Truth be told, the anniversary snuck up on me rather unexpectedly. It’s not that I didn’t leave myself enough time to prepare, simply that I hadn’t yet concocted an idea for an episode that was truly worthy of the anniversary title, celebrating both Sonic’s history and that of The Chaos Project. At least, not one that could be reasonably fit into the series where we are right now. That left me with pretty limited options. I contemplated an episode that would take place entirely in Classic Sonic’s world, eliminating any worries about the current context of the series. But Classic Sonic as an anniversary entity is a little cliched, and I couldn’t really come up with any good ideas for that anyways. That train of thought lead me to consider something a little more unique, a complete telling of the lost Sonic 4 Episode III. I liked the thought, but I wasn’t sure that I could reasonably get it to fill an entire episode without making it completely unlike its predecessors, and either way, it’s a bit of an odd choice for an anniversary celebration. I was bouncing around between those two ideas for a while, before I began wondering if I should just skip the anniversary altogether. But as the date grew closer, I began to realize that it would fall right around the time that I would ordinarily be writing my regularly scheduled pre-finale comedy episode. There was actually a completely different episode idea planned to fill this slot, but I pulled out another idea I had on reserve to take its place. The idea was simple. A propaganda documentary for the Eggman Empire, poorly put together by Orbot and Cubot. It was intended to take inspiration from some legendary comedy episodes from my favorite cartoons, including Spongebob’s “Krusty Krab Training Video,” Avatar’s “Ember Island Players,” and the somewhat more recent “Rising Tides / Crashing Skies” from Steven Universe. An episode that covers and makes fun of Sonic’s entire history. I realized that it was perfect for the anniversary slot, even if it would also count towards the standard season length, unlike a typical special.
Having the idea was one thing. Writing it was a whole other issue. Comedy has never been my strong suit, and keeping fresh under this one constrictive theme for an entire episode was challenging. But then I got to writing, and the ideas kept on flowing. Soon enough, the episode was halfway done, and I’d only just made it out of the Classic era. I decided at that point that I’d only go as far as Colors—for the Ultimate relevance—before skipping ahead to The Chaos Project. Even that took longer than I was expecting, and the segment on The Chaos Project had to be cut very short. It’s kind of sad, seeing as this was supposed to be a celebration of our 5th anniversary as well as Sonic’s 30th, but in the end, I think the episode was better for it. This didn’t need to turn into a recap episode. And I still got the chance to flaunt myself around a little bit, while doing some foreshadowing to the future.
Part of the point of this whole thing was to create a product that would actually make for really respectable propaganda, if it didn’t have such poor production value. There were some honestly legitimate arguments made in Eggman’s favor, and some twists on the truth so minor that they could be easily missed by someone who doesn’t know the details. For the most part, a fairly accurate representation of Sonic history was given, just from the perspective of Eggman instead of Sonic. As I wrote, I was surprised to find how few accommodations I actually had to make for that. As pretty much the walking definition of “villain because evil,” I didn’t expect it to be so easy to portray him as the hero.
In hindsight, I can see how I might’ve crossed a line with this episode, as a reviewer kindly pointed out once the episode was published. The attempts at comedy in the scripts of recent Sonic games have averaged around bland and cringey at best, and one of the reasons I’m writing this story in the first place is to fight back against this idea of using bad comedy as a substitute for real story content. I imagine that most of my regular readers are probably in general agreement with that, and so, putting out an episode like this that channels the Meta Era of Sonic writing so heavily could easily be a turn off to what should be a serious story. My goal in writing the episode was certainly to be a bit less Modern Sonic and a bit more Boom Sonic in style, hence the inclusion of Dave the Intern and a plethora of Boom references. Personally, I always found Boom to be absolutely hilarious where most of the games have fallen flat, and that’s probably why I didn’t consider how tactless this episode really was. Whether it was funny or not, I chose to spend Sonic’s anniversary by bashing him and defaming him in every way possible, something that the fanbase already does more than enough of. Sonic deserves better, and some part of me definitely regrets this decision. But at the same time, that was part of the joke. Eggman was a reflection of the Sonic fanbase, finding every excuse to hate him for doing nothing wrong. (Maybe nothing is an understatement, and that was also part of the joke.) And regardless, I spend every day of every year celebrating the best of Sonic’s history just by writing this story. I chose to use this anniversary to celebrate the rest. I wanted to show that I love Sonic as he is, not just the drama and the action, but the memes as well.
Alright, let’s get into the specifics. I’m obviously not going to explain all my jokes here, but there are a couple of things worth pointing out. Dave the Intern, for instance. Now that Lyric’s already a canon character, I had no problem with pulling in another Boom character for the jokes. In fact, the original episode that was planned to fill this slot also would have featured a Boom character for very different reasons. Anyways, it’s safe to assume that this is the canon-world version of Dave, not actually the same character from Boom. Although, Eggman could be experimenting with multiversal shenanigans for all we know. I guess I should say “was” the canon-world version, because he’s probably dead now. Unless Tails Doll actually did save him. The world may never know…
Showing Eggman’s origin was a bit of a surprise. I wasn’t planning on discussing most of that information until considerably later. But keep it all in mind. It may be more important than you realize.
The “Inside the mind of the mad Doctor” segments were obviously a bit of a stand out in the episode. They were meant to be a complete tonal shift, thoroughly serious and seemingly high-budget, with no jokes to be seen. Technically, that contrast is a joke in and of itself, but I can see in hindsight how it might have messed up the flow and pacing a bit too much. Regardless, just like last season’s comedy episode, I wanted to make sure that it was still here for a reason, and integrating the Metal Sonics was an important part of that. The change in tone was supposed to help draw focus, tell the audience to pay attention because this part is actually important. The focus on this importance is also why I chose to leave out the joke entries of Shadow Android and RC Sonic from Colors and Lost World.
Speaking of relevance to the season, there was another big lore drop here in the interview with the Sergeant. The Postcursors were revealed just last episode, and now they’re already getting their backstory established. Before this scene was slotted in, that exposition probably would’ve come next episode in part 1 of the finale, but the less I defer to that the better. I at least want it to look a little bit like I’ve been planning ahead… An interesting note about this lore that I only realized after I finished writing it is that I effectively just wrote the backstory of Doctor Who. Race of time travelling beings from another planet have a time war that ends with their annihilation, save for one survivor who carries the weight of the rest with them. This one surviving Postcursor is unlikely to appear in the near future (but don’t count out the possibility for certain), and we’ve been given no reason to assume that they aren’t still around. But by the nature of being a time traveler alone in the universe, they could hypothetically show up any time and for any reason.
I suppose I also ought to explain a little bit of my thought process behind this story. Eggman and the Sergeant covered a lot of it. Someone clearly lived on the Little Planet, yet they were never seen nor mentioned in any of the three games that feature the location. Meanwhile, we have this unexplained Lost Labyrinth treasure which I theorize to be connected to Neo Metal Sonic’s shapeshifting powers. Regardless of my claims, it’s seemingly an ancient magic power source which is perfectly compatible with a futuristic machine, first appearing in the context of a game where the Little Planet is the central focus, a location where past and future are intimately connected. Really, I just put two and two together. Calling this treasure a piece of the power of the universe is certainly a little out there, but the idea in mind was that it turned out to be a sort of data core—a blueprint for all things in the universe, allowing Metal Sonic to transform into such things. The rest was just putting together a simple narrative for how that universal blueprint got from the Postcursors to the Labyrinth.
And now for the trivia!
- The following locations from previous Sonic games were shown and/or mentioned in this episode.
- Spagonia (Sonic Unleashed, Hub World)
- Green Hill Zone (Sonic 1)
- Scrap Brain Zone (Sonic 1)
- Emerald Hill Zone (Sonic 2)
- Death Egg Zone (Sonic 2)
- Angel Island Zone (Sonic 3)
- Hidden Palace Zone (Sonic & Knuckles)
- Stardust Speedway Zone (Sonic CD)
- Station Square (Sonic Adventure, Adventure Field)
- Mystic Ruins (Sonic Adventure, Adventure Field)
- City Escape (SA2)
- Iron Gate (SA2)
- The ARK
- Eggmanland (Sonic Unleashed)
- Eggman’s Incredible Interstellar Amusement Park (Tropical Resort, Sweet Mountain, Aquarium Park, Asteroid Coaster, and Planet Wisp, Sonic Colors)
- This episode’s title “Hate That Hedgehog,” is a reference to a catchphrase of Dr. Robotnik in The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog Cartoon. There’s no extra pun here, the title is supposed to say all that needs to be said.
- This episode took several other bits of inspiration from that show, including the Eggman Sez segment, playing off of Sonic Sez, and the reference to Mobius City, a location from the show.
- This episode features the debut appearances of Dave the Intern from Sonic Boom and Professor Pickle from Sonic Unleashed.
- Early in the episode, a photograph is shown of Eggman in pajamas. This is a reference to the earliest concept art of the character, before he was even planned to be a Sonic character. Shown below.
- Eggman claims that Robo Sonic was destroyed in an unfortunate lab accident. This most like refers to the battle against Zero and Amy seen in S0 E4. However, the events of those episodes were rewritten at the end of the arc, so we know longer know the exact circumstances being described.
- Eggman also discusses how Robo Sonic was specifically designed to harness Chaos energy in a way that other Sonic robots were not. This is intended to explain how it is able to use Time Control in that same episode.
- When Eggman refers to the popular mustached hero look from the video games, he seems to be referring to Mario (and his penchant for being kissed by princesses). This is actually rather strange, as Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games have already been implied to be canon with a reference to the “Interdimensional Olympics” in S1 E6 Lost Chronicles.
- The Archival Footage of Eggman’s Incredible Interstellar Amusement Park is a reimagining of a real (and really bad) trailer for the original Sonic Colors from the good old Nintendo Channel app for the Wii. The trailer featured the brochure with Sweet Mountain playing in the background. Strangely, the brochure showed five locations chained to the center, except one of them was Tropical Resort which is supposed to be the center, and then three of them were concealed by question marks, even though there are four other locations, and all of them are showcased over the course of the trailer. I’m not sure what exactly they were trying to hide there. Just hiding how poorly made the trailer is, I guess. I decided to amp up the trailer in a way that they really should’ve done to begin with. Eggman’s P.A. announcements are absolutely the best thing to come out of Sonic Colors, and there’s no reason that they shouldn’t have been used to voice over the trailers.
- This scene also featured some cheeky references to the upcoming Colors Ultimate remaster, quickly summing up all of my personal gripes with it.
- Eggman’s description of The in-universe Chaos Project may not have been particularly comedic, but the joke is that he is also effectively describing the story itself. Not just a story that uses these elements of Sonic lore, but a greater study of the franchise that draws connections between these elements, and uses them to their fullest.
- Orbot and Cubot are a little bit confused by how Blacklight seems to be communicating with them from beyond the grave. Canonically, he is still lying dead in a trash pile, and he just seems to be really good at predicting what they will say how ever many years after his death. But, by the alternative canon of the yearly Blacklight Takeovers here on the website, he, despite being dead in the show, could very well be sneaking himself back onto the set to film a new scene without anyone noticing.
And that’s all for now! Sit tight, as the exciting Season Finale is coming soon! Hope to see you all there!
-And until next time, remember to live and learn every day!
The Chaos Project: Sonic the Hedgehog 