Film / Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022)

Spoilers for this movie will be marked as usual. However, due to its nature as the sequel to Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), that film's spoilers are unmarked here. You Have Been Warned!

Welcome 2 the next level.

"Trust me when I tell you: there will come a time when your powers will be needed. But you don't choose that moment. That moment chooses you."

— Tom Wachowski

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is the sequel to the 2020 live-action film based on the Sega franchise of the same name and thusly the second entry in its film series. It released on March 30, 2022 in Europe and on April 8 in the US.

After settling down in Green Hills, Sonic (voiced by Ben Schwartz) is ready for more freedom, and Tom (James Marsden) and Maddie (Tika Sumpter) agree to leave him home alone while they go on vacation. However, not long after their departure, Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey) returns to Earth in search of an emerald that has the power to both build and destroy civilizations — and he's teamed up with the super-strong echidna Knuckles (voiced by Idris Elba). Wishing to prove his worth as a hero, Sonic teams up with his own sidekick, another recent arrival to Earth named Tails (voiced by Colleen O'Shaughnessey), and together they embark on a journey to find the Master Emerald before it falls into the wrong hands.

The movie has a comic tie-in from IDW (who also publishes the comic for the main game series), called Sonic the Hedgehog 2: The Official Movie Pre-Quill. It released on March 30th (a week before the movie's official release) and shows what the characters were up to between movies.

On February 15, it was announced that a third Sonic movie was in development, as well as a spin-off series for Paramount+ starring Knuckles the Echidna. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 will release on December 20, 2024, while the spin-off series will debut on April 26, 2024. On March 28, producer Toby Ascher has stated that further projects in what will become the Sonic Cinematic Universe are in development.

A short-form sequel to the film, titled Sonic Drone Home (which saw Schwartz returning to voice Sonic, without the actors of Tails and Knuckles returning), would be included with the film's home media release.

Previews: Title Announcement, Trailer 1, Big Game Spot Trailer, "Blue Justice" trailer, "Final" trailer

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Sonic the Hedgehog 2 contains examples of:

• 11th-Hour Superpower: Mirroring the first movie, Sonic unlocks a hidden power while near death. This time, he unintentionally uses the Chaos Emeralds to transform into Super Sonic.
• Ace Pilot: Tails effortlessly dodges a barrage of Macross Missile Massacre with his biplane from Robotnik's giant robot, while Sonic is riding on top of the plane at that. The wings get snapped off by the robot's moustache clamping shut over it, causing it to crash.
• Actionized Sequel: This sequel has Sonic and Tails trying to prevent Dr. Robotnik and Knuckles from getting the Master Emerald with lots of explosions and fight sequences, which contrasts with the first movie's more down-to-earth and universe-building road trip plot.
• Actor Allusion:
  • While looking for a movie to watch, Sonic tells the dog Ozzy that he refuses to watch Snow Dogs because "that movie is the wOOOOOooooOOOOOOOrst!"
    • Also, after crashing through the temple at super speed, the first thing Sonic says is "Nailed it!"
  • Shemar Moore plays a government agent once again.
  • Robotnik absorbing the power of the Master Emerald marks the fourth time that Jim Carrey has played a larger-than-life character associated with the color green, and the second time he's played a character who temporarily gets omnipotent/godlike power.
  • Sonic compares Robotnik's new look to the Monopoly guy.
• Actually Pretty Funny: When Tails uses his Heli-Critter power to fly, Sonic asks Tails if his butt turned into a helicopter, which Tails finds hilarious.
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • As with Sonic in the first film, we learn more of Knuckles's past and how he came to be the Last of His Kind. The Echidna Clan as a whole is also given a more fleshed-out history.
  • In the games, the first Tornado was just a biplane owned by Sonic, and its exact origins are unknown. Here, it's introduced as a banner plane used for Rachel and Randall's wedding. Tails eventually spruces it up with some gadgetry and flies it into battle.
• Adaptation Amalgamation: The movie exhibits a mix of plot elements from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Sonic meeting Tails and becoming Super Sonic for the first time) and Sonic 3 & Knuckles (Dr. Robotnik seeking the Master Emerald, Knuckles being an adversary of Sonic's) together. The final showdown is a 20-minute adaptation of Sonic Heroes, with Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles utilizing all of their individual strengths to fight Robotnik's weapon, while the mid-credits scene has the introduction of Shadow the Hedgehog from Sonic Adventure 2.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • Knuckles debuts in the games as a threat because he blindsides Sonic and sets up traps for him in the various levels, but as a boss, he is a pushover. While Knuckles is more effective as a hero, he is at best Sonic's equal. Here, Knuckles is Always Someone Better to Sonic. He inflicts a Curb-Stomp Battle with Sonic in their first meeting, and while their rematch is much more even, it is unclear if Sonic could have won.
  • Unlike in the video game series, Robotnik uses Chaos energy directly without hooking it up to a machine as a power source, becoming a very powerful Evil Sorcerer capable of floating, shooting bolts of energy, conjuring up tornadoes, and psychically constructing machinery of massive scale and lethality with only his mind and scrap parts from around Green Hills.
  • In the games Super Sonic rarely demostarted any powers beyond being a Flying Brick, here he's shown to be an outright Reality Warper. Additionally, in most continuities this form has a very strict time limit, with Sonic requiring a steady supply of rings to maintain it. In this movie, there's no mention of any such limit, and Sonic only returns to normal once he voluntarily gives up the emeralds' power in recognition of the fact that he still has "a lot of growing up to do".
• Adaptational Location Change:
  • Usually, Angel Island (AKA "the Floating Island") is the resting place of the Master Emerald. Here, the Master Emerald is hidden on Earth and is located in a temple in a submerged island, the temple being this film's version of Labyrinth Zone.
  • The Labyrinth itself also qualifies, as it was originally located on South Island in the games, but is located on Earth here, completely unconnected to the film's version of South Island.
• Adaptational Superpower Change: Similar to Sonic, Knuckles is filled with a form of red electricity that seems to be what fuels his Super-Strength.
• Adaptation Personality Change: Inverted for Tails in the same way it was for Knuckles in Sonic X. Tails having a lot of admiration for Sonic is actually Truer to the Text of his original concept from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (only apparent in the Japanese manual), despite his more low-key, close friend/brother to Sonic presentation in the localized Sonic Adventure games.
• Adaptation Distillation: In the video games, the Master Emerald acts as a separate entity to and a "controller" for the power of the seven Chaos Emeralds. The Master and Chaos Emeralds are little more than a Power Source for near-limitless energy, though it may change depending on a given entry in the series or piece of media. It is also a main source of power which keeps Knuckles's home, Angel Island, afloat in the sky. The movie has the seven Emeralds fused into one Master Emerald, which turns whoever wields it into a Reality Warper. After Sonic uses the Chaos Emeralds to defeat Robotnik, he scatters them across the planet, with Knuckles fixing the Master Emerald that once held them together.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Tails and Knuckles, in a way. In the games, while they are good friends, they rarely interacted with each other unless Sonic is around. In the movie however, after Knuckles' Heel–Face Turn, Tails and Knuckles are seen working together on their own, and Knuckles even treats Tails like a younger brother, especially during the baseball scene at the end of the film where he carries Tails on his shoulders like an older brother, which he rarely does towards Tails in the games.
• Adaptational Villainy: Downplayed, as while Knuckles is by no means a bad guy, his conflict with Sonic here is much more personal, rather than being tricked by Robotnik into thinking Sonic was trying to steal the Master Emerald from his island like in the games. This changes after Robotnik’s betrayal and his Heel–Face Turn.
• All There in the Manual: The official novel confirms for the first time in the series that the planet Sonic, Tails and Knuckles hail from is Mobius. That said, this was apparently an addition by the novelization's author, as the writers for the film denied involvement with it.
• Alternative Foreign Theme Song: The Japanese version uses a lyrical version of the Green Hill Zone theme by DREAMS COME TRUE called "UP ON THE GREEN HILL".
• American Kirby Is Hardcore: Compare Tails' facial expression in the American poster (shown in the page image) to his expression in the Japanese version of the poster.
• And Starring: "With Idris Elba"/"and Jim Carrey".
• And Your Little Dog, Too!: Robotnik says this trope word-for-word while provoking Sonic into attacking him, leaving him open to being counter-attacked by Knuckles.
• Apologetic Attacker: Tom becomes this when he attacks Randall, the bridegroom at a wedding, to steal his ring.
• Art Evolution:
  • In the first movie's second stinger, Tails' shoes looked more akin to slip-ons. In the first trailer for this movie, when showing the same scene again, they now have shoelaces. His head now also looks less wide than it did in that first version.
  • The sprites for Classic Sonic in the credits, while still retaining the Conjoined Eyes, have now been altered to feature Movie Sonic's blue arms.
  • Sonic is now the same height as his game counterpart, as opposed to being much smaller like in the first movie (presumably a remnant of the original, more "realistic" design).
• Art Shift: While Tails explains the history of the Master Emerald, the movie shifts into a beautiful 2D animated style to depict the events of the story.
• Ascended Meme: When Robotnik teams up with Knuckles, he offers to "show him the way", referencing the "Ugandan Knuckles" meme.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The Death Egg Robot, a massive mech constructed by an emerald-enhanced Robotnik, dwarfing the environment around him and making Sonic look like a bug from Robotnik's view.
• Autobots, Rock Out!: Rachel roams the scene of her ruined wedding seeking her fiancé to the sound of Heart's "Barracuda".
• Badass Boast:
  • After Sonic tells Knuckles that he'll never take his power, the echidna delivers a cutting retort.
    Knuckles: Do I look like I need your power?
  • Sonic gets a good one that doubles as an Insult Backfire against Knuckles. It's still not good enough to beat him, though:
    Knuckles: I was expecting more of you. You're unskilled. Untrained. And... Unworthy!
    Sonic: You forgot one: unstoppable.
  • Sonic gets another good one as they're snowboarding down the mountain.
    Knuckles: You are no match for me. I've been training for this my entire life.
    Sonic: And I had no training at all, yet here I am ahead of you. That's gotta be embarrassing.
• Bad Guy Bar: Sonic and Tails enter a bar in Siberia teeming with menacing, thuggish-looking folks. However, they're willing to solve things with a Dance-Off, in which the two manage to win the angry Russians over.
• Bag of Holding: Tails can seemingly pull any amount of items from his backpack, despite it being roughly the size of a small child's. While many of his inventions seem small, he's also carrying machines that allow him to augment both a cop car and a biplane for battle, as well as several explosives. This may be an homage to his antics in Tails Adventure.
• Baritone of Strength: The Paramount live-action Knuckles speaks with a voice much deeper and rougher than other previous incarnations, courtesy of one Idris Elba, which helps emphasize he as a strong opponent that Sonic has a hard time fighting.
• Battle in the Rain: The first fight with Knuckles takes place in a rainstorm.
• Berserk Button: During the final battle, Sonic plays on the fact that he is this to Robotnik, deliberately baiting the villain into focusing on him so that Knuckles and Tails can attack the giant robot from behind.
• Big "NO!": Tails lets one out when it seems that Robotnik has crushed Sonic along with Tom and Maddie. Thankfully, it turns out that Sonic used the Chaos Emeralds to transform into Super Sonic in time to save them.
• Booked Full of Mooks: Sonic escapes from the avalanche in Siberia by teleporting to Rachel's wedding in Hawaii, at which point the groom, Randall, reveals himself to be an undercover GUN agent by tasering Sonic and taking him into custody. He gets help from his groomsmen, his "family", all the guests he invited, and the staff at the wedding venue, all of whom are undercover GUN agents, too. Even the priest officiating the ceremony has a taser hidden in his Bible. Poor Rachel and her family were the only ones unaware that the wedding was just a ploy to capture Sonic.
• Book Ends:
  • The film opens with "Stars in the Sky" by Kid Cudi, which also plays over the animated credits.
  • The main plot of the first movie starts when Sonic plays baseball by himself at nighttime, getting upset because he's all alone. This movie ends with Sonic having fun, playing a game of baseball with his friends and family on a bright, sunny day.
• Book Safe: Rachel asks if the priest is also in on G.U.N.'s scheme. He turns his Bible around, revealing it has been cut into a box to house his taser.
• Brick Joke:
  • The G.U.N. commander mentions sending Rachel a gift card as compensation for revealing her wedding was a sham. He also cancels his five o’clock appointment at Olive Garden, which is a call-back to the ending of the first movie.
  • While stranded on the Mushroom Planet, Robotnik attempts to make a decent cup of coffee from fungi, to absolutely no avail. When he finally returns to Earth and drinks a fresh latte provided by Stone, he comments that it needs more mushrooms.
  • During the second act, we find out who owned the squad car that Tails stole and ended up destroying in the beginning. It was Deputy Wade's, as he is seen rolling around town on a push scooter with a police light strapped to his helmet.
  • When Tails mentions how the Master Emerald can turn thoughts into reality, Wade compares it to the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. After Robotnik uses the Emerald's power to create the Death Egg Robot, Wade declares that he was right.
• Bullet Time: Shown in the first trailer. When Sonic confronts Knuckles, it is raining outside. When he goes for the Spin Dash and Knuckles catches him, the rain is falling around them in slow motion as Knuckles gives his Badass Boast, showing he's capable of Super-Speed too.
• Call-Back:
  • When Sonic first confronts Knuckles, he tells him he's never getting his power. The first film's prologue has a tribe of echidnas chase after a younger Sonic for his Super-Speed.
  • On the counter of the Mean Bean Coffee Shop, there's a statue of a goat, in reference to how Robotnik's drink of choice is a latte with steamed Austrian goat milk. Robotnik alerts Stone of his return by texting him to prepare a latte, and the words "latte with steamed Austrian goat milk" turn out to be a code phrase that, when uttered by Stone, transforms the shop's interior into a high-tech evil lair.
  • When Sonic loses his disguise in the bar, he awkwardly says "Uhh... meow?" just as he did when he first encountered Tom in the previous movie.
  • Sonic and Tails' heart-to-heart in the bar is very much like a similar moment between Sonic and Tom in the motel in the first movie. Sonic even parallels Tom in that scene when he tucks Tails in under a blanket.
  • In the first movie, Tom briefly mentions that he kept his phone off in order to make sure Robotnik couldn't use it to track them. Unfortunately, Sonic doesn't think to do the same, and sure enough Robotnik uses that to follow him to where the compass is hidden.
  • Robotnik briefly flosses, a dance which Sonic performed himself in the last movie.
  • Sonic calls for Tom's help by saying he is in a life-or-death situation, much like the first time they met.
  • At the end when Knuckles is playing baseball with Sonic, Tails, Tom, and Maddie, his constant questioning about the workings of baseball prompts Sonic to say with an annoyed tone, "I can’t with this guy", like he jokingly said about himself in the last movie when playing by himself.
  • A couple of times in the opening scene, Robotnik licks the quill he took from Sonic and gets zapped by it, just as he did when he first found it in the first movie.
• The Cameo: Youtuber Preston has a brief appearance as a member of Tom's volleyball team.
• Car Fu: During Sonic's first fight with Knuckles, he's saved when Tails arrives on the scene with a hijacked cop car and rams into Knuckles with it.
• Catch and Return:
  • During a confrontation in the mountains, Robotnik fires a missile at Sonic, who catches it in his hand and hurls it back towards his enemies.
  • After being knocked off of the Tornado by a missile, Sonic manages to ride it and redirect it towards the Death Egg Robot.
    Sonic: Return to sender!
• Celebrity Paradox:
  • During the confrontation in Siberia, Sonic refers to Knuckles as the Winter Soldier. Assuming that Sonic is referring to the Marvel Cinematic Universe version of that character, then wouldn't he notice that Knuckles and Heimdall have the same voice?
    • Sonic is also shown to be a fan of The Fast and the Furious. It's never confirmed if he's seen Hobbs & Shaw, which Knuckles is in.
  • Speaking of comic books, Batman and Professor X are mentioned. No one remarks on any resemblance between Eggman and Jim Carrey, who played the Riddler in Batman Forever, or between Tom and James Marsden, who played the older Cyclops in the X-Men Film Series.
• Central Theme: What it means to be a hero. While Sonic starts the film trying to do good, Tom can rightly see that he's mostly doing it for his own satisfaction and not for the right reasons. Knuckles in parallel, sees himself as the hero, restoring his ancestors' lost honor over the Master Emerald, never stopping to question the long history of bloodshed behind that quest. Both learn to see the true value in being a hero is not in the glory, but in protecting something.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Sonic gives Tom one of his rings so he can return from his sister-in-law's wedding in Hawaii. When Sonic is escaping from an avalanche in Siberia after having lost his rings earlier, he makes a call to Tom to make him an emergency portal with the ring.
  • One from the last movie. The emerald symbol on Sonic's map, which initially seemed to be not much more than a Mythology Gag in the last film, ends up being the key to how Sonic and Tails can find the Master Emerald in this film.
  • The hologram projector Tails uses in Siberia to help him and Sonic win the dance-off is later used by Tails to help him distract Robotnik. In addition, the midair spin maneuver they do together is used as an attack later in the film.
  • During Rachel and Randall's wedding, a biplane with a celebratory banner flies past them. Later, Tails uses it to save Sonic and Knuckles from the island and win the fight against Robotnik.
• Chekhov's Skill: Subverted with Robotnik's electric emitter from his gloves. Although he uses it to break the doorknob on Tom's house early in the movie, he tries to use it on Knuckles, who led him to the Master Emerald and is now useful as a backstage pass to Limp Bizkit. When Sonic drops right in just as he was about to hurt Knuckles, however, he blows out the electricity and decides it's better to let Knuckles fight Sonic so he can get the Master Emerald.
• Cherry Tapping: Super Sonic finishes his No Holds Barred Beat Down of the Giant Eggman Robot by lightly tapping it with his toes and causing it to fall over. Considering the game that was last seen in, Robotnik's reaction is priceless.
  Robotnik: Oh, it's like that? Okay, we're not friends.
• Color-Coded Wizardry: As in the first film, Sonic's power manifests in blue lightning, while Knuckles' manifests in red lightning, Tails' power (as well as his gadgets) are orange/yellow, and Robotnik's technology retains his signature mix of red, white, and black. After Robotnik acquires the Master Emerald, he and his technology take on a green glow and his magical powers manifest in green lightning.
• Comic-Book Adaptation: IDW Publishing (who owns the comic book rights to Sonic) released a one-shot that explained events that happened between the first movie and this.
• Commonality Connection:
  • Tails grew up an outcast due to his extra tail, and discovering Sonic's existence helped him realise he wasn't alone.
  • When Knuckles reveals that his tribe all perished, leaving him as the sole survivor, Sonic notes that they both know what it's like to lose everything, and starts to sympathize with him. Ironically, the two tribes are implied to have wiped each other out.
• The Comically Serious: Knuckles is incredibly sheltered due to his upbringing, which leads to things like him reading off the ellipses of an in-progress text-message out loud, call holograms magic, and treat a game of baseball like a battle of conquest.
• Composite Character:
  • As far as the Master Emerald can be said to be a character at all, at least. Unlike the games, it is a merging of the Chaos Emeralds rather than a separate entity — it is actually a shell that contains the Chaos Emeralds within, which, during the climax, is broken to reveal the individual Chaos Emeralds; it becomes its own entity afterwards when Knuckles re-fuses the shards — and has the ability to turn thoughts into reality, a property more associated with the Phantom Ruby from Sonic Mania and Sonic Forces. The Master Emerald is also much smaller than in the games, making it more similar to the Super Emeralds from Sonic 3 & Knuckles.
  • The Death Egg Robot has the color scheme of its classic Sonic the Hedgehog 2 iteration, the size of the mass-produced Death Egg Robots from Sonic Forces, and the power level and position as Eggman's ultimate weapon of the Death Egg.
  • More like "Composite Location", but the temple of the Master Emerald is a combination of the Labyrinth Zone of Sonic 1 (being an underwater maze with crystal formations, booby traps galore and water slides) and the Hidden Palace Zone from the second half of Sonic 3 & Knuckles (not only being the place where the Master Emerald is hidden, but also the arena of Sonic and Knuckles' climatic duel).
• Console Cameo: The instruction manual for Robotnik's giant robot resembles a manual for a Sega Genesis/Mega Drive game.
• Contrived Coincidence: A twofer:
  • The BIG One: It turns out Rachel's wedding reception just so happens to have a bunch of undercover G.U.N. agents - Randall included - posing as friends and family in order to capture Sonic (and Tails). But what are the odds that Sonic would eventually wind up in Hawaii despite not wanting to go? Somehow, the agents get their mark.
  • Ironically, this works against them when they surround Robotnik's lab after Commander Walters learns that Robotnik has returned, who just got the Master Emerald and proceeds to use its power to take apart materials from the tanks, vehicles, and train to make his Death Egg Robot. Robotnik himself lampshades this when Agent Stone shows him being surrounded by G.U.N military.
    Robotnik: Incorrectus, my trusty barnacle. After all these years, ^note Including the first movie's events what I finally got... is a solution.
  • The Master Emerald's location happens to be just a few hundred miles away and easily visible from where Rachel's wedding in Hawaii (and Sonic himself) is located.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • Robotnik, despite his massive ego, did have contingency plans in place for if he were ever to be defeated or go missing — namely, as seen in the prequel comic, leaving instructions for Agent Stone on how to recover his Badniks and create a new base of operations. He also has hidden satellites with spare drones and other utilities he would need in an emergency, including a spare flight suit.
  • In spite of having just built the Death Egg Robot mere moments earlier, and fully being self-assured of victory, Robotnik made sure to have a backup power supply and control scheme ready on the off chance that he were to lose possession of the Master Emerald.
• Creative Closing Credits: Like the first film, sprite-styled animations recap this movie during the end credits, although the art evolves from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 into a hybrid of something now more reminiscent of Sonic Adventure, though it is closer to the earlier 3D games.
• Crushing Handshake: Robotnik explains the Earth custom of the handshake to Knuckles but, to his own regret, emphasizes the grip too much. Knuckles crushing people's hands in this way becomes a Running Gag throughout the film.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Sonic's first confrontation with Knuckles is definitely in the echidna's favor. Even Sonic unleashing the super-speed that he beat Robotnik with in the previous movie gets completely and utterly no-sold by him.
  • Once Sonic absorbs the seven Chaos Emeralds that emerged from the broken Master Emerald, he easily breaks Robonik's Death Egg Robot's fists and makes quick work out of the robot in one minute.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: In their final fight, Sonic does a lot better against Knuckles than before, displaying his skills have grown a lot since last time. He manages to actually trade blows with Knuckles in a straight fight and land a few hits as well as even get the better of Knuckles and pummel him down. He also dodges much of Knuckles's attacks before he is finally put down.
• Cutting the Knot: After barely surviving several of the labyrinth's traps, Robotnik decides to just have one of his robots scan the place and calculate where to go, which also results in Knuckles simply knocking down some walls as well.
  Robotnik: Work smarter, not harder.
• Cycle of Revenge: The Owls and Echidnas have been fighting over the Master Emerald for centuries in one of these. Sonic and Longclaw were attacked by echidnas in the first movie to try and find out where the Master Emerald had been hidden, and Knuckles is tracking Sonic for the same reason, along with attempting to avenge his clan. The cycle does, however, finally end with them both putting aside their differences and deciding to protect Earth from anyone else who might come for the Emerald.
• Dance-Off: After unintentionally insulting a Siberian tavern waitress via faulty translator, Tails accidentally invokes this to avoid him and Sonic getting thrown in a fire. Though they start off performing poorly, a literal change in tune allows them to pull off a win while retrieving their map.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • Despite having the same comedic tone as its predecessor, this movie is slightly more intense. Robotnik is much more menacing, the characters are dealing with a doomsday-level threat, and the grudge between Sonic and Robotnik is much more personal.
  • While Knuckles starts off as Sonic's rival in the games to protect the Master Emerald, his reason for hunting him down in the movie is much more personal, as he blames Sonic and Longclaw for the destruction of his tribe and wants to kill the former. But luckily, Sonic becomes more sympathetic to Knuckles. And they become friends.
• Darkest Hour: Everything is looking dark for our heroes; the Master Emerald shatters in Sonic's hands, and Robotnik is about to kill Sonic, Tom, and Maddie by stomping on them using his giant robot. Luckily, Sonic uses the power of the Chaos Emeralds fused within it and becomes Super Sonic to save himself, Tom, and Maddie from being stomped on by Robotnik's giant robot.
• Deathly Dies Irae: The four notes of the words dies irae play a few times early in the film as Robotnik tries to engineer a path off the mushroom planet.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Tom Wachowski, who was the deuteragonist and Sonic's main companion in the previous film, plays a slightly smaller role here, and doesn't have much of a role in the main plot until the third act and climax. Justified, as he is away in Hawaii for most of it.
  • Agent Stone, Dr. Robotnik's main partner from the first film, plays a smaller role here, and outright disappears from the film once Robotnik and Knuckles set out to seek the Emerald, only returning during the climax. That said, he did play a significant role in setting up a new secret base for Robotnik, actually assists Robotnik in fighting the heroes in the climax, and is shown in the mid-credits scene to have blended in with the G.U.N. agents and overhear about "Project Shadow".
• Description Cut: Maddie assures Tom that Sonic will find his way. We immediately cut to Sonic and Tails lost in a blizzard in Siberia, with Sonic openly and specifically admitting that he cannot find his way.
• Destructive Saviour: The beginning of the movie shows Sonic (as "Blue Justice", anyways) attempting to stop a bank robbery by hijacking the robbers' getaway van. However, between his inability to drive and the robbers' stash of pipe bombs, Sonic ends up causing a lot of damage to the city, which both Tom and the robbers' hostage call him out on.
  Hostage: You're a terrible hero!
• Didn't See That Coming:
  • Knuckles is caught completely off-guard when Robotnik betrays him.
  • Both Knuckles, and presumably the audience, are caught off-guard when Super Sonic, instead of becoming Drunk with Power and going on a rampage, in a comedic twist, decides to conjure up the perfect deluxe chili dog as a self-reward for defeating Robotnik.
• Did You Actually Believe...?:
  • When Sonic tells Robotnik that he made a big mistake in coming back, Robotnik counters that Sonic's mistake was believing he'd won.
  • After telling Knuckles that he has served his purpose, Robotnik further twists the knife by laughing at him and mocking him for thinking they were friends and trusting him.
• Dinner Order Flub: At the Siberian bar, Tails orders beef stew for himself and Sonic, using his Miles Electric to translate. Thanks to the device's faulty translation, they end up getting an unappetizing dish which appears to be beef tongue.
• Disney Villain Death: The last we see of Dr. Robotnik, he's plummeting to his death as his Humongous Mecha falls apart. Knowing Dr. Robotnik, this will most likely be a Disney Death, and he'll back to wreak havoc in no time.
• Doppelgänger Spin: One of Tails' gadgets is a device that makes multiple holographic copies of the user.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: Following the mountain chase, Sonic loses his rings, meaning he has to brave a perilous journey across the ocean to get to the Master Emerald's temple (and is reliant on Tails and the Tornado to catch up to Robotnik afterwards).
• Drunk with Power: Played with. After Sonic defeats Robotnik with his Super form power, Knuckles claims that this form of Sonic is not the one that Maddie and Tom once knew, and has become as corrupt as Robotnik was with the Master Emerald. Sonic then begins to form an energy vortex that will seemingly balloon out of control, but very quickly subverted when he instead uses his newfound power to conjure up the perfect deluxe chili dog as a self-reward, and then accidentally makes a fool out of Knuckles by dropping a chili dog on his face.
• Earth Is the Center of the Universe: The Owl Clan chose to hide the Master Emerald on Earth, of all the planets in the infinite vastness of the universe.
• Easily Forgiven:
  • After winning the dance-off, Sonic and Tails get awfully chummy with the patrons of the Siberian bar, considering they were going to throw them both into a burning fireplace.
  • Knuckles becomes an immediate ally to both Sonic and Tails after his Heel–Face Turn, despite spending most of the film trying to kill Sonic.
• Embarrassingly Painful Sunburn: Sonic jokes about Tom getting one in the latter's trip to Hawaii.
• Empathic Weapon: The Chaos Emeralds react to the love and familial bond between Sonic, Tom, and Maddie, granting him the power to become Super Sonic and saving them from getting crushed by Robotnik.
• Et Tu, Brute?: Knuckles doesn't take it well when Robotnik betrays him and mocks him for thinking they were actually friends.
• Every Car Is a Pinto: A mild example, but when Tails drives the police cruiser off a cliff to get away from Knuckles (since he can fly and Knuckles can only glide), the car explodes in a small blast when it hits the bottom of the cliff.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: Ozzie goes hostile when Robotnik returns to the Wachowskis' home as Sonic parties inside alone.
• Evil Gloating: As Robotnik steals the Master Emerald, he gloats to Knuckles about how foolish and naive he was to have trusted him.
• Exact Words: When Tom admires the camaraderie between Randall and his groomsmen, Randall comments that they are more than friends — they're his squad. They're an undercover squad of G.U.N. agents, of which Randall is also a member.
• Extremely Short Timespan: The majority of the movie encompasses one crazy weekend. Lampshaded about halfway in, when Sonic brings Maddie and Tom up to speed on what's happened so far.
  Maddie: Wait, all this happened since yesterday?!
• Face Death with Dignity: As Robotnik falls to his unresolved likely Disney Villain Death, rather than flailing or cursing Sonic, he simply grins and waves goodbye with a "Later, hater!"
• Faint in Shock: Tails faints after seeing the intimidating people attending the Siberian bar, topped by a fish getting its head chopped off and land at his and Sonic's feet (and inexplicably tell them to run).
• Family-Friendly Firearms: Though the badniks still use bullets and missiles, all of the other firearms shown in the movie are either tasers or blasters, such as the new Buzzbombers. Justified for the G.U.N. agents in Hawaii, who are packing Tasers because they're specifically looking to capture subjects alive.
• Family of Choice: After the first movie's ending implied it was going in this direction, this movie's ending solidifies it, with Sonic calling Tom "Dad".
• The Farmer and the Viper:
  • Knuckles saves Eggman from a rolling boulder by holding the stone door open long enough for him to get through. The bad doctor repays this debt by stealing the Master Emerald and leaving him and Sonic to die in the labyrinth.
  • Immediately afterwards, Knuckles gets trapped under a pillar as the room is rapidly being flooded. Sonic decides to save Knuckles despite his inability to swim, letting the echidna to swim to the water's surface while Sonic is trapped on the floor. It almost looks like he's done for, but then Knuckles comes back for him. A life for a life.
• Fatal Flaw: Knuckles' biggest flaws are his naivete and gullibility, and this almost leads to his downfall when Robotnik betrays him and leaves him to die in the collapsing temple with Sonic.
• Fights Like a Normal: When Sonic is attacking the bank robbers, he kicks them down instead of using his signature Spin Dash. Most definitely Justified, since an attack that can total a tank would almost certainly kill a human being.
• Flashed-Badge Hijack: After evacuating the citizens of Green Hills away from the battle, Tom and Maddie borrow a truck to drive to search for Sonic.
• Flat "What":
  • Tom has this reaction when the wedding is revealed as a setup to capture Sonic.
  • Jojo has this reaction herself when her mom assumes that she's a G.U.N. Agent. She makes a face that reads, "What do I know about being an undercover agent?"
• Foreshadowing:
  • Sonic falls out of the fishing boat that he and Tom are in and panics as he can't swim. When Sonic decides to save Knuckles from drowning, he almost drowns himself before the latter returns the favor.
  • When Tails deciphers the pictograms in the Siberian temple, he explains that the Master Emerald is forged from the seven Chaos Emeralds, which no-one In-Universe had heard about until then. When the Master Emerald breaks apart after Knuckles punches it out of Robotnik, the Chaos Emeralds are revealed, and Sonic unintentionally uses them to transform into Super Sonic.
  • The scene after Tom plays Volleyball has Randall call his men his "Squad". He also says that he couldn't have made it in life without them. This has a darker meaning when its revealed that Randall and his friends are all Federal Agents sent to capture Sonic by using Rachel's marriage to infiltrate Tom's family.
  • In the labyrinth, Robotnik doesn't want to die to a rolling boulder, because it would be "derivative." If his "death" in this film sticks, what could be more derivative than his Disney Villain Death?
  • During the climax of the film, Tom and Maddie arrive at Green Hills in a G.U.N. chopper with "SA-2" marked on the side. Cue the post-credits scene, and a certain someone has arrived...
• Forgot About His Powers: Sonic doesn’t use his Spin Attack to bust his way out of the cage G.U.N. puts him in, for some reason.
• Friend-or-Idol Decision: When Tails is injured in the confrontation with Robotnik and Knuckles, Sonic immediately goes for protecting him over recovering the compass from Robotnik. His selfless act, coupled with Robotnik's callous attitude about it, is enough to plant the seeds of doubt in Knuckles on which side he's on.
• Fungus Humongous: The Mushroom Planet that Dr. Robotnik is living on is covered by giant mushrooms.
• Fun with Acronyms: Once told about the Guardian Units of Nations, Rachel downright asks, "G-U-N, seriously?"
• Gadgeteer Genius: Tails has this all over: not only does he have access to a range of gadgets, including a translator device, a scanner, and a range of highly effective weapons, but he is apparently able to augment a standard biplane with weapons while in flight.
• Glowing Gem: The Master Emerald and the Chaos Emeralds glow with an otherworldly light. Unrelated, glowing crystal formations also adorn the interior of the shrine that houses the Master Emerald.
• Good Colors, Evil Colors: Evil characters, such as Robotnik and a nameless echidna warrior, display a sinister emerald green glow and become clad in black upon wielding the power of the Master Emerald (which even extends to his Badniks in the case of the former). Sonic, on the other hand, becomes the golden-colored Super Sonic due to the righteousness and love in his heart.
• Go, Ye Heroes, Go and Die: During the climactic final battle, once Sonic realizes that he is Robotnik's weak spot, and if he antagonizes him he will focus all his attention on him and leave himself vulnerable for Tails and Knuckles to flank him, Knuckles wholeheartedly encourages the plan, telling Sonic he is a brave warrior, and tells him to "go to [his] certain death with honor".
  Sonic: We're gonna have to work on your pep talks, pal.
• Gratuitous French:
  • When Sonic tells Robotnik he made a big mistake by coming back, the not-so-good Doctor replies with "au contraire, mon frère!". The French dub of the movie handles it by having Robotnik reply "on the contrary, my friend!" with a thick French accent.
  • Robotnik also says "Where have you been all my life?" in French when he's about to steal the Master Emerald.
• Gravity Screw: One of Tails' gadgets creates a burst of anti-gravity that sends anyone caught in it flying straight upwards.
• Groin Attack: Discussed as Knuckles advocates using this against Robotnik's Humongous Mecha, claiming it's a universal weak spot. Sonic feels uncomfortable about his use of the word "groin" and pleads with him to stop saying it, only to end up saying it himself when he realizes he's Robotnik's weak spot.
• Hard Work Hardly Works: When Knuckles claims that he has been training for years to face Sonic, Sonic mocks him by pointing out that he has had no training at all and has been handily outmaneuvering the echidna. Ultimately subverted, as Knuckles wins both his fights against the Blue Blur, even though Sonic gives one hell of a showing the second time around with his Heroic Second Wind.
• Head Smashes Screen: Knuckles introduces himself to Sonic by punching him through the wall and the flatscreen TV hanging on it.
• Heroic Wannabe: Sonic's attempt at being a Batman-esque crime-fighting vigilante goes awry, resulting in a bomb creating several geysers in the road. Tom has to explain that Sonic needs to wait for the right call for him to truly be a hero. His antics also lead to the formation of G.U.N, who proceed to capture him and Tails.
• Hope Spot: Played for Laughs. At the tavern in Siberia, Sonic and Tails get scared of the intimidating patrons, but then breathe a sigh of relief upon seeing a sweet old lady...who then lifts up her knitting, revealing a skull and crossbones.
• Human-Focused Adaptation: Downplayed. While the human cast still gets some screentime and their own side-story, Sonic clearly is the main character and gets a lot of screentime. The movie also introduces Tails and Knuckles, two new non-human characters as additional main characters.
• Humans Are Bastards:
  • The people in the Siberian bar are xenophobic towards Sonic and Tails at first, calling them monsters and freaks and wanting to throw them into a fireplace as soon as they see what they look like.
  • The government sets up a trap to capture Sonic, even setting up a fake wedding for Rachel and Randall to achieve this goal.
• Humongous Mecha: Robotnik uses the Master Emerald's power to conjure the Death Egg Robot out of thin air using scraps from every vehicle and metal object within five square miles.
• I Am Not Weasel: Knuckles the Echidna takes offense to Agent Stone calling him a porcupine.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: After learning she was being catfished by G.U.N. and her wedding was all a setup, Rachel sneaks a drink off a cart while she and Maddie are sneaking back to the hotel to try and rescue Sonic, Tails, and Tom. She then takes a swig from a wine bottle while chasing her fake fiancé.
• I'm Cold... So Cold...: Parodied. Randall makes a big show of being injured and near death after being tased by Commander Walters, but by the time he says he is "so cold", Rachel has long since realized he is mostly uninjured, and that he's only cold because he landed on their wedding ice sculpture.
• Immediate Sequel: Played with. This movie follows up on The Stinger from the previous movie, with Tails arriving on Earth and seeking out Sonic, but that doesn't actually happen until partway through, and it's shown that some time has passed since then^note Robotnik notes that he has been trapped on the mushroom planet for 243 days — roughly eight months — but it's unclear how that translates to Earth days.
• Imported Alien Phlebotinum: The Master Emerald originated from Sonic's home planet, having been sent to Earth by the Owl Clan to keep it away from anyone who wanted to abuse its power.
• Indy Escape: Robotnik and Knuckles have to pull one when a giant spike ball of doom comes rolling after them. Robotnik even lampshades how played out that particular booby trap is:
  Robotnik: I don't want to die like this! It's derivative!
• Indy Ploy: Sonic always has to make last-minute improvisations (thankfully, he is fast enough to pull off even the most absurd solutions, like dismantling an armored car without brakes so it falls apart instead of running over pedestrians), and more than once he is forced to note that he is going in without a plan.
• In Love with the Mark: Rachel's fake fiancé Randall originally was only using the wedding as an opportunity to try and capture Sonic, but ended up actually falling for her.
• Instantly Proven Wrong:
  • During Sonic's first confrontation with Knuckles, he makes a Badass Boast claiming to be "unstoppable" before attempting to use the Spin Dash on Knuckles. The result? Knuckles effortlessly stopping him in his tracks before flooring him.
  • While traversing the labyrinth containing the Master Emerald, Robotnik declares that he's worked out the timings of the Booby Traps, and that one will be triggered every seven seconds. He hasn't even finished the sentence yet when a Pendulum of Death descends from the ceiling and passes just centimeters from his face, forcing him to revise his calculations.
  • During the final confrontation with Robotnik, Tails manages to dodge a Macross Missile Massacre in his biplane with Sonic on top of the plane. Sonic says that was a "close one" and laughs it off, only to get launched off of Tails' plane by one last missile, and then the biplane gets a wing crushed by the robot's moustache clamping shut over it.
  • Knuckles attempts to keep Tom and Maddie away from Super Sonic, reluctantly informing them that he is no longer the Sonic they once knew. Super Sonic then uses his terrifying reality-warping powers to... create a chili dog for him to eat, and makes another one for Knuckles, which humorously splatters on his face. Knuckles then takes back what he said, and states that "he is exactly the Sonic [they] once knew".
• Intergenerational Friendship: Sonic, a teenage hedgehog, has become close friends with Tom and Maddie, who are adult humans.
• Interspecies Adoption: This movie confirms that Tom and Maddie have adopted Sonic, even calling him "our kid". The ending implies that they have made Tails and Knuckles part of the family too.
• Interspecies Friendship: By the start of this movie, Sonic has formed a genuine bond with Tom, Maddie, and Ozzy. By the end of it, Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles have also become a close-knit group of friends.
• In the End, You Are on Your Own: After Tails is injured in their escape from Robotnik and Knuckles, Sonic decides to confront them himself without Tails, Tom, or Maddie's help, unwilling to let anyone else get hurt. This changes during the final battle, when all of them must come together in order to defeat the Master-Emerald-fueled Eggman.
• Ironic Echo: "Dis is how I roll." First said by Robotnik to Knuckles when Knuckles calls it dishonorable for Robotnik to ditch Stone for the trip to Siberia, Knuckles says it back to him during the Final Battle when Robotnik calls him disloyal for siding with Sonic and Tails.
• Ironic Echo Cut: Contrary to what Maddie believes, Sonic did not know how to find his way (at least in Siberia).
• Irony: Despite the Guardian Unit of Nations being abbreviated as "G.U.N.", nobody in Operation Catfish’s unit deploys conventional firearms. Instead, tasers are used to capture Sonic alive. They do attempt to use more lethal munitions against Robotnik in Green Hills, however.
• It's All My Fault: Sonic faces great turmoil during the last third of the movie because despite trying to follow Tom's words to be safe and responsible, he blames himself for getting Tails injured and knocked out during their adventure and pushes Tom and the others away when they offer to help him obtain the Master Emerald. Thankfully, he grows out of it after saving Knuckles from drowning and Knuckles saving him from drowning.
• I Work Alone: When Sonic has his It's All My Fault moment, he decided to stop Knuckles and Dr. Robotnik by himself when he points out to Tom and Maddie that no thanks to him, Tails almost got killed during the fight and that he doesn't want to anyone else to get hurt because of him.
  Sonic: You see that little fox over there? He came all the way across the universe to meet his hero, and what did his hero do? I practically got him killed. You know what? You were right. My moment came, and I blew it. I'm no hero.
  Tom: Wait...
  Sonic: No. I'm not gonna let anyone else get hurt because of me. I'm gonna fix this while I still can. (runs off)
• Just a Kid: During a fishing outing, Tom reminds Sonic that despite his powers and desire to be a hero, he is still a young teen. At the end of the movie, Sonic has come to agree with this, and even says he likes being a kid, which is one reason he gave up staying as Super Sonic.
• Karma Houdini:
  • The Siberians completely get away with threatening to kill Sonic and Tails and calling them freaks.
  • Walters receives no punishment for setting up a sting operation to capture Sonic and having Tom arrested.
• Klaatu Barada Nikto: Robotnik shouts it as an alien triggers one of his traps on the Mushroom Planet.
• Lampshade Hanging: When in the back half of the film Commander Walters returns, now as the head of the newly-christened G.U.N, Maddie and Rachel dryly remark on the acronym, to which he cheerfully replies that, yes, it is indeed read and pronounced as "gun".
• Last of His Kind: Like in the video games, Knuckles is this, as he lost the rest of his tribe to their battle with Longclaw.
• Last-Second Word Swap: Robotnik gets a nice chortle-inducing line near the start of the movie:
  Robotnik: It's time to say goodbye to this... PIECE OF SHIITAKE PLANET!!!
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: For what was originally All There in the Stinger for the previous movie; the trailer, poster, and title logo all make it no secret that Tails is now present on Earth. The Japanese title logo is even more spoiler-ish, clearly indicating that not only is Knuckles in the movie, but he's an antagonist as well.
• Little Useless Gun: Ahead of their attempt to rescue Sonic, Tails, and Tom, Maddie gives Rachel a tiny firearm from Tails' backpack that looks more like a toy, especially in the hands of someone twice Tails' height. Subverted when Rachel threatens Commander Walters with it and then shoots the wedding cake, confirming (both to Walters and herself) that it is in fact a real and very powerful laser.
• Logical Latecomer: When Sonic and Tails arrive at a bar, Tails faints at the sight of seeing the scary people inside. Sonic, on the other hand, is more used to it due to having lived on Earth for a long time and having had his own bar experience in the previous movie.
• Logo Joke:
  • This film reuses the Paramount logo variant from the previous film, where Sonic's rings replace the stars, also including their sound effects, but there is one difference: due to ViacomCBS being renamed to Paramount Global, the ViacomCBS byline no longer appears. Musically, the first four notes of Tom Holkenborg's Sonic theme is heard in place of the Green Hill Zone music.
  • The Sega logo is also the same as before, with a series of Sega video game screens forming the logo and the operatic "SE-GA!". There is one slight difference: there are more strings building up to the chant at the end.
  • The biggest change is to the Original Film logo, where the background is blue and the text is red, rather than the other way around.
• Look Behind You: Subverted and lampshaded; When Knuckles is about to finish Sonic in the Labyrinth, Sonic tells him Robotnik is stealing the Master Emerald. Knuckles assumes Sonic is trying to trick him, but still turns around and sees the hedgehog is telling the truth.
• MacGuffin:
  • Instead of Sonic, Robotnik now has his sights set on the Master Emerald in his quest for limitless power, forcing Sonic and Tails to find it before he can use it for his own purposes.
  • Fitting this trope more is the compass to the Master Emerald, that requires a Siberia detour.
• MacGuffin Delivery Service: Robotnik sarcastically thanks Sonic and Tails for "doing all the hard stuff" when he catches up to them at the temple housing the compass that will lead them to the Master Emerald in Siberia.
• Mad Libs Catch Phrase: Whenever Sonic does something, Tails will often remark "Only Sonic the Hedgehog can X", whether it's coming up with the phrase "butt-copter", winning a dance battle, or even needing rescuing from a deserted island.
• Market-Based Title: Following the original film being released in Japan as Sonic the Movie, the sequel is titled Sonic the Movie: Sonic vs. Knuckles in that country.
• Meaningful Echo:
  • After saving each other from drowning, Knuckles asks Sonic why he would save him after everything's he done to him. Sonic tells him what Tom told him earlier about what being a hero truly means.
    Sonic: Because being a hero isn't about taking care of yourself. It's about taking responsibility for other people.
  • Sonic wishes to be a hero, so he decides "This is my moment!" when he learns about the Master Emerald. When it's time for Team Sonic to face Robotnik's giant mecha, he announces "This is our moment!"
• Mirrored Confrontation Shot: One poster shows Robotnik and Sonic face-to-face along with Knuckles and Tails.
• Missing Steps Plan: Sonic's usual plan of attack is this.
  Sonic: Step one: light taunting. Step two: I have no idea.
• Mood Whiplash: After an absolutely adorable and heartwarming Sleep Cute moment between Sonic and Tails, the scene immediately cuts to comedic cringe with Sonic waking up in horror to discover the bar's burly waitress snuggling with him and touching his face!
  Sonic: Tails, we have a situation!
• Motion-Capture Mecha: During the final battle, Robotnik controls the Death Egg Robot this way at first, until Knuckles punches the Emerald out of him and he's forced to switch to manual controls.
• Mundane Solution: Robotnik's method of finding Sonic's location? Hack his phone and just wait for Tom to send him a text.
• Mundane Utility:
  • Tom and Maddie use one of Sonic's Rings to get to Hawaii for Rachel's wedding, due to it being cheaper and faster than a flight, while Sonic uses one to get more snacks without being seen, despite the fact he's fast enough to do that without it.
  • After returning from the mushroom planet, Robotnik uses some of his super-advanced high-tech robots to perform some basic dental hygiene and restyle his moustache. While still on the mushroom planet, he uses Sonic's quill, the all-important power source from the first movie, to... stir his mushroom coffee.
  • After absorbing the Chaos Emeralds and turning into his Super form, Sonic uses his unfathomable cosmic power to... create chili dogs.
• My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels: Tails' device is quite bad at translating into Russian, something that almost gets him and Sonic thrown into a bonfire.
• Mythology Gag: Has its own page.
• Never Found the Body: Robotnik seemingly meets his demise when the Humongous Mecha is destroyed, but the military never finds his body, although Commander Walters is pretty sure he's dead. A disguised Agent Stone thinks differently, however.
• Never Trust a Trailer:
  • The official trailer released in December 2021 has specially animated versions of scenes that differ from the theatrical release.
    • In the trailer, Sonic and Tails' plane ride towards Eggman's Humongous Mecha is animated as though Tails is introducing himself to Sonic just then. In the movie, Tails and Sonic meet earlier, during the home invasion by Robotnik and Knuckles.
    • Speaking of Knuckles, the trailer's version of the Knuckles and Sonic fight at the Wachowski residence is animated such that their mutual Badass Boasting takes place at the climax of the fight, but in the film itself, these same lines are dropped with much less fanfare during the beginning of the fight.
  • The final trailer also employs some misleading editing.
    • When Knuckles and Agent Stone meet, the editing of the scene frames their encounter as though Knuckles is breaking Agent Stone's arm as retribution for being insulted as a "space porcupine". In the film itself, Knuckles is completely innocent of Stone's disdain, and breaks his arm as part of a Running Gag in which Knuckles gives everyone a Crushing Handshake.
    • The last few seconds of the trailer show Sonic dodging Knuckles' Rapidfire Fisticuffs with a voiceover of Sonic taunting Knuckles for being bad at punching despite his name, only to be answered with a Smash Cut to Sonic being Punched Across the Room as though it were Laser-Guided Karma. The dialog is actually from a completely different scene in the movie.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Sonic tries to stop a robbery by kicking the robber out of his vehicle, only to have to instantly swerve the car to avoid hitting a pedestrian. He also recklessly tosses a bomb out of the window, causing it to roll into the sewers and geysers to erupt from below the street's manholes. The hostage rightfully calls him out for doing a terrible job at the superheroics.
  • During a confrontation with Knuckles in Siberia, Sonic seems about to talk Knuckles down and assure him they don't have to fight, but then Tails comes up from behind and tries to trap Knuckles, leading the echidna to believe Sonic was just lying to him. To be fair, Tails didn't know that Knuckles was about to have a change of heart.
  • Played for Laughs when Sonic calls Tom up to use the emergency ring and save him and a knocked out Tails from an incoming avalanche. However Tom mixed up the rings while he was talking with Randell earlier and realize he gave him the emergency ring by accident rather then Rachel's wedding ring. Forcing Tom to have to interrupt the ceremony to retrieve it and, having no time to get somewhere discreet, throw the ring right in front of the ceremony to allow Sonic and Tails to come though with the avalanche coming in right behind them and plowing some of the guests in snow. However this likewise lead to GUN having all the proof they needed that the Wachoskis were hiding Sonic and they quickly reveal themselves and their sting operation to capture Sonic and Tails.
  • G.U.N. sets up a sting operation and captures Sonic and Tails, despite them trying to save the world from being conquered by Robotnik. They quickly get called out on it and the GUN commander relents after seeing the beam of light in the sky from where the emerald temple is meaning Robotnik and Knuckles are close to finding it.
• No Man Should Have This Power: The Owl Tribe fought the Echidna Tribe because they believed no one should hold the Reality Warper powers of the Master Emerald. They eventually stole the Emerald from the echidnas and hid it away, and the two tribes battled over it ever since until they wiped each other out.
• No One Gets Left Behind: During the climax, when Sonic begs Tom and Maddie to escape Robotnik's Ring of Fire, they reassure him that they're family, and family sticks together.
• No One Could Survive That!: The Stinger reveals that Commander Walters thinks this of Robotnik, despite not being able to find him in the wreckage of his Humongous Mecha.
• No Ontological Inertia: Averted. Knuckles manages to punch the Master Emerald out of Robotnik, so the battle's over, right? Wrong. Regardless of what created it, the Death Egg Robot is quite real and Robotnik had the foresight to give the robot a backup power supply on the off-chance he were to be deprived of the Emerald. It takes Sonic turning Super to put an end to the massive machine for good.
• No OSHA Compliance: When Agent Stone gets knocked out hitting his head against a wall inside the Death Egg Robot after it gets hit, Robotnik worries about being reported for having an unsafe work environment.
• No-Sell:
  • Sonic spin dashes at Knuckles, who promptly catches Sonic with one hand, says "Do I look like I need your power?" (only in the trailer - he's silent in the actual movie, although he does say it slightly earlier), and then slams Sonic into the ground with his other hand. The whole time, while Knuckles is grimacing, he doesn't appear to be having any trouble holding Sonic back. Previously, Sonic's spin dash was shown to be capable of destroying Robotnik's badniks in the first movie with ease.
  • During the climax, Super Sonic effortlessly catches two haymakers from Robotnik's Humongous Mecha without even moving.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Sonic makes this comment about himself and Knuckles, since they both suffered from the loss of their parental figures as a result of the conflict between the Owls and Echidnas. This almost makes Knuckles have a change of heart, until Tails (who didn't realize this) chooses the wrong time to ambush him, making Knuckles think that Sonic lied to him as a ploy to distract him.
• Not What It Looks Like: As Knuckles is climbing up a cliff, Robotnik sends some of his flying drones over to him. Knuckles assumes it's an attack and sneers that he can easily defeat them, before realising they're actually just forming a flight of stairs for him to climb up.
• Numbered Sequels: Sonic the Hedgehog 2 follows Sonic the Hedgehog. The video announcing the title pokes fun at its simplicity by describing it as "extremely obvious."
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Sonic when he sees Robotnik behind what was once the door.
    Robotnik: Hello, hedgehog.
  • Rachel's reaction to seeing Sonic with Tails in tow.
    Rachel: Oh lord, there are two of them now!
  • Last but not least, Commander Walters when he finds out what G.U.N. uncovered in The Stinger.
    Commander Walters: My God... Project Shadow.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Knuckles mentions that he's the last of his tribe because his clan went off to track down Longclaw but his father made him stay behind. This means that, despite also dying in the attack, after she sent Sonic away, Longclaw killed every single echidna before she went down. While injured, no less.
• Once More, with Clarity: The opening scenes of the first movie, where echidnas attacked Longclaw and forced her into exiling Sonic to Earth, are played again, and this time with further backstory. The echidnas sought the location of the Master Emerald, which happens to be Earth, and Longclaw sent Sonic there so he could protect it.
• Open Secret: This appears to be the general attitude towards Sonic's existence during the movie's time frame; a few citizens are perfectly aware he exists, but they don't talk about him. The US Government is keeping an eye on him, though, and eventually Sonic is arrested when they believe he's too much of a threat to national security.
• Operation: [Blank]:
  • Operation: Catfish. The wedding was just one big sham created to capture Sonic. Rachel is not amused.
  • For the mid-credits scene, we see Shadow's stasis capsule rise from a storage unit, while Commander Walters has a shocked realization:
    Commander Walters: My God... Project Shadow.
• Pass the Popcorn: Robotnik helps himself to Sonic's popcorn and enjoys the show when Sonic and Knuckles first fight each other at the Wachowskis' home in Green Hills.
• Pillar of Light: A large column of green light bursts from the ocean to mark the location of the Master Emerald when Robotnik and Knuckles find the labyrinth containing it.
• Please Wake Up: Sonic says this to an unconscious Tails who got knocked out of the sky by Robotnik's missiles.
• Police Are Useless: Deputy Sheriff Wade completely bungles up detaining Agent Stone and tries to interrogate him right there in the Mean Bean coffee shop, including Good Cop/Bad Cop and Food Interrogation routines to get information. A G.U.N. agent says she doesn't want to say that Wade is stupid, but if he's the only law enforcement in Green Hills, then the town is in big trouble.
• Power Glows: Like in the first movie, Sonic's quills glow blue when using his power, and the same is true for Knuckles, except in red. Once Robotnik harnesses the power of the Master Emerald, he gets a green glow. Also, later, Super Sonic's entire body glows gold when he harnesses the power of the Chaos Emeralds.
• The Power of Love: Tom and Maddie's refusal to leave Sonic because of their familial bond and love for him is ultimately what activates the positive power of the Chaos Emeralds, transforming him into Super Sonic and saving them from Robotnik. Doubles as The Power of Family.
• Power-Up Full Color Change: When Eggman absorbs the power of the Master Emerald, his red and black coat change to black and green. Sonic fires back at the end with his classic Super form being gold.
• Precision-Guided Boomerang: Tails's arsenal includes a boomerang that becomes a flying, glowing projectile which takes out all enemies before returning to the user's hand. Rachel uses it to knock out some G.U.N. agents surrounding Maddie.
• Product Placement: Much like the first movie:
  • Sonic offhandedly mentions that Tom and Maddie are staying at the Four Seasons in Oahu. Maddie makes the exact same offhand mention later on.
  • Sonic uses his portal rings to get some Oreo cookies from the supermarket.
  • The G.U.N. Unit enacting Operation Catfish is led by Commander Walters, aka "Olive Garden Guy" from the first movie, who despite operating on the grounds of the Four Seasons Oahu and having a wealth of local cuisine to sample, still made a reservation for himself at Olive Garden that he regretfully cancels to deal with Robotnik.
  • Sonic and Tom prominently have iPhones and have FaceTime calls with them. Similarly, Stone gets a text from Eggman on his Apple Watch.
• Punch Catch:
  • A variant. When Sonic spin dashes at Knuckles during their first confrontation, Knuckles promptly catches him, walks a few steps forward, and then slams him into the ground.
  • Played straight with Super Sonic, who is able to pull this on the Death Egg Robot itself.
• Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs: During the temple fight, Knuckles throws a rapid series of punches at Sonic, who uses his super speed to dodge all but the last one.
  Sonic: You know, for a guy named Knuckles, you're really bad at punching.
• Read the Freaking Manual: Robotnik expresses annoyance that Agent Stone isn't able to operate the Death Egg Robot initially, so he has to teleport to Stone's control panel to fire missiles. Later subverted when Agent Stone activates the clamping moustache feature of the robot on his own and reveals he was able to find a manual to read to do so.
• Real After All: Prior to the car chase, Sonic thought that the Master Emerald was just a bedtime story.
• Recycled Soundtrack: One scene briefly uses the track "I Shrink, Therefore I Am" from Ant-Man and the Wasp.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning:
  • Knuckles is shown having glowing eyes similar to Sonic when he powers up, but whereas Sonic's eyes glow blue, Knuckles' glow red.
  • As is the norm, Sonic's eyes turn red when he transforms into Super Sonic. Subverted when it turns out that, despite Knuckles' warnings, the power hasn't gone to his head, and he's still the same as ever.
  • Shadow's eyes in The Stinger are also red, and additionally crackling with similar electricity to that of Sonic's.
• Refuse to Rescue the Disliked: Sonic saves Knuckles, his enemy at the time, from drowning in the flooding labyrinth because it's the right thing to do. However, when Robotnik is falling to his apparent death after Super Sonic completely destroys his giant mech and tips it over as a final insult, Sonic floats there and glares at his arch-nemesis, doing nothing to save him. While Sonic has sympathy for Knuckles because their caretakers wiped each other out and left them both orphaned, Robotnik has affected, endangered, and offended the hedgehog, those he holds dear, and nearly everyone else so many times with his callousness and lack of remorse (including trying to crush him and his adoptive parents under the aforementioned mech's foot moments before) that he's completely done with the doctor, deciding that letting him off easy like their last climactic battle isn't worth the risk.
• Retcon:
  • In The Stinger for the first movie, Tails is shown having one tail that he splits into two. When that exact scene is shown at the beginning of this movie, he just has two tails for the whole thing.
  • The first movie stated that the echidnas attacked Longclaw and Sonic specifically for the latter's power. This movie explains that they were actually intending to force Longclaw to give up the location of the Master Emerald, using Sonic as collateral.
• The Reveal: Longclaw's clan battled with the echidnas for generations, taking the Master Emerald from them and hiding it on Earth.
• Ring of Fire: Robotnik encircles Tom, Sonic, and Maddie with one after assaulting their car in order to obtain the Master Emerald.
• Rings of Activation: While trying to rescue Sonic, Tails and Tom, Rachel and Maddie are confronted by a GUN agent. Maddie whips out an anti-gravity device from Tails' backpack which generates a beam of rings as it launches the agent into the air.
• Rube Goldberg Device: Robotnik makes these out of mushrooms and puffballs that crush some smaller fungi, and a caricature of Sonic, into a drinkable fluid (with limited success). Bonus points in that it's set off by a mushroom sprouting and knocking against another one.
• Running Gag: When people offer Knuckles a handshake, he tends to literally crush their hands. He does it three times, to Robotnik, Stone, and Sonic.
• Sea Sinkhole: The temple containing the Master Emerald is hidden underneath the ocean and accessed through a large hole in the sea ringed by foaming waterfalls and with a bottom obscured by mist.
• Sequel Escalation: The conflict this time is world-threatening as opposed to confined to a single city, an ally and an adversary return from Sonic's world, and the giant Death Egg Robot is the final enemy.
• Sequel Hook:
  • Sonic scatters the seven Chaos Emeralds across the planet. Though he did so in order to keep them safe, it doesn't mean they can't be found.
  • During the post-credits scene, much as with Tails making his first appearance in The Stinger of the first movie. Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles make a pact that they'll defend the universe from all threats that may appear. However, while the government attempts to Unperson Dr. Robotnik one more time under the assumption that he's dead (though Stone is shown to have secretly infiltrated them to look for Robotnik), they come across evidence of a top-secret black ops project. Cut to a pod rising from the ground in a science lab, containing a certain black-and-red hedgehog. Commander Walters says "My God... Project Shadow..." as Shadow's eyes open. Smash to Black.
• Shout-Out:
  • In the trailer, Tom describes Sonic's habit of moonlighting as a vigilante as "pretending to be Batman." A promotional tweet for the film took the reference further by paraphrasing The Riddler in Batman Forever, which doubles both as an Actor Allusion for Jim Carrey (who played Riddler in that film) and a nod to The Batman, which began preview screenings the day the tweet was posted and also features the Riddler. A second tweet featured another Forever quote and a poster parodying the final shot of Batman (1989).
    Riddle me this, riddle me that, who's afraid of the big Blue Justice?
    The hedgehog-symbol is not a beeper.
  • In a deleted scene on the mushroom planet, Dr. Robotnik sees giant stone letters fall out of the sky during a Mushroom Samba that spell out the word "bacon". Robotnik says "I would like to buy a vowel!", causing an E to land and make the word "beacon".
  • When Tom calls Sonic out over destroying an entire city block in Seattle, Sonic quips that it was already messed up, quoting Chris Tucker's character from Rush Hour.
  • After Tom gives some words of wisdom to Sonic, the latter asks if he was quoting Oprah Winfrey.
  • While alone in Tom's house, Sonic recreates Ben Schwartz's most famous line in Parks and Recreation
  • After Robotnik cuts the power at the Wachowskis' house and the TV begins displaying eerie static, Sonic calls out that he "did not order a poltergeist".
  • While taunting Sonic, Robotnik shrieks And Your Little Dog, Too! (referring to Ozzy) in the voice of the Wicked Witch of the West from Wizard of Oz.
  • Robotnik's triumphant return in the trailer is capped off with a one-liner riffing on James Brown's "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag": "Papa's got a brand new 'stache."
  • When attempting to be a superhero, Sonic leaping off a city building while striking a relaxed pose in midair and facing the camera is remarkably similar to the famous "not falling, but rising" scene from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.
  • Sonic refers to Knuckles as "the Winter Soldier" when the latter hunts him down during a snowy mountain chase.
  • In this Blue Justice spot, Robotnik quotes George Carlin's "Au contraire, mon frere."
  • When Sonic and Tails manage to evade Knuckles in a police car, Sonic calls Knuckles "Clifford the Big Red Rage Monster".^note Paramount Pictures had released a live-action Clifford movie the prior year.
  • When Tom's deputy, Wade, learns about the Master Emerald's ability to convert thought into action, he compares it to "the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man".
  • When Robotnik tries to swat at Tails' biplane (his movements translating to the Humongous Mecha he's in), he does it slowly with a fake roar akin to King Kong.
  • The camera circles around Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles as they fight Badniks together and try to come up with a strategy in the streets of Green Hills, in a manner almost identical to a famous shot in The Avengers (2012) where the heroes team up back-to-back.
  • Sonic mocks Robotnik's new look as "Professor X meets the Monopoly man."
  • Speaking of Robotnik's outfits, one of the options Agent Stone scrolls through in the Robotnique Boutique bears a striking resemblance to Megamind's Black Mamba outfit.
  • Sonic counting to three before saving a pinned Knuckles underwater is similar to what Murtaugh does to Riggs at the end of Lethal Weapon 4.
• Skewed Priorities:
  • Tom and Maddie call Commander Walters out on setting up a whole government task force to try and capture Sonic when he's proven himself to not be a threat to Earth, particularly when they have the bigger problem of Robotnik's return to worry about.
  • When Agent Stone is knocked out during the climactic battle, Robotnik is more concerned about a potential "complaint about a hostile work environment" than about the fact that his most loyal minion has been rendered unconscious, not to mention the fact that he now has to pilot the Humongous Mecha all by himself.
• Skyward Scream: Agent Stone does this when Robotnik announces his return, joyfully crying out "HE'S BACK!".
• Sleep Cute: Tails falls asleep in front of a fireplace. Sonic drapes a blanket over him and joins him, sleeping back-to-back. Tails in turn drapes his tails over him.
• Sliding Scale of Adaptation Modification: Unlike the first movie, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 more directly draws on the plots of the Classic Sonic games, specifically Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 with additional elements from Sonic Adventure, while also adding some original twists, making it a Type 2. Original story elements from the first movie are either tied back into adapted plot beats from the games or are made less relevant altogether.
• Something We Forgot: Subverted. At the end, after Sonic, Tails and Knuckles vow to protect the emerald. They nearly leave it out in the open in a open cooler on the baseball field they were playing in. Luckily, Sonic remembers and quickly goes to retrieve it.
• So What Do We Do Now?: At the end of the film, after repairing the Master Emerald, Knuckles remarks that retrieving it was his life's mission and, now that he has it, he doesn't know what to do next. He agrees to stay with Sonic and Tails and live a normal(-ish) life with them, joining them in guarding the Emerald, the universe, and each other as part of "a new order", as Sonic puts it.
• Staring Kid: In the opening minutes, a truck is barreling towards a group of ice cream truck customers, who all run away except one. The dangerous truck comes to a halt right in front of a kid who stays standing in place, staring. Parodying the sub-trope in which the staring kid is eating an ice cream cone (which usually splatters to the ground in shock), this child's ice cream remains perfectly intact for a few seconds, before the top scoop seems to fly to the right and fall to the ground for no reason.
• The Stinger: There is a mid-credits scene, showing G.U.N. soldiers cleaning up the wreckage created by Dr. Robotnik's Death Egg Robot. While Commander Walters muses on the slim chances of Robotnik's survival, Agent Stone is revealed to have disguised himself as one of the soldiers. He listens in on the ensuing conversation, where a female G.U.N. agent informs the Commander that a black site file dating 50 years back was uncovered while clearing Robotnik from the databases. It contained coordinates to a research facility housing a black and red hedgehog, who opens his red lightning-fuelled eyes. The name of this test subject? Project Shadow.
• Stock Sound Effects: When Tails' biplane nosedives after getting a wing torn off, it sounds like a German Stuka.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: When Tom calls Sonic and expresses concern for him, Sonic tells him, "You're at the Four Seasons in Oahu! Have a mai tai! Spend some time with your wife!" Later, when Tom is talking to Maddie and expresses his concern again about Sonic not having anything like Randall's "squad", Maddie tells him the same thing almost word-for-word, which Tom lampshades:
  Tom: That's what he said. Seriously, his exact words.
  Maddie: See? He's a smart kid.
• Stranger in a Familiar Land: Played for laughs. Robotnik has spent the better part of the year living off of nothing but mushrooms and (with limited success) had to use them as a latte. And no doubt those mushroom lattes weren't his cup of tea, so to speak. Once he makes it back to Earth, one of the first things he does is have Stone make him one of his Austrian goat milk lattes. Comically, Robotnik is somewhat disappointed the latte he so missed doesn't quite taste the same without, oh say, mushrooms.
  Robotnik: Could use more mushrooms.
• Suddenly Shouting: Tom, having spent much of his trip to Hawaii worrying about Sonic getting into mischief on his own, first asks if he is okay after saving Sonic and Tails from the avalanche in Siberia. Sonic assures him that he is, resulting in this response:
  Tom: Okay, good. BECAUSE YOU'RE IN SO MUCH TROUBLE!
• Super Mode: The final trailer shows that Robotnik gets an Emerald-powered form capable of telekinesis. Sonic gets one too, using the Chaos Emeralds to transform into Super Sonic.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Played for Laughs. Early on, shortly after arriving to save Sonic from Knuckles, Tails asks if the hedgehog trusts him to do something dangerous.
    Sonic: Of course not! I literally just met you!
  • While Sonic was extremely badass in the first film, the primary reason he had a relatively easy time handling any problems that came his way was because of his Super-Speed, which made humans and conventional weapons nearly-useless against him unless you took him by surprise. Otherwise, he demonstrated very little actual skill in fighting. Thus when he goes up against Knuckles, who can keep up with Sonic (to an extent) and explicitly has Super-Strength and years of training, Sonic gets absolutely creamed in their first confrontation and is only saved by Tails' unexpected rescue. When they fight again later, Sonic has to rely on his superior speed to fend Knuckles off and avoid being hit in return.
  • Later on, when Sonic needs to run across the ocean to catch up with Knuckles and Eggman, he does well for a while. That is, until he finds out the hard way that while the water may be perfectly flat by the shore, the further you go out to sea, the stronger the waves become.
  • Robotnik was only able to build all of his fantastic machines not with Offscreen Villain Dark Matter but with funding and connections from the US military. When he betrays the government, they immediately freeze all of his assets and have his hideout surrounded within a few days. Had Robotnik not had the Master Emerald's power, he would have been screwed.
    Walters: You're finished, Robotnik! We've taken everything; your lab, your drones, your funding! Let's see how big of a man you are without your silly little robots!
  • In Siberia, Tails gets knocked out from a missile explosion. It takes him quite some time to wake up, especially without immediate medical care, and even when he does, he’s still in no shape to fly to catch up or otherwise help Sonic in the latter’s final fight with Knuckles. It’s not until the final battle that he fully recovers.
  • While Knuckles has tremendous Super-Strength, when he’s unexpectedly pinned underwater by a fallen pillar, he can’t lift it off himself due to having no leverage or way to brace himself, as well as the risk of drowning from the rising waters, and thus would have drowned without Sonic’s help.
  • Sonic's Destructive Saviour acts causes the government to label him a danger and order G.U.N. to capture him.
• Take That!:
  • When Sonic decides to let Ozzie choose which film to watch, he asks him not to pick Snow Dogs.
  • Just before attempting to backstab Knuckles, Robotnik claims that the echidna is now as much use to him as backstage passes to Limp Bizkit.
  • During the final battle when Robotnik realizes he's in trouble, he rehashes an infamous Donald Trump quote.
    Robotnik: "Why don't you just say we let bygones be bygones? I did some things, you did some things, there are good people on both sides."
• Taking the Bullet: Played for Laughs. When Commander Walters attempts to tase Rachel, Randall dives in front of her and gets zapped instead. He then acts like he's taken an actual bullet, much to Rachel's annoyance.
• Talking Is a Free Action:
  • In spite of both being fast enough to get the Master Emerald away from him, Sonic and Knuckles just let Robotnik make a speech to them before he takes it. Likely justified, since Sonic is a bit tired and disoriented from Knuckles' power blows, and Knuckles, being totally caught off guard by Robotnik's betrayal, was not consciously thinking about the Emerald until too late.
  • A downplayed example happens while Tails explains Knuckles' backstory to Sonic. While Knuckles does pursue them, it takes him some time to catch up to the police car they're in; later scenes show Knuckles is capable of moving much faster than that.
• Temple of Doom: The labyrinth housing the Master Emerald is a textbook example. Flame jets, spike traps, arrows, Spike Balls of Doom, a Pendulum of Death... you name it, Sonic and/or Robotnik have to dodge it.
• Tempting Fate:
  • When a box full of explosives slides near Sonic in the armored car, he tries dismissing them, saying they're not active. Their fuses instantly get lit.
  • After Sonic and Tails manage to evade a massive onslaught of missiles, the former notes that it was a "close one"... only to be hit by another one seconds afterward.
  • During an earlier fight, Knuckles tries and fails to hit Sonic with Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs, Sonic managing to dodge these relatively easily. Sonic mocks him for being unable to live up to his namesake... right before one of the punches connects and sends him flying across the room.
  • In the "I make this look good" part where Knuckles is chasing Sonic down a snowy mountain, Sonic boasts that he's ahead of Knuckles despite his lack of training, and remarks how embarrassing it must be for him. One ramp jump later, and Knuckles punches straight through the ramp to catch up to Sonic, who is in a very bad spot in midair.
  • Before entering a bar for shelter, Sonic claims to Tails that all humans are very hospitable. Unfortunately, the humans in the bar they went into are, in fact, not very hospitable at all.
  • After G.U.N. has Robotnik's lab surrounded, Commander Walters boasts that the Doctor's not a big man anymore without any of his Badniks. Cue Robotnik creating the Death Egg Robot with the Master Emerald's powers via a giant tornado.
• That Russian Squat Dance: Sonic and Tails attempt and fail to do this dance against some actual Russian dancers during a dance-off at a bar.
• Thematic Sequel Logo Change: The "2" added to the logo is orange and has Tails' twin tails sticking out of it to represent his involvement in the plot.
• Time-Passage Beard: Played for Laughs; the "Agent Stone" rock now has moss growing on it in the shape of a beard.
• Too Good to Be True: Knuckles thinks that he and Dr. Robotnik are friends, until Dr. Robotnik steals the Master Emerald and reveals to Knuckles that they were never friends, and that he was only using him.
• Took a Level in Badass: As shown in the crime-fighting opening segment, Sonic has learned at least some normal fighting abilities to combat humans (as using his Spin Dash would certainly be too deadly against them). It still isn't enough to take on the Skilled And Strong Knuckles.
• Trademark Favorite Food:
  • Chili dogs are Sonic’s, as usual. He even creates one with his Chaos Emerald powers after defeating Robotnik.
  • Commander Walters seems to really have a thing for Olive Garden, so much that Tom remembers him as the "Olive Garden guy".
  • Knuckles is shown to have a fondness for grapes.
• Turns Red: Eggman's Humongous Mecha, quite literally, once Dr. Robotnik kicks on the auxiliary power after the Master Emerald is seized and removed—its internal lighting transitions from green to red. Downplayed in that the mecha only uses one unique flamethrower attack after changing color, not very notable in light of the robot already spending the early part of the Final Battle busting out New Powers as the Plot Demands ^note Which is justified as the Master Emerald expressly grants the bearer Reality Warper powers. Robotnik was likely creating weapons as he went until the Master Emerald was knocked out of him by Knuckles. After that, he would be just operating off of whatever weapons the mecha had at that time..
• Uniqueness Decay: The original film makes a big deal out of the fact that Sonic is the only anthropomorphic alien animal on Earth, since his subsequent loneliness fuels his character arc for the movie. The trailer for this film shows both Tails and Knuckles on Earth, with the latter even having a superpower to counter Sonic's. The Stinger also reveals Shadow is locked away in a vault in a black site that is at least fifty years old.
• Un-person: In the first film, Robotnik's identity and trace of existence was wiped by the government. Needless to say, when the doctor found out about this from Agent Stone^note in a deleted scene only, he was NOT pleased at all. Come the end of the movie, G.U.N prepare to do it again after finding no trace of his body.
• The Un-Reveal: In the first film, Sonic's Super-Speed is acknowledged as an anomaly that he has to keep secret because certain groups will want to take advantage of it, the Echidnas showing up to punctuate the point, with advertising for this film hinting that Sonic's power will have some explanation when we see Knuckles exhibiting startlingly similar abilities. In the film proper, we find out that the Echidnas were actually going after Longclaw, Knuckles' animosity towards Sonic being entirely unrelated to his abilities.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Played With; In the climactic battle, Sonic tells Tails and Knuckles his plan to goad Robotnik into chasing him while they do a sneak attack on-screen. This plan works perfectly, but the depowered Robotnik is still a threat to the heroes, especially now that they're injured and exhausted.
• Unstoppable Force Meets Immovable Object: In his first fight with Knuckles, Sonic immediately dives at the echidna with a charged Spin Attack. Unfortunately, Knuckles is so strong that he holds the ball of hedgehog in mid air before slamming him into the ground, dazing Sonic.
• Unwitting Pawn: Knuckles doesn't know that he's playing right into Robotnik's hand until Robotnik steals the Master Emerald and reveals to Knuckles that he was using him.
• Versus Title: The film is called Sonic the Movie: Sonic vs. Knuckles in Japan.
• Villain Has a Point: During his Evil Gloating, Robotnik isn't wrong when he calls Knuckles out for being so naive and gullible as to think that they were friends, that naivety being Knuckles' biggest flaw, and points out what true friendships are all about (shown in You Have Outlived Your Usefulness below).
• Villain Opening Scene: The movie begins with Robotnik finally escaping the Mushroom Planet he was banished to.
• Visual Pun: During Sonic’s introduction scene, he throws some of the bombs on the armored truck into a nearby garbage truck, which then explodes. Talk about hot garbage.
• Warrior Heaven: Knuckles mentions that the rest of the owls and echidnas have passed onto the great battleground in the sky.
• Was It All a Lie?: After finding out that Randall only romanced her to get to Sonic, an irate Rachel asks him this. It turns out that he actually does have feelings for her, enough to save her from being tased by his boss and revealed that he ended up breaking the first rule of undercover work: Never fall in love.
  Rachel: You mean to tell me that this entire wedding was a setup?!
• Wedding Smashers: Tom discovers he accidentally traded Sonic's ring for his in-law's wedding ring, forcing him to punch the groom to get it and teleport the hedgehog out of his own mess. Since Sonic's mess was creating and having to run from an avalanche, this covers an Hawaiian wedding in snow! The kicker? The wedding was actually all a ploy made by G.U.N. to capture Sonic.
• Weird Weather: Using the power of the Emeralds to conjure something into existence through turning thoughts into power seems to be consistently visualized by a thunderstorm mixed with a hurricane as the object materializes, occurring when both a Master Emerald-enhanced Robotnik and Super Sonic invoke this ability.
• Wham Line: The Stinger has this comment from an unnamed G.U.N. agent to Commander Walters about a decades-old black operation linked to Robotnik himself, leading to a Wham Shot.
  G.U.N. Agent: When we were wiping Robotnik off our database, we found something. A file buried deep in our system and dating back over fifty years.
  [...]
  Walters: My God... Project Shadow.
• Wham Shot: The appearance of Shadow the Hedgehog in The Stinger, doubling as a Sequel Hook.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • There are a few artifacts that get discarded or lost in the movie that are forgotten about, but could have far-reaching consequences if they're recovered:
    • The last we see of the energy-filled quill Robotnik used to power his hovercraft in the previous movie is it being used to power a satellite relay device on the mushroom planet, with Knuckles recognizing it as belonging to Sonic. We don't see it again after, even though the quill was an excellent power source.
    • Sonic loses his rings in the Siberian mountains and never recovers them. They probably got buried in the ensuing avalanche, but are otherwise still functional.
    • A bit more speculative, but at one point, Rachel uses a ray gun that Tails invented against Commander Walters, and later just throws it on the ground within his eye-shot. It's not clear if the one that Tails uses in the climax is the same one.
  • Rachel soon reconciles with Agent Randall after learning that their wedding was a sting operation to capture Sonic. We don't know if they get married for real afterwards, and they're absent for the rest of the movie.
  • The strange figures in the opening that attack Robotnik prior to Knuckles making his first appearance. After the fight ends and Knuckles arrives, the identities of the strange fighters that appear aren't revealed,^note The tie-in comic shows these were alien trackers Knuckles had hired to look for Sonic. Likely the reason they found Robotnik was due to the signal he sent out, which Knuckles detected. nor do they appear for the rest of the movie.
• What the Hell, Hero?: The person Sonic tries to save early on is not pleased about how reckless and irresponsible the hedgehog is acting while stopping a robbery. Even Tom calls Sonic out for it during their boating trip and tells him that's not what being a hero is about.
  Tom: You're being reckless.
  Sonic: Uhh, not this conversation again.
  Tom: Hey, it's no fun for me either, but if you keep being irresponsible, we're gonna keep having this conversation.
  Sonic: How is it irresponsible to use my powers?
  Tom: Sonic, you destroyed an entire city block!
  Sonic: That block was already messed up, who cares? Look, I stopped a robbery. I was a hero.
  Tom: No, you put people in danger and that's not what a hero does.
  Sonic: (sighs) You're supposed to be my friend. Stop trying to be my dad.
• When Life Gives You Lemons...: While stranded on the Mushroom Planet, Robotnik tries to make coffee out of mushrooms. It doesn't work, to say the least.
• Why Am I Ticking?: During the chase in Seattle, Sonic gets a pipebomb stuck in his quills on the back of his head, with his only clue being the lit fuse spitting off copious amounts of sparks.
• Why Won't You Die?: Knuckles gets increasingly frustrated at Sonic for not being defeated easily at the Master Emerald's temple.
  Knuckles: Why - don't - you - stand still and DIE?! WITH HONOR?!
  Sonic: Let me think about it! (Beat) ...Okay, I thought about it. And - I - pass!
• Wild Teen Party: When Tom and Maddie leave for Hawaii, Sonic doesn't hesitate to trash the house with junk food, homemade skate ramps, and covering the living room in foam. Fortunately, super speed allows him to put everything back to normal at a moment's notice.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: While Robotnik was already not all there in the sanity department, the power of the Master Emerald makes him talk and act in a very unnerving way.
• Would Hurt a Child: Not just Robotnik attacking Sonic and Tails, but at the wedding, Sonic gets tased by G.U.N., just because of his powers, in front of his father figure, Tom. And before that, a bunch of Russian bar-goers nearly throw Sonic and Tails into the fireplace.
• Woman Scorned: Rachel is not happy when she finds out Randall's entire relationship with her was just a government scheme to capture Sonic, and doesn't hesitate to unleash her anger over the whole thing. She even recites the "Hell hath no fury" line word-for-word (replacing "woman" with "bride"), then backs it up by blowing up her wedding cake with Tails' laser gun.
  Rachel: WIFEY'S HOME!
• The Worf Effect: Sonic is able to completely total a genius-built tank and an aircraft in the first film. This film illustrates Knuckles' Super-Strength by having the echidna casually catch Sonic mid-attack and slam him to the ground, causing an explosion. Justified in that in his original appearance, Knuckles was strong enough to knock Sonic out of his Super state with a single punch, so his strength here is fairly close to canon. He also states repeatedly that he has trained with his tribe for years.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: After saving each other from drowning (following Robotnik's betrayal towards Knuckles), Sonic gives one to Knuckles and tells him what being a hero truly means. Even though he lost everything, he shouldn't let failure stop him, and he can have better things in life.
  Sonic: I didn't fail that much, but I didn't do this all alone. I found a new family, new friends, and you can too. You don't have to be alone anymore.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: When Sonic and Knuckles have a heart-to-heart talk on the beach and Sonic encourages Knuckles that he can have a better chance in life, Sonic has this reaction after Knuckles gives him a Crushing Handshake.
  Sonic: Ow, ow, ow, ow, are you kidding me with that handshake?
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Dr. Robotnik does this to Knuckles when he plans to leave him with Sonic to die in the collapsing temple after he steals the Master Emerald and taunts him for actually believing that they were best friends, and even calls him naive and dumb for it. Talk about adding salt to the wound.
  Knuckles: Wait! That wasn't the deal!
  Dr. Robotnik: Oh, you poor naïve creature. It's not your fault. A more advanced intellect would have seen this move coming a mile away. Or 1.6 kilometers.
  Knuckles: But I trusted you! You were my friend!
  Dr. Robotnik: (laughs mockingly) I'm sorry, that just hit me funny. Let this be my final lesson to you, you dimwitted celestial skin tag. Friends are open, honest and vulnerable with each other, which means X squared times the hypotenuse of Y squared divided by the absolute value of friendship equals… DOOKIE!

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♫ Say I might... and sail tonight, I'm home...
Say right now, I'll get it
Take my hand, come zone...
Come on, catch your ride, and we take it to places that we only dreamed
I think I'm home...
This is my heaven, baby
Day and night in my zone... ♫

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