History Trivia / SonicTheHedgehogArchieComics

** Elements from the game ''VideoGame/SonicChronicles'' are also off-limits because of the legal mess between EA, Sega and Penders that happened in 2011, since the game took many elements from Ken Penders stories and was part of what provoked his lawsuit against Sega and Creator/BioWare in the first place. Note that according to Ian Flynn, Sega themselves were fine with them being used, and it was Archie that forbade them.

** Elements from the game ''VideoGame/SonicChronicles'' are also off-limits because of the legal mess between EA, Sega, and Penders, since the game took many elements from Ken Penders stories and was part of what provoked his lawsuit against Sega, EA and Creator/BioWare in the first place. Note that according to Ian Flynn, Sega themselves were fine with them being used, and it was Archie that forbade them.

** According to an interview Ken Penders did with [[https://youtu.be/i0RKj6vFe3k?si=gImHbM6T8inoDt2o Did You Know Gaming]], Archie's original licensing agreement with Sega stated that they needed to get approval for every new character the comic introduced and have it put it in writing that Sega owned that character. Archie failed to enforce this and supposedly didn't inform their writers about this stipulation either. Likewise, Sega didn't pay attention to the comics and was either unaware or apathetic towards their rules being ignored. Penders remarked that had this agreement been properly enforced then he likely wouldn't have made as many characters in the comic as he did.

** Despite Archie's contract apparently specifying that everything they create for the comics transfers to Sega of America's ownership, and the reason for the post issue-160 staff's ideas still being used stemming to their contracts in Archie's possession, the later IDW comic series is still unable to use post-Super Genesis Wave characters for unexplained reasons.

* AccidentalDownerEnding: Thanks to the comic's legal lawsuit between Archie and Ken Penders, the whole continuity had to be rebooted. Pretty much ''every remaining'' plot thread is left hanging on a very dour note, [[spoiler:the entire echidna race has been banished to another dimension by Thrash, Naugus still has large influence over Mobotropolis and has now possessed his assistant Geoffery, Antoine is still in a coma and Bunnie is MIA, NICOLE and Mina are left trying to alleviate the stigma the former has, Snively has been disowned by Hope and imprisoned by Eggman after a failed coup, and while Sally has been neutralized and is back in the Freedom Fighters' hands, she is still roboticized (and likely in a state difficult to reverse due to Eggman heavily modifying her). The only plot that gets ''some'' resolution is Sonic letting go of his grudge against Silver, which happens ''just'' before the CosmicRetcon]]. Since this was the swan song for several characters under the copyright concern, needless to say they bowed out in the most miserable way possible, in favor of the new continuity that came after, and would later be succeeded by [[ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogIDW IDW's game-based continuity]].

** Ken Penders is very critical of the ''Sonic'' franchise (albeit mostly with the comics), often insulting and criticizing Sega, the pre-reboot comics he didn't write, Ian Flynn, the post-reboot comics, the IDW series and ''Film/SonicTheHedgehog2020'' on his Twitter account.

** Due to the lawsuit with Ken Penders, [[ExiledFromContinuity his characters, locations or events cannot be used, mentioned or named beyond vague references]].
** Elements from the game ''VideoGame/SonicChronicles'' are also off-limits because of the legal mess between EA, Sega, and Penders, since the game took many elements from Ken Penders stories and was part of what provoked his lawsuit against Sega and Creator/BioWare in the first place. Note that according to Ian Flynn, Sega themselves were fine with them being used, and it was Archie that forbade them.

** Sonic cannot get overly emotional (which is often paraphrased or misinterpreted as "Sonic can't cry."), since Sega considers it completely out-of-character for Sonic to act like that. [[https://66.media.tumblr.com/f747f6bf9f8032631492b498e00fb599/5cdf64ac58f35630-e5/s1280x1920/f48d581bebf0f49015da43281d80ddf043f8d6d9.jpg A couple panels in #166]], where Future Sonic is grieving over the loss of his children, were toned down because of this.
** From at least 2013 and on if not earlier, the name "Mobius" cannot be spoken or mentioned as the name of the planet, and it is not allowed to be called "Earth" either--Sega says it is now just "Sonic's World".[[note]]They still call themselves "Mobians" though.[[/note]]

** [[InvincibleHero Sonic]] [[TheGoodGuysAlwaysWin always has to win.]] Even if Eggman [[TeamRocketWins does get the upper hand for a short period]], Sonic has to immediately overcome him in a subsequent comic. [[note]]The ''VideoGame/SonicUnleashed'' arc had to have Sonic arrive ''after'' the world began to break up, and ''VideoGame/SonicForces'' had no chance...[[/note]]

** All of the 170+ characters created by writer Ken Penders have been permanently removed from the series due to a major lawsuit with him, including several major characters and series mainstays. This also included characters created by other writers pre-issue 160 like Karl Bollers as SEGA didn't want to risk anything similar to the Ken Penders legal case happening again in the future. In some cases, even unrelated characters of writers still at Archie (like Angelo Decesare's characters) got removed.

* AccidentalDownerEnding: Thanks to the comic's legal issues, the whole continuity had to be rebooted. Pretty much ''every remaining'' plot thread is left hanging on a very dour note, [[spoiler:the entire echidna race has been banished to another dimension by Thrash, Naugus still has large influence over Mobotropolis and has now possessed his assistant Geoffery, Antoine is still in a coma and Bunnie is MIA, NICOLE and Mina are left trying to alleviate the stigma the former has, Snively has been disowned by Hope and imprisoned by Eggman after a failed coup, and while Sally has been neutralized and is back in the Freedom Fighters' hands, she is still roboticized (and likely in a state difficult to reverse due to Eggman heavily modifying her). The only plot that gets ''some'' resolution is Sonic letting go of his grudge against Silver, which happens ''just'' before the CosmicRetcon]]. Since this was the swan song for several characters under the copyright concern, needless to say they bowed out in the most miserable way possible, in favor of the new continuity that came after, and would later be succeeded by [[ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogIDW IDW's game-based continuity]].

* ExecutiveMeddling: The series had a ''lot'' of issues of Archie suffering this under Sega in the later part of its existence, with numerous mandates imposed over the comics. According to most reports, Sega had been somewhat ''laissez-faire'' towards the comic's creative direction for much of its first decade of existence, being mostly content to let Archie run the show more or less as they saw fit, to the point of their attitude towards the comic bordering on CreatorsApathy at times. However, as ''Sonic'' as a brand started to flounder after it started suffering humiliation after humiliation in the tail-end of 90's and well into the 00's, Sega all of a sudden became extremely concerned with how their mascot was perceived by the public, and put new, stricter rules as to how Sonic and friends could be depicted in media, and set out to enforce them. As part of the process, Archie was wrangled in by Sega, who from then took a much more hands-on approach to the comic. However, as with the later IDW comics, writer Ian Flynn has frequently stressed that there was never a set-in-stone list of rules for the comics to work under, as everything was done on a case-by-case basis and that rules could and did change over time.

** Game characters can not have parents or relatives (Cream the Rabbit being the lone exception, as she's the only game-related character to have a physically present parent). This also caused the ContinuityReboot to change things up, such as the fact that Uncle Chuck isn't blood related to Sonic anymore, and that [[HonoraryUncle the title is honorary]]. In later pre-reboot comics, Sonic and Tails weren't even allowed to address their parents properly, [[CallingParentsByTheirName only by their names]].

** [[StatusQuoIsGod None of the game characters can have character development unless approved. SEGA Characters cannot be changed in any way unless approved.]]

** The idea of Metal Sonic being a [[LegacyCharacter series of robots]] [[FlatCharacter devoid of personality]], rather than one individual recurring robot, [[VillainDecay and being much easier to defeat than the canon Metal]], was eventually nixed by Sega, who got tired of it and told Ian Flynn to cut it out. Surprisingly, this is one of the few changes that was met with positive reception from fans, due to Metal actually gaining a personality and becoming a much bigger opponent than before.

* IKnewIt:
** Tundra's true identity was guessed by quite a few people.
** Once the the comics hit a delay at the start of 2017, many called that the comics were likely cancelled. On July 2017, that was indeed confirmed.
** When Sega announced that the comic was seeking a new publisher, many guessed that Creator/IDWPublishing was be a likely candidate due to having hosted many a property (Creator/{{Hasbro}}, many Creator/CartoonNetwork series, etc). Sure enough, Sega announced that they had signed a deal with them. ''2 days after their announcement of the cancelled Archie comic''.

** Due to the lawsuit with Ken Penders, [[ExiledFromContinuity his characters, locations or events cannot be used, mentioned or named beyond vague references.]]

** Due to the lawsuit with Ken Penders, [[ExiledFromContinuity his characters, locations or events cannot be used, mentioned or named beyond vague references.]] Elements from the game ''VideoGame/SonicChronicles'' are off-limits because of this legal mess, since the game took many elements from Ken Penders stories and was part of what provoked his lawsuit against Sega and Creator/BioWare in the first place. Note that according to Ian Flynn, Sega themselves were fine with them being used, and it was Archie that forbade them.