Come and leave your mark

Thought I’d list and clear up some misconceptions about the Sonic the Hedgehog series.

Sonic's speed does not come from his shoes. The English manual for the first game does say that Sonic's shoes make him go faster (a fact which was not mentioned at all in the Japanese manual), but this is most likely referring to the High Speed power-up (known as Power Sneakers in English), which makes Sonic temporarily go even faster than normal. Notably, Sonic wears different shoes in Sonic Adventure 2 (as part of a sponsorship deal by SEGA with Soap grinding shoes, hence why Sonic gained the ability to grind on rails in that game) and he's still just as fast as usual. Sonic's speed is just an innate ability he has, not tied to his shoes.

And by the way, they're not even shoes. Naoto Ohshima, the designer of Sonic, confirmed on Twitter that Sonic actually wears boots, and the white part that was assumed to be his socks is actually just the top of the boot.

No, Shadow the Hedgehog is not Sonic's brother, nor is he a dark version of Sonic himself or anything like that. He's a separate character who was actually canonically created years before Sonic was born, and he looks like Sonic (more specifically, like Super Sonic - his quills are up rather than down) because his creator, Professor Gerald Robotnik, based his design on a prophetic mural depicting Super Sonic fighting Perfect Chaos, while his black and red colour scheme are due to him being injected with the DNA of the Black Arms, a black-and-red-coloured alien race.

The robot Sonic you fight in Sonic the Hedgehog 2's Death Egg Zone is often called Silver Sonic by fans. This name appears precisely once in official material, in the English manual for the 8-bit version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2. The official name of the robot, in both Japanese and English, is Mecha Sonic. Similarly, the blue Sonic robot from Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles is also officially named Mecha Sonic. Some will call it Mecha Sonic Mk. II, but that was something Ian Flynn made up for the Sonic the Hedgehog Encyclo-speed-ia to differentiate the two robots. Officially, they're both just called Mecha Sonic. And they're not to be confused with Metal Sonic, which is a completely different Sonic robot who appears in Sonic the Hedgehog CD, the Sonic OVA, Sonic Heroes, and a few other games. In Lego Dimensions's Sonic the Hedgehog pack, the first Sonic robot (the grey one) is incorrectly identified as Robo Sonic, while the second is correctly referred to as Mecha Sonic. Robots named Robo Sonic have never existed in the games, though one appeared in the Sonic the Hedgehog Shogakukan manga, which may be where the confusion originated from.

Shadow's super form is not called Hyper Shadow. It's just Super Shadow, like Super Sonic. The Hyper Shadow thing came from a gaming magazine which captioned a picture of Super Shadow from Sonic Adventure 2 as Hyper Shadow, causing fans to believe that was the official name, even though the same magazine published a correction in the very next issue.

Amy Rose is not a cat. She's a hedgehog. She just has her quills in a bob, rather than spiky like Sonic.

Despite it being the first appearance of both characters, Sonic the Hedgehog was not the first time Sonic and Eggman met. Japanese supplementary material makes it clear that both of them had been fighting each other for a long time already before that game's story happened, and we still don't know the origins of how they met.

It's often claimed that Amy Rose was brown in her first appearance, which was in a manga that came out before she made her game debut in Sonic the Hedgehog CD. While Amy did debut in a manga, the manga was drawn by many different artists in many different styles, with only one of them (and most likely not even the original one) depicting Amy as brown.

While some adaptations do make Sonic aquaphobic, he's not afraid of water in the games. He just can't swim.

It's often claimed that, since the events of the game were erased from the timeline at the end of it, that Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) is non-canon. However, writer Shiro Maekawa, as well as many Japanese supplementary materials, confirm that the game is still canon despite the events in it being erased, which is why Silver is still around and why Blaze has fleeting memories of Crisis City in Sonic Generations.

Despite very common belief, humans and animals do not exist in separate dimensions in the Sonic games, and Sonic Forces did not retcon Classic Sonic as being from another dimension as opposed to from the past. This whole misconception seems to stem from the fact that in the English localisation of Sonic Forces, Tails says that Classic Sonic is "from another world", as well as Takashi Iizuka saying that animals and humans live in different worlds. This is actually a slight mistranslation of the Japanese word "sekai", which does literally translate as "world" but has a much broader meaning, and can also refer to things like societies and time periods. What Tails meant was that Classic Sonic was from another time period (Silver, being from the future, also refers to his time period as "my world" quite often), and what Iizuka meant was that the animals and humans just live in separate societies, not dimensions. SEGA confirmed in a video on their official YouTube channel that it is all one world, with the animals generally living on the small islands and the humans living in the big countries and cities, and games since Sonic Forces have clarified that Classic Sonic is still from the past.

And on the subject, there was never any such thing as a world or planet called Mobius in the games. Sonic's home planet is, and always has been, Earth. The Mobius thing came from a mistranslation of an interview with Yuji Naka, who made a comment about Sonic "running on Mobius", which was most likely a reference to the Möbius strips that appear in Emerald Hill Zone in Sonic the Hedgehog 2. While some American adaptations of the series did explicitly refer to Sonic's home world as Mobius, the games have always been set on Earth.

Sonic is not from Mobius in the Sonic OVA or Sonic X. In the OVA, he's from Planet Freedom (Wakusei Freedom in Japanese, which might even just be an alternate universe version of Earth), and while Sonic X depicts him coming from another world/dimension as a clear nod to the whole Mobius thing, the world he comes from is only ever referred to as "Sonic's world" and is never given an official name, either in the series or in supplementary material.

Freedom Planet is not a Sonic fangame. It did start out as one, but it quickly became a completely original game, with original characters and settings and an original story.

While Rouge does work for GUN now, that hasn't always been the case. In Sonic Adventure 2, Japanese-exclusive dialogue makes it clear she's an outside professional who was hired by the President himself to work directly for him on an on/off basis. She doesn't start explicitly working for GUN until Sonic the Hedgehog (2006).

It's often said that Jaleel White, voice of Sonic the Hedgehog in the '90s American cartoons, was planned to voice Classic Sonic in Sonic Generations, but he either turned down the role or demanded too much money. However, Jaleel himself confirmed via Twitter that he was never even approached by SEGA to voice Classic Sonic, who was always intended to be mute.

It's often said that Sonic's love of chilli dogs became canon to the games in Sonic and the Black Knight. It was actually first mentioned in the Japanese manual of Sonic Advance 3.

People will often say that Nack the Weasel was originally named Fang the Sniper, and that his name was changed in the West because of censorship. This is... slightly backwards. In fact, his original name was Nack the Weasel, but in Japanese, Nack sounds similar to Knuckles ("Nakku" vs. "Nakkuruzu"), so they decided to change it. They held a contest to decide the new name, and the winning entry was Fang the Sniper, so that became his name in Japan. In the west, where due to different pronunciation rules in English "Nack" and "Knuckles" are different enough to be distinct, he reverted to the name Nack the Weasel. Despite being called "weasel", SEGA have confirmed he's actually a jerboa, and the "weasel" in his name isn't referring to his species, but rather a description of his character (i.e. he's sly and crafty, like a weasel).

It's a common rumour that Tails was originally a tanuki, but he was changed into a fox because SEGA thought non-Japanese players wouldn't know what a tanuki was. This is the result of several mistranslations and crossed wires. Tails was always a fox - the only difference was that he was originally a normal one-tailed fox, before they decided to give him two tails. SEGA of America initially wanted to change his real name to Miles Monotail, but SEGA of Japan wouldn't let them.

Among the many, many levels that were planned for Sonic the Hedgehog 2 but cut, a desert level named Dust Hill Zone is often mentioned. There was a desert level planned, and there was a level named Dust Hill Zone planned, but they weren't the same thing. The desert level was actually called Sand Shower Zone, and Dust Hill Zone was actually a "dark future" version of Green Hill Zone, with more of a haunted house theme.

Dr. Eggman is often said to be a feminist, based on the manual for Sonic Heroes calling him one. While it is pretty funny to imagine an evil dictator who wants to take over the world and enslave all of humanity believing in gender equality, this is sadly the result of a mistranslation. The English word "feminist" is used as a loanword in Japanese to mean something more akin to "womaniser".

Contrary to popular belief, Utoku Keiko did not provide the voice clip of Sonic saying "I'm outta here!" in Sonic the Hedgehog CD (heard if you leave Sonic idle for three minutes). That voice clip was actually provided by Nishimura Masato, a designer at Sonic Team at the time (the "Majin" referred to in the creepy "Fun is infinite" Easter egg screen). Also, according to Masato himself on Twitter, what Sonic actually says in that Easter egg is "I'm outer here!"

The Japanese/European opening song for Sonic the Hedgehog CD is not called "Toot Toot Sonic Warrior", nor is it called "You Can Do Anything". The actual title is "Sonic - You Can Do Anything". And the ending theme is "Cosmic Eternity - Believe in Yourself".

Sonic has never actually said "Gotta go fast!" in any of the games. It just became a meme after the line was repeated in the English dub opening of Sonic X, though Sonic has said it in other continuities (like the Sonic Boom cartoon) as a nod to the meme. The closest he's come to saying it in the games is saying "Gotta speed up!" in Sonic the Hedgehog (2006).

Despite the fact that Tails is often the one piloting it, the Tornado is actually Sonic's plane, not Tails's (which is why it has Sonic's name on the side of it). Sonic and Tails first met after Sonic crashed his place on West Side Island, where Tails lives, whereupon Tails helped him fix it and added some upgrades and improvements.

It's often said that Sonic Adventure 2 is when the English localisation started using the name Dr. Eggman as opposed to Dr. Robotnik. That would actually be the next game, Sonic Heroes - Sonic Adventure 2 features scrolling text reading "I am Robotnik" and "The Robotnik Empire" during a pivotal cutscene.

"Reach for the Stars" from Sonic Colors was not performed by Cash Cash. It had the singer from Cash Cash, Jean Paul Makhlouf, doing vocals, but it wasn't done by the band themselves. Similarly, "Endless Possibility" from Sonic Unleashed wasn't performed by Bowling for Soup, it just had Jaret Reddick, the lead singer of that band, on vocals. 

Contrary to popular belief, Sonic's original name was not Mr. Needlemouse. The name he was given on his concept art was Mr. ハリネズミ (Mr. Harinezumi), which translates as Mr. Hedgehog. "Needlemouse" is a direct and far too literal translation of "harinezumi".

Shadow's theme from Sonic Adventure 2 is not called "All of the Darkness". That name comes from people mishearing the first line of the chorus as "All of the darkness that dozes in the dusk", when the actual lyrics are "Oh dark, the darkness that dozes in the dusk". The actual title of the theme is the line after that, "Throw It All Away".