The Sonic the Hedgehog Headcanon Thread of Lore and Time Stones

Funny, I remember having the same theory for Ice Cap...

 

I don't think I've ever shared this one, but I do have some stuff for the Sonic robots we see in the series. I try to base this in canon as much as possible, so I hope this will sound somewhat reasonable

Mecha Sonic was the first Sonic robot ever created and its development started shortly after the events of Sonic 1. Eggman stopped working before completing it though, since in the meantime he was invading Little Planet and figured he could create something stronger using unique parts only found in Little Planet's future.

Sonic CD happens and Eggman lost access to Metal, and since he was made of technology he couldn't reproduce, he was unable to perfectly replicate it, and decided to use Mecha for his next plan (S2), and then upgrade it in an attempt of actually replacing Metal (S3&K). Metal Sonic was still a better match for Sonic however, so Eggman instead tried to revive Metal by uploading his CPU into the new body of Metal Sonic Kai (Any game in between CD and Mania that has Metal) and I'm going to assume that there were at least two different versions o Kai that were made, since we see two Metals in the background of Mania's boss battle.

Finally, a year passes, and Eggman is able to actually recover the original Metal and rebuilt him. If you really want to include Sonic 4 into this, you could say that Eggman abandoned Metal in Stardust Speedway (Bad Future?) after the Encore Mode.

The robot we see in Final Egg is Mecha Sonic Mk. III, Eggman ended up never using him though and he was eventually destroyed by Neo Metal shortly before Sonic Heroes, as Metal believes he is the only real Sonic

 

I don't consider The Fighters as canon, but good point. I'll just say that Eggman himself thought Rocket Metal looked so stupid he decided to ignore his existance and the other 25 models along with it :v (Or maybe Metal Sonic commited genocide at some point)

 

I mean, both iPhone and Windows skipped the number 9, whose to say Eggman didn't just really like the idea of having a Mecha Sonic 29? :v

 

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the thing is, I think this is overcomplicating it. Heroes reintroduced the chaotix I don't see why they couldn't just introduce some IDW/Boom exclusive characters to the games. Doesn't need to be any more complicated than these characters are Sonic's friends and if you want to know more about them read the comics.

 

-Metal Sonic in CD is a roboticized Sonic from a Bad Future who then used a Past gate. He thinks he's Sonic because he is Sonic. This doesn't really make story sense but was always immediately apparent to me as a kid.
-Robotnik was killed after Doomsday Zone. The him you fight in all future games is a disguised version of the Egg Robo that rises from the rubble in 3&k's good ending. This is just based on a misinterpretation of said ending I had as a kid but wouldn't it be cool and weird???
-Robotnik discovered Chaos in his abuse of the Master Emerald in S&K and that's generally what 'activated' him and might partly be why he betrays Robotnik
-There's an early draft of SA2's story script where the scenario of Maria dying after sending Shadow out in an escape pod was instead played out by Amy and Sonic in the cutscene after Crazy Gadget where Robotnik would instead follow through with shooting Amy after Sonic and Tails' attempted double cross. This inclination just comes from the weird visual parallel between that scene and the one with Shadow and Maria and the fact that early on SA2 wasn't even going to have playable Shadow and presumably a more focused story. Not to mention at some point in dev SA2 was meant to have Starfox 64-esque progression with different level/story paths depending on what you did and maybe this could've been on the 'bad' path. Amy and Maria have always had a vaguely similar design to me and if it were the case that Amy was to have Maria's role in the story and Sega decided against that for the 1,000 obvious reasons then it might explain Maria's somewhat abrupt inclusion in the story. She'd have much less reason to exist in the version of the game where Shadow isn't playable and presumably a more 2D villain character.
-Another weird SA2 idea I've floated since I was a kid is maybe Sonic was supposed to be the one to die at the end at some point in development. Considering both the obvious in that SA2 was a sort of 'farewell' to Sega in the console department as well as a spiritual farewell to the Dreamcast era Sega dev team. And strangely some early trailers seeming to make direct references to Sonic's death ("Farewell Sonic...forever." is narrated at the end of one of them IIRC). I could see it being in the cards at some point that SA2 could've been the last Sonic game and that's how he'd go out before the decision to go multiplat was made. I don't know if these SA2 tidbits even count as headcanon or just what-if speculation since I wouldn't even want either outcome but uh I have to put this old mind junk somewhere.

 

The whole "Metal Sonic is a temporally displaced roboticized Sonic from a bad ending timeline that got erased" is one of those "fucked-up yet so incredibly mind-blowing" fan theories. Might as well point out a short fanfic that explores this very idea.

 

Knuckles gets his own Doomsday Zone equivalent after the good ending of his S&K story. I imagine that once Sonic drops him off, he'd watch him fly off until he's not even a blip in the sky, with the master emerald beside him just the same as he does in the best ending of Sonic's story. Right before one last surviving Egg Robo sneaks from behind and dives onto the emerald, absorbing its energy just as Mecha Sonic did before. It grows into a massive Metal Robotnik equivalent, wings and all. A latch opens up in its body which then quickly "electromagnets" the emerald inside of it before closing. It squares up and Knuckles immediately goes super/hyper out of anger, and right as Angel Island begins to descend out of the sky. Cue the final boss Knuckles deserves, and with the title card flashing "Dragon Egg Zone".

(i just wanted to play doomsday zone as knux as a kid and this is how the thought matured)

 

I've been getting back into Sonic recently and wanting to make OC's and MAYBE that damn fanfic I swear I will make one day, but this of course requires me to get my gloves on and lay down headcanon seeds into the dirt because Sonic Team sure never explains anything in this series

To clarify: I have not played Frontiers (wasn't super down on the concept, and I don't have a lot of money), but I do know the basics of the lore it adds to the Chaos Emeralds. I don't think it matters much for my headcanons though. Also I don't own the Encyclospeedia, guess I should own that.

So, the thing I've been mulling over my head is the idea of chaos energy. Chaos energy is a emanating force from the Emeralds, which have a tendency to drift around the world. If they remain in a place long enough, they'll turn it into a zone: a surreal, vibrant area filled with strange geography (that is, a Sonic level). Zones are inherently chaotic--the same Zone may manifest differently the next time you see it. That's why places that return in multiple games like Green Hill appear different each time. For the record: once a place has been so inundated in chaos energy to become a Zone, it remains a zone even as the Emerald leaves. The chaos drives GUN uses for its robots are particular concentrations of the energy in Zones--as if the Zone tried to form a shard of a new emerald. No new emerald has ever been formed, though: the existing ones are absurdly strong compared to even the biggest drives. Zones also tend to manifest rings which are odd productions of chaos energy that usually cluster. Mobians can use them for power or grind them down into artificial chaos drives*

*: I cannot believe this series has been going on for over three decades and has never explained what the fuck RINGS are so I have to bullshit some headcanon, Sonic Team PLEASE. Dear god please tell me the Encyclospeedia says something

Mobians are a race of beings that are naturally attuned to chaos energy. Given that it didn't exist on their world originally, this might mean that they were formed from it, but really no one knows. Mobians can naturally harness it to perform superhuman (superanimal?) feats, but the vast majority can only really sense it. The main Sonic cast are examples of mobians who have cultivated their ability to harness it, which is why they are superpowered in general. Chaos energy is why the cast can run so fast; why they have seemingly inexhaustible stamina; why they can destroy metal robots with a mere jump; why they don't get sick from spinning and can fly literally miles and land like it's nothing etc. Sonic himself in particular has a borderline freakish ability to use it, to a level that greatly outstrips nearly all living mobians as well as every known chaos energy master in history. Not only does he have nigh-inexhaustible stamina and speed, that he can boost stems from this as well: boosting is an extremely powerful but inefficient drain of energy, so the fact that he can do it nigh effortlessly and for so long is borderline unheard of amongst Mobians.

The only others that come close are Shadow, who was created and specifically designed to harness it excellently, Silver, who lags behind the other two but is still incredibly strong, and Blaze. As for the rest of cast, without detailing every one: Tails and Cream aren't super good but have potential, Knuckles is really good since he's an Echidna, Amy is surprisingly good but hasn't cultivated it anywhere near as much as Sonic, and everyone else is mid-tier compared to Sonic (but would absolutely blow 99.99% of Mobians out of the water anyway). Ah fuck it, lemme just rank everyone. Characters I'm not super familiar with won't be here so most comic ones won't because ooops I haven't read the any of the comics really including the IDW comics (I SWEAR I WILL I BOUGHT THEM I'M JUST SUPER ADHD PLZ FORGIVE ME i'm ranking tangle and whisper though)

SSS: Sonic (honestly should be SSSS or X or something), Shadow
SS: Blaze
S: Silver, Metal Sonic
A: Amy, Knuckles, Jet, Omega, Infinite (only after Eggman's phantom ruby shenanigans)
B: Rogue, Espio, Wave, Storm, Tangle, Whisper, Sally, [comic characters I'm not familiar with who are shown to be exceptionally athletic/superpowered]
C: Vector, Mighty, Ray, Sonic Forces Avatar/Buddy
D: Tails, Cream, Charmy, Sticks, Marine, Fang, Bean, Bark, Tikal, Honey [most of the comic characters I'm not familiar with who aren't expressly athletic/superpowered]
E: Big (sorry man lmao)
F: [normal mobians]

(cannot believe I just seriously DBZ power-ranked the Sonic cast WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE)

Gotta be S or above to go "true Super", and gotta be SSS to go Hyper (unless you're an echidna, then the cutoffs are B and A because Echidnas get to cheat hell yeah)

The four masters of it--Sonic, Shadow, Silver, and Blaze, are all capable of attaining true Super forms. I'm throwing out the "only male hedgehogs can go super" lore, and instead explaining it as those four being the only ones who can harness chaos energy enough to fully tap into the Emeralds' power and go truly super. The rest of the cast could use the Emeralds still, but they don't get a whole new Super Saiyan-esque form since they aren't as skilled at harnessing the energy and have to tune their Super forms a bit weaker to not damage their bodies. They could get there with training, though, and Knuckles in particular can brute-force 90% of the way with the Master Emerald. The Hyper forms are what results from utilizing both the Master Emerald and Chaos Emeralds together, and are so extremely taxing that only Sonic (a freakish savant at using chaos energy) and Knuckles (who can cheat due to being an Echidna) and they both found them so draining it was potentially life-threatening. Shadow probably could, but has never had the chance. Silver is too weak, but he's closer to cracking that barrier than anyone else.

Any Mobian could use the Sol Emeralds to go Burning, though none have besides Blaze. And yes, this allows for other sets of Emeralds or even powerful gemstones in particular that allow for unique forms. Hell this is already sorta canon if you take Darkspines Sonic into account lol. All of these foreign "powerful gemstones" let you go both Super and Hyper--the Hyper form for the Sols is called "Infernal" for instance.

 

So of the new Zones in Sonic Mania, two of them connect to existing Zones on West Side Island without any Phantom Ruby related shenanigans - Studiopolis Zone connects directly to Chemical Plant Zone, and Mirage Saloon Zone directly to Oil Ocean Zone. This suggests both these new locations are actually located on the island, alongside most of the Zones from Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

Following on from this, my own headcanon is this: much as the 2013 remake's Hidden Palace Zone is apparently directly below Mystic Cave Zone, Mirage Saloon Zone is what's directly above it. It fits nicely with the fact that both transition to Oil Ocean Zone in different ways, and I kinda like the idea that there are multiple levels of caves running underneath the vast desert (and that if you get deep enough, you even find there's actually water way down there somewhere...!). And in Hill Top Zone - the Zone directly preceding Mystic Cave Zone - the large buttes seen in the background also bear some resemblance to the ones seen in Mirage Saloon Zone, suggesting a possible geographical proximity between the two.

Plus, out of universe, it'd make Mystic Cave into a direct link between the Stealth/Taxman team's embellishments to West Side Island from two separate games (the 2013 remake of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Sonic Mania), which in itself is kind of neat.

Also, with far less thought behind it: since we now have South Island, West Side Island and the Northstar Islands, given the far eastern influence in the second Act of Press Garden Zone, I now headcanon that Zone as being on an East equivalent to all of the aforementioned islands. Since the preceding stage - Flying Battery Zone - is an airship, inter-island travel during the course of that Zone would be totally possible.

 

Mirage Saloon was Dust Hill all along.

 

Eggman doesn't have a 300 IQ. He has double digit average IQ, narcissistic personality disorder, and a lot of capital. He is not building these factories, robots, or factory-building-robots himself. There is a whole corporation of individuals working, most of whom are good and decent. They want to invent little caterpillar bugs to go scavenge for mysterious gems. Eggman wants an empire.