darth Vader all show up to back Sonic up for their own reasons. However, after the battle ends, they become enemies again.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: In Season 7, when Earthworm Jim suggests engaging in coke on tits, Psy-Crow, who apparently spent three hours saying he was gonna kill Jim, say that he considers drug use and using women like that is just wrong.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: When Sonic and Co. realize that they were duped on the initial "Creator" quest, they end up going on an acid trip with Tails finding out that going to Link would help them find the Creator... much to his chagrin. After finding Link, Link (after making fun of him) tells him to "ignore the mountains (boobs) and get to the cliff (The first name of the creator of Gears of War is "Cliff"). Sonic and Tails go to Gears of War and find the Creator of Gears of War...
  • Expendable Clone: Darth Vader kills his stormtroopers in anger like if it was nothing.
  • Express Delivery: Mother Brain gives birth to Soniqua within hours after having sex with Sonic.
  • Extreme Omnisexual:
    • Slightly downplayed in that he does have limits, but Sonic will basically fuck anyone and anything he finds.
    • Thunderhead plays this far more straighter, as he clearly has no limits to who or what he will have sex with.
    • Mother Brain is easily one of the most sex-crazed characters in the series. While she seems to prefer the male sex, Mother Brain doesn't seem to care what species they are.
  • Everyone Has Standards:
    • In "Duck Hunt", Tails wouldn't shoot the dog from the game, even if it is beating Sonic to a pulp.
      Tails: I'm not shooting a dog, man. We've done some terrible things before, but... I can't shoot a dog.
    • In "Link to the Past", Sonic kills Link's uncle for being homophobic.
    • In "Cold Blooded", Eggman actually thinks eggshell tacos — tacos where the shells are made out of eggshells — are disgusting.
  • Evil Feels Good: In "Back to Work", when Sonic decides that what he and Co. do best is to "fuck shit up," he goes and shoot Kid Chameleon, in which Sonic says it just feels right.
  • Face–Heel Turn:
    • Tails has one during the end of Season 3 and it lasts all the way up to the end of Season 4. By Season 5, he's back to normal however.
    • Two examples in Season 8. The first was when Eggman meets Eggette who slowly returns him to the path of evil, making Eggman the antagonist of Season 8. The other is Earthworm Jim at the end of Season 8, who steals one of Eggman's mecha suits and threatens to kill the whole team for treating him poorly. This one is lampshaded by Sonic, who quickly points out how stupid it is for them to reuse the plot and make each character turn evil. Ultimately Jim doesn't turn evil thanks to Sonic's awareness of this trope and calling it out.
  • Fate Worse than Death: When Sonic attacks the Duck Hunt Dog and starts getting thrashed, Tails reveals he doesn't have it in him to shoot a dog, so he does something "much worse". He gives the dog to Soniqua as a pet.
  • Fisher King: During Crash Bandicoot's/Eggman's timeline, Crash and Sonic have the power to make games appear based on their personality.
  • Flat "What": A common reaction many characters have towards some of the more unexpected or random information/requests being given to them.
  • Fluffy Cloud Heaven: Sonic and Tails end up here in the Season 7 finale.
  • Foreshadowing: During Season 6, when Sonic goes back in time to prevent himself from squandering his funds, various things happen. For one, Princess Potato (who had connections to Mario) is alive again and now President of the United States, after having been unceremoniously killed off in Season 3. Later on, Potato steals the Epoch and uses it to bring back Mario, who was also dead.
  • Forgotten Fallen Friend: All the time. Hardly anybody shows remorse when someone they know dies. The one who gets hit with this the worse is Sonic himself, whose death not only relieves Tails and Earthworm Jim (though neither of them knew Sonic had died), but actually ends up bringing world peace.
  • Freeze-Frame Bonus: Eggman's bucket list in "Elevator Action":
  • Gameplay Ally Immortality:
    • Tails. The reason why Sonic wanted Tails to be "top billing" was so Sonic could kill him in the movie theater explosion, as Tails would become "Player One".
    • In "Alien", Tails goes back to "Player Two" as a Chestburster popping out of his chest doesn't kill him.
  • A God Am I: Once Sonic kills the creator, he declares "I. Am. GOD!" He gets bored of it though and eventually steps down from his position.
  • Grail in the Garbage: Turns out Sonic owns an oversized Sega Genesis in his trashed apartment. It's heavily implied to be running the whole universe as a game, but Sonic can't use it to his advantage in nearly all scenarios since you can only do two things with it: Reset the universe in case it's starting to fall apart but reduce everyone to a single pixel, or turn it off and end the universe.
  • Groin Attack:
    Sonic (from a Facebook update): Kicking Tails in the balls while in space feels really good.
    • An implied case in "Ghosts 'n Goblins". According to Thunderhead, there was a "teeth situation" when getting a blowjob from a zombie, resulting him turning into one.
  • Gondor Calls for Aid: Sonic and Tails are cornered by Mario and his gang, then Eggman, Kirby, Thunderhead, Earthworm Jim, and Soniqua come in to Sonic's aid.
  • Hilarious Outtakes: Almost every single episode ends with one of these (sound recording). Some of these are things that weren't inserted in the episode, while some of them are outright bloopers.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Mario attempts to kill Soniqua using Bullet Bowser, but forgets about it and ends up being the one killed.
  • Home by Christmas: Two meta-examples:
    • "Space Chicken", the Season 5 Finale, ended up with Sonic and his friends back home. The episode was aired on December 23, 2012, two days before Christmas in Real Life.
    • And the Season 7 finale was released on December 22, 2013, three days before Christmas, and Santa Claus himself makes an appearance, even though he does absolutely nothing to advance the plot.
  • Hot Skitty-on-Wailord Action:
    • Sonic + Mother Brain = Soniqua. Downplayed since, when comparing their sprites, the two are roughly the same size.
    • Sonic also had kids with Lucca, which he managed to switch with Eggman via time travel.
  • Humiliation Conga: "Atari" was one for Sonic, seeing as how Tails runs over Elliot (From ET) who was going to offer him money, gets arrested by the FBI, and worst of all, finds Gilius Thunderhead wanting to give him a condom full of wine from up his ass.
  • Indulgent Fantasy Segue: In "Two Bad Characters" Sonic pulls out a gun and shoots Tails to death multiple times before returning to reality.
  • Iris Out: At the end of "Cash Explosion", but is parodied as Sonic comes back up.
  • Ironic Echo: In the episode "Dig Dug", Sonic tells Taizo Hori this: "I should introduce you to my friend Kirby, you'd get along, you're both psychopaths." Later, Mario gets Taizo to join his Legion of Doom. Kirby eats Taizo.
  • It's the Best Whatever, Ever!: The final episode of Season 7 closes out with Sonic declaring his new status as God to be the "Best. Job. Ever."
  • Jerkass: Sonic, Eggman, Kirby, Tails... Really, everyone who isn't Bomberman or Spaceworm Frank falls under this category.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Sonic. Yes, he can be a mean jerk to people, but he does have hints of being a decent person, especially towards Soniqua after the events of "Mortal Kombat". And before Tails broke him, he really was sympathetic and sincere about apologizing to Knuckles to give him a second chance at Burger Time.

     K-Z 
  • Karmic Death: Darth Vader is killed by Dominque Wilkins, who he had released from carbonite earlier. And for extra points, he was killed in the same way he killed Emperor Palpatine.
  • Kick the Dog: It's all but flat out said that Tails purposefully gave Sonic a bad stock tip and screwed him out his money (thus making him the cause of the entirety of the show's events). This dog-kicking moment nicely sets up his Face–Heel Turn later down the line.
  • Killed Mid-Sentence: Toad, Sonic, and The creator
  • Last-Name Basis: Nobody ever calls (Ivo) Eggman and (Gilius) Thunderhead by their first names.
  • Later-Installment Weirdness:
    • The first four seasons mainly revolved around Sonic either looking for jobs or trying to earn money. In Seasons 5 and 6, the job finding aspect dropped in favor of the gang engaging in various hijinks in order to try and get rich. Then in Season 7, after rebuilding the nearly destroyed universe from scratch, the gang try and find the Creator of all Video Games and ask why he's messing with them after a series of bizarre occurrences (such as Sonic randomly having a cat in his apartment).
    • Season 8 has an even weirder formula. Of all of the episodes, only one of them really focuses on a specific game, while the rest of the series arc focuses on Sonic and Co trying to make a good game until Eggette comes into the scene and convinces her father to rule the world.
  • Lazy Backup: When Mario kidnaps Sonic, his friends are too wasted to pay attention. When they later remember, they find the best way to save Sonic is to mail his kidnapper a flaming bag of poo.
  • Large Ham: Knuckles, particularly in the opening scene of "Sonic Knuckles".
    FRYING AND BUYING
  • Layman's Terms: After Mario kills Sonic, a news broadcast he watches initially starts off with "Not since Oedipus freed Thebes from the Curse of the Sphinx", but then someone tells him to dumb it down, when he then says "Not since Papa Smurf thwarted the evil Gargamel that there's been a miraculous turnaround. For the first time in history, there's total world peace."
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
    • "Back to Work", which aired in the Season 7 (originally the final season), has the protagonists remarking that they feel like they've done all they can do and return to their original games. Ultimately subverted, however, as they find that their original lives were even worse, and return to fuck shit up (as Sonic puts it), starting by shooting Kid Chameleon for no real reason.
    • In Season 8, the gang gets Morty, from another Lowbrow production titled Morty Kombat, to help code their new game. Eggman notes that Morty sounds way better than Earthworm Jim; the joke being that Morty and Jim are voiced by the same person and sound almost alike.
  • Legion of Doom: Mario is pretty serious about killing Sonic after he knocks him out. He even calls forth villains such as Bowser, Dr. Wily, Mecha Hitler, Dracula, and Blanka. Of course he also gets Dig Dug and Pit to join as well. However, in the next episode, Sonic's friends come and kill all of them except for Dr. Wily, who survives in Mega Man dies at the End, and Blanka, who electrocutes Eggman.
  • Long Song, Short Scene: While any of Mike "Monk" Soucy's 8-bit remakes would qualify, but his rendition of "Here I Go Again" by Whitesnake really takes the cake because not only did he make the FULL SONG (which is awesome by the way), but it only ever played for about 10 seconds in the Season 3 finale, "It's On"
  • Made a Slave: Tails wanted to do this to Sonic after he took over his mafia. He was also a "slave" of Mario in late Season 2.
  • Mama Bear: Soniqua is this to Sonic, despite the fact that Soniqua is Sonic's daughter. Threaten or hurt Sonic and you will be in a serious world of hurt. Heck, she is more protective of Sonic over a Pokemon Trainer and even her own mother, as she destroyed Mother Brain's Metroid Army.
  • Massive Multiplayer Crossover: The series takes place in a universe where apparently the setting of every video game in existence co-exist with each other. Listing every video game character Sonic has interacted with would take too much time, so the fact that the main gang include characters like Earthworm Jim, Kirby, and Mother Brain should tell enough.
  • Meaningful Echo: At the end of Season 2 when Sonic reveals he found Dominic Wilkins and had him frozen in carbonite, Tails mutters "This should be interesting". In Season 6 episode "Sonic Knuckles", when it's revealed Princess Potato is now president, Sonic mutters "This should be interesting".
  • Moral Event Horizon: invoked Parodied when Mario destroys Sonic's Dominque Wilkins poster.
    Sonic: Now you've crossed the line you mustache asshole!
    Sonic: Yeah, I value the poster more than your life, I tell you this all the time.
    Tails: I hate you, I'm glad you're going to die.
  • Morality Pet: Sonic seems to treat Soniqua a lot better than anyone else.
  • Motive Decay: Sonic goes around from trying to land the best job to deciding that "fucking shit up" at every game he and the gang travel is their business.
  • The Movie: Jokingly suggested in "Elevator Action", after Eggman suggests going to college.
    Sonic: No, we're not going to college. At least, not this season. Maybe in the movie. *cough* (looking towards the audience) Kickstarter!
  • Mythology Gag: For Sparkster. There is a nod to the fact that Rocket Knight Adventures got two wholly different "sequels" following the first game with entirely different plots. The Genesis game was a full sequel to the first, while the SNES game was a semi-remake of the original set in a wholly different continuity. This is implemented into Sparkster's appearance where the enemies, villain, and even the kingdom's ownership seem to be constantly confused by Sparkster and outright confuse everyone else.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Granted, nobody among the main casts are truly "heroes", but when they do try and do the right thing, they're unknowingly just making things worse.
    • Sonic and Co. try to help out a spy in "Elevator Action", but when he sees he's trying to retrieve secret documents, Sonic and Co. think that this guy's the bad one (it didn't help that the spy was a total jerk to the gang). Then they kill the spy, but the businessmen actually had secret files to legalize Hitler.
    • Also, in "Dig Dug", Sonic blows Taizo Hori up thinking that he's doing a really bad thing by killing random creatures, but these random creatures end up raping a village.
    • Sonic destroying Sonia Mania caused Eggette to go and search for Eggman, therefore creating the primary conflict of Season 8.
  • No-Holds-Barred Beatdown:
    • Sonic gives one to a show host in Season 4 for pushing to have Tails be in his movie.
    • Eggman reprograms Sonic's ship to brutally murder Falco's ship like this instead of racing. Fox gets pissed.
  • Non Fatal Explosion: Despite how massive the explosion seemed in the Season 4 finale, nobody died. That being said, Eggman states that he and Jim got out of the theater as soon as Sonic's face showed up on the screen. Also, Soniqua says that Sonic was ranting on screen for about 45 minutes, meaning that there would've been enough time for everyone to escape, despite the fact it seemed more like 15 seconds in "The Red Carpet".
  • Nostalgia Level: The first few episodes have been revisited multiple times, most notably "Paperboy".
  • Nutritional Nightmare: The Taco Sandwich, which is composed of two tacos serving as bread, and ten more tacos between them.
  • N-Word Privileges: In "Cold Blooded", Sonic calls the Ice Climbers "Eskimos", to which Tails reacts in disgust. Popo and Nana introduce themselves as Eskimos, where they say it's okay if they use it.
  • Old Shame: Invoked in-uiverse; "Lowbrow" has Tails himself admit that he really hated being a jerk in Season 4.
  • On Ice: Parts 2 and 3 of "Casino Zone" involves Shredder, after capturing Sonic trying to break into Casino Zone, deciding to punish him by forcing Sonic to star in his own ice skating musical called "Sonic on Ice". Sonic, however, liked the idea and was on board with it until Tails reminded him that they were there to steal money. Afterwards, the whole thing was cancelled but Kirby managed to revive it... only to eat the entire cast.
  • Only Sane Man:
    • Tails. He tumbles down to one of the insane bunch by the end of Season 3. He returns to his usual role in Season 5, but he's noitceably less so compared to prior seasons.
    • Sonic becomes this in Season 4, considering that Tails is a jerk and Thunderhead is as much of an idiot as ever.
    • Earthworm Jim occasionally carries this role as well.
    • Eggette, Dr. Eggman's daughter, is one of the only truly competent characters in the show and makes it clear she doesn't take shit from anyone.
  • Original Generation: As this series is a gag crossover of video games, there are a few Original Characters created for the story:
    • Soniqua, Sonic and Mother Brain's alien child
    • Princess Potato, Mario's other princess from a fictional Mario knockoff game called "Super Italian Labored Town".
    • Sonic also had twins with Lucca from Chrono Trigger. Until he rewrote the timeline and wiped them out of existence.
  • Orphaned Punch Line: When Sonic lands a role as Commander Shepard's sidekick in Mass Effect 3, this happens at the beginning of the sex scene as Liara enters the room. "Then I was all 'No, YOUR anus!'"
  • Painfully Slow Projectile: Bullet Bowser, which Mario uses to try to kill Soniqua once and for all. Doesn't work though.
  • Paper-Thin Disguise:
    • Sonic and his crew disguise themselves poorly as ice skaters (specifically they're dressed as the ice skaters who were dressed as them for "Sonic on Ice").
    • For at least half of Season 8, Earthworm Jim dons the body of Morty from Morty Kombat after accidentally decapitating him and poses as him so nobody gets suspicious. However, Jim's worm head is clearly exposed and lets off a lot of rather blatant hints that he's not actually Morty. Despite this, nobody seems to notice.
  • Plot Hole: There's a lot of them, to the point where it kinda got lampshaded.
    Tails: Seems like there's gonna be a lot of holes in this season [6] storyline.
    Sonic: Eh, just go with it.
  • Plot-Triggering Death: Mario's death in Season 2 sets up the plot for Season 3.
  • Poisonous Person: Eggman apparently; in "Battletoads", the characters get high by licking the eponymous Battletoads in order to get answers about the mystery of the Creator. At some point, the toads start licking Eggman... and promptly die.
  • Pre-Mortem One-Liner: "Hey Sonic, you ever call a coin toss? Let me give you a word of advice: always bet on tails."
  • Psycho for Hire: Although nowhere near as bad as Kirby, Sonic has stated that he enjoys murdering when working for Mario.
  • Putting the Band Back Together: Kirby has Sonic get everyone together to film a movie about his life.
  • Pyromaniac: Kirby. He sets a bar that Sonic and Tails acquired on fire... the second they walked in.
  • Random Events Plot: The series generally follows a loose narrative thread, with the main focus being on the characters visiting different classic video game settings.
  • Rage Against the Author: "Lowbrow" has Sonic and Tails traveling to Lowbrow Studios and talking with the creators.
  • Rags to Riches/Riches to Rags: Sonic appears to go through a cycle of this each season. From Season 2 to Season 3, when he took over the mafia. Then back to poor in Season 4 after Tails blew up all his money. Then back to riches again in the beginning of Season 6 when he traveled back in time to tell Tails not to invest his money in Dreamcast stock, only to be brought down to rags again in Season 7, and yet again go up by the end by becoming essentially God himself and then throwing all of that away in a petty revenge plot and returning, yet once again, to having nothing.
  • Real Life Writes the Plot: The inclusion of Eggman's daughter Eggette in Season 8 was thanks to a fan-created art of her from Sonic Mania.
  • Red Shirt: If a member of Bomberman's family appears in this or Mega Man Dies at the End, they WILL die (usually by Soniqua).
  • Refuge in Audacity: In spades many many times. The characters do things with such flagrant disregard to normality that their behaviors often go entirely unpunished beyond screwing themselves over. Example: At one point Thunderhead drives a tank onto a football field and runs over a number of players and crushes Sonic. The newspapers label Thunderhead as a member of Sonic's team and disqualify him. Does he go to jail along with Thunderhead for the deaths of numerous players in a horrific fashion by a tank on a football field? Nah, since he was disqualified, Sonic's bet against himself is validated and he wins a truckload of money and returns to his mob boss hideout a wealthy jerk (with broken bones, but still).
  • Reset Button: A literal example in Season 6's finale. When the world starts to literally fall apart due to the gang repeatedly messing with the spacetime continuum, Sonic hits the reset button to save them all. It works, except for the fact that the world has been reduced to oblivion and turns everyone into pixels.
  • Retcon: In Season 7's finale, it seems Sonic and Tails could freely leave the Creator's realm and screw around, yet in Season 8's intro, they're stuck there unless if they press a switch that would remove Sonic's creator powers for good. Plus the events mentioned in the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue are completely ignored.
  • Revisiting the Roots: An In-Universe case; in Season 7, Sonic declares that the gang should go back to their original roles in their original games after doing everything they could do. However, they decide to try and go back to finding jobs again when they realize they've gotten used to their current chaotic lives. And then they decide to just engage in hedonism when they realize that even that got boring after a while.
  • Rhymes on a Dime: About a quarter of Knuckle's dialogue is formed by the phrase "<verb>ing and <verbing>." Frying and buying. Throwing and blowing. Following and swallowing.
  • Ridiculous Exchange Rates: Rings might be worth something for Sonic and Tails, but they have a pretty poor exchange rate to coins according to Earthworm Jim. Also made a running gag in "Robotnik" and "Scribblenauts".
  • Royal Brat: Alongside the treatment that he received from Sonic, Tails in Season 4 basically becomes this after getting rich. Heck, he even sets a bunch of money on fire for no reason at all.
  • Running Gag:
    • Tails in his convertible listening to loud music when Sonic tries to tell him something in Season 4. He obviously doesn't give a shit.
    • Soniqua also yelling out "Avocado!"
    • Gilius Thunderhead's so-called "asswine".
    • Kirby killing people.
    • Eggman being pathetic and wanting lots of food (preferably fatty and deep-fried).
  • Sadist Show: A major reason why more people, most notably the main characters, don't die more often is because it's much funnier watching them suffer.
  • The Scrappy: Invoked in "The Avengers" as the team thinks that Hawkeye and Black Widow are worthless.
    Hawkeye: I hate those guys [the Avengers]
    Eggman:' Yeah, I'm sure they hate you too. You're like the Aquaman of the group.
  • Seen It All: By season 7, Sonic, Jim, Tails, and Eggman part ways for an episode, having done everything they've wanted to do. However, they realize that their old lives were boring and that all they can do now that they've done everything is to go on a spree of hedonism.
  • Self-Deprecation: In "Sonic Mania," after hearing about the release of the eponymous video game, Sonic insists that "Hedgehog Mania" would be a better name. Tails rebukes by stating that replacing Sonic with Hedgehog is a "dog shit idea" (which is followed by the duo looking at the audience nervously). note 
  • Series Fauxnale: Season 7 was originally intended to be the final season. After the series was picked up by Rooster Teeth, it was renewed for an eighth season.
  • "Shaggy Dog" Story:
    • The Casino Zone arc in Season 3. When the gang finally rob the casino, Jim finds out that they actually stole rings and points out that they're basically worthless as they have a terrible conversion rate.
    • The search for the Creator in Season 7. Throughout the season, Sonic and co. are being tormented by the so-called "creator of all video games," which prompts the gang to search for him for answers. After going on a pretty ridiculous journey for most of the season, Sonic and Tails finally come across the Creator, who turns out to be Dominique Wilkins. However, Sonic kills Wilkins before they could get any answers. Sonic then becomes the new Creator, but it still renders the whole search for him pointless.
  • Shared Universe: The series appears to take place in the same timeline as other Lowbrow series like Mega Man Dies at the End and Morty Kombat, judging from the fact that each of the series have had crossovers or not-so subtle references to each other.
  • Shoot the Hostage: The police thought that Shadow was taking in Sonic and his crew hostages, and they said "Come out or we'll shoot your hostages" before questioning if that was correct.
  • Shoot the Shaggy Dog: From "Wreck-it Ralph" on, Sonic and Co. were trying to find the Creator so they could ask why he was messing with the universe. After pointless clues through Ralph, Dracula, Sir Arthur, and Link, they end up getting a right clue from Lowbrow Studios, which leads them to the real Creator. Once they find the Creator who is Dominique Wilkins, he orders Sonic to "kill his idol", which Sonic does before they can ask why he was messing with the universe. Looks like that question will never be answered.
  • Shoddy Knockoff Product: Princess Potato, from an apparent Mario knockoff game called "Super Italian Laborer Town". She becomes president in Sonic's alternate timeline in Season 6 and, as of Season 8, becomes to the new Creator.
  • Shout-Out: Has its own page.
  • Sir Swears-a-Lot: Almost every character in the series swears in about half their sentences, but Sonic, Tails, and Eggman take the cake here.
  • Skewed Priorities: The minute Shadow drops by Fox McCloud's ship to showcase his "stolen shit," (not limited to tvs, Xboxes, beer, weed, and Chaos Emeralds), Sonic immediately goes for the Xbox 360 while Tails points out the much more important Chaos Emeralds. Sonic's response? He points out to Shadow that he forgot the cables for the Xbox instead.
    Sonic: Holy shit! Xbox!
  • Snipe Hunt: After strange events happening in their universe, Tails suggests that the group should visit Wreck-it Ralph to get advice on what the strange happenings may be, as he too has "game jumped" and messed things up. Wreck-it Ralph, although mad at Sonic for fucking his sister, tells them that the "Creator" might be messing with the universe, and gives them a riddle that leads them to Dracula, who is a drunken vampire, and Sir Arthur, who is a depressed lunatic in the continuity. After Sir Arthur and Thunderhead give Sonic the "clue", they reach the Battletoads. The Battletoads tell Sonic and Co. that they were blindly following advice from two crazy characters, which makes Tails realize that Wreck-it Ralph told them wrong advice out of revenge for fucking his sister.
    • Well Ralph said that he MAY help.
    • In fact, this whole "Creator Hunt" may be a Snipe Hunt as well, as Link also misdirected Sonic and Co.
  • Spell My Name With An S: Soniqua is commonly misspelled as "Seniqua".
  • Stalker with a Crush: Shown in "Wrestlemania". Everyone except for Mother Brain tends to act really "stalkerish" towards Sonic, especially Amy. After Sonic rejects her, Soniqua hits her with a chair.
  • Status Quo Is God: No matter how successful Sonic gets, he'll always winds up back flat broke in his rundown apartment, with nothing but his poster. Until the finale at least.
  • Stealth Pun/Title Drop: In "Contra", Tails takes over Sonic's position after he got put in the hospital from "Duck Hunt". He says that Sonic will still be around, but he'll be getting assigned jobs, so it would be more like "Sonic... for hire".
  • Stockholm Syndrome: Princess Peach, probably due to her being imprisoned while Bowser and Mario were dead for God knows how long.
  • Story Arc: Each season focuses on a different storyline, with the resolution usually setting up the events of the following season.
    • Season 1: Sonic looks for work to get him by with the help of Tails.
    • Season 2: The first half continues Sonic's job search, but the second half has him working for the Mafia to Work Off the Debt.
    • Season 3: Sonic becomes the new mob boss but proves to be incompetent at it.
    • Season 4: The first half has Sonic back to looking for work after Tails screws him over. The second half has Sonic working with Kirby to make a movie about his life while trying to get back at Tails in the process.
    • Season 5: Sonic and Co. end up aboard the Great Fox and must do missions in the meantime.
    • Season 6: Sonic decides to travel back in time to prevent himself from ever going broke, but things go out of hand when Sonic and eventually other characters start messing too much with the space-time continuum.
    • Season 7: Sonic and Co. search for the mysterious "Creator of all Video Games" to find out why they're messing with them.
    • Season 8: Sonic and Co. try to create the best video game ever but soon have to save the world from Eggman's daughter Eggette.
  • Subverted Catchphrase: Knuckles does this in "Back Together", when Sonic and Tails are stress eating:
    Knuckles: Uh, you guys okay? You're kinda eating a shitload of burgers there. I mean, I don't mind frying, but you guys better be, uh, paying for them with money.
  • Sudden Name Change: Apparently, at some point, Robotnik changed his name to "Eggman", which prompted his badniks to all leave as the name "doesn't exactly demand respect." He briefly goes back to Robotnik in Season 7, but immediately decides to stay being called Eggman as he's gotten so adjusted to the name.
  • Surrounded by Idiots:
    • Tails, especially in the "Link" episode. Tails suggests looking for Princess Peach, but Link suggests margaritas, which everyone agrees with. Tails asks him to find the princess, but then at the end, they stop at the Margarita Manor. Everyone goes crazy over margaritas, while Tails gets really pissed and announces he hates the group.
    • Sonic ends up like this in Season 4, with nobody showing him the slightest hint of respect or courtesy.
    • And also Sonic in Season 5 in the episode "Destroy Venom", when EVEN TAILS OF ALL PEOPLE is screwing around.
  • Squick: A couple In-Universe examples:
    • Sonic's response upon realizing that he had sex with Mother Brain. invoked
    • Also invoked as Sonic's thoughts upon Gilius Thunderhead wanting to get a condom full of wine from up his ass.
  • Swiss-Cheese Security: Casino Night Zone has virtually no security guarding the vault, mostly due to Eggman not purchasing a hi-tech security system when he owned the place. This is lampshaded by Tails after the gang clean out the vault in less than 10 seconds, wondering why no one else had done this before.]]
  • Take That!:
    • The deaths of the Angry Birds in Season 2 can be viewed as this, especially considering Mario's reason for wanting them gone is simply because they were popular.
  • "Take Your Child to Work Day" Plot: In "Bomberman," Sonic brings Soniqua with him when working for Bomberman saying it's "Take your daughter to work day". In reality, he only brought her along just so she could die and he would no longer have to pay child support.
  • The Tape Knew You Would Say That: Eggman, due the years he's spent hanging out with Sonic and Tails, is able predict pretty much everything they say in his broadcast, even that Sonic was about to shoot the TV screen.
  • Temporal Paradox: The end of Season 6 has this. Even after Sonic and Co fixed the Universe in Season 7, various temporal paradoxes have been going around, such as a huge pile of bricks appearing below an elevator, a sudden cat appearing in Sonic's apartment, and a girl that Sonic tried banging turning into various creatures before turning into Mother Brain.
  • Time Travel for Fun and Profit: Most of Season 6 revolves around Sonic, and eventually everyone else, time-traveling to make themselves rich and bring back previously killed off characters.
  • Timey-Wimey Ball: The entirety of Season 6 has Sonic going back in time to keep himself from going broke. This initially works until Eggman gets a hold of the epoch and makes it so that he's now the ruler of the world. From that point onwards, the epoch keeps getting stolen and the characters repeatedly mess with the timeline. The rules for how it affects the timeline are hard to define, and the various ways Sonic and co. try to fix it work on contradictory logic. Eventually it reaches the point where the space-time continuum gets so messed with that the universe literally starts to fall apart.
  • The Mafia: Mario is shown to be running one. Sonic becomes the new boss after he kills him though, but he doesn't really do a good job with it. After getting beaten up by the Duck Hunt Dog, Tails takes over the position. After "It's On", Tails completely destroys the mafia. Now he has all the money.
  • There Was a Door: In the season 2 finale, Both Sonic's enemies and his allies burst through the walls into his apartment to fight... Except Earthworm Jim, who actually uses the door. Sonic complains about losing his deposit, of course.
  • Those Two Guys: As of "Tetris", Earthworm Jim (who was actually pretty kind until Sonic stole his suit) and Dr. Eggman (who was a jerkass in Season 1) are always seen together and they (usually Eggman) get struck by misfortune, including Soniqua throwing Earthworm Jim and scaring off Eggman.
  • Toilet Humor: For an Animated Shock Comedy, the series had very little of this. Either way, it still popped up every now and then, with Eggman usually being the one responsible for it.
  • Token Evil Team Mate: Kirby. While nobody among the cast are really good guys in any way, Kirby is the only one to be an outright psychopath.
  • Too Dumb to Live:
    • Gilius Thunderhead. Not only did he get sent to jail for a backfired attempt starting a bar, he screwed up Sonic by murdering a bunch of Final Fantasy characters that would've offered Sonic and Gilius a nice place to live, simply because there wasn't enough asswine for everyone.
    • We also have Eggman who, in one of the shorts, deep fries himself in a suit of batter and then bites his own hand off thinking it's yummy.
    • Luigi, who despite Sonic's warnings, licks Frogger, ends up getting high, and runs headlong into open traffic. Ironically, Mario blames Sonic for his death, even though he sent the former to keep an eye on the hedgehog.
  • Too Much Information: When Princess Potato talks about not getting enough info from Mario because they would only have sex for a short time. She goes way into detail about it.
  • Took a Level in Kindness: Downplayed but, from season 6 onwards, Sonic's jerkass attitude was minimized to a certain degree. For example, in "Streets of Rage", after using time travel to make himself filthy rich, he gives Tails a call to see how he's doing and offers to save him from street thugs. Considering everything Tails did to him in Season 4, you'd think Sonic would be a lot less sympathetic.
  • Took a Level in Jerkass: As of season 4, Tails. Oh so very much.
  • Trigger-Happy: Sonic tends to shoot people out of the nowhere, but usually due to being ordered to or the victim displeased him such as not paying for the job.
    • Comes back and bites Sonic back when he shoots the Creator without resolving loose ends.
      Tails: We, uh, we never asked him why he was fucking with us... Kinda the whole point of this whole thing.
      Sonic: Right, hey Nic, why were you fucking with us the whole-
      Tails: Uh, he's dead Sonic.
      Sonic: Yeah, I know, hold on. Nic, why were you fucking with us the whol-
      Tails: He's dead Sonic. You shot him in the head.
      Sonic: I know, but there's like a buffer.
      Tails: Sonic, there's no buffer.
      Sonic: Oh.
  • Troll: The "Scribblenauts" episode in Season 4 is back-and-forth trolling between Sonic and Maxwell.
  • Verbal Tic: Soniqua says "Avacado" a lot. Enough so that a Pokémon Trainer calls her "Batshit Crazy Guacamole Nightmare."
    • She types "Avocado Tits" in the "Scribblenauts" episode.
    • After Mario fails to kill her, Soniqua says "Avocado a lot. Mario proceeds to give her a box of them hoping she would stop saying "Avocado". She doesn't, pissing off Mario pretty badly.
  • Viewers Are Morons: Mario watches the news after killing Sonic and they say that there is total world peace. However, they say "Not since Oedipus freed Theseus from the Curse of the Sphinx ..." until being interrupted and told to "dumb it down a bit" (assuming most viewers won't understand historical references), so he says "Not since Papa Smurf thwarted the Evil Gargamel..." instead.
  • We Hardly Knew Ye: Frank the space worm died in his debut.
  • Villain Protagonist: Sonic veers closer and closer to this with each episode. Notably when Mario kills him there ends up being world peace. The transition is complete by season 7, where he doesn't even bother getting jobs anymore, he just goes around being a hedonistic dick.
  • Wham Episode:
    • "Return of The Plumber" qualifies as one. For starters, Mario shoots Sonic in the head, killing him. This causes complete World Peace. However, Mario decides to take over the world, and uses the Epoch to bring his allies back.
    • Season 1's "Kid Icarus" qualifies as one too, albeit in a Played for Laughs manner. Sonic gets turned into an Eggplant and Sonic is actually stuck as an eggplant.
  • What Did I Do Last Night?: After having a party following Darth Vader's defeat in Family Feud, Sonic wakes up in his office with Amy next to him, and is concerned on finding a beer bottle shoved up his butt and whether or not they had sex.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: Amy Rose first appeared in the Season 3 episode "Wrestlemania" as a one-shot character, she appeared in the Season 4 finale in the movie theater and was never seen again until the Season 6 episode "Streets of Rage" where she appears to work for Sonic now after he went back in time to make himself rich. She suddenly disappears afterwards, though given the fact that the gang kept on messing with the spacetime continuum, it's possible she got erased from the timeline.
  • "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: In the final episode of Season 7, though come the beginning of Season 8 the events listed are ignored. In order:
    • Thunderhead and his Zombie Wife are living a happy life terrorizing local villages and making their own asswine.
    • Kirby is currently at large for murdering over 600,000 video game characters and is considered the "LeBron James of Hitlers".
    • Motherbrain and Soniqua's show "Grossy and The Freak" is the #1 show on TV. Motherbrain married Alan Paterson, a pharmacutical rep at Phizer and now lives on Mars.
    • Knuckles never figured out how to make himself a full character again. He works 39 hours a week at Burger Time, he misses his boxing gloves.
    • Link has become the biggest gay rights activist in Hyrule, and is currently the spokesman for Super Gay Margarita Mixers.
    • Princess Potato passed out 3 days ago. Someone please check on her. We're worried.
    • Eggman and Earthworm Jim opened a beachfront cafe in Dead or Alive. Their biggest selling item is the "Coke On Tits Breakfast Bonanza".
  • Who's Laughing Now?: Tails becomes this in Season 4... even more of a jerkass than Eggman was in Season 1. After being in Sonic's shadow and being constantly ignored or ridiculed by him, Tails, usually in a convertible, screws up Sonic's already miserable life.
    • At the end of The Red Carpet, Sonic pulls this one off at Tails by destroying the theater with his movie on it!
    Sonic: Why did you think I let you be player one?! Sure, you'll get top billing... but it also means you, can, DIE.
  • The Worf Effect: Soniqua typically one ends up slaughtering ANYTHING that antagonizes Sonic, gets a huge one from Eggette, who just simply tosses her into space.
  • World of Jerkass: Most of the characters aren't particularly nice people.
  • Work Off the Debt: The second half of Season 2 involves Sonic working for the mafia to pay off a $100,000 debt that Tails had to borrow to bail him out of jail.
  • Would Hurt a Child:
    • Mario in Season 6, when he tries to kill Soniqua in a pit of lava. It didn't work.
    • Sonic tried to kill Soniqua in Season 2 so he didn't have to pay child support. It also didn't work, but he soon gets over it and began to respect her for being very useful.
  • Your Head A-Splode: When Sonic goes back in time and says that "Throwin' and blowin'" is just about as awesome as "Don't go there bi-otch", Knuckles gets so confused that it literally blows his mind.

 
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Sonic at BurgerTime

After losing his entire fortune, Sonic is negated to working at Knuckles' BurgerTime fast-food joint.

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