The Sonic the Hedgehog Continuity Thread of Love and Timelines

Their homeland got blown up into the sky, for one.

 

Coming to think of it, that is a valid question.

An unknown amount of echidnas survived the Chaos' rampage, and the island got blown up into the sky. Sure. But once that happened, they are now within an environment that has no threats at all. It's only them and the remaining chao. What made the popoluation shrink instead of growing?

 

Could the Master Emerald itself be to blame? We know it affects DNA as it restored the Chao called Chaos into a form resembling his ancestors the Ancients due to close exposure. Perhaps it had the opposite effect on Echidna society, causing sterility.

 

The Gizoid was build 4000 years ago, while the Knuckles Clan was wiped out 3000 years ago. So either the Knuckles Clan lasted 1000 years, the Gizoids were in operation for 1000 years, or they didn't really research when things happened on the timeline.

Could just be the Echidna lost so many of their members they didn't have a Minimum Viable Population.

 

Isolation? War? We know from Divergence that there was more than one Echidna clan building shit on Angel Island at some point that it was in the sky, so maybe there was a schism. Disease too, if it spreads too quickly without much opportunity for quarantine. Famine, if the wildlife population got hunted to extinction and they had to ration food. Frankly I don't blame Fleetway for saying Knuckles was alive at the same time as the rest of his clan but sent forward in time somehow. But you can basically just keep inventing cataclysms that keep the echidna barely on the edge of extinction due to being trapped on a floating continent until you get closer to present day. The only problems with that level of isolation are which clan was able to build a floating city without also being able to leave the island, and the fact that Knuckles definitely shouldn't naturally speak the same language as everyone else. But overall those are handwavey problems for an already-handwavey scenario.

Another good reason to keep the Four civilizations and the Gizoid separate from the echidnas.

I just imagined the line "five heads and not one of them actually functions!" and now I feel a little gross.

 

I think Ian Flynn will push for the idea that a different civilization was living in the land of Angel Island alongisde the Knuckles Clan. Allegedly the ones who built Egyptian architecture as in Sandopolis. Those would be the ones the Knuckles Clan was fighting against, but none of them being responsible for the Gizoids.

 

I was always under the impression that Sky Sanctuary was built by The Ancients, which is why one of their portals was found by Knuckles. In that case, Sky Sanctuary would have been floating above the shrine before it took off into the sky. It also explains why there's teleporters that the Knuckles clan wouldn't have been able to build. Now that I think about it, it may also explain Hidden Palace's origins as well.

 

The other day I saw fanart depicting the middle stage of the ancients' devolution as the true thing being depicted in the Hidden Palace mural.

I don't think that's what they're going with since we have no allegory for the Robotnik-like figure, but it is interesting to think about. Also, given those proportions, we might be headed for a reveal that the Sonic-like characters aren't so genetically-different from chaos and chao after all. But I kinda hope they don't do that, it's maybe a little too convenient that they would be the source of all non-human life on Earth (other than Zeti, I guess).

 

Sonic Chronicles retconned it so that Pachacamac's Knuckles Tribe was attacked by Chaos 4000 years ago, instead of 3000, making them contemporaries and opponents of the Fourth Great Civilization. Then it was decided that Sonic Chronicles is non-canon, so that retcon no longer applies.

The current timeline on Sonic Channel places Pachacamac's era as an undefined "thousands of years ago" and brings the Fourth Great Civilization's destruction by the Gizoid forward in time, around 2000 years ago.

In Sonic Frontiers Prologue: Divergence, Knuckles comments that the (Sonic Frontiers) Portal he finds looks even older than the Sky Sanctuary ruins he found it in.

The Knuckles Clan of Pachacamac's era weren't advanced enough to build the Sky Sanctuary/Hidden Palace teleporters, but their descendants thousands of years later might have been.

I don't think they're going to do that. And if they did, we know that there are at least four animal people who are descended from a different alien species: Wave, Storm, Jet and Jet's dad.

 

I'm not sure why I can't find it on the site, but didn't the new timeline retcon this time-frame?

Now, the Echidnas are wiped out "thousands of years ago," and the Gizoids were created 2,000 years ago, along with the events of the Black Arms arriving on Earth.

If I’m not mistaken, maybe they did this to make the Echidnas the Third Great Civilization.

Unless they give that title to the Babylonians, I’m assuming the Echidnas will take it, since they have more established history in the series, and it gives more context to Pachacamac's expansion and need for the emeralds.

Sky Sanctuary seems to belong to the Ancients, but the Angel Island locations and Mystic Ruins still have technology that's somewhat advanced. So, I could see the Echidnas taking that spot.

 

It's really odd that they changed Emerl's creation to 2,000 years ago instead of 4,000. Maybe they just put that section in the wrong place?

Because it looks like a deliberate choice to include the echidnas in the group of Great Civilizations.
But, if it's correct, things get kind of convoluted.
1) Ancients
2) Gaians
3) Babylonians
4) Echidnas
5) Whoever created the Gizoids. The fourth great civilization is the fifth.

 

We will see next time if they expand more on this timeline through TailsTube or not but I do get the feeling the Babylonians are going to get treated like the Black Arms.

So made a contribution that mattered to Sonic's world, but not enough to be considered one of the great civilizations.

 

The Fourth was destroyed by Gizoid, the only game that claims the Fourth created Gizoid is Chronicles, right? Which obviously also ignores the fact that it supposedly destroyed them and that they couldn't have existed contemporaneously with the Knuckles clan.

 

I am really not sure at this point. Is it?

 

I don't really agree with that fan art either. For some unknown reason, the mural is very much intended to depict Super Sonic & Eggman during Doomsday. That doesn't rule out that The Ancients may have built Sky Sanctuary & Hidden Palace though.

This is a good point, but it seems highly unlikely that survivors of the Knuckles' clan built the teleporters used throughout Angel Island. We do see that Knuckles does use them regularly, but aside from their existence, there's no other evidence that those living on Angel Island had advanced technology. Every other example of technology and architecture we see (predominantly in Sonic 3) is closer to the Bronze Age, and that has held in depictions of Echidna society as shown in Adventure & Adventure 2. Any sophisticated technology we see in Sonic 3, besides the Teleporters and the sanctuary itself, comes from Eggman. For that theory to be true, it suggests that any advanced technology the Echidna of Angel Island developed was created and then largely eliminated as far back as Gerald's visit 50 years ago, which is highly improbable.

We also have to consider that Divergence does depict several Chao in Sky Sanctuary. Granted we don't see them in Sonic 3 (perhaps because Sonic, Tails, & Knuckles are nowhere near what is an unexplored area to Knuckles in Divergence), but isn't it interesting that a short that tees up the events that reveal the Chao are the Ancients' descendants, just so happens to show them in the vicinity of an Ancient portal? True, the portal is said to be much older than Sky Sancturary, but it's entirely possible the Ancients took it with them for the precise purpose of having transportation back to the Starfall Islands and built the surrounding area around it later on.

 

Yeah, it's ambiguous in Sonic Battle.

There's a line in Gerald's second journal entry that in the English version says: I am no longer able to ignore the possibility that this robot did in fact destroy the Fourth Great Civilization. I have discovered a stone tablet that explains as much. According to the tablet, "When the figure falls from the heavens, and the Stone of the Gods is joined, all that exists will become one again."

But the literal translation of the Japanese text we have on the wiki says: I could no longer disregard the report that the puppet in question destroyed a civilization. I discovered a stone monument that could serve as evidence. According to the stone monument, "When the human figure that descended from the heavens was given the stones of the Gods, all has reemerged."

The latter makes it sound like it might have come from somewhere else. Someone would have to confirm if there are any ambiguities there.

One thing that does seem consistent throughout Sonic Battle is that there's no hint of there being more than one Gizoid. Gizoid itself has the power to destroy the world, and the word Gizoid is said to mean "everything", so it doesn't make sense narratively for there to be more than one.

Or, if you interpret the previously mentioned line as Gizoid being an alien weapon, it wouldn't make sense for those aliens to deploy more than one world destroying robot to each planet they want to destroy/conquer.

 

Even the English version doesn't really make any specific reference to who made it, though. The bigger difference there is "Fourth civilization" versus "one of the four civilizations", which we've already talked about.

 

Yes, that's what I'm saying. It's ambiguous in both versions. And that one cryptic line in the Japanese version makes it sound like it may have come from someone other than the great civilization it destroyed.

 

I could have sworn Battle mentioned that the fourth great civilization created the Gizoid(s?), but I guess not. I think that was most people’s takeaway either way, though. This thread is the first place I’ve seen people interpret it as the Gizoid being from a different civilization.

As for there being more than one Gizoid, it could be an issue of interpretation of the original Japanese since the language has no distinction between plural and singular nouns. I personally think Emerl being the only one made more sense, but considering Chronicles came out over 15 years ago multiple Gizoids isn’t exactly a new idea.

The new timeline changing the date by 2000 years seems a little arbitrary though. I assume they made the civilization take place after the echidnas so that they’d have 3 other ancient “great civilizations” beforehand, but since the SA backstory no longer has an exact date (and to be fair never did outside of supplementary material and Chronicles, both of which were different IIRC) they didn’t have to change the date at all. It’s a minor gripe though.

 

The only reason I see for them to change it to 2,000 years old is to say that those who created the Gizoids were rivals to the Echidnas. For instance, the Egyptian tribe in Sandopolis. Maybe some Owl tribe, like in the movies.

So we would have:

1) Ancients
2) Gaians
3) Babylonians
4) "Egyptians Owls" - the 4th Great Civilization
5) Echidnas

Then Pachacamac tried to defeat his rivals, and the Chaos' rampage happened.
And then, a whole thousand years later, the 4th Great Civilization became advanced enough to create the Gizoids, and got themselves destroyed.

Even so, it's kind of useless. Because there's no reason for these two civilizations to be rivals. That's a Chronicles thing.