And so ends Season 3’s obligatory pre-finale comedy episode. This was certainly an interesting one. The last two seasons’ equivalent episodes were carried by a constant flow of jokes taking place in ridiculous situations, but this one focused much more on the latter half of that. Not to say there weren’t any good jokes, just that the comedy was supposed to come primarily from the wackiness of Big going on a space odyssey and somehow never getting any closer to his relatively simple goal. The biggest source of inspiration here was Big’s role in Sonic and the Secret Rings, which we’ll talk about later. But, much like S1 E16 “Hate That Hedgehog,” the base idea for this episode also took inspiration from stand-out comedic episodes of other shows from the past. In this case, that would be the episode “Mondo Coco” from an old Cartoon Network show, Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends (and, perhaps to some extent, the episode “World-Wide Wobbuffet” from Yuni Oha’s Pokémon Cosmic Quest, which began from similar inspiration). Much like this episode, that one features a particularly silly character being swept up on a long journey featuring progressively more ridiculous situations.
Of course, like previous comedy episodes, I also wanted to make sure that this one was here for a reason. Of course, the space theme made it obvious that this episode had to go in this season and nowhere else, but that’s sort of the opposite direction of logic from what I need. Of course, given that Big went missing a full season ago, and that he mysteriously appeared in the Frontiers special, this episode was automatically necessary and “story-important,” but that still didn’t really resolve my problem. I want the reader to walk away from the episode feeling glad that they didn’t skip it. So, as I was mapping out all the different parts of the journey, knowing that Big would have to end up in Cyber Space somehow, I decided to put the destroyed homeworld of the Ancients as one leg of that journey, and use Seraph’s expertise to lead into that. Just like with last episode, (S3 E10 War of the Lost World) having direct relevance to the lore of Frontiers is what made this one work.
But how was I to establish that relevance? What could Seraph help us learn about the Ancients that Big and Froggy could spur her to say? Well, what association do they have already? Big, not much. But Froggy. Froggy swallowed Chaos, and had a reaction to that which still hasn’t been explained—and Chaos is an Ancient. I took that and rolled with it. Although it was not definitively confirmed in the end, the implication is that Froggy is not an Earth frog at all, but perhaps instead an Ancient frog, or descended therefrom.
And then there’s the whole Paradox thing. Planning for this episode, I was not expecting it to end with Froggy acquiring the powers of an elder god, but somehow, that’s the way it went. The train of thought started simply because, in the long line of crazy ways for Big to get from one place to the next, my ideas ran dry on the Lost Hex. I mean, obviously I had the option to actually send him home the “planned” way of reaching the portal before Espio closed it, or simply finding the unclosed one, but that would make for a pretty anticlimactic end to the recurring dramatic irony that drove the episode. There are also Wisps on the Lost Hex he could’ve made friends with as was the plan on Planet Wisp, or he could’ve simply found the portal back to Planet Wisp, but going back to Plan E after Plan F failed would have been, again, anticlimactic. I think, if I didn’t have the Paradox route to go down, I probably could’ve salvaged something out of an idea like “all the failed plans come together to work in the end.” So maybe he finds the portal back to Planet Wisp, and discovers there that Seraph, Barry, and Dodon Pa have all been gathering Wisps to his cause. Obviously that wouldn’t make sense as-is, but something to that effect. But, ah, I’m rambling again.
So anyways, I wanted an ending that doubled down on what was supposed to make the episode funny in the first place, and to me, that meant finding the most ridiculously unlikely way home that can possibly be imagined. I was already considering how this episode would be highlighting Big’s incredible luck at making it out of so many situations alive when he really doesn’t have the skills to. That kind of thinking tends to get the concepts of branching timelines and alternate realities on the brain, which is probably what got me thinking about the preparations I’m making for the currently-delayed Sonic Prime special. And I decided from there how interesting it would be if Big’s luck was more than just an accident—then I decided to take it all the way. I thought that the ultimate culmination of this episode would be the suggestion that it is literally impossible for Big to get home. But he’s so lucky that he defies the balance of the multiverse in order to continue his journey, effectively rewriting reality to his will. Reminder that we’re still talking about Big the Cat.
So anyways, I decided that luring in the character formerly known as Yin-Yang Shadow would be the climax of the episode, but the details remained hazy as I began writing. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that sending Big home might not even be the best option. We already knew from Sonic Movie Special 2: Next Level Nexus that Yin-Yang Shadow and his mystery companion have been trying to build a team of “Prime Candidates,” and I had my ideas in mind for what that team would be. But I hadn’t considered the fact that the delay of the Prime Special would make one of my intended characters, who was available in this season but won’t be for the next, unusable. That character needed a replacement, and, while Big certainly isn’t an obvious choice to fill that role, I had just gotten through coming up with all the reasons that Big should be able to attract the attention of these multiversal protectors. And if he’s unique enough to get their attention, why wouldn’t he be unique enough to join the team?
The changes I needed to make from there were minor. I’d already decided on the idea of Froggy helping Big find this Paradox crystal to set the events in motion. And now, if Froggy simply does as Froggy does, and eats the dangerous magic gem, we would not only have a little extra excitement for the climax, but we would also end up with an unquestionably valid power for the team of Big and Froggy to have that they can use in their coming multiversal quest.
Of course, there’s also Yin-Yang Shadow himself to talk about. Or, should I say, Paradox the Hedgehog. And I suppose I should discuss Sonic Prime in general here. Last time we saw this character was in the Sonic Movie 2 Special, in April of last year. That was more than half a year before the airdate of Sonic Prime, but at the time I don’t believe the date was announced yet, and I wanted to be prepared early on in case the show was premiered without much warning. I teased the coming Sonic Prime Special in a mostly subtle way, by using shattering effects for his multiverse powers and making that one brief hint at the end of looking for a “Prime Candidate.” At that time, I figured that what I was leading into was a Special Episode that would have been written some time last year. I hadn’t yet decided if it would be my standard best-guess-at-the-details release-day celebration, or a more relaxed but fully informed follow-up to the show, or a two-parter that tries to accomplish both. As the date got closer and we still knew so little about the details of the show, I decided, given that Netflix (for some reason) likes to drop whole seasons at once instead of progressively airing episodes like a normal show, I would have the opportunity to binge the whole show in one weekend, then crack down on the Special quickly while the general audience is still watching the show.
Then the show aired. Or at least, one-third of the show aired. We already knew from the announcement that this show was written as a single 24-episode season, and then Netflix goes and releases a whole whopping 8 of them, with the audacity to call it “Season 1”. And now we know for sure that they’re calling the next incomplete batch, “Season 2”. It’s a scummy marketing tactic, taking one complete story and pretending like it’s 3 so you can “release” it 3 times. But, my distaste with Netflix aside, the result is that I don’t have enough of a show to make an episode out of. So, with regret, I chose to delay the Sonic Prime Special until, apparently, “Season 3” comes out, and we actually understand what the show is supposed to be about. That’s why I was rather pleased at the chance of bringing these hints back up in this episode, and expanding on them a bit. I wanted to remind readers that this is still coming, and confirm that it hasn’t been cancelled, while also making it look like I was actually just planning really far ahead. (I wasn’t.) Now, because of these multiple lead-ins, this is shaping up to be one of the most important over-arching stories of the series, which was definitely not part of the original plan.
Yin-Yang Shadow’s new name was a curious situation. This character has consistently been at the whim of last-minute ideas, and now is no exception. Basically, I got tired of that weird “Yin-Yang Shadow” name. It’s cumbersome to write, confusing for the readers, and especially awkward seeing as the in-universe characters would never refer to him as such (besides Movie Sonic, who never actually learned that his name was Shadow). But, after I already, over a year ago, decided to tie him closely in with the concepts of Sonic Prime, and given that his character is, in the most literal sense, a walking contradiction, giving him the new name of Paradox just felt obvious. It’s funny, because when I decided to make him important to Prime, we knew nothing about the “Paradox Prism” or any such use of the word.
Of course, there’s lots of other fun references and ideas to talk about in this episode. Barry and the space train, for example. For those who haven’t played yet, this was all one big reference to “The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog,” the free PC game the social media team put out for April Fools this year (and which Blacklight played and left some voiced commentary on). Barry is the name given to the character in the reveal trailer, and like with Hero, I decided that was the best route to take for choosing a canon name. I went through some debate over whether this weird piece of Sonic history should be considered canon, but in the end, I decided that the ridiculous factor was exactly what this episode needed. The concept of a “space train” probably felt pretty far out from left field, but to be fair, among the branching options for how the story ends, some of the options for what Barry can say they did after the story includes, in one breath, going to space and getting promoted to conductor. The implication was that these were exaggerations, but it’s not like any other parts of the story were really any less weird. To a very small extent, the concept was also vaguely inspired by the DC character “Space Cabbie.” It is what it sounds like. A decision also had to be made about Barry’s gender. They’re referred to exclusively by they/them in the original story, yet they’re clearly designed as a male animoid. Also appears to be more clearly attracted to females than males, not that that necessarily means anything (as Blacklight was quick to point out). It’s a question of whether the character was actually meant to be non-binary, or if the developers just wanted to save some money by not writing differing dialogue options for a user-selected gender. The developers have declined to respond to such questions, or so I’ve heard. So I’m inclined to assume the latter, but, in the end, I figured a bit of enbie representation wouldn’t hurt.
There’s also the debut appearance of Dodon Pa and the canonization of Team Sonic Racing. The game has already been loosely referenced, and of course, the Donpa Kingdom was mentioned explicitly in Frontiers (and equivalently in the Frontiers special), but there was still technically the option of low-tier “it didn’t happen quite the way you remember it” canon, which has now been removed in favor of pretty much complete acceptance. I’m always hesitant to embrace the weirder aspects of Sonic canon—the plot of that game really didn’t make any sense at all, there were some pretty significant out-of-character issues, and, excepting the existence of the Donpa Kingdom, it didn’t really contribute anything valuable to the canon. But that’s a very big exception, and, this being the alien season, the Donpa Kingdom was one aspect of the greater Sonic universe that I figured I shouldn’t ignore. While I was at it, I figured I should capitalize on the chance to showcase some of the uniquely weird aspects of the Donpa Kingdom that TSR talked about but never showed. I mean, an intergalactic motor company run by the ruling monarch of a planet of mythical creatures? That idea is nothing if not unique, but TSR just didn’t feel like elaborating on that. Technically, we don’t know that the Donpa Kingdom is inhabited by mythical creatures, but I think it’s a reasonable extrapolation. Dodon Pa himself explicitly is one. It could be that it’s an entire planet of Tanuki, but that raises an awful lot of questions. If what we know on Earth as a mythical creature is actually an alien from this other planet, what does that mean about our other myths? It would suggest that they all come from a similar source. Plus, if Earth, Planet Wisp, and Kaos are all multi-species planets, it stands to reason that the Donpa Kingdom is as well. And anyways, I think it’s more interesting that way.
Dodon Pa himself was actually a surprising challenge to write. His character in TSR is…a bit confusing. He spends 90% of the game with every word out of his mouth sounding intentionally over-the-top suspicious, but then we learn the full truth about him, and suddenly he doesn’t appear to have a malicious bone in his body—his goal is universal peace and clean, renewable energy. It’s really incongruous, and it was unclear if he was okay sharing all of his secrets with Eggman in the end because he thought Eggman incapable of causing any real harm, or because he simply didn’t care. Given his lack of concern over anyone’s safety, I’m inclined to think the latter. I decided it would be most practical to focus in on this aspect of his character, which meant downplaying his “universal peace” side a little bit. I’m sure this is still his stated goal, but I’m framing that more as a marketing slogan for his business. He’s a businessman first, a world leader second, and a “philanthropist” third, only because it makes him look good in those first two aspects. So, he’s happy to help Big get home. But only if Big does something for him in return. And when Big suggests an alternate option, Dodon Pa simply won’t have it, because that would ruin his business opportunity. That also means that he is perfectly okay with his products being used for illegal activities, as long as it isn’t made to be his problem, which is pretty much what happened with Eggman.
And lastly, we have the originators of this episode’s plot, the Pisceans. Funny story…I wrote this episode thinking that I made them up. I was quite convinced that I was building an alien species out of the vacuum, so I was free to design their appearance, architecture, and culture in whatever ridiculous ways I wanted. I’m not sure exactly how it is that I forgot, but somehow, the fact that this was originally meant to be an existing species in Sonic just completely vanished from my mind somewhere along the way. Here’s what I forgot.
These characters, Hokey and Pokey, are NPCs from the Crater Lake hub world of Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric. Even if you’re one of the few who played the game, I get the strange impression that you probably forgot about them too. Now, to be clear, I still have absolutely no memory of making any sort of decision to take inspiration from these characters. But Hokey (left) pretty much exactly matches the generic design I envisioned for all Pisceans, perhaps just a bit too short and hunched over. And, you know, the humanoid faces. So, what I assume happened is this. It was roughly February of 2021. Ahead of my upcoming episode, S2 E13 Non-Zero Chance, I was doing a quick re-watch of the full story content of Rise of Lyric. Roughly 6 months earlier, I had just completed my first full playthrough of Sonic and the Secret Rings, the very last 3D Sonic game missing from my list at the time. One of my biggest takeaways from that game was, unexpectedly, Big’s role, which was a total shock to me when I first learned about it. The fact that he had all these cameos akin to those of SA2, but with an actual background story put to it, was crazy to me as a Sonic fan. In his second to last journal entry from the game, he talks about being able to find Pisces in the Milky Way, and wanting to “meet him.” I had that simmering in the back of the brain as something I could use for a space/alien themed episode for Season 3. That same source of inspiration created the general backbone for this episode—Big is whisked to away to a strange place because someone mistakes him for a blue hedgehog, goes on a ridiculous and perilous journey where he keeps showing up in the background of important things, and somehow manages to survive through all the escalating danger. So that’s all relatively recent on the brain, and then I get to watching Rise of Lyric, and I see these two strange robot-alien-jellyfish characters who are completely out of place among the rest of the game’s NPC cast, and something makes me think, “That’s it. Those are my Pisceans.” Given that I was pseudo-canonizing RoL anyways, and that I was planning on addressing as many of its mysteries as possible, I suppose this one just felt like a no-brainer to explore in the Alien Season, and the Big episode felt like the easy place to put these aquatic aliens. It was such a quick and easy thought process that I made no effort plot it out, or take notes, or anything that would help the moment stick in my memory. So, two years later, any memory of the moment of inspiration was gone, and all I had left was a vague image of a species design.
So anyways, even though I wasn’t thinking about it when writing it, I will state plainly for the canon here that, yes, Hokey and Pokey are Pisceans, or at least are some related species using Piscean exoskeletons. Why they look different and how they ended up on Earth are another question entirely. Perhaps some other time.
Now it’s on to the trivia, I suppose.
- This episode’s title, “Big’s Big Space Adventure 3,” is an unusual one. It’s meant to have the eye-catching “Adventure 3” title as a sort of prank to get readers excited for something that this definitely isn’t. More literally, the implication is that Big’s yet-untold trip to the ARK in the background of Sonic Adventure 2 would have been the literal “Big’s Big Space Adventure 2,” and this is a follow-up to those events. Just don’t ask me what the “Space Adventure 1” would have been.
- This title also resembles a Sonic Social Media–endorsed fangame titled “Big’s Big Fishing Adventure 3” ( playable at bigthec.at ). This fangame was originally conceived as an attempt to tell the aforementioned story of Big’s appearances on the ARK, although I guess the story went through some changes from there. I’m not sure where the 3 comes from in their case. I will not deny that some inspiration was taken here.
- The following locations from previous Sonic and SEGA games, as well as other media, appeared or were mentioned in this episode:
- The Constellation Pisces (mentioned in Secret Rings)
- The Algolian System (Phantasy Star)
- The Mirage Express (Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog)
- Homeworld of the Ancients (Sonic Frontiers flashback)
- Kronos Island (Cyber Space replica, Frontiers)
- Western Fishing Spot (replica, Frontiers)
- This one was a little awkward. In Frontiers, the Fishing Spots turned out to be in Cyber Space, but I didn’t know that at the time of writing part 1 of the Frontiers Special, so I plopped Big next to a pond on Kronos Island and pretended like that was normal. I figure, for whatever reason, this Cyber Space replica of the Starfall Islands has its Fishing Spots merged in with their respective islands. Doesn’t matter now, they’re all destroyed anyways.
- Donpa Motors (mentioned in Team Sonic Racing)
- Donpa Kingdom (Planet) (mentioned, Team Sonic Racing)
- Planet Wisp (Colors)
- Mother’s Canyon (TSR)
- Hex Valley (mentioned in S3 E10)
- The Lost Hex (Lost World)
- Windy Hill Zone
- Sky Road Zone
- Silent Forest Zone (cameo)
- Lava Mountain Zone (cameo)
- Frozen Factory Zone (cameo)
- Bridge Zone (cameo, originally from Sonic 1 8-bit)
- The Legend of Zelda Zone (cameo)
- The Kingdom of Hyrule (originally from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom)
- This was a spur-of-the-moment reference, but given that I already canonized The Legend of Zelda Zone in the last episode, I figured this wasn’t too much of a stretch. And I couldn’t go without referencing the hot new game right now.
- Desert Ruins Zone
- Dessert Ruins Zone (note the inserted ‘s’)
- Sea Bottom Segue
- Another odd one. This technically isn’t its own zone, and it also doesn’t have a name. It’s a visual theme that appears in a single act of two different zones, sort of like Dessert Ruins, but without its own punny name. “Sea Bottom Segue” is the title of the music that plays during these levels. “Segue” is a musical term, but it also shares a general concept with the more literal word of a seamless transition from one place or idea to another. Literally, this is an undersea tunnel connecting one place to another, so the name makes sense. We also have “Honeycomb Highway” to look at as another example of a music track that clearly applies a name to a level theme that doesn’t otherwise get an in-game name.
- Between this episode and the last one, the only level theme from Lost World not to make some kind of appearance is the casino level in Frozen Factory Act 3 (music title of “Double Down” probably doesn’t work for a name here), as well as the “Hidden World.”
- This episode shows that Big was contributing in the background plots of several previous episodes, including:
- Big is able to judge the metric weight of the mutant demon shark on sight alone, referencing the weight tallying score system used in Big’s Sonic Adventure levels.
- He’s able to lift this obscenely large fish out of the water without much trouble—reasonable, given his ability to do the same with a full-sized car in his Adventure story.
- Among the planets mentioned but not seen in this episode are “Cascade” and “Green Gate.” These are both planets from the Metarex Saga of Sonic X. Their descriptions as tourist destinations would suggest that Metarex do not (yet) exist in this universe to ravage them.
- Apart from the occasional “gotta go fast” that’s only been used because of relevance to the Sonic movie, this is the first direct reference that has been made to Sonic X in The Chaos Project. In hindsight, it’s very odd that Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic Boom both got full episodes based around them before X was even referenced. I suppose that’s because the former two both sit comfortably in alternate non-canon universes, so introducing their ideas into the canon makes it clear that this is all meant to be a reinterpretation. But Sonic X is in a weird not-quite-canon limbo that makes any kind of reference dangerous—I don’t want to imply that the events of Sonic X have taken place, because in CP canon, they haven’t.
- More SEGA references in space to round off the season.
- Seraph’s ship, unnamed before now, is called the SG-1000, SEGA’s 8-bit predecessor to the Master System.
- The Algolian system from Phantasy Star shows up yet again.
- The ship Dodon Pa tries to sell to Big is the TeraDrive, which, exactly as Dodon Pa describes, was a Japan-only Mega Drive with a built-in home computer.
- The Orthani language has been brought to you by ChatGPT. The AI model was used to workshop the structure, grammar, and syntax of the language, and then all the lines in this episode were translated using a consistent dictionary. I’ll put up the dictionary in the bonus content area at some point.
- Barry claims to have found Froggy in the trashcan. This is a reference to a sub-plot in The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog involving Barry’s ongoing quest to search trashcans for clues.
- Upon realizing that they need to think, Barry pulls out a “Dream Gear”. This is the device on which the running minigame is played in Murder of Sonic. However, the game theoretically suggests that there is no actual Dream Gear, just a metaphorical representation of Barry’s thoughts. But they also don’t say that there isn’t a real Dream Gear. I find the image of Barry actually pulling out a gaming handheld in the middle of an interrogation while everyone is watching to be hilarious, so I ran with it.
- The method of Big’s arrival in Cyber Space resembles that of Knuckles in the prologue animation Sonic Frotniers: Divergence.
- The portal that Big takes is a purple one, implying it to be a Fishing Spot portal, despite it leading to Kronos Island. That oddity was already mentioned above.
- It is new information that there were Cyber Space portals on the Ancients’ Homeworld. The End suggests that Cyber Space was only created for the purpose of trapping it, but there is some cause for doubting that information. If nothing else, perhaps this was just a lone prototype that Big “accidentally” turned on.
- The Scavengers that assault the Mother’s Canyon race appear to be the same group from the Sonic Movie 2 and its Pre-Quill comic. In the comic, they appear to speak Ancient Babylonian (as does Longclaw’s clan in the movie, but who knows if that’s related), so I decided to acknowledge that by suggesting that they are “carrying on the legacy of the Babylon Rogues.” This doesn’t imply anything one way or another about what role the Babylonians had left in the galaxy after Babylon Garden crashed on Earth, but it does provide the new suggestion that the Rogues specifically were already known to be intergalactic thieves even before that crash. The alternative was to make them actual Babylonians, but given that they appear to be more humanoid than animoid in the movie, I thought that would be too much of a stretch.
- The way Big is rescued by the Wisps parallels Sonic’s own rescue at the end of Colors.
- Similarly, the way the Wisps play as he tries to recruit their help closely mirrors some shots from the title screen opening movie of Colors.
- The way that the Jade Ghost Wisp induces a partial transformation, allowing Big to phase through the ground without taking on the Ghost form entirely, also happened to Sonic in the Sonic Colors: Rise of the Wisps animation made for Ultimate.
And that is all for now! The Season Finale is in the works, so stay tuned!
-And until then, remember to live and learn every day!
The Chaos Project: Sonic the Hedgehog 