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*
