Franchise: Sonic The Hedgehog

Throughout 2023, Sonic Channel released a monthly series of wallpapers titled "Otherworld Comedy", each one featuring a what-if scenario involving an established character from the Sonic series, alongside another chosen by the community. The stories are comedic in nature, having unlikely scenarios involving the cast of characters.

Notably, the April wallpaper (centered around Silver the Hedgehog), "Story Act 4: In the Veil of Darkness", featured Princess Elise as the chosen character. This not only marks her first appearance in mainstream Sonic media since her cameo in Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity, but is also the first work she played an active role in since her debut in Sonic the Hedgehog (2006). A cutscene in the latter game, called "The Talisman", is referenced in the story when Silver gives Elise the blue Chaos Emerald, calling it a "lucky charm". Additionally, Elise herself received a slight redesign for her appearance here, being depicted in a more cartoon-esque style rather than the realistic design she had in her debut game.

Upon the release of Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, Ken Penders, a former writer on the Archie Comics Sonic comics, sued Sega and EA for supposedly using Sonic character concepts he had independently trademarked prior - particularly the Nocturnas Clan, a futuristic echidna tribe which he deemed as too similar to his own Dark Legion, a futuristic echidna technocracy. This lawsuit came months after Archie Comics filed their own suit against Penders due to a breach of contract after the trademarking, causing Archie to allow their contract with Sega to expire so they could negotiate new terms for the rights to create Sonic comics. This legal fiasco ended in Archie settling the case with Penders, losing the exclusivity to produce Sonic comics after negotiations with Sega, and causing them to write the "Super Genesis Wave", a super-charged energy blast utilizing the Chaos Emeralds that acted as a massive continuity rewrite where over 500 original characters and concepts created by Penders and other writers for the Archie Sonic comics were retconned. The Sega case on the other hand ended in a stalemate due to the statute of limitations, and will not be able to continue unless Sega uses characters from The Dark Brotherhood again.

Prior to doing official work on the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise as one of its writers/artists, Evan Stanley worked on a fan comic called "Ghosts of the Future" based on the series. Set in an alternate reality where Sonic and his friends are defeated by Dr. Eggman with the aid of a mind-controlled Shadow, the comic featured Silver the Hedgehog as the main character, tasked with restoring the seven Chaos Emeralds that were removed from time as a last resort. After being brought on to do official work on the franchise, the fan comic has been referenced on two occasions in official Sonic comics. The first was in issue 257 of Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog comic, which featured cameos from Richard and Deborah Erin (Silver's parents in the comic) during the scene where Rotor is directing rescue operations outside Twinkle Park (note that they are slightly recolored in this scene). The second time was in issue 64 of IDW's Sonic the Hedgehog comic, which featured cameos from Vanice the Hedgehog and Sicily the Hedgehog (Silver's sisters in the comic) during the scene where Silver and Whisper are trying to confront Duo.

"Sonic.exe" is a creepypasta story originally written by JC-the-Hyena, a user on the Creepypasta Wiki, about a cursed CD-ROM version of the first Sonic the Hedgehog game, notable for its malicious depiction of Sonic, giving him black eyeballs with glowing red pupils. The story became popular partly through a genuine appreciation of the story's content and scariness, and from those mocking the extremely poor quality of its writing, which has also been described as amateur and cliched, and later led to it being removed from the Creepypasta Wiki. Sonic.exe received two lesser-known sequels, a rebooted story in 2017, many unofficial games based off of it, as well as other tributes and parodies. JC-the-Hyena would later resign from authoring new Sonic.exe projects after multiple allegations of pedophilic and predatory behavior surfaced in 2021, with the story's fan communities taking control of it since.

The story became so popular and attached to the wider Sonic franchise that the official Sonic the Hedgehog Twitter account has referenced the story on two separate occasions. The first was on January 13, 2017, where they posted a video of Sonic standing in Green Hill Zone as a black recolor of Big the Cat passes him by, changing him and the environment to something more akin to what is depicted in the story. The second was on April 14, 2021, where they posted an image of a pile of Game Gear Sonic titles, with Sonic.EXE being hidden within the pile.

In issue 21 of IDW's Sonic the Hedgehog comic book, two characters on page 20 resemble Marinette Dupain-Cheng and Adrien Agreste, the main protagonists of the animated series "Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Car Noir". These characters would later appear again in "Sonic the Hedgehog Annual 2020" on page 7, itself a reference to the events of this issue.

Ryan Drummond (voice of Sonic the Hedgehog from 1999 to 2004) revealed that during Sega's recasting of the Sonic the Hedgehog cast in 2010, he had auditioned for the role and had actually won. However, Sega requested Drummond to leave his union, so Drummond ultimately declined the offer.

The title screens of Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2, with Sonic (a character known for his super speed) posing and waving his gloved hand inside of a ring lined with stars and a ribbon banner at the bottom, could possibly be taken from the logo of the 1981 anime adaptation of the Akira Toriyama manga "Dr. Slump" and its speedy protagonist Arale. It should also be noted that the ring surrounding Sonic has giant wings protruding from its sides, which appear to reference the angel wings on Arale's cap that also feature in the intros to the anime and some of the Dr. Slump films.

While it's not known if any Sega employees have commented on this connection, it was acknowledged in the form of a small cameo appearance where Sonic gets outrun by Arale in the 1993 sequel manga "The Brief Return of Dr. Slump".

Before the singular story concept of Sonic fighting against Dr. Robotnik, Sonic's character development was very different. During the 2018 Game Developers Conference, game designer Hirokazu Yasuhara and character designer Naoto Ohshima revealed that the series almost had connections to World War II.

"Sonic" was originally going to be a fighter pilot who earned the nickname "hedgehog" because of how his hair stood up while flying his plane at high speeds, while the Sonic the Hedgehog design known today was merely a nose decal on the front of his plane. The details of his time in the war were then re-imagined as a children's picture book by the pilot's wife. She took the Sonic the Hedgehog design and based it on her war veteran husband, making the game a story within a story. American pilot Chuck Yeager, the first pilot to break the speed of sound, was also mentioned in Yasuhara and Ohshima's pitch summary.

Additionally, they showed off line art for a proposed dance sequence during the game, originally intending for Sonic to be a trendy dancer, but this along with the meta-story elements were scrapped during development.

In the third installment of the Untold History of Japanese Game Developers book series released in 2018, Ohshima reiterated that Sonic was going to be a human boy, but SEGA rejected the design, not wanting their mascot to be a human, and Ohshima admitted that he does not have any concept art of Sonic as a human due to his proposal just being a basic outline. Despite this rejection, the core layout of Sonic the Hedgehog's speed-based gameplay and map design was set in stone by this time.

In the continuity of Fleetway's Sonic the Hedgehog comics (known as "Sonic the Comic"), Dr. Robotnik was originally a kind human scientist named "Ovi Kintobor", who wished to rid Mobius of all evil using a device called the Retro-Orbital Chaos Compressor (or "ROCC" for short) to absorb all the negative energy on the planet, eventually using the six Chaos Emeralds as a vessel for the energy (Issue #181 would reveal that this was because the Drakon Empire had used them in the past to contain an experimental energy source known as "chaos"). However, six emeralds was not enough: he also needed the seventh Grey Emerald to stabilize the process. During this time, he met and befriended Sonic the Hedgehog, who used his impressive speed to help Kintobor in his search for the Grey Emerald, albeit to no avail (Issue #36 would reveal this was because the Grey Emerald was on the Floating Island with Knuckles). Kintobor would also run experiments on Sonic to test his speed, which eventually lead to him gaining his iconic blue form.

The day after this (according to Issue #71), when Kintobor went to go make them some food, he could only find a six month old rotten egg in the fridge. While going to add salt to the egg, he tripped on a cable and slammed his head against the ROCC's control panel, causing it to explode. Both Kintobor and the egg were bathed in chaos energy, transforming him into Ivo Robotnik, the main antagonist of the comic, and revealing that Sonic was responsible for "Creating the most vicious dictator on Mobius". All of this is revealed in Issue #8 of the comic.

Issue #71 revealed that the accident was actually caused by a time-travelling Sonic, who both placed the rotten egg in the fridge and pulled the cables loose. This was done to save the future from the Brotherhood of Metallix, who could only be stopped by Robotnik. Additionally, Issue #26 revealed that the explosion had somehow "burned" Kintobor's brainwaves onto one of the Golden Rings from which the ROCC had been built: it would later be used to construct the Kintobor Computer, an important part of the Freedom Fighters' resistance to Robotnik's rule.

In "Sonic the Comic, issue #8, The Origins Of Sonic," Sonic was originally a normal, brown, and very spiky hedgehog. He had met Dr. Ivo Robotnik (known at the time as Dr. Ovi Kintobor) by finding his lab, and they had become friends. Dr. Kintobor performed experiments on Sonic's super speed, which helped him to run even faster, and with the aid of the Power Sneakers Dr Kintobor invented, it allowed him to run so fast that he broke the sound barrier, turning him into a more familiar blue form.

In 2008, the series was awarded the Guinness World Record for the "longest-running comic series based on a video game". Archie Comics' run of Sonic the Hedgehog lasted from 1992 to 2016, resulting in the publication of 290 issues (including specials) over the course of 24 years.

Sonic's favorite food is chili dogs. This trait was first introduced in the 1993 animated series "Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog" and was later officially incorporated into the video game series starting with Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood. Before the first appearance of the chili dog in the series however, Sonic's enjoyment of hot dogs in general was first established in Issue #5 of "Sonic the Comic", in a scene where Sonic is seen ready to eat three hundred hot dogs as a part of his breakfast. Since then, the chili dog has been established as Sonic's favorite food in almost every piece of Sonic media (for context, the only show to not reference chili dogs was "Sonic X", and even then a normal hot dog appeared in the episode "How to Catch a Hedgehog" during a scene where Sonic is stuck running in a giant hamster wheel), eventually making its way into the games as well, a rare example of something originating from the cartoons/comics being carried over into the mainline games.

On April 8th, 2022 (the American release date for the film "Sonic the Hedgehog 2"), former Archie Comics writer Ken Penders revealed that he was contacting his legal team in regards to the Echidnas and their backstory featured in the film. According to Penders, both Knuckles' unnamed father and the workings of the film's depiction of the Master Emerald were derivitive of two of his characters, Locke and Enerjak. Despite the fact that the powers of the game version of the Master Emerald had been established back in 1994 with the release of Sonic & Knuckles, Penders has claimed to have legal ownership over the ideas he created in 1996. However, as of March 2024, no lawsuit has materialized.

"TailsTube" is a webseries that began airing on March 22, 2022. Described as a "fun and informative, Tails-hosted show about all things Sonic", the series is hosted by a VTuber version of Miles "Tails" Prower, as he answers questions from fans about the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, often featuring special guests from throughout the series. The series is notable for explaining various aspects of the series' lore. For example, the first episode debunks a popular fan theory that claims that Sonic's world and Earth are two separate planets, and the fourth episode confirmed the existence of a multiverse in the series, as well as establishing that "Classic Sonic" and "Modern Sonic" are not separate entities from alternate dimensions, instead being the same character's past and future variants. The sixth episode also sees Tails mention Jewel the Beetle and the Restoration, two prominent parts of IDW's Sonic the Hedgehog comic book series, further connecting it to the game series canon.

In August 2016, Scott Fulop, a former editor and writer for Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog comics (whose notable contributions include the characters Mammoth Mogul and the Fearsome Foursome), began pursuing legal action against Archie Comics for the unauthorized use of his characters and reprinted stories. He was inspired to do so by fellow former writer Ken Penders, who had also infamously sued Archie for similar reasons. However, on September 5, 2017, Fulop ultimately lost his lawsuit.

On June 23, 2016, Sega released a YouTube video titled "25 Years of Sonic the Hedgehog!", a video going through an abridged timeline of the Sonic franchise's games on the anniversary of the first game's North American release. Strangely and controversially for a celebratory video, the video makes multiple snide remarks towards the games featured, some that are innocent in nature (such as Sonic the Hedgehog 3's description mentioning the "Knuckle Chuckle" meme and Sonic Heroes' description referencing the infamous "Look at all those Eggman's Robots!" translation error) while others very directly mock flaws and criticised elements of the games, such as Sonic 3's referencing the "barrel of doom", Sonic 3D Blast's description poking fun at how the Flicky AI would run away from Sonic, 2006's Sonic the Hedgehog not even receiving a description and simply showing its loading graphic, and Sonic Colors' description stating that it is where "Sonic in 3D finally finds its footing", a statement that is technically true when looking at critical reception, but tends to aggravate fans of 2000s-era Sonic games.

In a post titled "SONIC THE HEDGEHOG: One Year Later...", Karl Bollers (a former writer for Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog comics) revealed numerous plans that he had intended to include in the comics following Issue #134 that were never used, such as:

• Sonic and Amy becoming a couple after being stranded at sea together, keeping it a secret from Sally.
• Tails reuniting with his parents by traveling into space on a modified Tornado.
• Amy's origins being explored in a fuller adaptation of Sonic the Hedgehog CD.
• Knuckles departing Angel Island after learning that his presence exposes the location of the Master Emerald, going on a global pilgrimage to learn martial arts and battling a Dr. Eggman controlled-Monkey Khan while himself under the control of the Iron Queen before discovering the Master Geode.
• Sally being a pawn in a villainous plot by the corrupted Source of All and Ixis Naugus to prevent the future first previewed in "Sonic In Your Face!".
• Bunnie and Antoine breaking up due to a change in Antoine's personality, with Bunnie's origins later being explored and her true name being revealed as "Scarlette O'Hare" (which may have served as the inspiration for Scarlette Rabbot from Sonic Universe's "Fractured Mirror" story arc, and Bunnie's codename when she was in the Metropolis Egg Army in Issue #255).
• Antoine gaining his scar due to an accident with a knife and becoming a villain after allowing himself to be possessed by a corrupted Source of All in hopes of winning Bunnie back.
• Rotor retiring from field duty in order to pursue a role analogous to that played by "Q" from the James Bond franchise.
• The Source of All surviving Robotropolis' destruction and reconstituting itself in a remote mountain range, where it began to exert control over King Max, brainwashing the Arachne Clan and another group of Spiders known as the Strand, and possessing Antoine while under the control of Ixis Naugus.
• Locke and Lara-Le putting aside their previous disputes to help raise Kneecaps after his father Wynmacher ends up in the Egg Grape Chamber.
• Dr. Robotnik kidnapping Hope Kintobor under the pretense that he is the only correct choice to be her legal guardian, while using her as bait to lure in Shadow.
• Ixis Naugus attempting to return by transforming Max's body into a duplicate of his own, only to be thwarted by the destruction of the Crown of Acorns.
• Mammoth Mogul beginning to age rapidly due to his original Chaos Emerald running out of energy, forcing him to seek out alternative sources through illicit archaeological expeditions and hiring mercenaries like Nack the Weasel. The Master Geode, a powerful gemstone that would fulfill Mogul's needs, would be contested by him, the Iron Queen, Robotnik, and Rouge the Bat.
• Nate Morgan surviving the destruction of Robotropolis and being de-Roboticized by the Bem, returning as Coconuts' amnesia-addled ally, who creates a new Metal Sonic, Metal Amy, Metal Knuckles, and Tails Doll that are mistaken for Robian versions of the heroes.
• Snively taking up a fifteen foot-tall mechanical battle suit and the alias "Skarkus" in pursuit of revenge against Robotnik for leaving him alone against the Xorda, leading to an alliance between him and Shadow.
• A.D.A.M. and Nicole becoming romantically involved, leading to A.D.A.M. seizing control of the Shadowbot army and leading them from New Megaopolis to Knothole.
• A new Dingo Regime leader named Colonel Mange being introduced, with Croctobot, Jack Rabbit, and Gala-Na being reintroduced as Robotnik Sub-Bosses over Downunda, the Great Desert, and Albion. This would have led to the disappearance of the Downunda Freedom Fighters and a confrontation involving the Mercian Freedom Fighters.
• Evil Sonic coming to enjoy impersonating Sonic and enjoying the love of his parents and adulation of his people, leading him to plan to eliminate Sonic and permanently take his place.

Additionally, in the aftermath of Ken Penders' lawsuit against Archie Comics, Bollers has confirmed that he now owns the rights to all the characters he created for the comics, such as Mina Mongoose, Ash Mongoose, and Hope Kintobor.

Lanolin the Sheep, a character introduced in IDW's Sonic the Hedgehog comics, was created by artist Adam Bryce Thomas as a background character in Issue #2. He would continue drawing Lanolin in subsequent issues he illustrated for, often with a new look. Comic writer Ian Flynn would eventually confirm her name on Twitter. She even appeared in an early draft of Issue #30's A cover (drawn by Thomas), but was edited out in the final version. Starting with Issue #57, Lanolin began to have a supporting role in story arcs: according to Ian, this is due to how her appearances had evolved to the point of gaining a role in the story, and her increase in prominence led to a more developed personality. By her own admission in Issue #58, she is "bossy and inexperienced", being rather new to her role as a leader. Despite this, some fans have criticized the character for having a tendency to act as if she is just as experienced as her peers (i.e. critiquing Silver in Issue #63 despite having no experience with psychokinesis, and her interactions with Tangle in Issue #62 giving the impression that she had a genuine problem with her, despite the scene's comedic nature). This has resulted in comparisons to Sally Acorn, a character from the 1993 "Sonic the Hedgehog" cartoon who was a main character throughout the Archie Sonic comics, due to their status as no-nonsense leaders able to keep even Sonic in line. These similarities also led some fans (particularly those who don't like Flynn's writing) to accuse that Lanolin was an attempt to replace her despite having gone on record stating that he wanted to incorporate Sally and the Freedom Fighters into the IDW comics.

Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog comics introduced an original character named Geoffrey St. John, who at one point in the comic was in a romantic relationship with Sally Acorn, a character from the 1993 "Sonic the Hedgehog" animated series. This has been met with controversy from fans, because Sally was, at the earliest, 15 years old at the time of the relationship. While Geoffrey's age was never stated in the comic leading some to argue that a seemingly nonexistent age gap would be irrelevant, his creator Ken Penders claimed in 2015 that the character was 21 years old at the time of Sonic the Hedgehog Issue #46, which released in May 1997. In the Sonic-Grams fan letter section of that same issue, one fan letter asked if Sally is 14 or 15 years old, with the editor Justin Freddy Gabrie confirming she is 15 (it should be noted that while Gabrie incorrectly lists the wrong age for Bunnie Rabbot in this response implying others could be wrong, Sally's age is consistent with her being the same age as Sonic throughout the comic). All of this information is made significantly worse when Geoffrey is shown making out with Sally during the same issue, which they also did in other issues around this time. To complicate this further, in Issue #20 of the spin-off comic Knuckles the Echidna, which released in January 1999, it's shown that Geoffrey is older than Sally's older brother Elias Acorn, who was 21 at the time of the relationship, through two scenes. The first is when Geoffrey calls him a "kid" in the present, and the second is through a flashback showing Geoffrey as a physically older child than Elias, who was 5 years old in this flashback. The two aforementioned issues were co-written and solely written by Penders respectively, meaning that even if his original claim of Geoffrey being 21 was incorrect, it implies that he retconned Geoffrey to be older than that at the time, making the age gap larger.

This controversy worsened even further when Penders revealed in 2019 that he had planned at some point for a story involving Geoffrey taking Sally's virginity. While he acknowledged that this was a story that ultimately couldn't be told in the comic, as content found in the series had to remain within the realm of a G-rating, he attempted to justify the relationship in the context of a historical drama setting by saying:


However, considering the cited source material, this justification is fundamentally wrong as the actual implied age gap would be larger than the 4 years Penders suggested (Sally's 15 to Geoffrey's at least 21), leading fans to accuse Penders of making the character a pedophile, and by extension accusing Penders himself of being a pedophile.

Ian Flynn has stated that the IDW Sonic the Hedgehog comics are considered canon to the mainline Sonic games on his Bumblekast podcast. This would be supported by Chris Hernandez, one of the lore managers of the series: in the seventh episode of the seventh season of "Sonic Official", he reiterated that the comics were indeed canon and take place after the events of Sonic Forces. It's also worth noting that, unlike the previous comics by Fleetway and Archie, certain aspects of the IDW comics have been referenced in the Sonic games: original character Tangle the Lemur is briefly mentioned in Sonic Frontiers, and she (as well as other original characters Whisper the Wolf and Surge the Tenrec) has appeared in the mobile games Sonic Dash and Sonic Forces: Speed Battle.

While the comics do largely stay in line with the game's canon, there is one notable exception: the events of Team Sonic Racing in regards to the comics. Ian Flynn originally claimed that the events of Team Sonic Racing take place at some point after the Metal Virus Saga (meaning after Issue #32), but before Issue #43. Since then, it has been stated that it could also have taken place before the events of Sonic Forces, or it could have not happened yet.