Amy's Piko Piko Hammer actually took inspiration from a popular Japanese children's toy: while it beared a strong resemblance in its original appearence in Sonic the Fighters, its design changed over time to make it a decent-looking weapon instead of a joke item.
Black hedgehogs can actually be found in real life, though they obviously look very different from Shadow.
Big the Cat is fairly well liked in Japan, but was so strongly disliked by western Sonic fans (both for his slow paced, unorthodox fishing gameplay in Sonic Adventure, and for finding his infantile, slow-witted personality to be grating rather than endearing) that he had been reduced to sporadic cameos and bit player appearances after Sonic Heroes before returning to prominence in the 2010s. His English voice actor Jon St. John even deliberately forgot how to do the character's voice...However, thanks to games like Sonic Heroes, Sonic Chronicles, and Sonic Frontiers, along with other things, the international hatred of Big has mostly (But not entirely) died down.
Cream the Rabbit is a popular enough character in Japan that she's become a mainstay in the series, while by many western fans she was hated almost as much as Big the Cat. A likely reason was her personality; polite, submissive, and somewhat withdrawn. Also, she has a really high-pitched voice. These same traits makes her irritating to many western gamers. Over time however, much of the fanbase began to warm up to Cream, thanks to her consistent Game-Breaker status with anything she was playable in. Thanks to speedruns and lets players showing off what she could do, she acquired more of a Memetic Badass reputation instead. It also helped that her succeeding voice actresses toned down her shrillness which made her easier to like.
With the exceptions of Mexico, Argentina, and the Portuguese-speaking country of Brazil, Sonic is unable to become popular in Spanish-speaking Latin American countries, due to SEGA’s consoles not selling well in the region (minus Brazil for the Master System, and Mega Drive. The Dreamcast is popular in Mexico due to being a favorite among Mexican gamers), SEGA neglecting the region in favor of promoting the games in the USA, Europe, and Japan (even though much like in Latin America, Sonic wasn’t popular in Japan since the beginning), and not localizing nor dubbing the games in Latin American Spanish. (Much like Pokémon, SEGA keeps the games in Spanish from Spain)
Angel/Devil Shipping: While nowhere near as ubiquitous as Sonamy or Shadamy, there are some fans that ship Amy Rose and Metal Sonic, the two characters having shared a Damsel in Distress dynamic in their debut game (never mind that Metal Sonic was the one who kidnapped Amy to begin with). More reasonably, several fans ship her with Shadow rather than Sonic, thanks to reminding him of Maria herself, on top of the sentiment that he'd be more steady of a partner compared with Sonic's wanderlust.
Animation Age Ghetto: This trope has been the bane of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise for many years. While Sega marketed the character as a "cool and edgy" alternative to the squeaky-clean Mario and while the series began to try out much more dramatic storytelling following Sonic Adventure, there was a lot of pushback against the idea that a series starring a blue cartoon hedgehog would even try to be serious, with Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) being the final straw. Sega seemed to be taking it to heart since every game afterwards (until Sonic Forces) increasingly became Lighter and Softer and Denser and Wackier, much to the frustration of fans who liked their dramatic storytelling.
Archive Panic: Nearly seventy games in 25 years, several animated TV shows, countless cameos in other series, and several comic series, one of which had been around since Sonic's heyday, and ran until July 2017.
Awesome Art: A proud tradition of the series. In particular, the original Sega Genesis games (and Sonic CD) have barely aged in this respect.
Miles "Tails" Prower. In the Classic games, he was a standard Sidekick, but could keep up with Sonic and was just as capable when it came to taking on Eggman. In the Adventure series, he undergoes major Character Development, becoming more self-reliant and beating Eggman by himself. However, starting with Sonic Unleashed, he hardly fights and mostly stands on the sidelines while Sonic handles all of the work. In the aforementioned game, he's frightened and flees when spotted by some Nightmares, despite defeating far tougher foes in the past; and in Sonic Forces, he cowers in fear at Chaos 0, when he's already beaten the more powerful Chaos 4 in Sonic Adventure.
Knuckles the Echidna. Once considered Sonic's equal and the respected guardian of a powerful artifact, he has devolved into a Butt-Monkey who always gets tricked by an outside party and rarely has any significance to the plot.
Amy Rose. Started off as a Damsel in Distress in CD, but went on to appear as a playable character in the Sonic Drift games and Sonic the Fighters, where she acquired her iconic Piko-Piko Hammer. In Adventure, she is captured by Zero, but is capable of fending for herself and escapes on her own, resolving to earn Sonic's respect through her own merits. In Heroes, she leads Team Rose and helps take down Eggman, and is the first to go after Metal Sonic. However, in every game after that, she is consistently portrayed as a side character whose only purpose is to either get captured or cheer for Sonic while he does all the work. Sonic Forces restores some of her former glory by having her actively combat Eggman's forces, but she's still a far cry from the Action Girl she once was.
Cream the Rabbit. Originally, in the Sonic Advance Trilogy, Sonic Battle and Sonic Heroes, she was a Little Miss Badass who although a pacifist, was just as capable of fighting off large-scale threats as the older characters are and will absolutely do so if given no other option. However, beginning in the mid-2000s, Cream quickly became subjected to Flanderization, with her pacifism and innocence taking center stage, on top of becoming increasingly Out of Focus. Nowadays, she has little-to-no involvement in the gang's adventures and whenever she does appear, it's largely to act as a supporting non-action character.
For Doctor Robotnik/Eggman, it's either Long John Baldry (AoSTH), Jim Cummings (1952) (SatAM), Gary Chalk (Sonic Underground), Deem Bristow (games 1999-2004), Jim Carrey (2020 film) or Mike Pollock. Mike may in fact be this trope to SEGA themselves, as he was the only member of the 4Kids cast whom they were unable to find an appropriate replacement for when they recast the entire series starting with Sonic Colors, so they renewed his contract.
Character Perception Evolution: Big the Cat was originally one of the franchise's biggest scrappies for being seen as a Fat Idiot who only served to bring the gameplay of Sonic Adventure to a screeching halt with his Unexpected Gameplay Change of incredibly clunky fishing. Even when Sonic Heroes and the Archie comics attempted to do more with Big's character, the stench of his bad first impression still lingered, resulting in Big being phased out during the early and mid-2010s. However, after he was reintroduced in the late-2010s, Big started to become more respected by fans, initially because of him being a Fountain of Memes, but later due to fans realizing that Big was nowhere near as stupid or intrusive as initially thought, and people began seeing him for the Kindhearted Simpleton he actually was. Coupled with his Fishing Minigame being brought back as a side mode in Sonic Frontiers and being done in such a way that fans actually thought it worked, Big nowadays is a Base-Breaking Character teetering on the edge of being an Ensemble Dark Horse.
The entire reason the modern Sonic design was created is because Yuji Naka felt that people had begun to view the character as cutesy and he wanted to restore his original "bad boy" feel. Sonic Colors does this again by drifting away from the goody-goody, teamwork-obsessed Ace he had started to become to a slightly more nuanced version of the snarky Mascot with Attitude that he was supposed to be from the start.
Amy's obsession with Sonic and her temper grew throughout the 2000s; however, by Lost World it had been dialed back down to the point where the two can have normal conversations again.
Comedy Ghetto: From Sonic Colors and up until Sonic Frontiers, some Sonic fans became absolutely livid with the drastic change in narrative style. Sonic Adventure to Sonic Unleashed featured complicated drama-oriented stories, whereas Sonic Colors presented a more sitcom-like, comedic approach characterized by minimal plotting and cutscenes dominated by witty dialogue. This was enough for then-head writers Ken Pontac and Warren Graff to receive verbal lashings at every fan panel they attended and even death threats over the Internet.
Fans who grew up on the games from the 2000's feel this way about Shiro Maekawa, whom many consider one of the series' definitive writers and manages to make the large scale, epic Shonen-esc plots whom many love. After his departure from Sega after Sonic and the Black Knight, and with the advent of Warren Graff and Ken Pontac headlining the series as the head writers for the next decade, bringing their own amount of controversy, many fans are wishing for Maekawa to return to work on the series again.
Ian Flynn, main writer of both Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) (since issue 160) and Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW) has always been appreciated by the fanbase for his respectful characterization of the cast. Many claim that thanks to his stories, divisive characters like Silver and Zavok got a better appreciation. Naturally, the news that he would be writing for Sonic Frontiers was met with widespread praise.
Classic Sonic fans feel this way towards Christian Whitehead (aka: The Taxman) and Simon Thomley (aka: Stealth) thanks to their polished ports of the classic games, as well as Sonic Mania, which has receive a level of acclaim the franchise had not seen in years and is widely regarded as being the best post-Classic era 2D Sonic game by most. Some have even gone as far as to state that they have a better understanding of what makes Sonic work than Sonic Team does. The fact that they are Sonic fans themselves helps.
Due to the Sonic/Mega Man crossover Robotnik/Wily is an insanely popular pairing in the fandoms.
Despite the tensions between the Sonic fandom and brony community, pairings of Sonic and Rainbow Dash are quite common in fan works.
Rouge is also often paired up with many characters from other fandoms due to her flirtatious nature.
Rin (Love Live!) becoming Sega's Image Girl in Japan has led to some Sonic/Rin fan art.
Some non-romantic examples from DeviantArt are Sonic and Hilda, Rosa, Yancy and Serena (All from Pokémon), Sonic and Miley Verisse (Cherry Tree High Comedy Club), Tails and Bianca (Pokémon Black and White), Tails and Harriet Sinclair (Cherry Tree High Comedy Club) and on a minor scale, Sonic and Yui Hirasawa (K-On!).
Sonic The Hedgehog and Hello Kitty have also started becoming a common ship since the Sonic 25th Anniversary event where Sanrio and Sega announced a crossover called Sanrio X Sonic The Hedgehog which featured various Sanrio characters as the main Sonic characters.
There's also a good amount of people who ship Sonic and Vocaloid's Hatsune Miku, largely thanks to Sega's Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA series, which contains a couple of shoutouts to the Sonic series (the most notable being a Sonic themed costume in a couple of games).
Death of the Author: Many fans, especially fans of Team Dark, hate the implication by Word of God that not only is Team Dark not a thing in-universe, but that Shadow, Rouge and E-123 Omega aren't actually friends in the first place. It doesn’t help that this also overlaps with Writer Conflicts with Canon as Shadow shows a lot of emotion at the hands of Rogue and Omega in Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), with the reveal that Omega will be the one to seal Shadow away in the future very visibly shocking and upsetting Shadow. Unsurprisingly, most fans prefer to simply ignore this fact and portray Team Dark as being True Companions instead.
Die for Our Ship: The fandom has a reputation for employing this mentality often. One of the more common examples is people who ship Amy with Sonic or Shadow tending to give the male of the opposing ship the Ron the Death Eater treatment. Meanwhile Amy gets this from Sonic/Shadow shippers. And that's without bringing SallyAcorn into the fray...
Many fans interpret the title character as having ADHD, as he quickly gets annoyed if he stands still for some seconds, actively seeks out danger, and usually tends to improvise his strategies on the spot rather than plan them out in advance, with some official depictions of him even portraying the latter as something that he struggles with.
Miles "Tails" Prower is widely interpreted by fans as autistic thanks to his savant-like knowledge of and skills with technology and engineering (which is consequently easy to read as a special interest), his habit of twirling his tails around when idle (which is commonly read as a stim), and the fact that he was originally a socially awkward kid who couldn't connect with others before meeting Sonic. His habit of spouting technobabble is also commonly interpreted as infodumping in the context of reading his tech skills as a special interest.
Back in the 2000s and early 2010s, it was common for fans to label the supporting cast as "Sonic's shitty friends" and ask for the games to focus solely on Sonic and Eggman, getting to the point where one of Sonic 4's selling points was actually the lack of characters besides Sonic. Nowadays, this has died down in the wake of fans who grew up during Sonic's "Dark" era and eventually got sick of the cast being demoted to extra for a whole decade, now it's much more common for fans to roll their eyes instead whenever the term is brought up.
At least for Mike Pollock, he has no interest in doing his own impression of Eggman from the Sonic Real-Time Fandub, mentioning in a video that he would not fill a character's mouth with profanity if SEGA aren't going to use that sort of language.
Doctor Ivo Robotnik/Eggman may be a comical fat mad scientist, but his determination, kickass boss battles and themes, creations and armada of Egg Fleets make him possibly the most endearing character in the series. This applies to all his incarnations in media who have stole the spotlight either as goofyincarnations, the sinister, or acombination of both.
Metal Sonic, Sonic's doppelganger and Eggman most powerful creation. Not only he has the best bost fight out of any other doppelganger in the Classic era in Sonic CD, his visual design is excellent despite how simple it may look. The character was the highlight and main antagonist of Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie.
Classic Sonic being retconned into hailing from a separate dimension, rather than the past. Needless to say, this has not sat well with a number of fans for a variety of reasons. This has since quickly been re-retconned back to him being from the past.note that said, this "retcon" was later found out to be an unintentional translation error instead of a deliberate retcon. In the Japanese version of Forces, Classic Sonic was merely stated to be from "another world" instead of another dimension. The Japanese word for "world" (世界, Sekai) has multiple meanings, including dimensions, societies, and time periods, and has been used by the franchise to refer to different time periods (like Silver stating the future to be "his world"). The intention was for Classic Sonic to be from the past, but this was Lost in Translation during localization, with the English translation misinterpreting the word to mean he is from another dimension instead, resulting in this infamous "retcon"
Takashi Iizuka's assertion that Modern Sonic's world is split into two separate worlds—the human world (not Earth) and Sonic's world (not Mobius) and that it's been this way since Sonic Adventure, just never outright stated—was generally not met with warm reception. Many just see the change as completely unnecessary since there was already so much overlap in characters and content between both eras. Not helping matters was that various Sega employees offered contradicting interpretations of what exactly this entails. This would eventually get clarified in the first episode of "TailsTube" into the simpler explanation that anthros live on islands and humans live on countries, (with "world" being meant as a broad term for those societies rather than separate planets or dimensions) which has been better received by the fandom.
Although the current era spanning from 2005-2007 to now is officially dubbed the "Modern" era by Sega, many fans opt to call it the "Boost" era instead (usually starting with Sonic Unleashed, with Sonic Rush being viewed as a prototype), due to the introduction of the boost mechanic and the increased emphasis on speed in general, on top of it arguably being less likely to age than "modern".
The "Dark" era is a popular term for the brief period between Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic and the Black Knight, games that generally had a bigger emphasis on dramatic storytelling, "cool" gimmicks (the Werehog, Caliburn, etc.) and Shadow was considered a bit of a Spotlight-Stealing Squad. Generally, it's also considered the series' Audience-Alienating Era, thus the usage of "Dark" has double-meaning. This often ignores the handheld games, which are viewed as more of an experimental side dish due to the variety of genres that were tackled at the time, with wildly different degrees of reception.
A good number of fans (particularly Adventure fans) have begun to group the games released in The New '10s beginning with Sonic the Hedgehog 4 into its own mini era unofficially dubbed the "Meta" era, due to the increased emphasis on meta gags, nostalgic references and/or fourth wall humor that became prominent in those titles and especially in supplementary and spin-off material.
Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) is sometimes dubbed Sonic Adventure 3 due to having a similar formula of multiple playable characters involved in an ambitious, interconnected story. That said, the infamous poor quality of Sonic 06 can make this a Berserk Button among fans of the Adventure games.
"Sonic's shitty friends" was a popular insult to the supporting cast, who were often associated with clunky, poorly tested gameplay styles. This has more or less died down in more recent times due to "Sonic only" games not being necessarily synonymous with quality and Sonic Adventure (which set the trend) gaining further nostalgic status among fans.
Fanwork-Only Fans: There are a number of fans who are not into the games or other official material for a number of reasons, but tend to remain involved with the community through fanfics, fan games and fan art, amongst other fan works. Unsurprisingly, given the sheer size of the fandom, there are a number of Sonic groups who are dedicated largely to fanworks.
Fandom Heresy: Never admit you like Sonic 06 (at least unironically). Ever. Rise of Lyric even more so.
Sonic and Mario were this from the 90s and early 2000s; one of the most classic examples in gaming history. However, fans of both series from that era seem to laugh about the rivalry nowadays and have evolved to become amicable with each other. Newer fans who didn't grow up during that era tend to overlap. There is also a Vocal Minority who grew up during the Console Wars between Nintendo and SEGA and never grew out of it who loathe Nintendo with every fiber of their being for having so-called won the war (as Nintendo continues to make game systems), and they want nothing less than to demote Nintendo to a 3rd-party developer like SEGA, if not destroy Nintendo as a company outright.
Sonic fans and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fans are notorious for clashing with each other, which happens a lot on each other's fansites. This is mainly because the two fandoms are similar, but absolutely hate that fact being brought up. It got so bad that for a while, the famous brony website Equestria Daily explicitly banned any Sonic related content from being posted on it.
After kicking a hornet's nest towardsMighty No. 9 when Keiji Inafune's translator misattributed that the game's controversial development and unpolished state was "better than nothing" and the official Sonic the Hedgehog twitter putting said words into Inafune's words into his mouth in an infamous tweet, some fans of Mighty No. 9 were quick to remind the owner of said twitter account that Sonic the Hedgehog's reputation isn't all sunshine and rainbows.
With Crash Bandicoot, another 90's platformer series featuring a Mascot with Attitude. Fans often debate over which series has better games and characters.
One with Genshin Impact kicked up during the 2022 Game Awards when both it and Sonic Frontiers ended up in the running for the Players' Voice award. Fans of both threw accusations of cheating via bots and bribery at each other to the point of devolving into vicious flame wars, and it got bad enough that Game Awards host Geoff Keighley referenced it when announcing the winner of the award (which ended up being Genshin, an outcome that only served to throw gasoline on the fire).
The co-existence of the Retro Engine ports of the 16-bit Sonic games and the SEGA AGES ports of Sonic 1 and 2 has led to some friction between fans of the Headcannon-Stealth-Taxman trio (who handled the former) and M2 (a third-party team that made the latter, and known for a wide variety of other emulation projects), due to the discourse of whether what's technically remakes from the ground-up or "ports" that are just emulating other hardware is better for retro game preservation and bringing those games to modern platforms.
Fanfic Fuel: The series very lax, open ended direction on introducing new content and elements in each game alone has made it into a fanfiction gold mine. And thats not even factoring in that the series has numerous and vastly different incarnations, with alternate timelines and dimensions in the main series alone (and sometimes these continuities even overlap or outright crossover together in content), truckloads of both developed and one-off characters, a combo of magic / surreal fantasy and video game tropes, with in and out cycles of generally light but existent continuity, light/dark elements, and stronger stories/excuse plots and an ever expanding world with new elements and locations coming and going (i.e. alternatives to the Chaos Emeralds like the time stones and Chaos Rings, the existence of aliens in several different Sonic games), the characters minimal to nonexistent backstories (particularly Sonic's) the many crossovers and cameos in other major franchises, including Mario, Mega Man, The Legend of Zelda, Super Smash Bros. and even some of Sega's own franchises (Sonic headlines the Sega All Stars series alone, and the amount of cameos he makes in other Sega works, such as NiGHTS into Dreams…, is staggering), and the numerous number of series memes, have given the franchise more than enough material to sustain one of the most active fanfiction communities around.
First Installment Wins: Many fans agree that the Genesis-era platformers (Sonic 1 to 3&K, CD) are overall the best games in the franchise.
Just about every line Dr. Eggman says in battle can be turned into a meme.
Knuckles, due to his immensely goofy and quotable nature in adaptations, and the & Knuckles part of Sonic & Knuckles being adopted as an internet joke.
Shadow, due to his general edginess that contrasts with the rest of the lighthearted cast and memorable quotes.
While not to the same extent as Knuckles, Big has become a rather beloved memetic icon himself, no thanks to his rather earnest simplicity as a character. He even got his own semi-official joke game!
The Sonic fandom has ironically become one with the Mario fandom. The original heated Nineties' rivalry has quelled and turned into a Friendly Rivalry, with only the bad blood resonating with the older fans. Now, instead of the two fanbases at each others' throats, they are actually quite disappointed that the two franchises still haven't had a proper Platform Game crossover yet. In the mean time, they just enjoy the Olympic Games, the numerous crossover Fanworks and Mods, and Sonic being a beloved guest star in Super Smash Bros. Speaking of Smash Bros, Sonic being the only guest star to return in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii Unote all third-party characters, including Solid Snake, who was absent from 3DS/Wii U, return in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is a big time sign of how much Nintendo and their audience welcomes the blue blur. Many have also noted that Super Mario Odyssey seems to be strongly influenced by Sonic Adventure.
Oddly enough with Diary of a Wimpy Kid, most likely due to both fandoms being prominent in the DeviantArt community in the early 2010s.
They're also quite friendly with the Mega Man fandom and people who like one series tends to like the other. Both series' blue protagonists who often go by similar titles among fans, as well as being classic series who ended up getting the short end of the stick in many ways over time, are most likely some of the bigger factors in it.
The fandom is also on rather good terms with fans of Batman. This is because the largest quantity of vocal Sonic fans grew up in the early 90s, when Batman got a Darker and Edgier take and thus had substantial audience overlap of kids who were taking in the similarly dark and moody Sonic series from DiC and Archie Comics.
There also appears to be a decent overlap between Sonic fans and fans of Michael Jackson, mainly due to Jackson himself having been a Sonic fan in his later years, even composing part of the soundtrack to Sonic 3 & Knuckles. The discovery of the latter during the second half of the 2000s and the first half of the 2010s is likely what caused this overlap to develop and grow in the first place.
One of the stranger examples is Love Live! It is very common to see crossover memes between Sonic and Love Live (popular ones include "Maki is Knuckles" and "Love Live music is Sonic music," the latter a testament to how iconic Sonic music truly is), and a lot of Love Live focused channels started off devoted to Sonic before they also jumped on the Idol Singer train. It helps that Sega is no stranger to Japanese idols, being the publishers of Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA, and they're directly involved with making Love Live figures. They even make the relationship explicit by pairing Love Live image girls with Sonic.
The Sonic fandom is on good terms with the Pac-Man fandom thanks to numerous crossovers between the two franchises, most notably the inclusion of Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man as playable characters in Sonic Dash.
The Sonic fandom is on good terms with the Monster Hunter fandom, thanks to the frequent collaborations between them, with Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate and Monster Hunter: Rise having events dedicated to Sonic and Sonic Frontiers having Monster Hunter content as DLC.
Many fans of Sonic are also fans of the Dragon Ball series, especially Dragon Ball Z, due to the similarities the Sonic and Dragon Ball series have without outright copying it. The Dragon Ball Z-influenced Sonic and Mario crossover Super Mario Bros. Z is just one example of this; there are several Dragon Ball Z-influenced Sonic fan works, such as Ed Edd 'n' Eddy Z (also a crossover with, you know...), Sonic's Quest for Power (also a Mega Man crossover), Nazo Unleashed (which features the scrapped Super Sonic design from Sonic X as the eponymous Big Bad), etc. It helps that Yuji Naka is also a fan of Dragon Ball.
Gateway Series: Next to Mario, Sonic is definitely one of the first big video game franchises gamers get drawn into, due to its colorful artwork, fantasy tone, and casual-based gameplay. And by proxy, Sonic is also a gateway to Sega's other big series as well.
Sonic the Hedgehog is much more popular in the West than at home in Japan. This can be justified by the fact that Sonic was specifically designed to appeal to western audiences in the first place, and the fact that the Sega Genesis never got a strong foothold in Japan. The third season of Sonic X didn't even air there until 2020 (nearly 15 years later) and was mainly commissioned for the international markets, despite all the episodes having a Japanese dub recorded alongside the English dub. Several Sonic games, such as Sonic Chronicles, have performed abysmally in sales over there. On YouTube, the official Japanese Sonic channel has a mere fraction of the English channel's subscriber count. There's also a particularly fanatical subset of fans in the UK, thanks to Sonic the Comic. There's yet another slight fanbase division over international differences.
On that note, the Sonic brand is especially loved to pieces in the United Kingdom, which is no surprise since the Master System, and the European Mega Drive have been more successful in the UK than Nintendo's NES, and SNES, signs showed this since Sonic's debut in 1991, the first Sonic game won a Golden Joystick Award for Game of the Year, in 1996, Sonic became the first video game character in Britain to be inducted into the BFI National Archive by The British Film Institute, Alton Towers even has a Sonic-themed hotel room and used to have a Sonic-themed roller coaster, and London, England is the hosting place for the "Summer of Sonic" (the first official fan convention for a video game character).
Another notable European country that LOVES Sonic to pieces is France for the same reasons as the UK, in fact even moreso,note Despite the fact that Nintendo games, especially Zelda, are very popular in France. signs also showed this, France was the one who animated two Sonicshows, Sonic X is a HUGE success in the country as it did in the USA, consistently reaching the number-one position in its timeslot in both countries, and on that note, starting with the French dub of Generations, all of the voice actors from the French dub of Sonic X, with the exception of Vector's, reprised their respective roles, and continues to voice their characters since then.
Sonic is also incredibly popular in Brazil, where the Sega Master System was more successful than even Nintendo thanks to Sega's partnership with Tectoy to bypass Brazilian import taxes. As a result, Brazilian '90s kids grew up with Sonic rather than Mario, making Sonic the face of gaming in that country, an impressive feat to say the least.
For similar reasons, the Sonic franchise thwarts any platform game franchise and all Nintendo game series (minus Pokemon due to anime and toys) in CIS countries. Sega Mega Drive clones and Dreamcast were cheaper than their rivals in the late 90s to mid-2000s, and as PC in CIS countries have been more popular than consoles and Sega developing games for PC since 1995. Sonic X was broadcast on free TV channel during afternoons on working days. Many Sonic fan sites are made by Russian users, like Sonic SCANF and SonicCIS. Russian-speaking Sonic community became very active thanks to the local celebrity, Dmitry Sienduk, who is himself a huge Sonic fan and an amateur cartoonist and ROM hacker.
Sonic is really popular and beloved in South Korea, even during the 2000s post-Adventure era. Sonic merch is very easy to come by and Sonic is very well and alive in the public consciousness even before the release of the 2020 movie. In fact, the Asian country where Sonic is most popular in is not Japan but rather South Korea.
Sonic is also very popular in Mexico since the Adventure era, though not on the same massively huge levels as Mario, andmorebiggerwellknownpopularfranchises, and the fact that Sonic's games are not localized in Latin American Spanish yet, despite this, his popularity would grow further in the country with the release of the 2020 movie and it's sequel, giving Sonic more wider mainstream attention in Mexico, especially compared to Japan where the Sonic movies bombed financially hard in Japanese box office performance.
All of the vintage US Sega ads touting Sonic as the anti-Mario are this now, in light of the fact that Sega is now making games for Nintendo's consoles, and their own mascot has shared a few crossover games with his former rival now.
Multiple comics from both Archie and Fleetway had Sonic's arms accidentally colored blue. Fast forward a couple decades, and his Sonic Boom and movies incarnation have his arms officially colored blue.
There existed a Xbox Sonic skateboarding game that never got past the beta stages called Sonic Extreme. Just a few years later, they'd rework the board racing concept, albeit with a more futuristic flair, into the Sonic Riders series.
Paramount and Sega were both sister companies for a long time, as Gulf+Western controlled both companies from 1969 until the latter was spun-off in 1983. Now, Paramount has produced several films featuring Sonic, the first of which marking the first time in more than three decades ago that the two collaborated on a major project.
"Coldsteel the Hedgeheg" is an infamous parody of Darker and EdgierOC's that has gone memetic. Pokémon Sun and Moon would later introduce a new version of the hedgehog Pokémon Sandslash that immediately drew comparisons to Coldsteel. Why? Because its type is Ice/Steel.
Roger Craig Smith who took over as Sonic's voice in the games during the 2010s also voiced Chris Redfield of the Resident Evil games. The IDW Sonic comics had an arc dealing with a zombie virus outbreak, giving the Sonic franchise one more thing in common with the Resident Evil games.
Iron Woobie: Knuckles. He's the last of his kind, and has dedicated his life to guard the Master Emerald forever, due to being the last guardian, which at the same time means he has to restrain himself away from friends unless it's very important, but he has never once whined about it. Knowing he's doing the right thing, he sticks to his duty, and keeps a cool head. Though he does have some angst moments once in a while, it's very rare.
Most fans played the early 3D games for the Sonic gameplay rather than for the many, many other gameplay styles, even when it can comprise as little as 1/4th the length of the entire game. This resulted in Sonic being the only playable character in most of the more following games (Unleashed and Sonic 4, and Generations if you discount the sidequests).
Many people played the Adventure titles solely for the Chao Gardens. Curiously, this feature was removed from later games despite their popularity.
Sonic and Tails. Let's just say that pairings with them can get rather silly at times. It's made all the more confusing because neither of them is particularly interested in romance (bar Sonic X and the comics), to the point where Tails outright hates romance in Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, and, to a lesser extent, the games.
Despite only having feelings for Sonic canonically, Amy is ironically one of the most shipped characters in the franchise, having been shipped with almost every Sonic character in the entire franchise, including herself.
Dr. Eggman has gained this status, particularly his Adventures of Sonic counterpart. The main games show he's no slouch either, due to his hammy personality, incredible persistence and resourcefulness, and inexplicably being able to outrun Sonic from time to time.
Cream. Thanks to her Game-Breaker status in nearly all of her playable appearances, jokes have been made that this shy, adorable bunny and her pet Chao is a supreme badass to be feared and could demolish armies of robots in seconds as war gods.
A lot of fanworks take Tails' Gameplay Ally Immortality and essentially turn him into Kenny by having him die repeatedly, only him returning so quickly means that he can die again right afterward as part of a cycle of pain.
Shadow became this in certain circles in the 2010s, thanks to the rise of the "edgelord" meme, with Shadow more or less being the face of it◊.
Sonic himself gets this, with many jokes about the declining quality of his games being represented as the hedgehog falling on hard times.
Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: The Ugandan Knuckles meme presents Ugandans as a tribe of Knuckles with Ugandan accents repeating Who Killed Captain Alex?? quotes. Though some claim the meme is being racist, Ugandan citizens, including the makers of Who Killed Captain Alex?, have responded positively to the meme.
Many of the questionable decisions in the 2010's games are blamed on Ken Pontac and Warren Graff. They only wrote one original story, Sonic Lost World, based on outlines delivered by Sonic Team. In fact, while fans can blame them on the jokes, they didn't write the storylines of either Sonic Colors, Sonic Generations or Sonic Forces, just the localization, and occasional personality tweak based on Sega of America requests.
Shadow the Hedgehog's personality in the 2010's games is often blamed on Ken Pontac, with Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric and Sonic Free Riders taking the most blame. Ken Pontac didn't work on Rise of Lyric, but on Shattered Crystal, and in that game Shadow was potrayed closer to his mainstream counterpart - in fact, the Japanese dub of Rise of Lyric downright changed Shadow to be mind controlled, just like his 3DS self. Pontac likewise didn't work in Free Riders, so Shadow's characterization is not his to blame.
Likewise, Takashi Iizuka gets blamed for many of the 2010's games decisions. While Iizuka isn't blameless, he's only a producer; the direction of the games would be blamed on Morio Kishimoto, the actual director of the mainline titles.
While nobody will argue that the Japanese Sonic Team created the franchise, many feel Sega of America are the ones who truly made Sonic iconic and feel they deserve just as much credit for greatly fleshing out Sonic and his world, with some arguing that without Sega of America's influence, he would've probably fallen by the wayside, given that Sega of America played a large part of refining the final design and the general look and feel of Sonic, while also codifying many of his now iconic attributes (such as his love of chili dogs).
While the character of Knuckles the Echidna was created for Sonic 3 & Knuckles in 1994 by developer Takashi Yuda, his lore, background and personality weren't defined until Sonic Adventure, written by Akinori Nishiyama. While the debut of the character is iconic, more of what we know about Knuckles comes from Adventure's depiction.
The corny dubs of certain games may be annoying, but the thrill of the gameplay is usually worth it.
Fans of the more serious stories tend to argue this. Sure, cartoon animals might come off as hard to take seriously in some of the dark plotlines, but they feel that the stories still offer many memorable scenes and enjoyable writing.
Never Live It Down: In the leadup to the third Paramount movie, some fans discussed their hopes that Amy would show up so that she could finally get away from her Stalker with a Crush characterization or her Damsel in Distress role. However, she hadn't been a stalker since before Lost World, and she hadn't played the damsel in distress since her game debut.
No Yay: A huge part of the fanbase dissaproves of any relationship involving the humans and the anthropomorphic characters, due to this being labelled as zoophilia.
A good number of fans seem to think that Amy Rose has only been around since the Sonic Adventure days/is a recent addition, but the true fact is that she has actually been around for about or (at least) almost as long as Tails (depending on whether you count the manga or Sonic CD as her debut).
Vector was created around Sonic 1 development, and Charmy is from the same manga Amy made her debut.
On a separate matter, Sonic is not the first fictional hedgehog to utilize a Rolling Attack. Mattimeo, published two years before the first game was released, had a pair of hedgehogs locking together and then rolling around to attack enemies.
Many fans complaining about Sonic's Darker and Edgier era accuse Sonic Team of trying too hard to be like Final Fantasy. While Sonic Adventure was explicitly inspired by the RPG genre, this particular comparison overlooks the fact that Sega has been making RPG's such as Phantasy Star, the first game which was actually released in the USA before Final Fantasy. This is also an example of Small Reference Pools.
Old Guard Versus New Blood: One of the biggest reasons for the franchise's notorious Broken Base is the series' constant revisions and bringing in new concepts and by extension, new fans who become accustomed to those concepts and revisions only for them to be downplayed and removed in later entries.
Nowhere is this more true than the transition that happened from 2D to 3D, with some of the old guard from the classic titles pushed back against some of the changes made in Sonic Adventure and onward, but Sonic Adventure 2 Battle expanded the franchise to Nintendo players while Sonic Heroes saw the series go multiplatform for the first time ever, and the fresh infusion of new blood rejected the old guard for criticizing the things they loved.
A similar split also happened after Sonic Colors caused yet another split between the old guard of who grew up on the aforementioned Adventure titles and the new blood coming in with Colors (or in some cases, fans who left the series returning to it). Part of the split is because Sega constantly tries to appease all of the sects, which just causes even more strife.
Only the Creator Does It Right: How many fans feel in regards to Shiro Maekawa and Shadow the Hedgehog, feeling that being one of the character's co-creators, he is the only one who writes the character in a way many fans prefer as opposed to other writers, who's interpretations of Shadow tend to be far more controversial within the fanbase. Though to be fair, some cases, such as the very controversial interpretation of him in the IDW comics, aren't really the fault of the writers, but Executive Meddling forcing them to write Shadow in a certain way.
The franchise is generally well-loved by quite a large portion of furries for its cast of lovable anthropomorphic animal characters. Tails, Amy, Shadow, Rouge and Vanilla are great examples, but a lot of the characters get similar love as well.
Vector the Crocodile is by far one of the most popular Sonic characters with the Furry Fandom, thanks to having a good balance between a design that still wouldn't be out of place when compared to the rest of the cast in the video game series, while being just distinct enough to strike a chord with a good number of scalies. He's also a hit with the bara crowd, who tend to induce Self-Fanservice on the crocodile by giving him a big and muscular body.
Big the Cat and Storm the Albatross are no slouches in the furry popularity department either, albeit downplayed, thanks to both of them having a similar design balance like Vector, and like him are also subject to Self-Fanservice by being portrayed as Big Beautiful Men. The former has even been shipped with the aforementioned crocodile occasionally.
Popularity Polynomial: Probably no other video game franchise has fluctuated as much as Sonic has. If the history of the franchise is anything to go by, Sonic appears to have a boom-and-bust cycle with peaks around anniversary years that end in 0 and nadirs around anniversary years that end in 5. For example, Sonic's 10th and 20th anniversaries respectively produced Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic Generations, which were both very successful and well-received. Meanwhile, his 5th anniversary saw the release of the underwhelming Sonic 3D Blast, as well as the cancelled Sonic X-Treme, and his 15th produced the even more infamous Obvious BetaSonic 06, which many fans wish was cancelled. The trend continues with Sonic Boom becoming the worst-selling Sonic title with less than 500K across two platforms, while Sonic Mania Plus would receive universal acclaim and become the highest rated Sonic game in 25 years.
X, also known as Sonic.EXE, is a vile demon that takes on the appearance of/possesses Sonic. This character, originating from its own story, has since had multiple fan video game adaptations, and has frequently been pitted against Sonic himself in fanfictions and videos.
Maria the Hedgehog was created by fans and is often mistaken for canon. Though she's usually depicted as Maria reborn as a hedgehog, some depict her as a clone.
Sonichu is a character from a widely hated webcomic of the same name and is a fusion between Pikachu and Sonic. He appears in a lot of memes, fanfics, and fanart due to the ridiculousness of his character and story.
Aurora is a Fan-Created Offspring of the Sonic Boom versions of Sonic and Amy, created by E-vay. She has received a lot of fanart and fanfics from others.
When Silver got a starring role in the Milestone CelebrationSonic '06 with Sonic and Shadow, fans felt he was usurping worthier characters like Tails or Knuckles (both who have lousy appearances in said game) and accused Sega of being biased against their non-hedgehog characters. Silver's cameo in Super Smash Bros. Brawl also led to claims of this.
Since Shadow's introduction in Sonic Adventure 2, some fans weren't happy with how he replaced Knuckles' role as Sonic's main rival and often view him as the reason for Knuckles becoming less prominent after Sonic Adventure.
Big's debut in Adventure is very disliked by many fans, due to his simpleton personality, almost filler role in the story mode, and his boring gameplay. He however gained better appreciation with his comedic cameos, and his appearances in Sonic Heroes and Sonic Chronicles using the same gameplay as other characters.
Following his controversial debut in 2006, Silver would become one of the most controversial characters of the franchise, with many disliking his overuse in the same title, and for taking away the protagonistic role from other characters. However, Silver went to be more appreciated as time went on thanks to his boss battle appearance in Sonic Generations showing the full use of his abilities in a satisfying manner, and his appearances in the Archie comic series making his story less puzzling.
Rooting for the Empire: Robotnik/Eggman might be a Fat Bastard, but in most of his incarnations, he's also brilliant, stylish, and chews the scenery to the point that a better nickname might be Hamman.
Sacred Cow: Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Sonic 3 & Knuckles are considered vast improvements over the already solid original, with speedier level design, new characters and mechanics, and more energetic soundtracks.
"Seinfeld" Is Unfunny: The older entries evoke this in two ways: firstly, the speed which the eponymous Blue Blur ran through the levels in the first game in the series really seemed quite blistering to gamers of the day, even if nobody would think twice about it now, especially in light of the jaw dropping speeds Sonic reaches in later games like Sonic Unleashed and Sonic Generations (the latter compounding this by showing that the younger Sonic is canonically slower than the older one, if just mildly). Also, in order to truly see the heavily promoted "edginess" of the character, which has worn dry over time due to familiarity and Sonic's numerous imitators, you really need to be aware that when Sonic first appeared in 1991, the vast majority of platform heroes were promoted as squeaky-clean and cutesy. A teenage hedgehog with a spiky hairstyle and a self-confident smirk was enough to seem uber-cool by comparison.
Lots of it, especially with the female characters. Vanilla is perhaps the biggest example of this, as she is the only parent in the cast and thus gets frequently given the Stacy's Mom treatment.
While Maria Robotnik is already a cute human girl, she often undergoes an Adaptation Species Change in Fan Works and becomes a cute hedgehog girl instead, often to make shipping her with Shadow more acceptable.
Within the fandom, people who ship Sonic/Blaze tend to also ship Silver/Amy.
The most common train amongst the fandom (game-wise at least) is: Sonic/Amy, Knuckles/Rouge, and Silver/Blaze. Shadow/Maria and Tails/Cream are optional.
Within the slash side of the fandom, it's not uncommon to find Sonic/Shadow shippers who also ship Amy/Blaze and vice-versa.
Blaze and Amy don't have many interactions besides their brief dialogues in Rush (and Amy doesn't really treat Blaze any better than she does with other characters), but the pairing is very popular, especially among those that ship Sonic x Shadow. There is one official 4-koma for the 25th Anniversary of the franchise that has Amy oddly infatuated with Blaze though, so it might not be completely out of left field.
Shadow x Tikal exists and was decently popular at one point, despite neither character being likely aware of the other. It mostly comes from Tikal's very concept being similar to Maria's, that being of a sweet girl that sacrificed themselves to protect someone they cared about, leading to a potentially familiar dynamic.
Ship-to-Ship Combat: It's Sonamy vs. Shadamy, Knouge vs. Shadouge, Silvaze vs. Sonaze, Sonaze vs. Sonamy, Sonamy vs. Sonally, and Sonadow vs everybody.
So Bad, It's Good: Among the usual candidates named for this are multiple song lyrics, most strikingly We Can, My Sweet Passion, and the in-level Knuckles raps from Sonic Adventure 2, the campy dialogue during levels, and, to a lesser extent, in some cutscenes, and almost everything about Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog (2006).
A common complain from the western fanbase, especially the old-schoolers is the modern games emphasis on always referring to Dr. Robotnik as Doctor Eggman. Even though Robotnik itself is a name change (his name was always Dr. Eggman in Japan, and the dub name was added entirely without Sonic Team's consent) and both names are still considered official by Sega, people who grew with Robotnik feel its more menacing sounding.
A general disapproval from the fanbase is the use of Super Forms starting with Sonic Heroes only applying to male hedgehogs. Originally, both Sonic and his rival Knuckles could transform with the power of the Chaos Emeralds (and Tails with the Super Emeralds), but since the Adventure era, only male hedgehog characters (and Blaze) have been able to transform, with Heroes giving Knuckles and Tails a golden sphere rather than their own form from the classic games. This became nonsensical for the community when Sonic Mania allowed Tails and Knuckles to recover their super forms (and Ray and Mighty getting them), but the modern incarnations of any non-hedgehog character is still forbidden to do so. This also led to the general dislike of both Shadow and Silver as characters. Finally, "male" part was also criticised for being ridiculous and seemingly only existing to prevent Amy, series' prominent female hedgehog, from receiving her own Super Form (her Classic counterpart would eventually be allowed to do so in Sonic Origins).
They Copied It, So It Sucks!: An odd example. While Dragon Ball influencing the Sonic series has never brought up problems for Sega or Sonic Team due to Super Sonic being inspired by the Super Saiyan transformation, there has been criticism of Sonic copying Dragon Ball too much. This started with Sonic Adventure 2 with the introduction of Shadow, a rival character that reminded people of Vegeta, and Silver in Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), a time traveller from a ruined future who was inspired by Future Trunks, and both of these characters can turn Super. In a now lost Bumblecast post, Ian Flynn, writer of the Archie Sonic series, even commented his displeasure with the fan idea that Silver may be Shadow's son or descendant due to their counterparts in Sonic and the Black Knight. This is generally a reaction that Dragon Ball fans alone have towards the Sonic franchise, as most Sonic fans are either indifferent, or, as stated above in Friendly Fandoms, also fans of the Dragon Ball franchise.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: A common complaint against the series as of Unleashed is that the various characters are left by the wayside with too much focus on Sonic and Tails. Ironically, the opposite was what many fans had an issue with before.
Amy Rose. Starting as a lovestruck fangirl of Sonic in CD, her playable debut in Sonic Adventure gave her a story arc where she's inspired to win Sonic's affection by becoming a hero in her own right. Afterward, most games just have her in a mostly supporting (But still fairly prominent) role as Sonic's Hopeless Suitor. It doesn't help that after the anime, the series played up her more aggressive traits while downplaying her sympathetic ones, something that games since Sonic Unleashed (2008) have addressed.
Blaze was initially introduced as a co-lead along with Sonic, and has an entire world that she rules and governs. The series has barely touched upon Blaze's duties or her world, with only a single game taking place there and not much focus on the world itself. Blaze would be Demoted to Extra along with every other secondary character, and her duties and role barely getting a mention outside of flavor text.
Silver was introduced as an attempt to add a third main hedgehog to the franchise, but since the game he first appeared in also marked the point in time when the majority of the cast was Demoted to Extra, he suffered the same fate, and we know very little about his world.
Sonic's origins have never been brought up in the games. This wouldn't be a problem if a certain black hedgehog didn't look a lot like him, and during his amnesia storyline, Shadow questioned why he looked like Sonic. Fanon aside (of Shadow's appearance being based on the Mural in Angel Island despicting Super Sonic), this has never been explained in any game, and with Sega eventually mandating No Origin Stories Allowed for Sonic himself, it probably never will.
Similarly, the Japanese manual for the first game states Sonic already knows who Eggman is and already has disdain for him. What exactly started Sonic and Eggman's animosity, or what Eggman was doing before he created Badniks has never been elaborated on.
Dr. Eggman's motivations. Sonic Adventure 2 and Shadow the Hedgehog hinted that he had deeper motivations towards villainy with how much he looked up to his grandfather and that his motive for conquering the world was to overthrow the corrupt governments who destroyed his family. But it has been largely thrown away for the initial portrayal of "mad scientist who tries to conquer the world just because."
The Sol Dimension, aka Blaze's world, is a whole other parallel world with tons of potential for worldbuilding and storytelling. Unfortunately, it was only properly shown in Sonic Rush Adventure and outside of the comics, has been limited to mere acknowledgment by Blaze or in profiles of her.
Vanilla Protagonist: Sonic's role in most of the game's plots is to generally be The Hero who saves the day; while he does have a fairly charismatic personality, he remains static for most of the series. It's the supporting cast that get most of the Character Development and more fleshed out personalities, most of which bounces off of Sonic himself. This also extends to gameplay, primarily in the 2D titles; Sonic tends to be the simplest character in terms of abilities while it's the likes of Tails, Knuckles, and Amy who get all of the variations of his gameplay style. The exception is the Sonic Storybook Series, where Sonic does get to display more of his character because the conflicts are more personal there.
Vindicated by History: Numerous once base-breaking entries in the series, such as Sonic Unleashed and Sonic Heroes, are fondly remembered for being innovative and very risky departures from the usual gameplay that actually did quite well in a few areas.
E-102 Gamma. First major character to be killed off, after a lifespan of one day, which, unlike Shadow or Emerl, was not commemorated or recognized by the other heroes. He shares this fate with Chip, though the latter is at least implied to still be alive somewhere.
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