Details In Sonic Games You Only Notice As An Adult

Sonic Lost World's group of villains are, on the surface, nothing more than a quirky set of punching bags for Sonic to dunk on. However, it only takes one close listen to their in-game dialogue to reveal a different story entirely.

Take, for example, Zazz. He's a spiky string-bean of a bad guy with the voice of an emo high-schooler. On the surface, that's just the profile of a run-of-the-mill Sonic bad guy. But midway through one of the first levels, his voice can be heard taunting Sonic, wherein he says: "You're going home in a box."

That's something a serial killer would say. While the wording is subtle enough that a kid might not think twice about the sentence, it's the kind of thing that'll make any adult pause and really assess the threat this villain poses. Clearly he doesn't just want to defeat Sonic, he wants to shatter every bone in the hedgehog's body...and then stuff them in a box. Zazz has some equally charming one-liners to match his opener, such as the ever-graceful "I'm going to skin you alive," and all of his bad guy pals share a similar propensity for death threats and hate speech. Case in point: The Deadly Six are a much more menacing set of villains than kids might process or SEGA will advertise.

Sonic doesn't treat Amy Rose right. Whether it be abandonment, silencing of speech or risking her very life, Sonic continually treats her like a second-class hedgehog and never shows an inkling of remorse about it. But while the too-cool-for-the-ladies persona Sonic sports might help masquerade the true nature of this unsavory behavior, the reality is that he's just downright abusive.

Take the ending of Sonic CD, for example. Sonic drops off Amy in the middle of nowhere after rescuing her from the Death Egg, without stopping to see if she's okay or offering any further assistance whatsoever. He just ditches her. And remember the ending of Sonic Riders? Dr. Eggman uses Amy as a hostage shield, and instead of working out some way to save her beforehand, Sonic just dives in and writes her off as potential collateral damage. While she miraculously avoids injury during this dangerous move, Sonic's blatant lack of consideration for her safety is appalling. Then there's the time in Sonic Generations when she just wanted to wish Sonic a happy birthday–and he covered her face with his hand to silence her. All Amy wants to do throughout these games is love and dote on Sonic, and he continually puts her down in the most humiliating of ways. 

Ever take a close look at Sonic's eyes and notice that, well, there aren't actually two? Every time his brows lift ever-so-slightly in a cutscene, gameplay or promo art, it's revealed that he's got one massive eyeball that just happens to have two pupils. It's some pretty anatomically unnerving stuff. But beyond the unsettling appearance, what kind of health implications does this strange condition have for the heroic hedgehog? Well, one concern is that if he ever receives an injury to one of his "eyes," it'll technically be to both. Dr. Eggman might want to start targeting that massive peeper, then, since blinding it could be the singular key to defeating Sonic. Also, if Sonic has any genetic misgivings that might result in eye disorders or maladies, the consequences of such a condition would be doubly damning. To spell out the moral of this story: design your characters with two or more eyeballs, please. For their sake.

Kids aren't going to be privy to the strange undertones Rouge the Bat gives off, but adults are going to immediately notice how out of place she feels with the rest of the series' cast. She's the sole female in the Sonic games to wear a latex fetish outfit that exposes cleavage and remains the only character in the franchise's history to ever reference S&M. Her voice carries a deliberately sultry undertone unlike that of any of her fellow cast members and her appearances in games see her doing things like seducing robots, because apparently she's that attractive. All of it is very, very strange, especially when you consider the fact that the games never play up this aspect of her character for story purposes. This leaves us with no choice but to assume she exists exclusively as furry fan-service, courtesy of SEGA.

Sonic the Hedgehog, the 2006 game that nearly destroyed the character's reputation, is infamous for a lot of reasons. Tons of glitches, troublesome gameplay design choices, and a convoluted narrative are the most glaring issues when it comes to discussing this game's flaws. But more subtle problems lurk throughout–most notably its unsettling romantic elements. Rather than entertaining any sort of quasi-acceptable relationship prospects with Amy Rose, Sonic the Hedgehog instead decides to seduce a human princess. Princess Elise falls for the hedgehog's charms and, by the end of the game, they're smitten with each other.

This is why, when Sonic dies at the end of the game, Elise takes it upon herself to kiss his dead corpse in hopes of resurrecting him. It seems innocent enough on the surface, like a reverse Snow White story. But the reality of the situation is just a bit too strange. A human princess engaging in romantic activities with a dead animal-guy? Even if it's not taboo in the Sonic'06 universe, it's definitely an open invitation for all sorts of diseases–and frankly, just plain uncomfortable to watch.

For anyone who completed the Xbox 360/PS3 version of 2008's Sonic Unleashed, there's one level they'll never forget: Eggmanland. This nearly hour-long gauntlet of punishment demanded the absolute best platforming and brawling skills a gamer could have, and made a name for itself as one of the hardest final stages in Sonic history. This level wasn't made so hard and lengthy just for kicks, however — there was a thematic reason for this level's intensity. 

Eggmanland was the culmination of a construction plan that the villain had been plotting since Sonic Adventure, Sonic's 1998 Dreamcast console debut. That's right — Eggman had been working on Eggmanland for ten years, and only longtime Sonic fans who'd been with the franchise for all that time were privy to the payoff of such impressive foreshadowing.

The Eggmanland references in Sonic Adventure are straightforward, but you can miss them if you're not paying attention. First, Eggman explicitly mentions wanting to build Robotnikland. Given that Robotnik was Eggman's North American name at the time, some people might not realize this was the inception of the idea. Furthermore, the notorious 2008 level even features a direct callback to SA's Twinkle Park in the form of a flaming, purple-tracked rollercoaster, which serves as an in-universe point of reference for Eggman's design philosophies while constructing his city-sized doomsday amusement park. For longtime fans, these two little nods (and many others) can be seen as the payoff to a decade's worth of hype.

Long ago, in the distant past of 1993, Sega of Japan and Sega of America had such different visions for Sonic the Hedgehog that they couldn't settle on a single soundtrack for their flagship Sega CD game, Sonic CD. This resulted in two entirely different theme songs for the game. The North American version was "Sonic Boom," while the Japanese version was "You Can Do Anything." 

For a long time, these songs remained exclusive to their respective regions. Fast-forward a couple decades, though, and now Sega has started to inject Sonic CD's Japanese soundtrack into North American releases of modern games, including 2019's Team Sonic Racing. This means the official soundtrack of Ocean View, a racetrack derived from a Sonic Heroes level, features a snappy remix of "You Can Do Anything," colloquially known in the Sonic fanbase as "Toot Toot Sonic Warrior" (which is a line from the song's lyrics). While new fans might not recognize the remixed tune, old-timers who've been with Sonic since the beginning and studied the differences in soundtracks will no doubt dig the tribute to one of the series' wildest region-exclusive theme songs.