After finishing watching all the Sonic cartoons, mainly all the American Sonic shows made by DIC and even the Japanese Sonic Animes since this won’t cover Sonic Underground, I realized that these shows could be in continuity with each other. Just like I found out about the Nintendo Animated Universe that consists of the Super Mario Cartoons, The Legend of Zelda and Captain N, I will now do the same for Sonic.
As a kid I always thought of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog SATAM sharing the same universe. And why not? Both had the same voice actor, basically the same premise only executed a bit differently and both had the same personality, likes and dislikes for Sonic. There is no reason not to think they aren’t in the same universe besides the fact that one is a much lighter take on it. Counting much of the stuff the two shows shared wasn’t from the videogames so you can’t say it’s because of the source material, so it’s not crazy to think this.
While I was making my way through the shows, I wanted to notice if I could find any links between the shows to form one big animated story compromised of all the Sonic shows. While watching Sonic X, I noticed they go to planet earth and that’s where their adventures take place but they never mention the name of where they came from. If we take this into account then it could easily be Planet Mobius and the adventures that took place in that earth are the ones from the American show. Eggman in this universe can easily be the one from the DIC shows as he is at times goofy like in AOSTH and at times more evil like his SATAM counterpart. He even has two henchmen that resemble Scratch and Grounder. While Sonic is just an older version of him. After finishing Sonic X I decided it was too much trying to mesh all the shows together for the sake of it and decided it should be left alone…Well with the exception of the Japanese Sonic OVA which fits perfectly as an adventure that takes place before Sonic X in their version of the world before arriving to Earth, it fits perfectly without much hassle.
Now all the American DIC Sonic cartoons all seem to be based off the same story bible; They live in this planet called Mobius, they are freedom fighters who fight against Dr. Robotnik and Sonic is way too cool. He uses the same catchphrases in all those shows and has a taste for chilly dogs. Even with Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog SATAM and Sonic underground sharing those details all three shows definitely go in different directions story wise, which makes it a bit hard for all of them to fit. However with so many similarities it just doesn’t seem fine to separate them and stand alone, at least I won’t fail Sonic & his shitty friends.
After watching all three shows there are definitely a few inconsistencies, especially with the unresolved plots that each of the DIC shows had, this is the 90s after all where most shows didn’t finish their stories. However you can overlook them by giving explanations; Some simple and some complicated, not all of them are as simple. Let’s dig in then.. Why is Dr. Robotnik goofier in AOSTH? A theory I have is he accidentally became Roboticized which made him lose his small grasp at humanity that he had. Sonic Underground’s Dr. Robotnik works as a nice transition of the personality change until he is out there in SatAM, to help this fact you can see that he is more robot in the later shows and I believe we even see it happen in one episode.
Sonic Underground messes things up a bit, since it really adds a bunch of stuff that is difficult to account for like Sonic being royalty in the show and also the fact that the cartoon gives him two siblings.. but with all the magic that is used in this cartoon it actually helps and there can be a few explanations. First, we can assume that after the show ends they do find their mother and his siblings stay with her. Also she could’ve been a previous ruler of Mobius before Princess Sally’s father or taken control after Sally’s dad was taken.
The AOSTH universe can take place as the first show in the continuity while Dr. Robotnik is actively conquering Planet Mobius and Sonic Underground after as he’s gained more control but didn’t control everything. This works out fine since SATAM is the epitome of Dr. Robotnik. Overall it takes quite a few fixes but the universes share so much that is inconsistent with all other Sonic Media it makes me want to put it all together. The Christmas Special even bridged AOSTH and SATAM as well by introducing Sally into AOSTH canon, bringing up Robotropolis that only continues in the next two shows. We also get to see the first Swatbots in AOSTH, an improved model in Underground and the final version in SATAM. Uncle Chuck also makes an appearance in Sonic Underground and it’s brought up that he is the adopted uncle of Sonic, fixing the inconsistency of Sonic having a mother and actually helps this convoluted theory have more merits. We even see him get robotized. Of course there’s still inconsistencies since SATAM pretty much explains how Dr. Robotnik got into power but you would need to just place those flashbacks carefully as taking place during the other two shows and a small explanation for inconsistencies that will be found.
So We can have two nice timelines, the Japanese Sonic OAVs taking place before Sonic X and The Sonic the Hedgehog DIC animated trilogy all in one timeline. Hell, there really is no reason not to include Sonic X as well in this mess of a universe, the vagueness of what the original planet Sonic comes from in Sonic X as well as the fact that they had previous encounters with Dr. Eggman, if you really want to mesh them all together in this huge Sonic animated universe you could.
