Sonic the Hedgehog has been enjoying a bit of resurgence as of late
because of his upcoming feature film.
Which is great because
OH! OH THOSE LEGS ARE WAY TOO HUMAN.
THOSE LEGS ARE...
OH MY GOD.
THOSE LEGS LOOK LIKE I COULD HAVE THOSE LEGS.
PLEASE DON'T SHOW THAT TO ME ANYMORE.
PLEASE GET.
GET IT OUT OF HERE.
*screaming*
This new Sonic has a lot of fans crying heresy.
Sonic should be that cute, blue, cartoon hedgehog that’s gotta go fast,
and that’s all he’s gotta do.
But what if I told you that this was not the only blasphemous version of Sonic?
What if I told you that nearly every single piece of Sonic media was heretical?
I hold in my hand 13 pages that prove just that.
Before I hop into the deep end, I need to explain a little about Sega, these 13 pages,
and how Sonic was made.
You see, Sega was in a real tough spot in the early ‘90s as it tried to compete with
Nintendo and the overwhelmingly successful Mario.
So they worked internally to create a new mascot.
Not just for a game, but for the company as a whole.
Naoto Ohshima created Mr. Needlemouse, a teal hedgehog with red sneakers.
And then he worked with Yuji Naka to create a game around this wonderful creature.
A few tweaks and Sonic the Hedgehog was born.
Or at least one version of Sonic was born.
You see, Sega wasn’t just fighting with Nintendo, it was also fighting with itself.
Sega of America and Sega of Japan had a lot of tension between them, and they didn’t
see eye to eye on a lot of things, especially when it came to Sonic.
The original version of Sonic was a bit more punk rock and had a girlfriend.
A real life human girlfriend named Madonna.
And we all know that Sega would never make Sonic kiss a real human woman.
*discomfort*
So Sega of America started to iron things out a little bit.
Make Sonic a bit more family friendly.
More marketable.
Madeline Schroeder, the self-described mother of Sonic, wrote out this 13-page bible that
set out Sonic's true origins.
These 13 pages went on to become the true Sonic.
The Sonic we all know and love.
Right?
NOPE.
THIS BIBLE HAS HAD VERY LITTLE BEARING ON THE SERIES AS A WHOLE.
But here’s the thing, friends.
It should have a lot of bearing on the series as a whole.
And I am willing to wield this bible as a paladin wields a holy sword so that I might
EXCISE SIN OUT FROM THE SONIC CANON.
I'm sorry.
That was a lot.
I was a bit too intense for...
I'm gonna tone it down a little bit.
Folks, we’re about to engage in a friendly session of biblical literalism.
Now, I’m not one to advocate taking a written account as the pure truth and nothing but...
but for Sonic I’m willing to bend my values a little bit.
We're about to take everything written in these 13 pages as gospel, and anything that deviates
from the facts therein as sacrilege.
Let’s get Sonically Fundamental.
I’m not gonna read this bible in its entirety.
You can read it online if you'd like.
But I am going to read the first paragraph in full, because I think it's important for
you to understand what we’re dealing with.
“Sonny Hedgehog was born on Earth in the early 21st century, in the town of Hardly,
Nebraska, population 1,226.”
From the first line alone, we already know that:
1. Sonic’s birth name is actually Sonny.
2. He is a real hedgehog that was born circa 2000.
And 3. He’s a midwestern boy.
“He and his mother and five sisters live underneath a scraggly hedge beside the local
burger joint, and subsist on burger scraps, milkshakes, and the occasional slug or bug
that crawls their way.
They are a poor but happy family.”
From these lines we know that:
4. Sonic's family lives in an actual hedge, which is I guess why they're called hedgehogs.
And 5. They have a very similar diet to me.
“Unfortunately, Sonny’s dad died when Sonny was just a few days old, after falling
into a gurgling, festering vat of toxic waste dumped in a nearby pond.”
…
What?
Sonic, the lighthearted hedgehog we all know and love.
Never knew his father because he was reduced to sludge thanks to corporate pollution.
There are 30 key tenets in the Sonic bible,
and I'm just gonna go ahead and list them off real quick.
*just a big ol' mess of words from the Sonic bible*
The 30 tenets of the Sonic the Hedgehog bible.
Look at 'em up there.
Beautiful.
Practically glowing with potential energy.
The potential energy I shall release into a HOLY FLAME, SO THAT I MIGHT BURN OUT THE
BLASPHEMY FROM SONIC'S MODERN ITERATIO...
Pat: "I think, uh, we should probably just take a couple minutes, just to, just to like..."
Brian: "Okay."
Pat: "I'll... do you need water or anything?"
Brian: "Water... yeah, I think that'd be good."
Now, most of these are not found in most of the iterations of Sonic, but there are three
that specifically decanonize every game in the Sonic franchise.
Let's talk about 'em.
Number 18: There are seven chaos emeralds, one is a stabilizer.
You might have heard me say the name Kintobor.
He turns into Dr. Robotnik after he is fused the powers of the chaos emeralds and a hard-boiled egg.
Not a joke.
But he was originally looking for the chaos emeralds so that we he could bundle them up
and then launch them into space, thus reversing all pollution on the planet Earth.
The reason for that is because the Chaos Emeralds “contain a microlytic copy of all the inert
energy of every gross and disgusting impulse or deed done by humans since the beginning of time.”
Ignoring that microlytic is the name of a company and not an actual scientific term,
this seems to state that the chaos emeralds are just a crystalline form of every gross impulse.
Every time you pick your nose instead of using a tissue.
That’s in the emerald.
Every time you wear your underwear five times in a week 'cause you think it doesn't smell that bad.
That's in the emerald.
Every time you go three days without shampooing?
I get it.
Look, sometimes, you know, the shampoo has sulfates and that can damage to your hair.
We all have different scalps.
BUT THAT'S IN THE EMERALD, TOO.
Most of the games just state the chaos emeralds are an incredible source of power, something
that will help you to take over the world or become Super Sonic.
They don't ever mention that they are essentially just garbage diamonds.
Had Sega included one piece of flavor text, like “You got a chaos emerald.
You should probably go wash your hands, now.”
Then it would’ve been fine.
But they didn’t.
Number 21: Kintobor was a father figure.
Just as a reminder, Sonic’s dad died in a vat
of toxic waste.
Which is why it meant so much when Kintobor offered him an assistantship.
“Sonny was thrilled at the prospect.
Because although Sonny had never known his father, Kintobor reminded him of the kind
face in the photograph.”
Heartbreaking.
Can you imagine the drama in this?
Sega, you keep trying to do these gritty reboots of Sonic.
Sonic plus gun.
Sonic plus getting kissed by a human woman.
You don’t need all that.
It's all right here!
You are literally pitting Sonic, a hedgehog without a father, against the man who became
his father figure and then turned evil thanks to the machines that SONIC HELPED CREATE.
I hear you saying, “Brian, there’s no evidence that Sonic doesn’t think of Robotnik
as a father figure!”
And to that I say bullSHIT.
I have NEVER SEEN HIM CRY AFTER DEFEATING ROBOTNIK.
I HAVE NEVER SEEN HIM HOLD THE LIFELESS BODY OF HIS FATHER FIGURE AND SAY,
"I am sorry it had to turn out like this!
I am sorry!"
LET SONIC CRY OVER THE LOSS OF WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN, SEGA.
YOU COWARDS.
And finally, the third and most important tenet that destroys the entirety of the Sonic canon.
Number 11: Sonic helps quilters.
Have you ever seen Sonic in a quilting circle?
Cause he should be there.
“While making the rounds for juicy tidbits and gossip, he would drop in on the ladies
of the local quilting circle to offer a convenient pin or needle from his ample, portable supply.”
WHERE IS MY SONIC GAME WITH A QUILTING CIRCLE?
Sonic CD: shitty.
Sonic Mania: trash.
Sonic Hedgehog 2.
More like Sonic the Hedgehog Too MUCH OF A DUNCE TO INCLUDE TO THE QUILTING CIRCLE THAT
IS SO INTEGRAL TO SONIC'S BACKSTORY!
And with that, we have decanonized the entirety of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise.
But from this scorched earth can bloom a mighty flower.
The true Sonic the Hedgehog.
What would that video game look like?
What are the ramifications of a Sonic the Hedgehog game based on the bible?
The Sonic the Hedgehog bible.
Let’s go through this piece by piece.
We start the game with a legitimate hedgehog who lives in a hedge and his name is Sonny.
And it's 2019, and he's got brown quills, and they won't become blue until he gets faster.
And he eats food that is similar to the food that I eat.
He lives in Hardly, Nebraska, which is where the entire game is set, so you better get ready
for running in lots of corn fields.
His eyesight’s not good, but it’s okay cause he’ll get rec specs since he is able
to read but is also on the track team.
So the entire game is actually just running in track meets in the middle of a corn field.
When he’s not running track, he’s at the bowling alley or the playground or the quilting
circle doing normal hedgehog things.
The problem is that his town has SO MUCH POLLUTION, which is how his dad died, and it’s also
why Kintobor (now Robotnik), the trim kindly scientist who gave Sonic his new nickname
and the ability to speak the human tongue, was trying to solve with his new physics theories
and his machines and all of those terrible gross seven chaos emeralds before he became
evil and also a bit of an egg.
This is especially rough because Kintobor, before he became Robotnik, would feed Sonic
really good food and was basically a father figure to him.
Also Sonic is good at computer science.
So the game is basically an evil polluting scientist being taken down by a midwestern
teenage hedgehog track star with daddy issues.
So it’s basically if the CW rebooted Sonic.
Reach out to me, CW, I will license this.
But I haven’t used all 30 of these tenets.
See, there are four of them that, to be perfectly honest, shouldn’t be possible.
And beyond that, they are impossible to put into a game.
I've hit a bit of a roadblock.
Number seven shows Sonic's dead father winking at him through a picture on the wall, which
proves the existence of an afterlife in the Sonic Universe.
Number 15 shows that Sonic is able to hibernate below delta waves.
And those are the slowest possible brain waves.
About 0.5 hertz.
To go below them, Sonic would have probably died.
And yet he is resurrected and lives again.
And number 24, Sonic is shown to run at the speed of light.
And if the rules of relativity are to be believed, that means his mass would have to infinitely
expand, and he would need infinite energy to do this.
And that would destroy the world.
And yet he is able to do that without harming himself or those around him.
Number 30 is actually within the bible itself.
It states, “But like most peaceful times in the twenty-first century, it didn’t last long.”
This bible was written in 1991, nine years before the twenty-first century, and yet it
prophesied our challenging political landscape.
These four pieces of information are not purely canonical information.
They are...
divine miracles.
So of course I could not put them into a game.
They could only fit in a religion.
So I went on to wikiHow, the foremost explainer of how to do things, and I knew somewhere,
hidden in their beautiful imagery would be the way that I could spread the word of Sonic
to the masses.
And before you get upset with me, saying,
"Brian, aren't you just starting a cult?"
Look at this question answered by Cutegirlcorr:
"Technically speaking, religions and cults are the same thing."
So I have formed my religion around Sonic the Hedgehog.
And guess what?
I have a confession!
I'VE NEVER PLAYED A SONIC GAME.
NEVER IN MY LIFE.
I only tell you this now because you've already made it this far into the video,
and the sunk cost fallacy states that if you feel like you've invested something,
you're gonna see it through to the end.
But it's okay that I haven't played a Sonic game.
Because that means I haven't been tainted!
I have never beheld the false Sonic!
Only someone blind to the modern blasphemies of the Sonic franchise
could see as clearly as I!
Because if a hedgehog could commune with the dead,
be resurrected,
run with infinite energy,
and HAVE HIS GOSPEL PROPHECY THE FUTURE,
THEN EITHER SONIC IS A GOD
OR COULD KILL GOD
AND I DO NOT CARE IF THERE IS A DIFFERENCE!
Hello, friends, I’d like to take a moment now and apologize for my recent outburst.
I’ve taken some time and cooled down since filming this video, and though I suppose I
could have just not uploaded it to YouTube, I decided it would serve well as a cautionary tale.
You see, taking lore to be purely literal, whether that's for a video game or backstory
for a TV show, is a dangerous rabbit hole that can often lead to anger.
Biblical literalism is just an early form of fandom.
Sometimes, you gotta be a little bit more lenient.
Because sometimes, the bible was written to make a character
more marketable to kids in the '90s.
So let’s learn from this example, and make sure to take new additions to our favorite things in stride.
Even if it’s these legs.
I’m sorry, I can't in good conscience agree with that.
I do not agree with those legs.
I'm sorry.
I could spr... if you spray painted my legs blue, I could cosplay as this Sonic.
Do you think I should do that?
Do you think I should spray paint my legs blue for a Sonic cosplay?
Just half...
Just half, half down Sonic.
Not gonna do anything else to my body, just...
What are the ramifications of a Sonic the Hedgehog game based on the bible?
*everyone loses it*