Retcon = permanent contradiction erasing something from canon intentionally. Note that most of these retcons are GOOD, because it’s the writers learning over time to make things make more sense over time.
1: Issue 14 against Issue 7: A very minor and very understandable retcon is that in Issue 7, Gallagher had a throwaway line that money has no value thanks to Robotnik taking over, and that’s constantly contradicted afterwards in Penders’ issues like as early as Issue 14 Girls Just Wanna Have Fun and the evil twins’ When Hedgehogs Collide stories and Fang asking for double the money from Eggman. This is a good retcon because that idea was stupid. It would have no value to Eggman since he’s a world dictator who can get whatever he wants, but other people would still use an economy.
Ironically even the no money thing was a retcon attempt by itself, contradicting this from Issue 1:
2: Issue 18 against Sonic Miniseries Issue 0: The whole origin of the Freedom Fighters is retconned. In Sonic Miniseries Issue 0, Sally first met Sonic after Chuck was roboticized and she introduced him to her Freedom Fighters, and Sonic first saw the roboticized Chuck in a crowd of Robians with swirly eyes looking like normal people and used a tornado attack rather than seeing him in a factory. These two things are contradicted later.
Sally and Sonic were apparently always childhood friends together as Penders establishes in Issue 18, in fact later on Gallagher has stories where it’s clear that all of the Freedom Fighters were childhood friends in two Sonic Super Special Issues starting with the 5th one, which shows them discovering their Knothole base and Sally coming up with the name Freedom Fighters.
It’s a good retcon because it makes more sense that all of the heroes would’ve already been friends with each other to explain how they all met up and became Freedom Fighters together so quickly and easily, as they already knew each other. It felt overly convenient originally that Sally already had a group of heroes organized.
3: Issue 14 against Sonic Miniseries: In Issue 14, Eggman says nobody ever got into his base, except that insurance salesman last month, but in the Sonic Miniseries, the heroes clearly went into his base to save Sally from being roboticized.
4: Issue 22 against Issue 19: In Issue 19, Cyborg-Sonic says that his resistance ” was terminated ” by Robo-Robotnik. Then we see him and Sally alive in a happy future in Issue 22 one time. Good.
See, the above picture is from Cyborg Sonic’s future where Robo-Robotnik comes from.
5: My least favorite retcon ever is that Knothole went from clearly being a place underground to stupidly above ground and somehow not spotted by Robotnik. Even Sonic Miniseries 2 had the heroes say that the exploding robot would destroy all of Knothole and Sonic got it out of just the underground base before it exploded. It all started with Penders. This was SatAM’s fault, he was making it closer to that when it was ALWAYS stupid that Knothole wasn’t spotted above ground by satellites or flying camera drones or robots.
6: Issue 13 has Early Installment Weirdness regarding the Chaos Chamber. As in, it wasn’t around, it was just a pile of stones outside.
7: Super Sonic vs Super Knuckles against Sonic & Knuckles: Thanks to Gallagher, it turns out Sally was best friends with Knuckles before he even met Sonic. She clearly acted in Sonic and Knuckles as if she was finding out about Angel Island for the FIRST TIME. THIS is what’s contradicted! ” That character lied ” is the CHEAPEST easiest way to retcon something. It’s just that it seems to continue the trend of making Knuckles have a sort of Character Development from an unlikable antisocial jerk who hates Sonic long past when he should’ve, to someone reasonable and introspective with friends thanks to Penders.
There’s no indication this paranoid jerk would ever have FRIENDS already.
Great acting, Sally, seriously.
8: Issue 30 against Sonic Miniseries 0: According to Angelo in Issue 30, it turns out Sally was with Sonic when Sonic first saw the roboticized form of Uncle Chuck when he was alone with him in the crabmeat factory. This is an unnecessary retcon, and it’s also glaringly Creator’s Pet because why would the writer feel the need to put Sally there and not do anything? As far as I’m concerned, this isn’t the canon way that it happened.
Issue 57 retcons the Sally panel away and returns the original continuity to canon.
9: Issue 42 against Sonic’s Quest Issue 2: In Sonic’s Quest Issue 2 by Gallagher, Knuckles apparently respects Athair enough to say, “ By the beads of Athair! “ as a surprised interjection to the Death Egg. Then when Penders writes him actually meeting Athair in Knuckles’ Quest Issue 42, his reaction to him is more realistic and completely different rather than respecting him way too much for no real reason.
This is a good retcon, but still is one because it contradicts something implied earlier. I was annoyed by how he bickered with Athair so much and ended up feeling sorry for and rooting for him as a result, but ultimately it’s better writing because it makes actual sense with Knuckles being a guardian and wondering why Athair gave up being one.
10: Issue 42 against Sonic Miniseries Issue 2: The Freedom Emeralds of Gallagher’s Sonic Miniseries Issue 2 are never mentioned again despite being made a very big deal of as being part of the Acorn crown when the king was deposed and an entire issue being dedicated to recovering them. It’s a shame because Sally could’ve used them to be more useful.
Worst magic crown EVER.
In Issue 42, the Freedom Emeralds are officially retconned. Kent Taylor introduces the Crown of Acorns, and that retcons the Freedom Emeralds because they were supposed to have been on a crown at first.
11: Issue 46 against 3: In Issue 3 in Bunnie’s first story, Antoine’s clearly seeing her for the first time, asking, “ What is that? “ with an impressed smile, with Bunnie asking, “ My oh my, who’s that little soldier boy? “ In Issue 46, Penders retcons it that Antoine had saved Bunnie before she was a cyborg and she used to know him as a dashing hero, This is one unnecessary retcon. What bothers me more than the Bunnie part of the retcon is the “ used to be a dashing hero “ part, since he was ALWAYS a coward. Gallagher shows us in the Sonic as a kid issues that Antoine was always a coward. Why would his Character Development go backwards offscreen?
12: Sonic Super Special 1 against Sonic Blast: In SSS1 “ The Map, “ by Tom Rolston, Snively says that he’s been plotting against Robotnik for years. “ I have been subtly scheming against him for years, but if I’m not too careful, he’ll know it’s me. “ But Gallagher’s Sonic (3D) Blast Special clearly established that he started being super rebellious against Robotnik to the point of sabotaging his communication encrypter in his enemies’ favor, only AFTER he was stuck on Robotnik’s back for days because of the end of Sonic’s Quest.
Granted, that was stupid, no way he’d survive that, but the point is that BEFORE the issue where Robotnik was sent into the Void and he replaced him, he was shown as unquestionably loyal and cheerful, even, with only the occasional insult or snarky quip to imply disloyalty. When Robotnik was zapped away by EVE, he didn’t know what to do with himself without Robotnik gone, he was literally crying, and didn’t try any major plans being wasted as a character while he was away.
And now I’m expected to believe that he’s been plotting to overthrow Robotnik for years. I could’ve forgiven that as one bad line of dialogue to dismiss by a writer who never knew what he was doing, who all of his stories were terrible by that point and I can only think of one good one afterwards. In that very story, Antoine was out of character the whole time, so maybe Snively was gotten wrong, too.
But then Gallagher’s Sonic Super Special Issue 5 happened, where we see that even from the very beginning of the Freedom Fighter days, Snively was still planning to take Robotnik’s place, saying, “ for now, “ about him being in charge. It honestly feels like the writers retconned him from being genuinely loyal and admiring of him to him being a backstabber, just because SatAM did the exact same thing with even less of an excuse, where he was loyal and admiring in Season 1 and not in Season 2, for no reason.
I don’t really appreciate this, I feel like this was a bad retcon, because it pretends that his Character Development after Sonic’s Quest and which was foreshadowed in the issue where Chuck gets free, never actually happened, because he was apparently plotting to replace Robotnik all along.
Maybe it’s more that after Sonic’s Quest he started actively sabotaging him and he was still power hungry before, considering the time he took over when Robotnik was in The Void, but why did he not sabotage him at all before the Sonic Blast Special, if he was always treacherous? Why did he not know what to do with himself with Robotnik gone thanks to EVE and just sit there crying for hours, instead of celebrating years’ worth of waiting being over?! His Character Development was one of the only things that made him interesting, so I don’t see how it’s necessary to just ignore it.
13: Dr. Quack’s electro-encellographic memory inducer is retconned by the same writer Penders to have the new name Dream Watcher in Issue 50. Sonic doesn’t ask for clarification on what he means and point out the name change, so either this is a retcon, or we’re expected to understand that he changed the name offscreen. Another good retcon because the first name was stupid.
14: Knuckles Comic Issue 1 against Sonic’s Friendly Rival Knuckles 3: Locke was wearing a black cloak in the Knuckles Miniseries and its lead-up and he doesn’t in the Knuckles Comic. It’s never mentioned again. I hope that means him wearing the same outfit as the Legionnaires was retconned then because it’s silly in retrospect.
15: In Issue 35 “ A Sense of History, “ it’s clearly called Echidnapolis, but by the Knuckles Comic Issue 4, Penders adds an “ o “ before polis, and I never adjusted to verbally calling it by that new retconned name, which is retconned since that’s what KNUCKLES calls it before anyone else says the name.
If he wanted to change the name, in such a minor way that I took until long after the Knuckles Comic to even notice because I was already reading it as Echidnapolis automatically, then he could’ve just had Knuckles be told by an Echidnaopolis resident that the city’s name was changed, being corrected, or maybe Knuckles had misremembered his history lessons and called the city the wrong name. But instead, even Knuckles calls it by the new name out of complete nowhere. It’s a nitpick, and ultimately it’s a good retcon because the opolis sounds better, but it really didn’t need to be a retcon.
16: We clearly saw in Issue 36 A Sense of History that the echidnas blew up their city to follow the technology ban. But NOPE! I guess THAT was Knuckles being LIED TO by Locke so he wouldn’t ask where the city is and ask to go back. But that’s never actually explained as being the case. It’s because of this contradictory retcon that I was confused when Knuckles first went into Echidnapolis in Knuckles 4 and thought that he was going back in time through a portal, and it wasn’t until a while after Hawking told me about the Hyper-Zone Projector that I finally realized what was going on, confused as hell before that point.
This is a good retcon obviously, it’s for the best that the idea of Echidnapolis isn’t completely wasted since this is one of the most unique things about Archie as a continuity and it just wouldn’t be the same without it, not to mention the advanced ancient city with a twist is a cool concept. It’s just that you shouldn’t establish that a city was destroyed 400 years ago with dynamite and THEN suddenly pretend that never got mentioned. I hope EVERYBODY assumed it was time travel at first because why wouldn’t they?
Why wouldn’t they have simply brought the city back by bringing it forwards in time but with Knuckles preventing it from being destroyed? That’s probably how it’d be done in the games, have Knuckles prevent Chaos from destroying the echidnas so they can have a city in the present day. Wouldn’t it have been much simpler to do that, than to have it be going on in another dimension?
But none of the guardians after Steppenwolf would’ve had a city around if it got destroyed, time would’ve passed with the city being destroyed, and why would there be a time portal for Lara-Le to go through in the first place? With people going back in time from the future, wouldn’t history be changed to prevent its destruction by future people?
So, ultimately, having it have been in another dimension all along was just for the best for explaining how every generation had someone guarding its Emerald, from every generation having other echidnas for the guardians to marry and have kids with to continue on their family line in the FIRST place.
This makes a lot more sense than the games’ lack of an explanation for it making it appear that the Emerald had no guardian for a thousand years and then Knuckles came out of nowhere and he’ll only live for so long anyways. Yeah, obviously Sonic 3 didn’t think the implications of Knuckles’ being the last of his kind all the way through when it had that one throwaway line in its manual in the early 90s. A line that if SA1 cared about that much, it would’ve had Knuckles reacting properly to seeing other echidnas for the first time.
17: I was surprised that we saw Kodos alive and well in Bollers’ story when we saw him get vaporized by Feist’s laser in Issue 43. But I guess when we saw Kodos vaporized by Feist, it was another “ Robotnik was teleported by EVE’s ash-creating laser “ situation and Feist was actually just teleporting Kodos and the king to Ixis to be his slaves.
It was never explicitly stated that he was actually about to kill them, and we saw teleportation lasers from EVE and from the laser being reflected off an Emerald back at Eggman to send him back to Mobius from Moebius, so the idea wouldn’t come out of nowhere, it just wasn’t explained properly. So that’s an example of “ it feels like a retcon, but it actually isn’t if you think about it. “ Unless it really was Pender’s intention to kill off Kodos and Bollers changed it. And it’s better that way because I was disappointed at the idea that Kodos would be wasted as a villain by being vaporized.
18: In Issue 58, the king explains that when Robotnik initiated his coup, King Max engaged the Swatbots in battle with a Sword, reflecting a laser with it. ODD, I never saw THAT from his memories in the hospital in Issue 43, I remember him being captured by them effortlessly and never even SEEING the Sword! Granted, this is another example of a good retcon, making him look more proactive trying to fight back rather than him just being grabbed by the Swatbots and effortlessly captured.
19: In Issue 65 according to Bollers, it’s because of Nate that the Acorn Kingdom got to a technological Golden Age and the city of Mobotropolis was built to celebrate. That contradicts the city’s history by Penders in Issue 71; the city was built way earlier to be a multi-cultural city by a visionary ancestor of Sally’s ancestor, bringing various cavemen knowledge together.
But here, some text says, “ the city of Mobotropolis was built in commemoration. “) Actually, I like this better, it’s a good retcon, because I don’t like the idea that Mobotropolis only came to exist after Nate met the king’s father, I always pictured the city to have been a long-standing ancient city about as old as Echidnapolis. I like the idea that it existed longer better because it’s a significant setting in the comic.
20: In Issue 65 by Bollers, Nate supposedly was hailed as a hero for creating the Rings and respected. We see him on a balcony in front of a cheering group of people throwing their hats upwards, and Nate said in the narration, “ I was hailed as a hero by the populace. “ But then it turns out he wasn’t actually hailed as a hero for creating the Rings, it’s retconned in Issue 73 by Bollers that Chuck was given all the credit and he feels bad about it.
And as if that wasn’t bad enough, Nate’s name AND EXISTENCE were apparently left out of the Kingdom Records- What, just because Nate’s a human? But people didn’t seem to mind him being a teacher to Mobian students at two different points, so what gives? How was Chuck his finest student, as stated in Issue 73 at that, if he wasn’t able to teach him in school from his name and existence being a secret?!
That was a depressing and unnecessary retcon. And it can be seen as early as Issue 68, because apparently Nate has to be in disguise in the city and his human appearance would cause a panic, and he’s mistreated for being a human at one point, when everyone should know who he is and like him because we clearly saw him being cheered for in 65. This contributes nothing but making things depressing, their disguises aren’t even believable because he’d be recognized as a human under the hood immediately.
21: In Issue 36, Eggman says that Kodos developed inventions to keep law and order over the populace, and ” the best one was a convenient little thing called the Zone of Silence! Another dimension of reality suitable for stranding one’s enemies! ” If it was made for that purpose, it makes far more sense that it’d be made by Kodos because it was made for a REASON. Ixis would have had no reason to make it. By Issue 43, suddenly Eggman says that Ixis is the zone’s inventor.
In Issue 53 by Bollers, the crystallized king had told the heroes in Ixis’ first issue that Ixis was the supposed creator of the Zone of Silence.
But in Issue 66, also by Bollers, there’s a textbox in the Ultra Sonic fight’s beginning saying that Ixis had accidentally opened the doorway to the Zone of Silence years ago as the royal wizard, and he entered the zone to explore it. How could you ACCIDENTALLY CREATE a universe?!
And if he created that universe, why would he explore it if he would’ve created it and thus would know every aspect of it already by heart? Good, actually, because Ixis is a bad guy who doesn’t deserve to be the creator of a universe, but retcons are still confusing!
YOU DID DO THAT! Stop LYING to TAILS!
22: In Issue 70, Paul Castiglia’s back-up story retcons that Sonic and Sally started dating at the end of Issue 560. In Issue 111, instead of Sonic admitting to Tails that he did tell someone he loved her, Bollers retcons that Sally and Sonic admitted they loved each other and started dating in Issue 50 just so that HE could be the one to do it WAY LATER.
It was very obvious that the ending of Issue 50 was intending for us to assume that Sonic and Sally started dating, because Sonic kisses her twice, once while dunking her at that, the exact same way he kissed her after he saved her from Fang when Bollers has them admit they love each other.
It’s totally unrealistic to expect a relationship not to start from that, without Sally being angry at him for refusing to date her after kissing her twice. She’s the opposite of angry, she becomes affectionate after that and the Ship Tease is ramped up, with Sonic giving her flowers and Sally kissing him on the forehead.
And that kiss above was still canon because look, it was remembered in issue 101 by Sonic and that’s how he realized what he was in wasn’t the real reality he was used to.
Yeah they’re totally just friends! Friends kiss each other all the time, right?!
But then we get Issue 70 by Paul Castiglia and someone in Sonic’s dream talks as if Sonic and Sally aren’t an item, and isn’t corrected. If they’re supposed to be just friends, this isn’t how you write a friendship. And while I was making fun of how ” tame ” they were, saying ” I don’t buy that these people are in love, ” I said that because I was making fun of censorship that wasn’t letting them actually act how they would normally as a couple. And the fact that they had no chemistry. But it was still obvious that they had a crush on each other, and they told each other about it in Issue 50!!
Yeah, friends always kiss each other on the cheek! If these are supposed to be just friend affection moments, why isn’t Sonic having them with TAILS?!
And later on we get an entire back-up story dedicated to Bollers having Sonic explain why he doesn’t have a girlfriend. So we go from one stupid line in a pointless back-up story that could be dismissed being made by an inexperienced writer, to it being followed up on by an entire back-up story by the main writer trying to sink any possible ships. Who was that trying to appeal to?
It’s a retcon that tries to pretend Penders never wrote them getting together just to avoid shaking the status quo, when Sally’s never been hugging him that much BEFORE they kissed. It’s a sloppy enough retcon that it even got ME angrily ranting at the continuity error, and I don’t even think they’d make a good couple! Opposites may attract, but they don’t LAST, they’re actually the most likely to get divorced.
I guess it’s a good retcon then since they belong with more compatible people, and this delays them being together with their complete opposite, but Sonic and Sally don’t date other people in the meantime, so them not dating after that was just entirely worthless from contributing nothing but depriving us of arguably sweet moments between likable characters.
Combine that with the fact that there was no attempt at addressing why they didn’t start dating after Sonic kissed her when she woke up from the stasis tube and it was instead just swept under the rug, and this retcon seriously pisses me off with how sloppy it is. It comes off as the writers being totally ignorant and unaware at best, and just wanting to spite another writer at worst. Bollers only really started writing starting with a little of Issue 50 and beyond, and Paul barely wrote at all.
Even ignoring all the affection they show each other, which is suspicious because Sonic isn’t that affectionate with any of his other friends even Tails, and the same can be said for Sally, Issue 50 started a trend. For the FIRST TIME we start to notice scenes where it’s just Sonic and Sally together hanging out. There’s Issue 53’s beginning, Issue 71, even the ending of Sonic Super Special 10. You can’t blame me for assuming they were on dates as boyfriend and girlfriend of some kind because they’ve literally never spent entire scenes alone together THAT frequently before.
23: By Issue 74, suddenly it’s retconned that Ixis instead of Kodos invented everything in the war room, including the mace which has nothing to do with magic. What’s Kodos good for anymore then?
24: In Knuckles Issue 28, the origin of the Fiona robot was somehow that she was left over from the Sally Miniseries when she was never seen there at all. It’s retconned in Knuckles Comic 28. And it makes more sense there, she’s from a labor camp specifically made for getting infiltrators made.
25: In the earlier Gallagher issues, we saw lots of mentions to TV; Jurassic Park was mentioned in the Universalamander story, Sally cried at a soap opera and switched channels to a news broadcast by a Swatbot. Sonic mentioned Mighty Mouse. But sadly Issue 72 comes around and Bollers makes Sonic look like a complete idiot who doesn’t even know what a TV is, and calls it a doohickey, and apparently Nate inventing these “ telecrates “ is now such a big deal! It’s so stupid!
Does that mean that every time we saw a TV show or the camera footage being used as a TV, it’s now retconned? Kodos even calls the TVs “ boxes. “ It’s so contradictory! The entire first story of Issue 12 couldn’t have happened without TV because Sonic saw it and went to fight Eggman because of it!
26: In Issue 36, Eggman said in his flashback, “ Interesting! Kodos was just about to overthrow the king when he DISAPPEARED! “ This contradicts a later story where he kicked Kodos into the Void BECAUSE Kodos said he wanted to overthrow the king. How is Eggman surprised to learn he did from a piece of paper after that? Wouldn’t he have said, “ when I kicked him into the Zone of Silence, “ or say disappeared in sarcastic quotation marks, since he’s just in the company of robots loyal to him?
So it wasn’t thought up by Bollers that he was the one who put Kodos in that zone yet. We see that he sent him to that Zone in Bollers’ Issue 72, and we see the scene officially in Issue 74. I prefer that retcon because it makes Eggman take action.
27: In Knuckles Comic Issue 24, we’re supposed to pretend that Edmund “ put the bag on your (Dimitri’s) plan, “ to rule the world and stuff, but no, in 35 Sense of History we just see Dimitri become powerful and then the next issue cuts to Edmund chained to a wall It was the ants that crumbled his base and stopped him. THEY made the wall and ceiling collapse on him!
And yet I’m constantly annoyed by later references to Edmund stopping Dimitri and Edmund being a traitor in like the Knuckles 23 arc, when we never saw him do ANYTHING against him and how COULD he, when he didn’t have ANY magical powers to use, against someone literally omnipotent at the time?
So the idea that Edmund could ever stop him or inconvenience him in any way was stupid. And when Knuckles tells Dimitri that Edmund supposedly put the bag on his plan, he’s not corrected and told he’s buying into revisionist history propaganda glorifying Edmund. It’s confusingly inconsistent. So much in A Sense of History gets contradicted by the Knuckles Comic trying to develop on it later, only the basic idea remains the same.
Edmund didn’t deserve to have that revisionist history glorifying him because he didn’t do anything but get chained to a wall! Why would he be chained to a wall for being a threat to his plan and a big enemy if there couldn’t have possibly been anything he could’ve done against him?
28: Sonic is very suspicious of Dr Quack in Issue 43 as if he’s first meeting him, and asks Sally if he trusts him, and Rotor calls him out on his lack of faith in medical science, but apparently he knew him since Tails was born in SSS9 and wasn’t mistreating him back then. So he couldn’t have actually still been suspicious of him.
29: Of course, Sonic Super Special 10 changes the names of the good Swatbots to Sweep-bots, a name making more sense for good robots.
30: And either Kintobor went on a diet to lose a lot of weight and finally realized the evil cyborg eyes made no sense for him or he’s been officially retconned to have always had that harmless skinny design, so another example of good retcons, two in a row this time.
31: In Issue 72, Robotnik shows that he had banished Kodos in his autobiography wearing a red and gold military uniform, with cyborg black and red eyes, but when we see him actually do it in Penders’ story in Issue 74, he has white and red eyes and the lame gray outfit. This is a pretty minor art inconsistency, like the one hand not talking to the other, but it’s still a contradiction.
It would’ve been a more believable lie and better writing if Robotnik had lied to the king that Kodos had been planning to overthrow him with Robotnik’s help and Robotnik had refused and pushed him into the Zone of Silence to save him. That would’ve better justified why the king trusted him not to overthrow him, instead of him just taking his word for it that Kodos went into the Zone of Silence by accident despite having no reason to ever turn on its portal at all.
It would’ve made sense that Kodos was banished for trying to overthrow the king, that’s what I always assumed about why he was in that zone when I first saw him. I guess I was thinking of the Zone of Silence like the Twilight Realm in Zelda, a place criminals were banished to, because why ELSE would the portal to the Zone of Silence even be allowed to keep existing in the king’s castle if it wasn’t used for that?
32: Issue 74 has the king say that he made an error in judgment when it came to Nate, but Nate’s origin story issue said that he banished HIMSELF, which was less depressing and frustrating.
33: In Issue 75 by Bollers, Robo-Robotnik explains that when he sent Robotnik home, his interdimensional teleporter tapped into his memory to tell him where the Giant Borg’s pieces were all hidden. And now he was always the same person as the Robo Robotnik in Issue 19, when Robotnik didn’t know who he was in Issue 22 and says that meeting another version of him has happened before. How did Robotnik know where the Giant Borg pieces were all hidden, wouldn’t only the individual Sonics who hid them know that? That’s another retcon then!
34: Issue 75: There’s no way that Penders planned this from all the way back in Issue 22. It SURE was CONVENIENT that Robo-Robotnik had thought to put memory-tapping powers into an interdimensional teleporter that was only designed with teleporting HIM in mind and nobody else, when his consciousness was trapped in a satellite running out of power!
35: Julie-Su goes from having a house that she just walks into from outside after a date in Knuckles Comic Issue 27, to having an apartment whose front door leads to a hallway when Lara-Le visits her in Knuckles Issue 28. In 27, she went straight from the outside to inside her house, which was really dark, so obviously it wasn’t an apartment building, and she sat down and sighed like she was in the living room.
From this….
to this.
One retcon in the span of two issues within the SAME ARC, though this is just an art thing and not a big story thing. How’d Julie get her own place as a moneyless teenager, though? I guess she has a career working for Remington offscreen, and we DID see broken windows in her house so it’s not like it isn’t cheap.
At least the artist recognized that an apartment makes more sense for her income level, not to mention Legionnaire history. So this is a good retcon. A similar type of retcon is that the Knothole Kitchen goes from looking the way it does in Issue 13’s second story to the way it looks in Sonic Triple Trouble Special, not looking underground anymore, to the point where I don’t think of it as being the same room as the last place.
36: Moritori Rex goes from Kragok’s father as mentioned in Knuckles 18 to not his father but his grandfather, and more like a substitute father figure when it’s retconned in Sonic Super Special Issue 11 that no, him and Lien-Da actually killed their father, Luger, and Rex wasn’t Luger. So Kragok was just using confusing terminology by calling Rex his father in front of Knuckles without clarifying, and actually that does make sense since you know, he was his enemy, and he didn’t really wanna give him info in the first place.
But it really comes off as a retcon after the fact and not something that was true all along. But Lien-Da saying that Moritori was more of a father to them than their actual father under Flynn did genuinely help to clear up the confusion on Kragok basically lying to Knuckles. I guess it’s a good retcon, since it gives Kragok and Lien-Da a big villain moment Start of Darkness in their backstory emphasizing that they were always power hungry, it’s just that it feels very pointless.
37: Issue 79: We see Sonic as a baby here, when his father was just roboticized, when according to Sonic in Issue 74, he reunited with his parents 10 years ago, and he was 16 when he said that. Here, he’s definitely a baby, and this is around the time he lost both of his parents. He’s even in Chuck’s backpack later.
38: In Issue 79, it was only Elias heading to the Ring of Acorns. In Issue 80, suddenly Elias has the Freedom Fighters behind him in the same exact place seconds later. At least this way they all get to witness Modern Amy’s appearance at once to be dramatic, but they came out of NOWHERE, only Elias out of them had a reason to go there. I get that they showed up quickly before Elias, but they were there quick enough to see Amy’s light when they were nowhere near Elias when he was outside.
39: In Issue 87 by Danny F, Sonic says that the Power Gem in Shard’s chest from the Knuckles Chaotix Special is what “ finally gave him a personality, “ but he clearly has the exact same personality in the Sonic CD adaptation when he first met Sonic! Nevertheless, Penders would use this as an excuse to claim ownership over Shard who Gallagher had written first, because he thought up the Power Gem idea and that was supposedly what made Shard have his personality, when that’s just not true. Sonic’s wrong assumption kind of became canon, it’s never stated to BE a wrong assumption in the story, and that’s annoying!
40: Issue 102 by Bollers: The comic goes back and forth twice on whether or not Robians can sleep and dream, as would actually make sense. Chuck says they don’t get tired anymore, then when Antoine’s father gets his free will back, he says to Antoine in amazement that he had dreamed about him.
And then Issue 123 changes it back. The narration pretends that Robians can’t sleep, when Antoine’s father said he dreamed about him. That’s very stupid. A person’s mental health would deteriorate if they never got to sleep. Can they just be able to sleep? You can’t leave a computer on forever and never being able to sleep would have a catastrophic effect on mental health.
41: Issue 36 A Sense of History showed Edmund as the first guardian, but this gets retconned in Issue 102: ” When Knuckles saved my brother, that took away the impetus for the creation of the guardians… ” So NOW it’s acknowledged that Edmund WASN’T the first guardian and Steppenwolf was the first guardian after all, because Edmund wasn’t trained like Steppenwolf was, being unable to fight as well. So I was right to assume that it was retconned that Edmund was the first guardian even if it turns out it took longer than I thought.
When the Floating Island’s renamed Angel Island, Edmund’s called the first guardian again, but 102 was supposed to make the distinction that Edmund wasn’t trained like a guardian should be, being a scientist, not a fighter.
42: In Issue 105, the character profile for Snively after this immediately starts out with a retcon because it says Snively’s mother died giving birth when clearly there was a picture of his mother on a desk at the end of Sonic’s Quest Issue 3. I hate that retcon because it’s needlessly depressing. It humanized Snively, having a picture of his mom that he loved. But apparently, it was a picture of someone he never got to know!
Then it’s much harder to believe HE would care enough to keep that picture around when he never got attached to her, even after he was separated from any family pictures and would have to go back to Megopolis to get them. While this doesn’t outright disprove the idea that he knew his mom, as he could’ve still had a photo of her from before he was born, it’s much more confusing and it’s clear that her being alive was the original plan of the writers.
43: In Issue 29, the narration stated that Dulcy was the last of the dragons. While SatAM would show that some dragons weren’t roboticized, maybe that issue was before that episode, and the comic didn’t pay any attention to it. That’s why we didn’t see those specific dragons in the comic. In Issue 106, there’s a dragon, and not even the Dulcy kind. There’s no indication he has any connection with Mount Vesuvio. So this is clearly a retcon. AND one I like! Dulcy being the only unroboticized dragon was too depressing anyways.
44: In Issue 117 by Bollers, Eggman says to Drago that he sees in his data files that Robotnik made a deal with Drago for a factory he used to own, and dismisses the audacity of it. UH, NO. Drago’s deal was that he’d become a duke! That has nothing to do with a factory!
I thought he betrayed them for POWER, and owning a factory wouldn’t be the kind of power he’d find worth it, lots of people own factories! This makes no sense and I have a feeling it’ll never be restated that yes, he wanted to become the ruler of something and this was just a dumb line.
45: Issue 121 pretends that Jules is the one who first taught Sonic how to play the guitar, either that or first taught him how to play it especially well, but he’s clearly been playing it before he reunited with him. In Issue 8, didn’t he strum a guitar and the note went all the way to Robotnik? In Issue 81, and Issue 106, Sonic plays the guitar on his own.
Later on, Jules says he can still teach his boy how to play the guitar even if he can’t himself. How’d he play it earlier? This implies that he only recently started teaching him, but by deciding to say this now, while Sonic’s playing, he’s implying he only very recently started teaching him how. Issue 8 is the strongest piece of evidence this is a retcon because in 81, he was with his dad again, so it could be assumed he taught him how, but nope, he played it long before that.
46: Issue 122: Catweazle was red and unrecognizable in the story about Vector first meeting Knuckles, instead of the color white like he always was. More importantly, Knuckles forgets Locke already told him that Aurora gave him a dream of a bad future.
47: In Issue 98, when Shadow was still in the tube, Maria was startled by a power surge caused by the Station Square military already arriving to kill her. So Shadow barely got to know her before she died. In Issue 124, Shadow thinks about how Maria was his friend, and he thinks he was attached to her a lot. Though I’m fine that being retconned because it was lame that he didn’t get the chance to be friends with Maria and get attached to her. That was his whole motivation for being so upset at losing her. Maybe there was a subtle time skip by a week in this issue.
48: In Issue 124, again, Aurora talks as if Dimitri did some tests when Knuckles was kidnapped that accelerated his natural processes to make his body react with magic to dangerous situations. This is implied as early as Issue 91, but we could assume that Gala-Na was just mistaken.
But even before the Dark Alliance arc, in Knuckles Comic Issue 11, Knuckles’ burns healed magically during the wandering tribe arc, so yeah, no, Aurora, it wasn’t Dimitri accelerating his natural processes, SOMEHOW BY ACCIDENT at that. He had the omnipotence inside of him all along. But apparently that was retconned too and that healing was just a normal guardian power. Yeah, I don’t accept that. How the hell did Dimitri ACCIDENTALLY accelerate Knuckles’ natural processes? How did he ADD magic to him when trying to SUBTRACT magic from him to get it into himself?
49: Prehistory. In Issue 12, Sonic meets his ancestor Sonugh in the cavemen days of dinosaurs after being supposedly sent back in time, and in Tails Miniseries 3, Athair tells Tails that the Walkers lived with dinosaurs and the crashing of a Chaos Emerald created the Ice Age and that was when the coming of the Emeralds happened. This is Gallagher’s historybuilding, but Bollers establishes in 124-5 that the Mobians were created just 1000 years ago and the Emeralds were created by the Xorda gene bombs creating the Mobians long after dinosaur times. Where’d Athair get that idea of history in the first place, then?
I’m torn on whether this retcon was bad or good because at least it actually bothered explaining why there weren’t just humans on a world with humans in it, but usually that’s not explained and with something as bizarre and dark for Sonic as gene bombs… It’s always better writing to have a plot hole be filled than left gaping open. It’s better to be thorough and logical than sloppy. But all the other continuities seem to act like it’s always been the case that humans and Mobians share Mobius and it’s fine, it’s a fantasy world after all.
50: The narration in Issue 125 saying ” the Mobian Moon ” is by itself a stupid retcon because we were told in “ Space in yo Face “ that there were hundreds of Mobian moons, and the whole reason the plot could happen was that the heroes landed their spaceship on Mukury, Mobius’ mud moon. And Sonic was on that moon. But apparently that story’s non-canon now, which sucks because I loved the concept of tons of different moons for Mobius. I knew it would be retconned eventually.
51: In Issue 129, why the HELL is Amadeus looking gray like a generic robot?! This is a serious continuity error by the colorist because the WHOLE reason Rosemary DIDN’T notice that he was a robot when Tails was born, was because he was still his normal color, just all masked up! So there’s no way this color of his is canon. Here it implies that he only looked his normal color because he was painstakingly painted that way to fool her after which Robotnik wasted resources to remove the paint to make him gray again!
52: What’s worse, then we see Amadeus walk away from some energy field or gas just as Rosemary’s reunited with her spouse to find out he was a robot. This BETTER not be trying to pretend that Amadeus was only turned into a robot right when Rosemary was brought to him by Robotnik, because that’s not what happened! She’s asking Amadeus what’s become of him as if she just saw him get roboticized or was told that this robot would be her husband ahead of time.
Rosemary wasn’t originally THERE when Amadeus was roboticized, she was giving birth at the time! That was the whole plot of the earlier story! I hope this attempt at a retcon gets ignored later by later recap of Amadeus’ roboticization, because this art is being very misleading about what happened back then. Why draw squiggly lines around Amadeus if he hasn’t been just roboticized?
HOW’D THE DESTRUCTIX SURVIVE THIS?!
53: Issue 117, it’s clear that none of the roboticized criminals would’ve made it out of the building in the seconds before it’d explode. In Issue 135, Sonic is told that Tommy couldn’t contact him right away because he was picked up by the roboticized goons Eggman somehow sent outside before the place blew up.
Maybe he was lying, and he was picked up by regular robots instead, since this is a fake Tommy, but, we see Metal Destructix later, and there’s no indication in the pre-Flynn issues that they aren’t the real Destructix roboticized. There’s NO apparent motive for why fake robot Destructix would be made for Eggman just for him to not be told they’re fake and just robots made to help him.
And later on, Flynn insists on bringing the real Destructix back, so HOW’D THEY SURVIVE without being roboticized and having their data sent to cyberspace to safety? That’s how I think they survived based on THIS issue, but Flynn does something different. There’s no indication that any of those roboticized criminals made it out before the building would explode!
In fact, how could they have possibly made it out that fast?! Literally the SECOND that dog was hit with the roboticizing tentacle, he had already thrown a live grenade! NO ONE would’ve had the time to escape! Don’t they go off in SECONDS? This is such a lazy Hand Wave for why all those villains got to have more plots!
54: Issue 137 clearly portrays Patch as Antoine, since he somehow remembers when Antoine and Bunnie had just started dating and reflects on it to HIMSELF. ” That’s right, I remember. It was right after we defeated Robotnik, Bunnie and I were just starting out as a new couple when… ” This means that the more serious and mean Antoine being Evil Antoine was a retcon, making this story look like it creates a continuity error in the process from its mere existence.
Extra: Tails is shown with glasses in the future of In Your Face, he doesn’t have them in 25 Years Later. This is a nitpick though because Future Tails could have just gotten contact lenses. So it doesn’t really count but it’s still inconsistent, so I listed it here. And this must have been before he and Sonic became tired of each other and estranged as 25 Years Later established.
55: Issue 140 against In Your Face Special : While the In Your Face Special says that Nicole was destroyed in the war against Robotnik and that’s the whole reason why Rotor had to recreate her to send her into the past in the first place, Issue 140’s 25 Years Later story says that Eggman was defeated when Knuckles went Chaos Knuckles again, with no implication that there was a big fight where Nicole was destroyed before this and the Freedom Fighters got to do stuff.
While Flynn does claim that the 25 Years Later arc takes place in Light Mobius and thus this could make this NOT a continuity error inconsistency since it’s not actually Nicole’s future, that wasn’t what the original writer intended, so it was a continuity error retcon at the TIME. The comic NEVER SAYS the term Light Mobius or ANYTHING. Stuff isn’t canon just because you said it on Twitter.
Granted, there’s no proof that this “ Knuckles destroyed Eggman because no one else had the guts to do it “ idea, proved that Nicole DIDN’T get destroyed because it’s never stated that she DIDN’T get destroyed, she would be in this story arc if she was still around at that point. But it’s still a confusing inconsistency because In Your Face’s narration by Future Sally talked as if Nicole was a big help in taking down Robotnik, when really it was just Knuckles. What’d Nicole even do against him?
Oh no… What if Nicole ends up destroyed because it was an automatic part of the fact that Knuckles made Julie-Su fully organic when he was omnipotent? His lifelong resentment of technology might have caused him to get rid of Nicole too in his efforts to make reality the way he thinks it should be, because it’d be a world without AI! I mean, what OTHER explanation is there? It’d certainly do the extra bit to explain why Sonic HATES him in the future and jumps at every opportunity to argue with and insult him. Though it’d make me wonder why Sally ever forgave him.
56: Issue 146 against Issue 124: In Issue 146, the whole reason the arc happens is because Shadow comes to a place he was led to because he thinks he’ll learn more about his origin that way. Why does Shadow wanna learn his past so badly when he clearly didn’t have amnesia when he fell to earth before? In Issue 124, he tells Sonic he thought he was ” STILL ” under attack, meaning he remembers what happened to him right before this. And right before this, he was thinking about how he remembers who he is, recapping SA2 and thinking that Gerald made him to be a living weapon.
And then Penders makes him wanna learn what his purpose is and all that stuff when he already knows it. And so Eggman gets him back on his side really easily when Shadow already worked with him in SA2 and he acts like he’s joining him for the first time!
If he remembered Gerald and Maria just fine, then why did he ever think he needed to go to Isaac’s base and why did he need to have that exposition about why and how he was created? You would think he would’ve been told that a lot earlier with Gerald and he would’ve remembered that. Why would he forget THAT and not everything ELSE, like the memories of Maria’s friendship that would make him be attached to her?
WOULDN’T YOU KNOW THAT?! Wouldn’t you remember seeing him or be told about him in your past?!
And then Shadow inexplicably says, “ I agree, “ with Isaac trying to kill Sonic, and starts to fight him again! But the SA2 adaptation happened, he should’ve gotten to respect and like Sonic by now! His entire direction starting from this arc is a continuity error because the SA2 adaptation happened! If this was a Shadow Android INSTEAD, it would’ve made sense!
Because he didn’t have amnesia when he fell to earth, in Issue 158 Shadow going to work for Eggman is deceptively forced! Eggman reminds them all that Shadow is created by his grandfather and shows Shadow the military footage of Gerald on the ARK which conveniently also recorded what happened to Maria all the way up on the ARK! This is SO stupid, the SA2 ADAPTATION HAPPENED ALREADY! Why the fuck does Shadow not know ALL of this already? At no point did Shadow ever SAY or THINK that he got amnesia from falling to the earth before the Xorda attack.
And there’s no reason he shouldn’t have asked the people who clearly knew him already to tell him about his past! SA2’s plot was what made him GET OVER antagonizing GUN for Maria! The whole reason he worked for Eggman in the first place was because they had GUN as a common enemy and yet now Shadow is talking as if this is the first time he’s learned this and Eggman isn’t acting like he’s REMINDING him of something he should already know! It’s like SA2 never happened!
57: Issue 148 has 2 in one. In Issue 146, Isaac says that he was programmed and built by two different people, a Nivon and a Clark, but then in Issue 148 just two issues later he says his creator was someone else entirely. He spontaneously changed backstories in the span of the same story arc.
58: In Issue 146, Shadow reveals from Isaac’s diagnostic that he was created over ten millennia ago, 10,000 years ago meaning quite a long time before the Xorda thing happened, but he was “ never used. “ Then it’s revealed he regularly tended to a human who was frozen in a capsule and went out for walks occasionally. So much for never used. So why was he sealed in an airtight chamber then, how was he going out for walks and expected to unfreeze that person, and why did Shadow never question this?
Knothole when Sonic came back in Issue 130.
59: Knothole changed looks:
Knothole later with no explanation.
60: The Ancient Walkers had forged the magic golden Rings in Vesuvio, on the banks of lava lake. GOOD, so Nate wasn’t the ONLY one who could make Rings, go figure! It’s a shame this is such a forgettable text blurb because it really tries to make up for that dumb plot point, by implying that the heroes were all wrong and it really was the Ancient Walkers who forged most of the Rings on the planet, as was implied in the billionth Ring’s introduction story.
The Ancient Walkers are magical beings with mysterious powers and history, and Nate was just some mortal. Of course they made all the Rings. But there’s not enough focus on this to make it memorable enough to make up for that problem.
61: Since we’re expected to believe in Issue 155 The Price of Flame that Dulcy couldn’t breath fire when she didn’t have a black ring in her nose, I guess THIS didn’t happen anymore! This was in Issue 68 and I KNOW I saw Dulcy with a gold Ring before then.
62: In Issue 156, Fiona says that Bunnie never enjoyed Scourge and was just using him to get Antoine jealous (despite being a HERO, so that’s uncharacteristically mean of her if that’s the case), but Patch was never THERE to be MADE jealous, and we never saw her TELL Patch what she did, so huh? She looked pretty happy in Issue 150! She spent hours cuddling with him!
There ARE rare temporary retcons where the writers seem to forget a previous issue detail – for example, Frank Strom has Antoine say this is the first time he and Sonic have fought alongside each other when they did it before in The Map. In Issue 50 Dr Quack says that SONIC was detained looking for the Sword of Acorns and not Knuckles. And in Issue 71’s backwards time story, Sonic talks as if he’s using his intangibility power for the first time when he’s not at all and Sally doesn’t correct him from being already familiar with it.
This might be just a temporary retcon, we’re told in stories like Super Sonic vs Hyper Knuckles by Gallagher and Kent’s first story that the Lake of Rings only spawns one Ring PER DAY. I think that’s how Satam had it too. But then in Issue 42, Kent Taylor has Sally say that a Ring shows up from the lake once every HOUR. If it was every hour, why don’t the heroes just have someone sit there and collect the tons of Rings that’ll show up for Rotor? That’s overpowered! But at the same time, I liked the idea at first because it’d make the lake more useful and productive. So I’m torn.
Rings are portrayed as kind of rare in the comic, and for good reason since apparently they can grant wishes. I hope that’s just bad dialogue of Sally that doesn’t get acknowledged again or it’ll be a dumb retcon. The Lake of Rings wasn’t used that much as a concept anyways, so it’s hard to remember what its exact rules are. And a texbtox once says that Sally used the Sword of Acorns and freed Uncle Chuck’s mind when he was a Robian, but really, the king did that. But these aren’t counted because they have no lasting impact on the comic of any sort of importance, they’re just single-issue mistakes contradicted later that don’t disqualify an entire story from being canon, like Sally references Knuckles looking for the Sword after Issue 50.
Issue 67 has a temporary retcon in the recap. Ixis being sealed away by Nate wishing him away with a Ring in the original fight with him may have been retconned away an issue later. It retcons it so that it took Ultra Sonic and Hyper Tails’ combined talents to seal the zone and Ixis in it. But then in Issue 68, Sonic said that Nate helped him kick Ixis to the Zone of Silence anyways. When Sonic gets home, he tells his friends Nate helped him seal Ixis away. But he could have been lying, with Tails backing him up, so they’d trust Nate. Also, he just said he helped. He did make the Rings that turned them Ultra and Hyper. And finally, in Sonic Super Special 15, Sonic’s recap brings Nate sealing away Ixis back into canon.
Every Continuity Error:
The continuity errors, as opposed to what I call retcons, are; Plot holes against previous issues once new things were introduced, or plot holes against LATER issues because some things make no sense because of previous issues:
While these technically aren’t retcons because they don’t CONTRADICT, just feel incompatible with previous issues, there’s a lot that’s introduced after the fact when Robotnik’s gone. And even before THAT, there’s still problems like this. I only count if a character in-universe or the scene in general does the error. So for example, a textbox saying that it was Sonic who reprogrammed Silver Sonic 2 and not Nate doesn’t count because it’s just a dumb textbox that clearly made a mistake. Sonic’s not a programmer, so they’d never actually want you to think he reprogrammed him in canon.
Against the First Story:
Things that get established that make no sense with the backstory and premise of the comic being how it was:
1: Sonic Live against the first story: If Tails had a wizard uncle who was living in the Great Forest all along, why the fuck didn’t he raise Tails then?! Why didn’t he make a habit of regularly visiting Tails, at least, and therefore discover he lost his parents? He has a crystal ball that lets him see into the future, as the start of 25 Years Later reveals. If he can find out information so easily, and used to be the royal wizard, he would’ve been able to quickly find out when Tails lost his parents and go to raise him that very day, so it’s not like it’s super plausible that he didn’t know he was needed. He’s a wizard. It’s obvious that he wasn’t an idea from the beginning and that making him his uncle only raised further questions in regards to why all of the previous issues weren’t different in response to that revelation.
There’s never a proper explanation for why Merlin estranges himself from Tails, and why he comes back to him so easily. There’s even a story explaining that he’s the one who arranged for Tails to get his shoes, and he is concerned about him and gives him a healing potion when he sees him hurt and regrets getting him hurt later after sending him into danger. So making it so that he cares about Tails makes it forced that he abandoned him. Isn’t it bad enough that there’s no explanation for why he stopped being the king’s royal wizard? So it seems unrealistic that he did. Maybe he could’ve stopped Robotnik’s coup if he didn’t leave him!
2: Elias had a homing beacon Chaos Emerald rod the WHOLE TIME that his mom could’ve used to call for help and yet he STILL wasn’t ever found, when apparently the beacon tells Locke’s airship to come get him, but not any other airship like the Freedom Fighter Special.
He had this rod all along, and yet it took 18 years for him to be found. WORST homing rod EVER! And it’s got a Chaos Emerald in it, why would that never be picked up by any Chaos Emerald radar? Like Rotor has! He’s lucky Eggman never detected it!
The worst part is, the king constantly visited Angel Island looking for his son and wife. Even when Sally was 4, she only met Knuckles because he went there to search the island. And you’d think the Colonel and his wife in that royal compound would’ve met with the king. Knuckles has a history of eating dinner with them, and yet he didn’t meet Elias, who lived with them, years ago?
And this is the inevitable problem with the fact that Sally’s brother wasn’t an idea from the very beginning and wasn’t always there and now is introduced as having existed in the world all along, while somehow having never been discovered by Knuckles the guardian of the island. Was Elias being intentionally kept hidden in the house by his caretakers, because they didn’t trust Knuckles not to pointlessly keep him a secret?
The reason Elias wasn’t sent home by the echidnas was that if the Overlanders were to find out that the echidnas withheld the facts from them, the echidnas would be dragged into a war with them that they have no interest in whatsoever. This made sense to me at first since they’re isolationists, until I remembered how magical the Brotherhood really are. The Brotherhood have strong magical powers and their combined forces would easily decimate any Overlanders who threatened their island and send them retreating!
But I guess their objection was, they didn’t wanna kill anybody, and the fact that they’d effortlessly win a war wasn’t the point of the matter. It could’ve been explained that the echidnas didn’t want to murder anyone by engaging in a war in the first place. But why couldn’t they just SEND ALL of the Overlanders TO A TWILIGHT CAGE?!
The Brotherhood, who care so much about “ securing the safety of echidnas everywhere, “ since outside forces are “ posed to conquer and destroy, “ are ultimately responsible for Robotnik getting to do everything he wanted (including roboticize members of the wandering tribe, so much for safety of echidnas) and Eggman too since any one of them should just be able to warp to him and take him down with their magic at any time. THIS is the problem with having the Brotherhood have always been around to the point of discovering the queen and prince.
And then it gets the worst of all. In Knuckles Comic Issue 29, Knuckles meets up with the Colonel, who treats him like an old friend, complete with Knuckles saying that he had missed his wife’s cooking. OK, so I guess I’m expected to just assume that he only met them after Elias left. Because otherwise, there’s no way in hell that he wouldn’t have found Elias years ago. The problem is, we never see Geoffrey talk to Knuckles on Angel Island after his mission’s completed there, so there’s no indication that HE told him. It’s implied that he really does visit the Colonel every so often and always has, and yet he never met Elias!
This is the nail in the coffin. There’s no way Elias wouldn’t have been discovered if he was on Knuckles’ home island the ENTIRE TIME. Because apparently Knuckles had been inside his house. This so easily could’ve been written better. Elias could’ve been in another dimension or kidnapped in another country or hidden there, whatever, not on Angel Island. Why couldn’t Sally have been in Elias’ position as the king’s right-hand man, again? He’s nice, but he’s the definition of unnecessary.
Also, this is barely an incompatibility since it’s so easily explained, but I have to mention it since I even noticed it my first time with the comic. Elias isn’t the king in the future of In Your Face and 25 Years Later. He’s nowhere to be found even though he replaced Sally as the heir to the throne. Another sign that he wasn’t an idea from the beginning and was introduced after the fact, but hey, it’s easily explained in-universe as, either he’s dead or he abdicated the throne to give it to Sally, which he kind of did in the comic itself when he ran away.
3: Issue 73 against the first story: Wouldn’t Ixis have taken over the Acorn Kingdom instead, if his excuse for going into the Zone of Silence was so unbelievable and lame? In Issue 73 it’s established that Kodos and Ixis were feuding. Ixis, instead of killing Kodos with his magic, or at least making him injured and comatose, flees to the Zone of Silence like a coward, while confusingly being all smirking and confident about the cowardice. HUH?!
If they were feuding, couldn’t Ixis win instantly? He’s a freaking WIZARD against a MORTAL! And I thought his WHOLE motivation for working for King Acorn was so he could eventually usurp him, so why would he give up on that plan so easily by leaving for another dimension HIMSELF? Couldn’t Kodos have kicked him into the Zone of Silence catching him by surprise if they were feuding?
That would’ve made a lot more sense because it’d be the ONLY way he’d win against him as a mortal, and then Kodos would’ve gotten an ironic punishment because Robotnik did the same thing to him later on, but even then this would have to happen under the circumstances that Ixis was unaware that Kodos would wanna kick him into the portal the second he had his back or side turned to him.
But I’d take Ixis in SatAM being an idiot briefly and being allowed to make a mistake any day over this confusing nonsense where just to look menacing, Ixis decided to banish himself to another dimension where he can’t rule the kingdom, ON PURPOSE.
We get a situation in the historybuilding where the writers were written into a corner. Ixis HAD to have been written to have gone into the Zone of Silence in the past history, because that’s the only explanation for why he didn’t effortlessly prevent Robotnik from overthrowing the king as the royal wizard who wanted the power for himself.
But him going into that zone doesn’t feel compatible with the implication of what his long-term plan was from the moment he “ generously “ offered to be the king’s royal wizard which must have had some ulterior motives involved. Also, if he always wanted to usurp him, why didn’t he instantly freeze or crystallize him? So maybe that wasn’t it? Ixis is just confusing. It made more sense in Satam because Robotnik trapped Ixis in the Zone of Silence, so it made sense he was there.
4: Mecha Madness against the first story: Why didn’t Mammoth Mogul take over the Acorn Kingdom before Robotnik even MET Max? If he’s so psychic, and so powerful he can disguise the members of the Fearsome Foursome as the Freedom Fighters and send Sergeant Simian flying, why didn’t he warn King Acorn of Robotnik’s impending betrayal so that he could take over his empire a lot easier without Robotnik in the way of it? It was obviously a lot easier to overthrow King Acorn than Robotnik! And Mogul was apparently on Mobius all along for like a thousand years, so what took him so long?
He should’ve been sent to another universe like the echidnas and only recently come back to this one, or he should’ve always been a native of a different universe. Worst case scenario, he would’ve teleported to the king to overthrow him. Logically he’d have done that centuries ago, but even if he just insisted on trying to do it to King Max, because he did somehow think he had to wait to recruit the Fearsome Foursome first to take over the world, he’d have just passed up on waiting until Max’s overthrowing to get Simian on his side. He’s the one who took the longest. He would have had to fight but then team up with Ixis, who realistically wouldn’t have left his position as the royal wizard out of cowardly fear of a mere mortal.
There were TONS of Chaos Emeralds just lying around everywhere, so many that Eggman found one for the Sonic Triple Trouble Special, so there’s no reason he shouldn’t have eventually found some more and become super powerful, without NEEDING to resort to draining Tails of his kitsune magic or using the Sword of Acorns or getting Chaos Knuckles into a random Syphon Chamber. What an IDIOT! And the comic portrays him as intelligent.
5: Sonic Super Special Issue 11 against the first story: According to Future Sally in the Source of All, the Source of All apparently makes you know everything to come when you fuse with it, as in know the future. That’s the lame excuse for Sally not becoming one with it. Wouldn’t King Acorn have known that Robotnik wanted to betray him ahead of time because the Source of All would’ve told him about it?! “ Your father is one with the Source, fully aware of the consequences of each action he takes! “ Then why did he trust Robotnik, why did he lose his wife and son, why did he trust Ixis, why did he dismantle the military?! HOW did the writer not THINK of all this in SECONDS after writing that?!
And this is the only excuse for why Sally doesn’t become a badass using the Sword of Acorns all the time, because apparently it makes her a glowy goddess with no eyeballs and she doesn’t wanna become omniscient, even though her father only got overthrown because of everything he DIDN’T KNOW. I think the Source of All doesn’t grant omniscience and just lied to Sally that it would as a secret test of character to see if she’d still agree, though even then, if the Source can show her the future for a bit, it should’ve shown the king that Robotnik would’ve overthrown him, too.
6: Issue 87 against the first story and Issue 55: Monkey Khan’s an incompatibility with the previous issues. He tried to kill Robotnik when Robotnik first made him a cyborg before Robotnik even tried his coup, and he only failed because Eggman, despite being surprised that Khan turned on him, miraculously thought to make a button to knock Khan out just in case he’d turn on him.
Robotnik should’ve long since thought of a way to make Khan work for him with brainwashing by now, without Sally having a chance to free him from the vault first. If Eggman can just try to brainwash Khan with chips on his head, why didn’t Robotnik do that years ago? What, did he just FORGET about the most powerful cyborg he ever made?!
Shouldn’t he have thought to put bombs in his cybernetics to force him to behave? Maybe he’d actually say no anyways because he’s that stubborn, though, but it’s weird that Robotnik didn’t think of that. There’s no way Khan would’ve only met Sally after Robotnik. Him being sealed in another dimension and then finding his way back to Mobius Prime would’ve made more sense. Worked for the echidnas!
Even after pretending it’d make sense that Eggman rose to power in a world with Mogul, Ixis, and Khan:
7: Issue 60 against first story: Why didn’t the Iron King and Queen take down Eggman a long time ago? I know she was busy with her own country far away, but she went there YEARS ago and she can create an eternal fire. Robotnik would’ve come to threaten THEM first in the five years he was running Mobius, so you can’t say they wouldn’t have known he existed, he would’ve struck first trying to roboticize their kingdom’s people.
Flynn just made it worse by giving the Queen the ability to control Eggman’s robots, so she had literally no reason not to take over his empire! It’d be way easier than fighting the armies she was exhausting herself fighting in the Dragon Kingdom all the time.
Before that, there was plausible deniability, because you could say she was too busy trying to conquer her own kingdom first, but apparently ANY place with Robians in it would’ve been pathetically easy to conquer. With mecha-dragons being able to fire roboticizing beams, and world roboticizers, you’d think Robotnik would’ve been considered a huge threat to them from these things and a war would’ve started.
I don’t buy that the king and queen would share power UNDER Robotnik as sub-bosses, I’d think they’d wanna conquer the whole world. They are wayyyy too confident to be afraid of Robotnik! The Iron King is literally invincible.
8: Knuckles Comic against the first story: The whole existence of the Brotherhood is, like the Iron Queen, another “ why didn’t they take out Robotnik if they were around all along? “ scenario. According to Knuckles Comic Issue 25, the guardian Steppenwolf has an ability that can make people feel like their brains are on fire, and Spectre can teleport, as the 22 arc shows, so combine that and they would’ve effortlessly defeated Robotnik.
Granted, it’s only been recently that Echidnapolis was brought back to Mobius, maybe they were una- never mind, the Brotherhood spent months in ” the hinterlands, ” and outright discussed the fact that without Robotnik, his sub-bosses are on their own. They KNEW about Robotnik! And guardians can go to Mobius whenever they WANT. Why didn’t all of these guys team up and send Robotnik packing? Did they seriously not know about his coup and roboticization, because they were so focused on Angel Island and Echidnapolis instead?
Apparently so, but after Robotnik introduced himself to Knuckles, and turned the island into a flying fortress, you’d think the Brotherhood would’ve stepped in! Robotnik was all about turning people into robots, which the technology-haters should’ve been repulsed by on sheer principle because that’s worse than anything the Dark Legion ever did.
That’s not even getting into the question of why the Brotherhood wasn’t with Locke and Sabre all along if they talk as if they reside in Haven like it’s normal, only AFTER they arrived there in an airship for the audience to meet them. Where were they before? Oh, the hinterlands? What hinterlands? WHY there?
Why weren’t they here before? They come out of complete nowhere, there’s no reason for them to have existed instead of having all died of old age, with Locke and Sabre being the ones who found Elias and his mother.
9: Sonic Super Special Issue 8 against the first story: Why didn’t the headless ghost take down Robotnik or any other villain? If ghosts are real on Mobius as we see in SSS8, why haven’t the villains all been defeated or at least severely inconvenienced by on a regular basis the angry ghosts of the people they caused to get killed? Or even just ghosts in general? What ghost on Mobius WOULDN’T wanna be a practically invincible Freedom Fighter?
10: Issue 58 against the first story: HOW did Robotnik not DISCOVER the SOURCE OF ALL?! It was in his base the whole time, because his base was the former Castle of Acorn! He reconstructed the whole castle to be his base, you’re telling me he never found the place leading to the Source of All? I guess I can only assume that it ONLY APPEARS to ROYALTY! Or that it magically disappeared to hide from someone it magically knew was evil. But that’s never explained!
Robotnik should’ve fused with the Source of All by now! Or at least done experiments on it and used it as a redundant energy source, if the logic is that he can’t use it because the Source doesn’t have a potential marriage partner for him and he’s not married to said person, but never mind, Sally gets allowed to go into the Source without marrying Antoine in SSS11 anyways. Maybe the Source wouldn’t do anything to help Robotnik because he’s not royalty. So it wouldn’t have made much of a difference. He could’ve still destroyed it.
11: Issue 71 against the first story: Jeremiah had been working to preserve the collective body of work by his grandpa, which is supposed to be why Robotnik hadn’t been able to destroy them. So, was he hiding here the whole time, even when Robotnik was in power? Somehow none of his Swatbots came in here when the city has a No Reading rule? He’d be a robot. He’s talking as if he didn’t start this only when the city was taken back from Robotnik. Amy even asked why Eggman didn’t have a bonfire of all these books when she first found this library. So this dumbness started as far back as Issue 65.
12: Issue 50 against the first story: Knothole’s still around. If Robotnik can detect specific metals and track them down, and that’s also why it was made a big deal out of that Tails’ medal couldn’t be scanned, how did Robotnik take so long to find Knothole when Rotor was constantly engineering in that place? There are so many more believable ways Eggman could’ve found Knothole. He could’ve succeeded in keeping that tracking device on Bunnie’s leg. He could’ve simply sent a robotic flying camera drone through the whole forest and it’d fly through every inch of it. And you’d think Sonic wouldn’t have been able to postpone telling Eggman where Knothole was when he was roboticized!
13: Knuckles Comic Issue 31 against first story: The Hunter is an Overlander, and yet he showed up on Angel Island? Even if that made sense, if he had the time to get all those mounts on his “ collection, “ why didn’t the Brotherhood spot him with cameras and deal with him a lot earlier? Why wasn’t HE thrown off the island at night by the Brotherhood? The Overlanders mostly all went to space when they lost the Great War before Eggman even rose to power, so it’s a miracle any stayed behind like Aerial and Athena and the guy Eggman tested the Ultimate Annihilator on. So Hunter had to have just landed on the island from his egg-shaped pod caught in an air current, because otherwise, he would’ve made himself known earlier. Why would he know about Robotnik at all, then? He’d have to leave the island.
Why did he say he’s studied Knuckles for a long time, long enough to know that he could threaten Julie-Su on him? How did he study them, AND remain isolated? He’s a human, if he went to Echidnaopolis, he’d have caused a panic! He popped out of NOWHERE just to have a story arc about him. He could’ve been a zone-hopper!
14: In Issue 102, the issue where Elias runs away, how the hell does Sonic’s family have family photos still when the photos would’ve been in Mobotropolis, and been destroyed when Robotnik Prime took over and completely changed the city, and then the city got damaged by bombs and an earthquake, and eventually Eggman took it over?
You’d think after ALL the damage to the city, and the heroes worrying that Eggman would destroy the books on Mobotropolis’ history just for being books, there’s no way their family photos would’ve ever been recovered when the city was taken back. And if you thought THAT was weird, I’ve heard that the canon chronological age of Chuck is 70. How was he a boy when Jules was, then? No wonder I didn’t wanna believe it. Even if you consider that he was a robot for ten years and roboticization keeps you from aging, so he’s biologically 60, that means Jules had Sonic pretty late in life to be having children.
15: Issue 117 against the premise: TOMMY TURTLE being Sonic’s childhood friend in Mobotropolis, even though he was never in Knothole. Why was he never in Knothole? Oh, the Swatbots split them up, but why didn’t he meet Tommy among the Robians in Mobotropolis then?
He’d have known to go to Knothole and been there all along instead of coming out of nowhere. It would’ve made sense for Sonic to meet Tommy after all the Robians in Robotropolis regained free will and he’d have been one of them. But he wasn’t in that city, and he wasn’t in Knothole, so how could he have once lived in that city right up to Robotnik’s coup?! What, was he kidnapped by aliens?! And they put him in the Forbidden Zone?
16: Why didn’t Robotnik Prime discover the Hidden City of the Ancients a long time ago just by having his robots search that mountain? His robots would’ve searched EVERYWHERE. A mountain hiding it shouldn’t MATTER! He had living being detectors since the beginning, and you’d think he’d give those to his sub-bosses across the world too, and logically the SA1 adaptation should’ve been different and earlier as a result, or at least Station Square wouldn’t have been around, because it’d already be a ghost town thanks to Eggman. With that in mind, though, Amy still would’ve been kidnapped by Zero, Chaos still would’ve been found, Gamma would’ve still been made, Big still would’ve been fishing and the Egg Carrier would still exist.
17: The cat queen talks as if this is the first time in a very long time that her country’s been ” invaded ” by outsiders, so clearly her people haven’t had to deal with Eggman and his robots yet, but WHY NOT? The cat country was SO MYSTERIOUS that Robotnik Prime NEVER FOUND IT SOMEHOW with his robots and sub-bosses, which only makes sense if the region was hidden in a pocket dimension all this time! Instead he can get to it easily! Because this is supposed to be a world where everyone was roboticized, and yet this place was spared, with no attention to the fact that it existed during Robotnik’s time, almost like it was warped here by another dimension entirely! I thought Eggman ruled the world! Why are there so many places that aren’t ruled by him? Or even his sub-bosses?
The cat country isn’t like Albion with its advanced security system, it’s a place full of nothing but primitive hunter-gatherers with spears, who spent all their time outside where they should’ve been detected by his living being detectors, especially since apparently the minute Angel Island landed, it landed right next to them and the out-of-nowhere Mystic Ruins, which was never that far from Knothole to begin with.
Normally I’d like the idea that there are places in the world where everyone in it HASN’T been turned into mindless boring robots, but it’s stupid because there’s no explanation for why they avoided this fate, when he took over Mercia, Sandblast City and Downunda with sub-bosses just fine! And considering that the cat people are racists who eat their young when they get out of line, and then Flynn made it even stupider with the “ the clothing makes the people “ nonsense, yeah you end up wishing that Robotnik did roboticize them and wonder how he missed them all this time.
18: Issue 108 against first story: Eggman, right behind Robotnik who was working together with him the whole time, says that their molecules are dissembling thanks to his matter-fluctuator. Wait, wouldn’t he just try to roboticize them all?
19: Knuckles Comic Issue 27 against the first story: Eggman had perfect copies of the Freedom Fighters just sitting here all this time and he NEVER USED THEM? He would’ve WON! He would’ve ruined their reputations and destroyed Knothole with Sonic’s fake alone! This is stupider than wasting infiltrators of the Freedom Fighters on test dummies for an amnesiac Sonic! Also, how does he have infiltrators of Tails and Sally here when they were never in the camp?
20: Sonic Super Special Issue 5 against the first story: The art where the heroes discovered their base implied that there were no trees close by to the hollow stump, which is completely contradicting how we always see tons of trees around that stump. If anyone can just stand near the stump and collapse through the ground to reach the base and it’s a lone stump in the middle of nowhere, you’d think it would’ve been recognized and found a lot earlier. But that was just art, for one issue, so I guess it’s not a canon problem.
21: Issue 94 against first story: The story has a hospital, prison and high school be built in Knothole for the first time. How on earth has Knothole not had any of those in the five years that it’s been a self-sufficient village?! In fact, Dr. Quack worked at a hospital, in Issue 43! A prison was also put there for the first time. Just as implausible. Also, Knothole did have a prison, Fang escaped from it in Issue 39!
22: Issue 65 against the first story: Nate unnecessarily discovered the Knothole underground base before the Freedom Fighters did. Logically, he had no reason not to stay there if he wanted to be a hermit, because he didn’t KNOW that anyone would go on to spend time in there, and then this brings up the question of why he wasn’t with the Freedom Fighters as a teammate all along.
Kodos and Nate were the only survivors of the Overlander skirmish caused by Ixis, with Kodos’ approval. If Kodos hated Nate so much for being human, why didn’t he kill him HIMSELF and blame the Overlanders? He’s not above that!
23: Knuckles Comic Issue 28 against the first story: Ray wouldn’t even be here for Mighty to find. Why would Eggman have never used and totally forgotten about the jewel that kept Ray frozen in time all the way back when Sonic was 5?
24: Issue 98 against first story: Why didn’t Robotnik find the ARK and carry out the plot of SA2 a LOT EARLIER if the ARK was apparently in outer space all along orbiting Mobius? Why did Maria’s grandfather know about Aurora? Also, Eggman should’ve been able to roboticize all those Overlanders way faster than just six and a half weeks.
25: Issue 129 against premise: It took the Bem aliens 50 years to learn how to make a world deroboticizer. Meanwhile it took Uncle Chuck much less than that to make both a roboticizer AND a small-scale mass deroboticizer that works after exploding near people. Even though the Bem are on a super advanced alien planet with spaceships while Chuck is stuck on a planet that was medieval until Nate came along decades ago. Chuck sure is smart, then! He took less than a year to figure deroboticization out for the ” first ” time.
He’s smarter than futuristic aliens, and echidnas, because even the Dark Legion didn’t have roboticizers, or they would’ve used them to save Dimitri instead of him slowly dying as a cyborg! Is he the smartest man in the universe? And yet he didn’t make any security measures for his roboticizer to keep unauthorized people from using it, and keep Robotnik from going into its room to sabotage it. So is that really what they were going for? Rotor figured out Sonic’s super speed after he overloaded the treadmill while Chuck couldn’t. He isn’t smart enough to, say, think to just upload Jules’ mind to a clone of Jules made from a parallel universe Jules’ DNA to make him feel like he was deroboticized. So he DOES have limits as an inventor.
Honorable mention not really counting again: In Issue 142, IF ROBOTNIK MADE the TACHYON CHAMBER, why the fuck wasn’t he abusing time travel all this time?! If he was even capable of making a time machine, an actual one, then why didn’t he complete this chamber when Sonic was five years old instead of being stopped before he could complete it as a convenient Hand Wave? He would’ve gone back in time to kill the heroes and undo all of their victories by now. Well, I can buy that it simply took so long for his robots to complete this complex machine that Knuckles defeated him before he got to use it, though, or he was ALMOST finished the time machine before Knuckles beat him and Rotor figured out how to complete it. That wasn’t explained.
Against Specific Issues and not the Entire Foundation and Premise:
26: Sonic Super Special Issue 9 against literally the first story, Sonic Miniseries Issue 0: it’s established that the Ring sending Sonic and friends on stupidly pointless zone-hopping was the same one that Sonic found in a well in the first ever issue. Then why did it not do all that to him AGAIN? Why wasn’t he worried about this happening? This is a Continuity Nod gone wrong.
27: Issue 137 against Issue 1 at latest: Antoine expects me to believe that he didn’t want to fall in love again until Bunnie came along, but he also called Tatiana his first love, when CLEARLY he had a crush on Sally from the start of the comic. This is pretending otherwise. Of course this is the same story that pretends Patch was Antoine when the king wanted Patch as his bodyguard, so, this whole story has to be non-canon anyways.
28: Issue 143 against Sonic Miniseries Issue 0, Issue 90, Knuckles Comic Issue 32, Issue 50, Issue 136: The fact that nobody in Issue 143 thought to just heal Locke with Rings when he was dying was baffling. And so was the idea that Knuckles didn’t have his omnipotence triggered and heal Locke with a Deus ex Machina, and that Locke wasn’t healed by Rotor’s nanobots or a stasis tube from Dr Quack, which I’m pretty sure could cure cancer! Nanobots would be the best antibodies ever! Sonic healed Jules with a Ring just fine, just make a wish!
The sheer fact that the death scene even happened is distractingly forced because the only way it makes sense is if you ignore all of the previous issues that established the magic and futuristic technology that exists in this comic, and even then, even a random Sonic fan with no knowledge of the comic would still probably ask why they don’t just use the Chaos Emeralds to save him, even if they don’t know that Rings can grant wishes.
And that’s ignoring the fact that the echidnas have technology centuries ahead of ours, and even our scientists have made a lot of progress in treating cancer! They’d just cure him! Couldn’t they just replace his pancreas with a cyborg one? The Legionnaires can survive replacing any part of them with a cybernetic just fine.
29: Sonic Super Special Issue 8 against Issues 2, 11, 19, 24, 44, etc: The easiest example of a plot hole introduced by a later revelation is the existence of the zone cops in SSS8, because if the zone cops existed, why did they not immediately go after Sonic for going to Scourge’s planet and keep him from ever making an enemy out of Scourge? Zonic’s response to Robotina showing up in Mobius Prime was INSTANT.
Why did they ever let the evil twins just go to Mobius Prime by driving through a portal that’s there for no reason, not to mention ignore Eggman when he zone-hopped to replace Robotnik? Even from the first reading, I was constantly asking why they weren’t doing their jobs before they were introduced. Why would those random portals show up as early as Issue 2 when they wanna discourage zone-hopping?
Why did Zonic POINTLESSLY send Sonic to those places for him to accomplish nothing? Zonic and Sonic try to talk as if Sonic had to go to zones like Anti-Mobius, the detective zone, and so on, but he DIDN’T, because every time he had zone-hopped aside from the time he stopped Robo-Robotnik it was completely POINTLESS. It’s trying to fill in the plot hole of why the interdimensional portals randomly show up and failing miserably.
I could understand Zonic letting him go to the Special Zone to become Super Sonic because he thought he needed to. But he DIDN’T, he shrank Universalamander with a ray and crushed it!… And it was CLEARLY explained that Sonic used the Chaos Emeralds he collected and a checkpoint to get to the Special Zone. He didn’t need Zonic’s help! He expected to get to that zone, as if he did it before!
If it was all Zonic’s doing, why didn’t Zonic introduce himself to Sonic way earlier? The Night of 1000 Sonics would’ve been the perfect time for him to show up, giving Sonic help with contacting his other selves and opening up portals for him and his other selves to get more other selves, not to mention they were dealing with a zone-hopping threat, but if he was meant to be in the comic from the start he would’ve been there, but he wasn’t, so there’s an inconsistency.
At least this can be explained as, “ he’s a zone cop so he was too busy doing other things to introduce himself, “ but you’d think he’d have to be THERE to open up the portals for Sonic in the first place, and therefore he’d have no reason not to stop by and say hi to Sonic. And why would he be expected to watch camera footage of other Sonics if he can’t always do that because he’ll be busy?
30: Sonic Super Special 11 against right after Issue 3: Suddenly, Bunnie’s bionics no longer work reliably with her central nervous system. As her bionics continue to inexplicably deteriorate, eventually her bionics will shut down and become toxic to the organic part of her body, which ALSO makes no sense, as if their materials can be toxic, why weren’t they that way BEFORE?! Even Dr. Quack says he doesn’t know why this didn’t happen to Bunnie sooner. Then why didn’t it?
Issue 6 is the first story where Eggman wants to use a world roboticizer, which he didn’t use in FIVE YEARS, because I assume it took him that long to build, Sonic wrecked it and he fixed it for the Death Egg in Sonic’s Quest. So that issue makes it the most obvious of all that Eggman wants everyone roboticized and wouldn’t just slack off, DRAGON KINGDOM!
At least Issue 16 tried to justify why Eggman didn’t roboticize the heroes after capturing them, because he said that keeping them in a simulation just to have them wake up to a world he completely took over and ruined would be way more sadistic to do, and there’s no proof that he wasn’t planning on roboticizing them AFTER he’d wake them up anyways.
In Issue 6, he says that after he roboticizes the planet, he’ll rule at last, so he doesn’t even consider himself to be ruling properly because he hasn’t achieved that. So, why did he leave entire places unroboticized, like the Dragon Kingdom, Goldenhive Colony, the Cat Country, Furville? He would roboticize anybody he could. With that in mind….
31: Issue 60 against Issue 6: Eggman apparently didn’t have the people of Mobius China roboticized. Somehow Robo-Robotnik had to be the first to start doing that. It’s just as ridiculous that all of Goldenhive Colony remained untouched by roboticization.
32: Knuckles Comic Issue 26 against Issue 6: Why the hell did Robotnik just put Sonic, Fiona, Ray and Mighty in a labor camp without ROBOTICIZING THEM? That’s so stupid! He’d get their DNA for infiltrators in two seconds, and go on to USE THEM, and then he’d have no need to keep them unroboticized! Everything about Fiona’s backstory is forced because of this. Logically they’d be roboticized by now. Eggman wants to roboticize everyone. That was especially obvious in the Sonic Spinball story where he wanted to use a world roboticizer, and Sonic Quest as well. I say Issue 6 because that’s the first story where Eggman wants to use a world roboticizer, so that makes it the most obvious of all that Eggman wants everyone roboticized.
The stupidest thing is that somehow Robotnik kept Fiona in a cell for two years, instead of roboticizing her like he does with everyone. No, she definitely would’ve been a robot by now.
33: Issue 143 against Issue 6: The Original Freedom Fighters were all roboticized, but then they were sent to The Void instead of put to good use!
34: Issue 159 against Issue 6: Eggman calls his lieutenants potential traitors. This builds up to nothing. Why would he have lieutenants that CAN betray him instead of just using robots with the one limitation that they can’t betray him? It worked for the roboticized version of Antoine’s father, Chuck, and Valdez. Him not using robots for his sub-bosses is Out of Character.
35: Issue 170 by Mike Gallagher against Issue 9: Pseudo-Sonic somehow still existing in the island now instead of actually being used for scrap metal by Rotor already by now is ridiculous. Tails destroyed him in Knothole’s base, there’s no way his remains would’ve been recovered. Sure, he was last seen in a garbage can, technically, but that can was still in Knothole and Rotor would’ve thought to use Pseudo for scrap metal for his engineering.
36: Issue 170 by Mike Gallagher against Issue 9: It’s also ridiculous that Pseudo-Sonic knew that Sonic was affected by poison sumac. He had no way of knowing that! He even SAYS ” we never actually met! “
37: Issue 86 against Issue 11, 71, and so many early featurettes about his speed: In the Metal Sonic volcano stories of 86-87, why the hell would it take SONIC a half hour to get to a volcano that they’re close enough to that they can see it?! Sonic was able to run all over the planet multiple times in no time at all! Since when did he get so slow?! What about ” 12 second work-out ” where he ran around the planet tons of times? Sonic can start the shutter of an old-fashioned camera and get to the photo in time before it’ll take the picture!
Any time the writers forget his super speed, it’s a continuity error. Why did he think he was too slow to just run over to deal with the launching missile and M in seconds, especially when he can run across the surface of the water to run all over the planet? If he couldn’t do that, he wouldn’t have done so with the Super Emerald in that issue where he made Knothole no longer hours apart in time from everywhere else. He ran all over the world and had tons of Super forms there.
38: Issue 150 against Issue 13: There ISN’T an Angel Island stash with the largest and only known Chaos Emerald supply before Issue 150 had them mentioned. The Chaos Chamber has been down to ONE Emerald for CENTURIES. Why don’t they just say “ Master Emerald “ if that’s all they’re talking about? He had NO REASON to know that they now have a Master Emerald that’s made of 14 Emeralds, when he wasn’t there for the Super Mogul scene and echidnas are secretive. Before the Master Emerald, the Chaos Chamber only had one Emerald for the longest time. Wouldn’t he think that was still the case? Who would survive finding out something changed to tell the guy telling Fang about this?
39: Sonic Super Special Issue 5 against In Your Face Special: As a kid in SSS5, Rotor says he’s got an idea for a handheld computer called Nicole before being interrupted… I don’t appreciate THIS reference at all because it just distracted me and pulled me out of the story because I’m now wondering why, instead of Rotor having created Nicole a long time ago, they had to wait for her to show up out of a CONFUSING, Stable Time Loop from the future! If Rotor had the idea to make Nicole that early, why didn’t he realize who made Nicole right away, with the same name and everything?!
40: Issue 108 against Issue 19: In Issue 19, Robotnik SAW Robo-Robotnik had Shadowbots, WHY does he think he can order them around?
Which village did Geoffrey live in in all that time after Robotnik rose to power, and why wasn’t it Knothole, which it doesn’t seem to be because Sally and him don’t recognize each other? It was established in Issue 61 at latest that Geoffrey’s father worked for the Secret Service in Mobotropolis. Since it turns out that Geoffrey used to live in Mobotropolis with his father, why didn’t he live in Knothole and always live there, instead of Sally meeting him for the first time so much later? Wouldn’t he have gone to Knothole with everyone else who fled there? Or have been roboticized?
Maybe he used to live in Knothole. How did Geoffrey not get met already by the Freedom Fighters of Knothole? Maybe he lived a city block away from them. Just because people live in the same town together doesn’t mean they’d meet everyone in the town in five years. You’d think since his group is dealing with Eggman too, Sonic would’ve run into him and met the Rebel Underground earlier. Well, it’s a big continent.
41: Issue 137 against Sally Miniseries Issue 1: In Issue 137, the Sonic infiltrator robot for some reason talks just like a mindless Swatbot trying to apprehend Rotor, even though duplicate robots like the last one of Sally and the Fiona duplicate and even the more recent Tommy duplicate are supposed to be better at talking than that! Plus even Pseudo-Sonic talked more like a person! And Metal Sonic!
There’s no reason that Sonic and Sally infiltrators, infiltrators of the MAIN characters and hated enemies of Robotnik, would ever be made to talk like this. In fact this contradicts the PREVIOUS issue. The Tommy robot talked. The Sally robot here talks just fine a few panels before this one, but as soon as Rotor gets suspicious, she goes silent and the Sonic robot has a green text bubble like a Swatbot and talks like one.
42: Issue 75 against Issue 22: Robo-Robotnik located the piece of the Giant Borg that laid dormant by tapping into Robotnik’s memory rather than his Sonic’s memory, somehow, because I guess he just searched his planet and found it eventually, and from that ONE SMALL PIECE, he rebuilt a suitable body for himself! How?
His consciousness was trapped in a satellite body! That didn’t exactly have arms and legs! How could he have built anything with a body like that?! He’s not saying that he could make robots in that satellite in that state and they could build things for him. How would he even get the materials to make robots with no way of damaging metal in the satellite and taking it off to get robot materials, and no way of fashioning the metal into anything with no arms and legs or anything?
43: Issue 84 against Sonic and Knuckles Special: For some reason the new Master Emerald shrine in Issue 84 is supposed to more effectively harness the power of the Master Emerald, even though it didn’t have the beautiful green-gem ceiling of the old Chamber and just looks like a generic cave in Issue 151. If the Brotherhood knew they could do that with architecture alone, why the hell didn’t the Chaos Chamber get designed that way in the first place? Why did it take them this long to figure this out? Why wasn’t it redesigned to be like this a while ago, like with their magic? Why did they wait until the old one was destroyed first, why did the fire ants even make the old one in an inferior way?
44: Issue 120 against Issue 29 and Sally Miniseries Issue 3: In Issue 120, Sally reveals that she always kept the royal signet chained inside of her vest. Well, it’s a good thing that when she was roboticized with that vest on, there wasn’t any roboticizer explosion from the metal signet being put into it WITH Sally. If anything metallic is hit with a roboticizer effect, it blows up, which is made official in the issue where Sally’s roboticized again.
And the royal signet went who knows where after the vest became a part of her robot body (maybe it was inside of her?), when Dulcy hit her with that portable deroboticizer the royal signet was back again, when it’d be programmed to return specific metal structures to their old organic self and former clothes to clothes. But it wouldn’t be programmed to account for any gold signet inside the clothes.
Apparently that doesn’t apply to gold, just to other metals that robots are made of. I guess that’s the case? Good thing the portable deroboticizer ray knew that the royal signet was supposed to be inside of her vest which were clothes and were not a part of her body to be turned into flesh or cloth after it started turning Sally back to normal!
45: Issue 135 against Issue 29: In Issue 135, Eggman has the memories of roboticized criminals scanned. If Eggman can scan Robians’ memories, why didn’t he do that to Mecha Sonic and learn where Knothole was? Why didn’t he do that to Dulcy’s herd to learn where her country was immediately?
Why didn’t he do that to Sally the first time she was roboticized? Couldn’t he have immediately found out where Knothole was by scanning the mind of one of the many Robians he kidnapped from Knothole itself, like Chuck? If he could do this, why did a genius like him take five years to either think to do this, or become able to do this, maybe just because of ADAM?
46: Knuckles Comic Issue 11 against Tails Miniseries Issue 3: It’s established that Athair is so attached to his wandering tribe out of nowhere, that he didn’t visit his mother when she was on death’s door, and yet he had NO problem with spending what could’ve been hours visiting Tails in Downunda (ways away from the Eastern Hemisphere with his tribe) just to POINTLESSLY tell him about ancient history.
I could understand him taking a few seconds to heal his injuries and tell him he’s the Chosen One, help Knuckles get clues for finding the Sword of Acorns, visit Locke to give him a nonsensical warning, rescue Knuckles from Enerjak, or fight Mammoth Mogul, because that was indeed necessary and helpful, but if he was planned to be part of a wandering tribe all along, it’s surprising that he wasted so much time telling Tails about prehistoric times.
47: Sonic Super Special Issue 2 against Issue 30, if not the first story: If Robotnik had Sonic’s parents alive as robots the whole time, he would’ve bragged to Sonic that he did that to them the FIRST chance he got?! So he would’ve always been angsting about wanting his parents back too, not just his uncle, in Issue 30 and stuff. ” You roboticized my uncle! ” ” And your parents, too! ”
While you could’ve assumed Sonic’s parents had been roboticized until this point, this issue is the first to establish out of nowhere that Chuck told Sonic his parents were casualties of the Great War just so Sonic would get mad at his uncle. But he could’ve easily told him his father was roboticized by him in Issue 46 where he used his camera projector eyes to reveal to Sonic that Eggman sabotaged his roboticizer to make it take away free will.
This happened right after we saw a flashback panel where Chuck was upset that he turned his brother into a mindless robot. You could’ve assumed Chuck had told Sonic about that since we saw it and Jules was the person who proved the roboticizer was sabotaged. I can prove it would be Out of Character for him not to tell him about his parents.
See, Eggman taunted Sonic about the fact that Chuck was under his control, as far back as the flashback in the Knuckles Comic when he was a kid and first met Mighty, in an adventure he referenced in a Sonic Kids story as like a 5 year old.
And combine that with him taunting him about his parents being under his control on his satellite and presenting them to him, and there really is NO WAY he wouldn’t have TOLD Sonic his parents were his Robians and still alive before he found out for himself! Eggman didn’t know that his parents still being alive was supposed to be a secret. Why on earth would he keep mentioning his uncle and never his parents?
48: Issue 79 against Issue 30: There’s no way Sonic’s parents wouldn’t have immediately come to Knothole after Issue 30. According to Issue 79, apparently Chuck knew Sonic’s parents were alive and had free will soon after he got free will himself. It was implied that he knew this at least before Robotnik was taken down even by SSS2, but the point is, if they were that way since all the way back in the 30s issues, there’s no way they wouldn’t have come to Knothole. It just makes it more obvious that the real reason they didn’t was that they weren’t thought up as characters yet, so it creates another retrospective incompatibility.
If ALL that was needed to free their minds was one Ring, then we should’ve just had Sonic do it after SSS2, and had him earn the victory himself, Deus ex Machina or not, we didn’t need him being mad at his uncle instead after his parents are just handed to him. So Chuck’s explanation that Sonic would have never stopped to think clearly until they were free doesn’t hold water since he could’ve just told Sonic to use Rings to free their minds instantly anyways. If only Sonic told him that at some point, but he’s never called out on that in particular.
49: Knuckles Comic Issue 13 against the Knuckles’ Chaotix Special: How did Robotnik or one of his sub-bosses not find and roboticize everyone in Charmy’s kingdom, including Charmy, a long time ago? He ruled for 5 years. They have royalty, it’s not like the kingdom’s implied to have the kind of advanced technology that I always assumed Albion had to keep Robotnik’s forces out. Charmy called a UFO a chariot.
So Goldenhive Colony is introduced after Robotnik’s death as having been there all along and yet it doesn’t seem to have even been noticed by Robotnik! Charmy wouldn’t be in the comic so early. He’d have been roboticized. He wasn’t super young when he ran away from his home to a safe haven from Robotnik.
50: Issue 86 against Knuckles’ Chaotix Special: I hate that while Metal Sonic’s talking like Sonic entertainingly in the Sonic CD adaptation by Gallagher, in Penders’ Knuckles’ Chaotix Special he’s talking like a boring robot. And then Issue 87 has me believe that only his power core gave him a personality and these were somehow the same robot when he’s back to talking like Sonic, as if his personality in Knuckles’ Chaotix Special was retconned, undoing that first continuity error.
51: Issue 125 against Knuckles Chaotix Special: In the Knuckles Chaotix Special when Knuckles lost his guardian powers, his spines became shorter and his spikes dulled, but that didn’t happen when he came back from the dead. THIS is mostly to blame for why I took forever to notice that that happened to him again!
It’s a complete inconsistency and it’s very confusing. Why THIS time does he look normal despite being powerless? In Issue 136’s third story, Knuckles is still able to climb on the base of Angel Island. Eggman removed his powers in the Knuckles Chaotix Special and he LOST his spiked knuckles, so why is Eggman better at this than Aurora?
52: Issue 115 against Issue 35 ” A Sense of History “: Mammoth Mogul goes to taunt Dimitri about stealing his power, and then says that Dimitri’s power was stolen from him, and yet he doesn’t know how. Wait, what? How, indeed? Dimitri got his power from using the Chaos Syphon he built on the Emeralds and himself, what does that have to do with Mogul at all? Mogul didn’t create those Emeralds, did he? He would’ve kept them then and took over the world with then.
And the textbox says that ” obviously ” Mammoth Mogul didn’t read Issue 79. Um, I read that issue, and Dimitri never stole any power from Mogul! The only thing involving Mogul that happened in that issue was that he got released from the Master Emerald by Eggman. Nothing involving Dimitri and Mogul’s power happened in 79.
53: Issue 131 against Issue 35 ” A Sense of History “: Why does Dimitri talk as if he knows what Lien-Da and Kragok were like as children personally when it’s always been made clear that he’s their ancestor from centuries ago? Rutan even calls him ‘ ancestor, ” in this issue! And yet Dimitri says that neither of them were temperamental, but they were treacherous. How would HE know what they were like as kids? They wouldn’t have told him, their boss! This would make sense if he literally was their grandpa.
And because she sees that Rutan got a bump on his head and asks if he got into a fight, Lien-Da says that she doesn’t recall Kragok and her being violent children. REALLY, even though they murdered their stepmother? I guess she really DID die of an accident in this dimension! Either that, or she’s just referring to the fact that she and Kragok weren’t violent with OTHER CHILDREN.
54: Knuckles Comic Issue 11 against Issue 36: In “A Sense of History, ” in retrospect most echidnas would’ve moved to Albion with their flying cars or planes rather than deal with the technology ban, but Albion was thought up too late, only being mentioned by Knuckles 11.
55: Mecha Madness against Sonic Miniseries Issue 1: If Sonic disobeying a direct order gets him court-martialed and banished, in Mecha Madness and Issue 40, why wasn’t he prosecuted all those other times he disobeyed Sally’s orders, like when he ruined her plan in Sonic Miniseries 1’s “ Run Sally Run? “
The Sonic Miniseries is confirmed to be canon still, despite all the times it was contradicted, because it was referenced in the huge recap issue Issue 57, where we see when Sonic saw Chuck in the Crabmeat factory again and he had his robot disguise on. And Sonic Super Special issue 8 explained when the Ring that was in the well in the first ever story of the comic was first encountered by Sonic, to explain why he knew to go after the Ring in the well in the first place.
56: Issue 170 by Mike Gallagher against Issue 40: The Robo Hobo Jungle and the island concepts are redundant with each other, because what incentive did the badniks have to go to the Robo Hobo Jungle if this island existed, and they had programming in them all along to go HERE? Logically, this means Sonic never should’ve gotten to find Fang by questioning the badnik head in Issue 40, not to mention all of Sonic Spin City shouldn’t have happened earlier because the badniks would have no reason to be in that bar.
57: Issue 142 against Issue 43: In Issue 142’s past flashback, how did Sonic ever get separated from Sally when he was 5 when he was WITH HER when the king was thrown into the Void?! We saw that as late as Issue 58, as early as Issue 43!
58: Sonic Super Special Issue 9 against Issue 44: Its first story has Robotnik in a zone that’s still being created, somehow. If he was able to travel between dimensions at will even five years ago, why didn’t he already tap into such a primal source of power by now? Why didn’t he zone-hop until Issue 44? He’d need a zone teleporter to get to this place in the first place, but he takes like 5 years to do this kind of thing again!
59: Issue 119 against Sonic Blast Special: After Sonic used his ridiculous intangibility power to phase inside the train because the writer couldn’t think of a more logical way, Sonic needed a rest for a while exhausted after that, which is a weird way to balance it NOW, since he didn’t get exhausted the OTHER times he turned intangible, like in Issue 71, or the story where Sally was dressed like a witch! So it’s too late NOW! And every time AFTER this that he goes intangible, he DOESN’T get tired. So it’s not like it’s a permanent change, it’s just a mistake.
60: Issue 58 against Issue 46: Why would Antoine’s father be made a sub-boss and not just a regular robot in Mobotropolis, just for Eggman to NOT brag and boast to Antoine about it at any point, what’s the POINT then?! They’re adding lore related to Robotnik’s rule AFTER THE FACT that just doesn’t seem compatible and make sense, because if it was meant to be always the case, then logically we should’ve known about it earlier. Robotnik wouldn’t keep these kinds of things a secret! He would be bragging to Antoine about what he did to his father every chance he gets just to be a dick! Antoine wouldn’t have merely said his father was a casualty when Eggman took over in Issue 46, he would’ve said that his father was turned into Mercia’s sub-boss.
61: Issue 137 against Sonic Super Special Issue 1 ” The Map “: In Issue 137, the heroes fight the infiltrator robots with Patch damaging one of the robots with his sword effortlessly removing its head, even though Antoine’s sword was always useless at damaging robots, though this is at least a GOOD inconsistency. It HAS to be inconsistent or else why was Antoine NEVER fighting robots, ever, and why did he think he needed a Ring to fight robots? Again, you’d think a Sonic infiltrator would be built better than that. And every time Sonic takes Shadow Swatbots or Swatbots seriously, it’s an inconsistency, because he once took down 50 of them in less than a minute, so he’s got no reason to be scared of them at all.
62: Issue 155 against Sonic Super Special Issue 1 ” The Map “: In Issue 155, Dulcy’s black singe Ring from her nose was replaced with a gold magic Ring which inhibited her ability to breathe fire instead of enhancing it like Rings ALWAYS DO for some reason. They enhanced Sonic’s speed and Antoine could slice robots with one, but this one works in reverse somehow!
63: Issue 108 against Issue 49: Despite the fact that Robotnik Prime says that Robo-Robotnik stole his memories, Robo-Robotnik doesn’t reveal that he knows where Knothole is and immediately go attack it, even though Robotnik found out where it was and revealed that in Issue 48. The heroes would definitely remember that, and freak out here, but instead they calmly stay in Knothole with him for days. It’s as if he never told them his memories were stolen at all.
Robo-Robotnik tried to access the location of Knothole from the Robotropolis computer as soon as he took it over so he knew that Robotnik Prime knew where Knothole was. And yet he didn’t even think to ask him right after he somehow brought him back from being disassembled by the Ultimate Annihilator, which by itself is nonsensical.
64: Knuckles Comic Issue 11 against Knuckles Comic Issue 4: Why didn’t Robotnik tell Knuckles about the wandering tribe echidna Robians just to brag? You would think if they were there all along, Knux would’ve learned about the roboticized echidnas, which we never hear about after the Bem deroboticizes everyone, instead of Knuckles having to find out he’s not the last of his kind in the start of the Knuckles Comic. He’d have already known by that point.
65: Issue 95 against Issue 53: Bunnie and Sonic see Kodos and Arachnis fighting each other. And it doesn’t make any sense to the heroes as the narration says, “ They’d always been pretty tight. “ How’d THEY know what their relationship was like?… Maybe they weren’t very close! How’d they even know they were dating when Arachnis never talked? I don’t think Kodos and her interacted with each other at all last time they saw them. Did they even talk to each other?
67: Sonic Super Special Issue 8 against Issue 54: In Sonic Super Special Issue 8, we see in a flashback to when Robotnik was around that Rotor was able to accurately measure Sonic’s speed even though his device for doing so burned out and caught on fire. But back in Issue 54, an entire story was dedicated to Uncle Chuck trying to find out his speed LATER.
That never should’ve happened then because he should’ve just been told by Rotor exactly how fast he was if Rotor just had that speed measuring device lying around already when Sonic needed it to see how much faster he was made by Snively. After all, invention-making takes time. If Sonic was forced to do nothing while Rotor made his speed-measuring invention for him only after Sonic was hit by the ray, then Sonic would have died of old age waiting for him to finish it in time.
Maybe Kragok disagrees, because he’s not taking her suggestion.
68: Sonic Super Special 11 against Knuckles Comic Issue 8: This special establishes that Julie-Su is related to Lien-Da and Kragok and forgot about it, and they never liked her. If Julie-Su was someone Lien-Da and Kragok always hated for being their half-sibling that their father loved “ more, “ then why was Julie ever allowed to walk around without her cloak uniform and even sit right beside Kragok as if she was such a special Legion goon, when they hated her? They’re a huge, technologically advanced army, you’re telling me they didn’t have the budget for a spare cloak in case of emergency?
Why did Kragok let her get away with not killing the Chaotix when she was ordered to, when he already was biased against her? And why didn’t they just kill her a long time ago, then? He even said he was relieved that he didn’t lose her when she went back to the Legion! Kragok called her an outstanding soldier, too.
Maybe the reason she didn’t die when Lien-Da was always the one saying she wanted her dead or miserable and not Kragok was that Kragok actually had less hatred of Julie, so he went easier on her? Maybe he just wasn’t as bad as Lien-Da, since he NEVER SAID he wanted Julie dead or even insulted her at all. But you’d think Lien-Da would’ve killed her by now if she always hated her that much.
69: Issue 131 against Knuckles Comic Issue 9 and Knuckles Chaotix Special: Rotor’s asked if this is his first trip in Echidnaopolis and Rotor says, ” Yes. ” Why would he lie? Didn’t he come to Angel Island in the Knuckles Chaotix Special and the Mammoth Mogul story? I’d say this proves that it’s an alternate universe, but as the arc goes on, it’ll be made clear that the writer wants you to think it really is the Prime universe’s future.
70: Issue 148: Issue 148’s Isaac speech is just confusing because of the word ” thousand. ” THAT has to be the ” corrupt ” part of his data. ” The process from the Xorda lasted for well over a thousand years ” – bullshit, then the ash would’ve still existed up until very recently in the 3200s – ” until the sun finally burned through the last of the ash and dirt in the atmosphere ” – that somehow hadn’t killed off all life on the planet a LONG time ago, from the drastically colder temperatures, and the ash rain the world over. If Isaac was right, the heroes would still be suffering through it.
It was THEN that during one of his rare forays from the life cell chamber, Kintobor added historical events to the list of scientific data he was to collect. Yeah, well over a thousand years later, when echidna history went back 500 years, so he was pretty late there!
Isaac continue that as various societies began – even though they should’ve existed well over 500 years ago what with Albion and all – a second cataclysm erupted from below the planet’s surface as the beryl deposits reacted to the energy of the gene bomb as it was absorbed over time. Except the Chaos Emeralds have existed for over 500 years before present time in the 3200s, echidna history and all.
71: Issue 142 against Sonic Super Special Issue 5: Romy Chacon’s original Freedom Fighters story in Issue 142 tries to have Sally and Sonic call each other the Freedom Fighters fist-bumping in response to those original Freedom Fighters as if they’re doing it for the very first time, when they weren’t, or else Sonic wouldn’t have said that’s a little extreme about her name and instead commented on the fact that she had the idea to call themselves Freedom Fighters earlier when spying on a meeting, and said that they’re not Freedom Fighters like the original Freedom Fighters were because they’re just kids.
I really hate this attempt at a retcon, but I feel like it can be safely ignored and ultimately isn’t supposed to matter anyways and the Sonic Super Special 5 origin is the actually canon one, with Sally calling her group the Freedom Fighters when they discover their base. So it’s just a continuity error.
It’s just weird, it makes it obvious that the original Freedom Fighters were never originally meant to exist because if they were a concept all along, Sonic would’ve referenced them in SSS5 when Sally had the idea to be Freedom Fighters. Granted, I will always appreciate that they filled in the plot hole of how people found their way to Knothole and it was built into a village; the original Freedom Fighters were the ones who did it. That at least is respectable.
72: Knuckles Comic Issue 23 against Knuckles Comic Issue 16: What took Fake Tobor so long betraying Haven for the Dark Legion when he’s been with the Brotherhood for so long and the Legion was out since Knuckles 1? He takes until Knuckles 23! He would’ve betrayed them as soon as possible, killed them all or sent them to a Twilight Cage, before they’d ever save Elias and the queen.
Honorable mention: In Knuckles Comic Issue 16, if Knuckles has spikes on his actual hands according to Knuckles 25, and that’s because Locke made him especially powerful, why does Lara say that the first time she witnessed something was different about him was when he was spelling out words with blocks too early? Wouldn’t she say that was the second time?
So in reality, this ended up being the second sign to her that he was different, not the first. Once again, this can be explained. I’m guessing that when Lara first saw his natural hand spikes, Locke explained it away as a genetic mutation that can occur in plenty of echidnas, not just guardians, and she continued to believe him about this for the rest of her life. After all, she didn’t learn that Locke made Knuckles super powerful as an egg.
All she tells Knuckles in this issue is that she knows he’s special because of this spelling. She didn’t go on to think of his red knuckle spikes as a sign that something was different about him, because she assumed or was told that other echidnas who are normal can have that problem as well. It’d be like her thinking that him being lactose intolerant or something would be a sign that something was different about him.
73: Issue 71 against Issue 65: Amy already knows Jeremiah even though she ran out of the library without seeing him last time she was in it, in Issue 65, when if he always kept going here, Amy never would’ve met him before Issue 65 because she always stayed in Knothole. And yet the next time she goes there, she talks as if she already knows him and isn’t surprised he’s here. She’s the one who introduces him to Tails. She noticed someone else was there, but she and Dulcy immediately rushed out of the library after that.
74: Issue 90 against Knuckles Comic Issue 24 and 32: In Knuckles 24, Knuckles was lying on a table and Dimitri told him that the Legion has a way of getting rid of the problem where someone would not agree with them. You’d think being told this would’ve caused him to go Chaos Knuckles instead of him simply being put under with no resistance at all.
Knuckles had plenty of times where the situation was so desperate that he instinctively used his true potential as the most powerful guardian for a “ Deus ex Machina, “ to exaggerate here, like against The Hunter when he killed Monk, and he used it to save himself from the Legion and Dimitri while unconscious. And yet he didn’t go green back THEN! He had no attachment to Antoine’s father, and while he cared more about Antoine than Monk, we never saw him have any friendship moments with him. The only reason Knuckles took so long to go green was because the idea wasn’t thought up yet. That’s 2 errors in one issue (Issue 90).
Sure, there were references to him having potentially limitless power all over the place, but it only ever resulted in him using more magic than usual, not turning green and getting to do whatever he feels like, so while this does feel like it was properly foreshadowed, logically it should’ve happened sooner than this. It’s just a nitpick though, I understand why it happened at this point.
75: Issue 150 against Issue 71: Wait a minute Scourge has GREEN eyes?! But Sonic only got green eyes from running around a planet with the Super Emerald! So… why the hell does SCOURGE have green eyes? HE didn’t have to keep a Super Emerald in a backpack on him and run around to save the planet from a temporal beam that was trying to get Knothole out of being three hours ahead in time, because the Ultimate Annihilator was never built and stopped!
It was specifically pointed out in Sonic Super Special 10 that Scourge DIDN’T have green eyes and Sonic did as a way to differentiate them. So if this was a retcon so that he always had green eyes, then this would be a big contradiction to that issue, which has to have happened to explain why Scourge was in Litigopolis and why he was there to threaten Antoine.
There has to be an explanation for why this happened to him, but we won’t get to see it. If he got his hands on a Super Emerald himself, what’d he DO with it? What reason would he have to run around the planet with it multiple times then?
We should’ve gotten a story explaining THAT, not the nonsensical story in SSS10! If his eyes are green because he’s wearing contacts, well he must only be wearing them to disguise himself as Sonic, but he KEEPS HAVING green eyes AFTER this arc, so THAT can’t be it, because he would’ve given up those contacts after they served their purpose! Archie Sonic Online’s Q and A tries to explain this as if EVERY Sonic got green eyes at once, completely ignoring that Underground Sonic didn’t get green eyes.
76: Issue 108 against Issue 72: Eggman somehow doesn’t know who Robotnik is on sight, despite the fact that he broadcasted an entire autobiography on him in Issue 72, and he used to look like him!
77: Sabrina Comic 28 against Sonic Super Special Issue 10: Here’s an art inconsistency. In the Sabrina part of the Sabrina crossover, Sally was in a desert. When Sally’s sent back to Mobius in SSS10, she doesn’t question the fact that now she’s in a grassy field. Maybe them not questioning this was a part of the spell. What’s even more confusing is that their roles are reversed when they get back for NO reason.
78: Issue 150 against Sonic Super Special 10: In Issue 150’s flashback, HOW did Scourge get back into his old position in the gang of being the top dog when the last time we saw him, his gang DITCHED him in Sonic Super Special Issue 10, and then he got arrested by Zonic after threatening Antoine and his father?! And before that, he was on the run in Litigopolis after his gang ditched him. What’d he do to get accepted back? This is a serious continuity error completely ignoring how Scourge wasn’t home last time we saw him!
You’d think that unless Scourge was extremely lonely to the point of wanting to go back to that gang just to have some company again, he’d have either not bothered returning to a gang that didn’t want him around, which would’ve been the only reason why he would’ve taken so long to return to them and done zone-hopping all alone instead, or he would’ve gone through with his revenge plot of SSS10 (” Well they’re gonna pay, one by one! “) and at that point, why would they have accepted him being around them without plotting to kill him every time his back was turned, if he was so mean to them when he came back?
He apparently used violence and force to get back to this position after he turned green, but the writing and them were acting like this was a new thing for him and he didn’t already intimidate them into accepting him back BEFORE. 150 ended up with 5 continuity errors as a whole! The most in one issue in the comic until Flynn.
79: Issue 90 against Issue 76: Bollers gives Mina super speed as if she always had it just so she can save Sonic. The only logical reason for why Mina didn’t use her super speed to save her mother from being roboticized from sheer force of will and panic, was that it hadn’t been thought up as an idea yet. Logically, her desperation to save her mother should’ve made her just as frantic and full of adrenaline and let her start running at sonic speed even back then, and then she wouldn’t be depressing us with her interesting desire to be roboticized just to be with her mother again.
And no, I’m not buying that Mammoth Mogul gave her super speed without forcing her to work for him right away out of the kindness of his heart like a soft little teddy bear, when she had no way of finding him IN KNOTHOLE! He was trapped in the Master Emerald at that time.
80: Issue 110 against Sonic Super Special Issue 11: Sally’s BEEN IN the Source of All BEFORE and it looked the same, so why does she ask where she is when she’s there?!
81: Issue 110 against Sonic Super Special Issue 11: Sally asked the stupid question of how she can see a vision of Sonic when it’s obvious the Sword’s giving her a vision. And the Source of All gave her a short vision of the future earlier in SSS11 so why is she asking how she can know something that happened in the present somewhere else at that point? It showed her visions BEFORE. Despite the whole story only happening because of what she did in SSS11, she spends the whole story acting as if she doesn’t remember that story at all.
82: Issue 142 against Sonic Super Special Issue 11: Sonic’s daughter Sonia naturally complains about the bullshit that even though SHE’S the oldest child, her irresponsible brother Manik gets to be king because he’s the firstborn male. So, I guess Sally with her independence streak, didn’t think to oppose that law just because the KING supported it?!… Wasn’t the whole reason she didn’t fuse with the Source of All being that she wanted to rule HER way? That’s SO frustratingly Out of Character for her!
83: Issue 118 against Issue 78: Eggman knows where Knothole is after getting a new robot body. In Issue 78, he said that he had to dump his old corrupted files because of the virus. Wouldn’t Knothole’s location be one of his files? It’s a file from his computer, not one in his body. He had to dump his robot body’s files. But shouldn’t the virus have corrupted the Knothole data, if that was what corrupted his old files in the FIRST place, and it was capable of corruption at all?
Even if not, why would being in a new robot body make it so that he doesn’t get a virus when he tries to download the location of Knothole? It just doesn’t make any sense. It’s stupid enough that his roboticizing touch power doesn’t transfer to it when it did to the last one.
Wouldn’t he just get the virus again as soon as he’d try to access Knothole’s coordinates? Not if he’s not a robot that the virus can infect, granted, so once he’s human, it makes sense, but not when he was a robot in Issue 118. And again she would’ve either deleted the coordinates or hopelessly corrupted it, not had a punishment for trying to download the intact data! that only a robot could suffer from, when he could just have an organic being like Snively access the data the normal way and not get a virus put in him.
And somehow he never did that, so that couldn’t be a solution for him if it was that easy. It wasn’t just downloading the coordinates into him that would be impossible. It was trying to access it in any way.
And it sure is convenient that Eggman thought to upload the inaccessible location of Knothole data to cyberspace and computers outside Robotropolis just in CASE, before Robotropolis was destroyed with seconds’ worth of warning, WHICH HE NEVER CONSIDERED, and he had to change cities, because the last place the data was at, was nuked anyways. And yet he has a computer able to access it, as if he’s still in Robotropolis.
84: Starting with “A Door to the Past” Locke implies that he’s part of the Knuckles Clan since they would be able to re-fight a war with the cat people. I guess the Knuckles Clan really is related to Knuckles despite the fact that they lived on the surface and were descended from the Albionians directly instead and had NO REASON to be related to the GUARDIANS who’d been on the Floating Island for 400 years! Not related enough that it’d be relevant anyways. Otherwise, why’d he say the Knuckles Clan and not “ the echidnas? “ Not to mention the ENTIRE Knuckles Clan was killed by Chaos, so they couldn’t have left any descendants.
85: Sonic Super Special Issue 13 against Issue 82: Eggman orders Chaos to get Froggy saying that it’s possessed by his tail and he’ll become stronger, which confused the hell out of me because I thought the entire point of him putting Froggy in that matter-energy transmuter to absorb his energy in Issue 82, was that it would depossess him getting the chaos energy out of him! Even if all it was actually for was powering Chaos up to Chaos Zero, the fact remains that if Froggy and Chaos were in the same room together, there was no excuse for Eggman not telling Chaos to get that frog because it’s possessed by his tail in Issue 82. But that scene in 82 had to happen to get Chaos to Chaos Zero form.
86: Issue 90 against Issue 88: The king being paralyzed from the waist down makes no sense because the only injury he got was to the head.
87: Issue 100 against Sonic Super Special Issue 14: It’s confusing that Julie says, “ But I’m your sister! “ in Issue 100 since she’s flip-flopping, as the last time she acknowledged their kinship, she said, “ Our relationship is strictly an accident of biology! “ and now she’s acting all sad and hurt as if the feeling isn’t mutual. She had plenty of time to change her mind before SSS14 and didn’t.
88: Issue 108 against Issue 105: Based on the events of Issue 105 revealing that someone has to be roboticized to survive the toxic atmosphere of Robotropolis because living there for six weeks will poison a person, Robo-Robotnik would have told Robotnik Prime this as soon as he’d bring him back, so that he’d want to be roboticized and therefore have mobility afterwards. Why would he wait until he’d get sick before telling him why he needs to be roboticized when he knows how useful being a robot is to him, and therefore having a second robot ally would be also helpful?
He would’ve roboticized Robotnik with his permission right away, so because his molecular structure would be changed that way, why would he still disappear like at the end of this story, as a robot? Robo-Robotnik would’ve backed up his data like he does to himself if he really inexplicably cared about working with Robotnik Prime. But he wouldn’t anticipate that he’d be fated to disappear of course. He wouldn’t have to anticipate it, though, he’d just immediately hook him up to cyberspace for the same reason he did that for Snively.
Why would he vanish after his chemistry was completely changed so that he couldn’t really be recognized as the same object by the universe? So Robotnik Prime wouldn’t have disappeared at the end of this story! At first I didn’t notice this huge plot hole because I was so distracted by everything else wrong with this story, like the fact that Robotnik Prime only being brought back temporarily by itself was extremely confusing.
89: Issue 139 against Issue 100 at earliest – a lot of the Chaos Knuckles arc, especially Issue 108: We had this whole arc after Issue 100 where Knuckles realized he should be more open-minded and listen to the Dark Legion’s points (the technology bans are unfair after all), leading to him letting Dimitri give a speech about technology’s pros to the High Council in Echidnapolis. Then flash forwards to Issue 139 where Bollers had Knuckles be especially mean to the Legionnaires who it turns out were just trying to help them fight the dingoes, with Sonic’s narration saying that he forgot how much Knuckles can’t stand the Legion.
That was all ground-breaking social progress. Knuckles even sacrificed his life to save Dimitri.
The heroes attacked the Legion first on sight, assuming they were the bad guys this time, and Knuckles said nothing and just joined in instead of giving them the benefit of the doubt and asking them what’s up..
All of that progress was apparently for nothing. And it’s not like Knuckles dealt with the Legion being evil at all during the time skip, he was stuck on the ground the whole time and that’s implied to be why Angel Island got taken over by Eggman in the first place.
And yet the instant Knuckles sees the Legion again, he acts like they’re pure evil and doesn’t stop his friends from jumping to attack them, even though they were built up to become good guys before! So the writer seemed to have ignored Knuckles’ Character Development and made him go back to hating the Legion unconditionally. It’s like he was totally unfamiliar with the end of the Chaos Knuckles arc.
90: Issue 131 against Issue 109: It’s confusing that Dimitri casually lives with Lien-Da in the future no problem and is even kind enough to put faith in her to mend fences with Julie-Su, even though she betrays him and leaves him to die in the Iron Dominion arc, not to mention was written to try to assassinate him before this issue, so clearly she would’ve tried that again, and she was happy to be in charge at last in the Return to Angel Island arc while Dimitri was gone.
91: Issue 155 against Issue 123: There’s mecha dragons who have been monitoring Dulcy for years and they find Dulcy’s colony by following her. HOW were they not deroboticized by the Bem?! Every other Robian WAS! The Bem were in a spaceship above the SKY.
Clearly they’d have seen the mecha-dragons that were in the sky, and simply used tractor beams on them and knocked them out immediately just like they must have to all of the Robians. And why didn’t their memories get scanned to find the dragon colony way earlier? Also, why didn’t they roboticize Goldenhive or the Cat Country or the Dragon Kingdom?
92: Issue 155 against Issue 123: So why wasn’t everyone in the Dragon Kingdom and the Sandblast City and Downunda Freedom Fighters hit with roboticizing beams in the 11 years that the mecha-dragons have been roaming the planet? How is there anyone still left alive? WAIT A MINUTE, didn’t the Bem make the entirety of the planet’s people immune to roboticization?! Why doesn’t Eggman get himself roboticized again by the mecha-dragons since he should KNOW that they’re still around and able to roboticize just fine?
APPARENTLY they missed the dragons in the SKY when the Bem were in a spaceship able to tractor beam and knock them out like everyone else, and they missed Vesuvio because it was so well-hidden, but they still managed to find everyone ELSE, even Eggman and Snively in their secure Robotnik base! That’s even MORE of an inconsistency! At first I was just doing an extension of the continuity error I mentioned before with the Dragon Kingdom being free of Robians, but it’s silly that these beams can even still work!
93: Issue 149 against Issue 125: If Aurora made Knuckles powerless as a punishment because she somehow psychically KNEW him not being one with the Chaos Force would let Mogul destroy zones, then, if she’s powerful enough to know Mogul’s plan ahead of time, then that just brings up the question of why she didn’t stop him herself, or at least TOLD KNUCKLES why he should stay in the Chaos Force, to fight Mogul! This clearly wasn’t planned from the start.
94: Issue 155 against Issue 125: Fiona not already knowing by now what Tails’ history with the Fiona duplicate was, is really nonsensical, there’s no way she wouldn’t have already been told about that from him being just as startled from when he first MET her. She didn’t question why he knew her name in Issue 125, so I assumed they already met and he explained his history with the fake Fiona after inevitably being tellingly shocked at seeing her.
95: Issue 148 against Issue 126: Isaac says that the gene bombs are responsible for the Chaos Emeralds. It’s not like every planet with Chaos Emeralds got gene bombs released on it to create them, right? The ant planet probably didn’t, though it was never said the Xorda DIDN’T do that to those planets too, and the Bem WERE afraid of the Xorda. But I refuse to believe this. Unless the Xorda gene bombs WERE powered by Chaos Emeralds, so of course they had chaos energy. 4 continuity errors at once for Issue 148, that is really ridiculous for pre-Flynn.
96: Issue 118 against Issue 129: Considering that it turns out the aliens wanted Sonic and Tails to win, so they could be allowed to deroboticize Mobius, it ends up being bullshit that they rigged the test in the robots’ favour like this. There was nothing forcing them to give the roboticized participants that they wanted to lose NEW abilities. What REALLY would’ve happened is they wouldn’t have new abilities at ALL.
The test was to see if robots were superior to organics, but the robots didn’t necessarily have to have new powers, because that wasn’t putting the two pairs on an equal playing field. You’d think an alien species centuries ahead in technology would be better at making a fair, scientific experiment.
97: Issue 134: Rotor shows naivety saying that Lien-Da’s kid seems pretty harmless, and is told that he doesn’t know his mother, who could really muck things up. I call bullshit on the idea that after 25 years, Rotor would still have little to no experience with just how evil Lien-Da has been!
That’s especially true with the whole Dark Egg Legion nonsense in later issues, but even before this, though at this point in the comic he hadn’t met Lien-Da in the present day, he could’ve still been told about her by one of his many friends, like Knuckles in all the time he was stuck on the surface of Mobius, for example.
98: Issue 153: In 153, why does Fiona call Tails, “ Miles? “ She’s been on the team since AT MOST right before Issue 130! After all that time! Does she think the name Tails is too insulting? She doesn’t two issues later. Did people NEVER say to her that she can call him Tails? Did she not HEAR people call him that? Are they not close friends enough after all this time – I don’t even know how long she’s BEEN with them to BEGIN with – that she wouldn’t call him by the affectionate nickname?
99: Issue 137 against Issue 134: Despite Rotor saying in 134 that he retired from field missions, there’s still times where he goes on them dangerously anyways, like in Issue 137, Issue 146 or 157, so even the writers realized how stupid it would be to go along with that idea and ignored it for good reason. I wish THAT lasted!
100: Issue 141 against Issue 139: In Issue 141, just two issues after it was revealed that the Master Emerald now drains Knuckles of his power putting him in pain, he goes super with it and gets his powers back. Huh? Why didn’t that happen last time?
101: Issue 142 against Issue 80: In Issue 142, Sally thinks Amy used Sonic’s billionth Ring to turn Modern Amy, when everyone knows she used the Ring of Acorns, and she’s never corrected, not even in a thought bubble.
102: Issue 156 against Issue 150: Fiona says that she saw her putting the moves on him not so long ago – which she DIDN’T, there was no HINT of that and you’d think she would’ve just been mad at Sonic for “ cheating “ on her and revealed herself to Bunnie right away, and gotten Sonic and Scourge in trouble because Scourge was kissing Bunnie and not her.
If she was doing it just to make Antoine jealous, why did she never TELL Patch that she was kissing ” Sonic? ” Or if she saw him with Bunnie BEFORE he kissed her, why did Fiona not question him wanting to kiss her after Bunnie and… I can believe she was just that lonely and he explained that HE was to relate to her, but Sonic should have commented on that.
103: Issue 151 against Issue 151: We saw the entire time that Scourge was in the Chaos Chamber in Issue 151. The minute he entered it, he got approached by Sonic, who fought with him. We NEVER saw him pick anything off the Master Emerald. So somehow the issue contradicts itself.
104: Issue 154 against Issue 152: In Issue 152, Snively says the nanites could become the dominant “ lifeform “ on the planet, and in 154, he insists that nanites aren’t alive.
105: Issue 155 against Issue 153: Again in 155, Fiona asks Tails why he’s always acted strange around her, when she clearly talked last issue as if she KNEW that he had a crush on her from Sonic saying Tails has a lot of respect for her and that’s why she called Sonic selfish for dating her. And the textbox insists that Scourge tried to make a move on her in 150 when we never had any hint of that there.
106: Issue 157 against Issue 141: Sonic says about M that he thought he defeated her, even though in Issue 140, M was in the background when Eggman was on camera talking to Sonic. Why would he ever forget that after the scary experience M put him through in his first fight with her?
At least 46 of them are by Penders, and until Nate was introduced, he was almost the only one making continuity errors. It was only after Nate’s backstory that other writers started constantly making mistakes to make up for lost time, like Bollers, Romy, and eventually Gallagher. 45 is nothing compared to Flynn’s 180 continuity errors, though.
As you can see, the continuity errors are the most confusing plot holes of all. They’re also the most rare ones, because there’s over 3000 plot holes and only a tiny fraction of them are continuity errors. But the vast majority of the time pre-Flynn, usually there’s either 0 or 1 continuity error or retcon on average. It’s rare that it even climbs above 2. Don’t get used to that.
Ian Flynn’s preboot issues reach 88 continuity errors and 15 retcons by Issue 201! Which is like 43 issues later!
CrystalMaiden77 
All good points! Clearly you read the stories in a very thoughtful way, which is admirable.
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OK well it’s cool if that’s really you, dude. My problem is that it’s from meta logic. Sure it’s a dream, so I guess anything can happen, but it would’ve made more sense to me if Sonic had been written to ask ” But Sally and I ARE dating ” and the implication is that he only asked him that because it’s just a dream and it was foreshadowing, or at least, ” Well Sally and I did kiss a while ago but we decided not to date right away because we’re too different, and we’re not ready yet. ” I was really confused because it was brought up ” why aren’t you dating yet? ” when I thought they were at the time, and Sonic didn’t give a logical in-universe respnse to it I’d expect. I don’t mean any offense, it’s more a problem with the main writer of the comic Bollers not explaining right after Issue 50 with a scene that Sonic and Sally didn’t start dating after they kissed and WHY they didn’t. So I had a lack of proper context for why the scene’s question made sense. I could get the other question ” Sally should’ve been a martyr ” being a fan thing though.
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Hello – Paul Castiglia here. I just want to chime in regarding my story, “Statue of Limitations” from SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #70. The backstory on it is that at the time we were getting tons of feedback from fans about Sonic stories both online and in phone calls. Much of it I received directly as I one of my duties working on staff at Archie was monitoring that feedback. Many of the lines of dialogue in that story that made you scratch your head (and likely caused the scratching of many other readers’ heads, I imagine) were actual real comments from fans at the time, including the oft-repeated “Sonic and Sally should be together” refrain. Of course, you and many other readers would have no way of knowing this context, but this story’s main function was to provide a tip of the red sneaker to the many vocal Sonic comic book fans out there. Hope that brings a little more clarity, if not to the story itself, then at least to the origins behind it.
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