The Sonic the Hedgehog Continuity Thread of Love and Timelines

Would you be happier if I said "they retroactively reference" instead?

I know what you're saying, though. The ties weren't made until Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles and Sonic Adventure made them. But the fact they exist now is why I say the lead into them. I'm not saying they're planned, I'm just saying:

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 establishes an ancient civilization that abused the power of the Chaos Emeralds. This leads into...

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles which establishes the ancient civilization of the Echidna, with a lone successor to the species, implying they were the ancient civilization in question. The backstory mentions Knuckles being aware of the story of a legendary dragon, which leads into...

Sonic Adventure using that legend to develop the story of Chaos, a dragon-like being when in Perfect form, while also tying it to the disappearance of the Echidna civilization.

I do not think any of it was planned, but I think it leads to elements in the next game as the developers pulled said plot leads into it. This is also why I said Sonic actually had a pretty tight continuity before the Modern era: minor elements from previous games would crop up to be used in a later one.

Kind of makes me wonder if Chaos Emeralds were always intended to be time travel capable, as established with Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic the Hedgehog (2006).

 

It's a loose continuity. They reused certain ideas in ways that don't necessarily align with the previous games. Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 had ancient civilisations that were wiped out when they abused the Chaos Emeralds' powers, after an era of prospering from their power. But one was on West Side Island and the other was on a continent, a part of which became the Floating Island. By the time Sonic Adventure came around, it was revealed that the Knuckles Tribe never actually used the Chaos Emeralds for prosperity, like the manuals say the Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 civilisations did. But they're clearly the same civilisation in Sonic 3.

The legendary dragon is another instance of them reusing a semi-scrapped idea, but doesn't really tie into hard continuity. I don't think we were ever supposed to infer that, canonically, Chaos is the dragon from Sonic 3, the one that Knuckles is aware of, the one whose legend is described outside of the island's Chaos Emerald altar. That was already retconned out in Sonic & Knuckles when the mural depicted an Eggman figure instead. Let's not forget, that's also the part of the manual where Knuckles is the guardian of the Floating Island's 7 Chaos Emeralds, which controlled the power of a crystal pillar. By Sonic & Knuckles, the crystal pillar is replaced by the Master Emerald (Chaotix would unify the two ideas). In all future games the crystal pillar is gone entirely, Knuckles is the guardian of the Master Emerald and always has been and has no duty to the Chaos Emeralds.

 

Or the copious amounts of islands "where the Chaos Emeralds rest". I'm honestly not sure why that phrase popped up so many times in the Japanese manuals, South Island, West Side Island, Flickies Island, etc. all are the islands in question. And Angel Island had their own Chaos Emeralds that disappeared one day.

(Those, I think, are supposed to be implied to be the ones you collect in Sonic the Hedgehog 2. I think Special Stages don't actually contain the Emeralds, but act as an instant warp from wherever they've ended up in the world.)

 

All right, if we're really talking what we'd _ideally_ do, it's simple. I've got two ideas. I'd either:

Double-down on the multiverse idea, and make _everything_ canon. Calcify the idea that Sonic, like Spider-man or Batman, exists as an array of continuities. Ideally, GIVE ME A SEQUEL TO SONIC GENERATIONS in the vein of Spider-man: Shattered Dimensions, featuring a crossover between Sonic's movie, cartoon, comic, and video game universes. To keep the story and gameplay tight, I'd ideally focus on Classic, Modern, and SatAM as definitive gameplay styles, but with ALL KINDS of others in the periphery, and perhaps make them playable/unlockable, while still following one of the three styles. Oh, and BRING BACK JALEEL WHITE YOU COWARDS. _AND_ Martin Burke, I can do anything, so LET'S DO IT ALL!

OR, I'd just do what I joked about in my first post on this thread:

Hey, I'm not immune to it, haha. To that end, the universes stay separate, the games follow one "SegaSonic" canon, but we just get rid of everything since Sonic Adventure 2. That doesn't mean those elements can't come back, but they're going to have to be handled very differently, and with more consistency with what had been established to that point. I totally agree that SA1 felt like it was in line with SegaSonic, but SA2 was the point where the series became something else:

"Sonic's character didn't fit Sonic's character." Brilliant.

But don't worry, NONE of these ideas (mine or others) are actually going to happen, and I don't really think they'd be GOOD ideas, anyway. Sonic's more like Dragon Ball at this point, in that the characters, locations, and concepts are well-established, and they're not going to let in-depth continuity established decades ago prevent them from telling whatever kinds of new stories they want to tell, but they're not going to officially disavow anything either, because it ALL has its fans.

 

In my headcanon Dr. Robotnik already knew about the prophecy of the dragon and, with the intention of being as powerful as that legendary egg, created his machines (Egg things) and adopted the nickname (Eggman). The legend got the prediction right (or almost right) because it was indirectly responsible for making it happen.

 

To be fair, we don't need to make the Classic and Modern worlds separate to maintain a Sonic multiverse. Though I think that might not happen due to Ken Penders' lawsuits, not because it would affect the Archie stuff (we can just use the Nu-252 stuff for the Archieverse), but because I recall something about him claiming ownership of the Sonic Multiverse concept.

Again, telling new stories is fine. Robotnik took over the world, fine, we can ignore the idea that G.U.N. was defeated (perhaps the Black Arms assault and Robotnik's continued hostilities have essentially fatally crippled the organisation and it was slowly dying by Sonic Rush and Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), if we need an in-lore explanation), we fans can easily handle the lore side of things, same as the Legend of Zelda franchise can.

It's arbitrarily changing lore that irritates me: we did not need three worlds to explain why Sonic seems to find areas of the world where Humans don't inhabit, nor to put the classic games. Hell, the fact that Sonic Forces uses the Death Egg and Sonic comments that the thing just won't stay destroyed further implies Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles, Sonic the Hedgehog 4, Sonic the Fighters and Sonic Battle are all canon. Three of those are set in the classic era, and one of those directly ties itself to said classic era: if the Classic Era has been retconned to an alternate dimension, Modern Sonic's comment makes zero sense for him: he'd only have encountered the one Death Egg in Sonic Battle, and only seen the Death Egg of the Classic Dimension during the run through Sky Sanctuary.

This is the mess I'm talking about when I say the three worlds canon mucks up continuity. The games only ever treated the world as one world, and that made perfect sense. Sonic Forces' introduction of the Classic Dimension is either a mess of continuity that even itself contradicts, or is pointless because those same events happened to a green-eyed Sonic the Hedgehog running through them, which kind of makes a separate dimension pointless, as it happened to this world anyway.

Hence my preference to treat the "Classic World" as simply a different time period, just as Silver treats his future as a "world", and pretend Sonic Forces made an error when translating it as dimensions.

 

The "Classic Dimension" is poor wording. In actuality it's a timeline split caused by Generations. I think the continuity is both Sonic's experienced Sonic 1 - 3K + CD, but Generations ripped a version of Sonic and Robotnik out sometime after S3K but before 4 (guess Sonic was just taking a romp through Green Hill at the time). Sonic and Robotnik learn of what happened in their would be futures, so when they go back they take a different approach to things. Classic Sonic learns the drop dash based off a modified boost while Robotnik doesn't follow through with future Eggman's post 3K plans because they don't work and Sonic would likely know how to beat him now. Then Mania happens, and then Classic Sonic is ripped out of that timeline and brought back to the original timeline which is where Forces is.

So "Modern Classic Sonic" went through Sonic 1, 2, 3K, CD, Generations, Mania, and Forces. "Modern Sonic" is Sonic 1, 2, 3K, CD, 4, and everything post Adventure but he never experiences Mania's plot.

Also my current headcannon is that all the game gear titles, SegaSonic Arcade, and Chaotix, are part of the "Modern Classic Sonic" timeline, while those games never happened in the Modern timeline because those side characters just don't exist for some reason.

 

The problem with that is Sonic Generations was mangled into two dimensions:

 

Eh, timeline split = dimension lol.

 

The wording indicates that Classic Sonic was always a dimensional counterpart, not a younger counterpart that split off into a new timeline due to Sonic Generations.

Funny thing is, Archie Comics' Sonic the Hedgehog had Sonic reference Sonic Generations during Genesis of a Hero: Part Three, an adaptation of Sonic the Hedgehog CD, during the time SEGA had a stranglehold on it. So this definitely feels like a new choice to have a split.

 

It's a new dimension though, it only exists because of Generations, which yay time fuckery. So it's both I guess, it's the same Sonic to a point but they have a different series of events that makes them different.

Also this is Sonic Team. They can't write :specialed:

 

A fair assessment. Well, current Sonic Team can't, the older group could write a story that would keep you distracted long enough that you'd miss the plotholes until you looked back on it.

 

This is why it can't be a traditional divergent timeline. Mighty simply does not exist in the Modern Sonic universe. A divergent timeline after Sonic & Knuckles/Sonic Generations cannot account for that. They're just separate universes, where Modern Sonic has had adventures similar to Sonic 1, CD, 2, 3&K in his past.

 

I love how one of them was like "is Mighty popular?"

Yes he has his fans lol

 

Mighty was always one of my favorite characters. I dunno why. He just struck me as badass.

 

Which makes alternate dimension pointless.

"Oh, let's split the classic games away from the Modern games!"
"Ok. So where do we start Modern Sonic's story?"
"Oh, from the classic games, of course!" :specialed:

 

Ya it's weird. Mighty is a Sonic clone with barely any established personality, but he's my favorite character. Something about his design clicks for me, and I love playing as him in Mania even if he has the weakest moveset (sometimes I'll use mods to make Mighty my partner).

I think I prefer Mighty over the likes of Shadow because even though he's a clone he can look cool without being an edgelord. And maybe he holds a soft spot to me because the modern era never tainted him.

 

I legitimately was under the impression that this actually depicts Eggman giving Mecha Sonic the Master Emerald, which happens (if indirectly) in Knuckles' story...

 

Nah, I'd say it's pretty clearly evocative of the battle in Doomsday Zone.

...huh, I just noticed the thing holding the Master Emerald has Eggman's glasses and mustache. I think I've always seen the design as more bird-like until now, with the nose looking like a beak. Speaking of, this also falls in-line with the ancient structures seen back in Labyrinth Zone:

 

It's been like this from the beginning; the emeralds disperse in Sonic 1's good ending (or they at least 'disappear').