Franchise: Sonic The Hedgehog

There was almost going to be a Sonic game based on skateboarding made for the Xbox, GameCube, and PlayStation 2 called Sonic Extreme (not to be confused with the cancelled Sega Saturn game of the same name). This game was developed by a San Diego company called Vision Scape Interactive.

Development began in 2003 shortly after Vision Scape finished up Bare Knuckled Grind. The game was initially planned to be ported to other consoles. There were also going to other skateboarding games using the same engine, but with different intellectual properties, including the Nickelodeon TV show Rocket Power. Unfortunately, budget issues is what resulted in all 13 projects cancelled. They later worked on cutscene animations for Sonic Heroes, and later pitched to Sega the Sonic Extreme prototype.

The prototype was finished in a week, and originally had planned to use hoverboards. The player would be to race against Sonic or Shadow. Yuji Naka, former head of SEGA, was impressed at the time and asked Vision Scape to make design documents for the game. However, when they did show the documents to SEGA, they went silent.

Later on, in September 2005, Sonic Riders was announced. People at Vision Scape believed that SEGA took some of the concept from Sonic Extreme. and used it for Sonic Runners. However, legal issues from SEGA forced Vision Scape to shut down in 2006.

As a result of a sponsorship deal between the motor racing circuit Donington Park in Leicestershire, England and SEGA, the 1993 European Grand Prix was adorned with SEGA logos. Even the race itself was renamed the SEGA European Grand Prix.

Ayrton Senna won the rain-drenched event after passing four cars on the first lap and holding off his teammate Alain Prost through the race's length, and was presented a trophy which featured Sonic the Hedgehog. While the image of Senna holding this trophy was widely circulated around the Internet, it was unfortunately only a fake trophy used for a photo op. It's unknown what became of the Sonic trophy.

At E3 2004, Sega displayed a tech demo of Sonic the Hedgehog for the Nintendo DS simply named 'Sonic DS'. The game played by swiping back and forth on the bottom touch screen to allow Sonic to gain speed.

Silver the Hedgehog was originally going to be an orange mink named Venice, but the developers decided against it and changed him into a hedgehog as they didn't think that a mink would fit in with the other characters.

Tomoya Ohtani, a recurring composer for the series, frequently samples a portion of the famous drum break from the song Amen, Brother by The Winstons. This portion can be heard in 'Vs. Orcan' and 'Skullian' from Sonic Colors, the extra boss theme 'Boss - Big Swell' from Sonic Rush Adventure, and 'Cool Edge Day' from Sonic Unleashed, just to name a few.

Since Sonic was very popular in English speaking countries, one of Sonic's quirks in Japan (performed by Junichi Kanemaru) is that he may speak English at times, unlike other characters.

Andrew Rannells, the award-winning actor who played the lead character Elder Price in the play The Book of Mormon, was the voice director for the English dub of Sonic X. He played characters such as Bokkun, Decoe, Gamma, and Mr. Stewart. He also played the G.U.N. agents in the game Shadow The Hedgehog. Rannells actually worked on quite a few 4Kids shows during his time there, including Pokémon, Pokémon Chronicles, Kirby: Right Back At Ya!, F-Zero GP Legend, and voiced characters in 4Kids-acted games in the Yu-Gi-Oh and One Piece series.

Sticks the Badger from the Sonic Boom sub-series resembles Aika from Skies of Arcadia, another Sega game. Both Sticks and Aika use a boomerang as their weapon of choice, have nearly identical hairstyles and have orange as one of the predominant colors in their design.

Fang the Sniper, called Nack the Weasel in the English release of Sonic Triple Trouble and various English-language comic books, originally wielded a realistic gun. However, this was considered too violent for the Sonic series, and was changed to a cork-shooting popgun during development of his debut game, Sonic Triple Trouble.

The skid noise made when Sonic stops running comes from Out Run, an earlier SEGA game.

Dr. Robotnik was created to be the opposite of Sonic, and to be the bad guy. During the development of the game, there was a growing debate between developers and environmentalists, and Robotnik was created to represent machinery and development, as apposed to Sonic, who represented the environment.

His egg shaped redesign came from Naoto Ōshima wanting to give the characters designs that were easy enough for kids to draw.

The English script for Sonic Colors, as well as other 3D Sonic localizations up to Sonic Forces, was partially written by Ken Pontac, known for working on children's programming such as LazyTown, Arthur, and Bump in the Night (the latter of which he co-created), and Warran Gaff, best known for his and Pontac's work together on the adult cartoon Happy Tree Friends. Pontac and Graff's renditions of Sonic were significantly more lighthearted than earlier or later 3D games, a highly requested shift at the time that would prove controversial after a few games. This disdain for Pontac and Graff's writing style led Pontac to decline from doing Sonic panels at conventions out of fears that vitriolic Sonic fans will visit and harass him.

The design for Dr. Robotnik/Dr. Eggman was based on a caricature of Theodore Roosevelt in pajamas.

In all of the Sonic Riders games, there is a gear titled "The Crazy", which resembles a taxi. This is most likely a reference to another SEGA series, Crazy Taxi.

Tails' real name, Miles Prower, is a pun on "miles per hour", a reference to Sonic's speed.

There is a series of posters in several Sonic games advertising a movie series called "Chao in Space". These posters also feature the names of various Sonic characters.

The trademark Sonic Emblem, as featured in Sonic the Hedgehog and subsequent installments on the Sega Genesis, is based off of the logo from the 1988 Sega arcade title, Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair.

In the early Sonic games, The Chaos Emeralds appeared to be 'Emerald Cut'. Eventually, the emeralds in the series became 'Brilliant Cut'. In reality they should now be Chaos Diamonds, as a brilliant cut is reserved for diamonds.

In the 1990 arcade racing game Rad Mobile, there is an air freshener of Sonic that is hanging from the rear-view mirror. This marks the first time Sonic has ever made an appearance in a video game, which, interestingly enough, predates the release of Sonic the Hedgehog in 1991.

In 1993, Sonic the Hedgehog became the first video game character to appear as a balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. The balloon popped on it's one and only flight by being pushed into a lamp post by strong gusts of wind, hurting a kid and a police officer on it's descent. Because of this incident, the balloon was retired.

A second Sonic balloon based on his modern redesign was used between 2011 and 2013 to celebrate the series' 20th anniversary, and was brought back one more time in 2021 in accordance with the series' 30th anniversary.