Headscratchers / Sonic Adventure

• Why is there a train station in the middle of the jungle?
  • Maybe the jungle is a tourist spot?
  • Archeologists use the train to commute between Station Square and the Mystic Ruins. It was probably integrated into Station Square for the sake of being a tourist destination.
  • The train is like the DC subway when you want to go in or outside the city limits. In this case, the Mystic Ruins are the city limits.
  • The station itself looks to have been built onto an existing bridge—that itself seems to lead off elsewhere—implying it was established semi-recently, likely for archeologists studying the newly-discovered ruins.
• What possessed Eggman to build such a large set of bathroom facilities on the Egg Carrier despite Eggman himself being the only organic onboard, while his entire labor force is robotic? Also, why can't the player make Amy Rose use one of the toilets?
  • Maybe Eggman planned on building extra bathrooms in case he needs to relieve himself?
  • Not to mention that even robots possibly need to use the bathroom by leaking out waste oil...Possibly.
  • As for Amy Rose using one of the toilets, well...Somebody in the Sonic community will have to create a specific mod for that.
  • Eggman is a bit of an oddball, it's possible he just stuck them there because he felt he needed to, "just in case". Or just because he could.
• How did Birdie get a locket with a picture with his family in it, much less one with a Chaos Emerald? Did he purchase it? How can he even lift it?
  • It's been shown that all animals in the Sonic World are higher functioning than what would be expected of normal animals. Birdie's family probably got the locket and took a family picture to put inside it just like any human or anthro would. As for the Chaos Emerald inside...*Le-Shrug*
  • The Chaos Emerald is a shiny object, birds like shinies, and the Chaos Emeralds are hidden across the "world" anyway. The three birds find it, keep it, and then two of them get kidnapped by Eggman and the other one gets chased by Zero until it runs into Amy.
  • Sonic X has Eggman specifically accuse Lily/Birdie of stealing the Chaos Emerald from him, suggesting it may have taken an Emerald he had already obtained from his lair during its escape.
• Could Sonic have reached the last Chaos Emerald before Chaos if Tikal hadn't stopped him with that final vision?
  • Given how often Sonic lost the chaos emeralds every time by some contrivance, then no. Vision or not, Sonic or somebody in the game would've lost it to Chaos anyway.
  • Somehow the villain always manages to obtain all the Chaos emeralds before the heroes in the Sonic games.
• Is Tikal sending the heroes back in time? Did those brief moments when they interacted with Tikal in the past actually happen?
  • It is either inconsistent writing, or some characters were sent into the past (Tails) while others only received images (Gamma)
    • Actually, at one point, Tails mentions that Sonic apparently was "out of it" during his visit. Course, it might mean that they'd have to have seen him standing there with a blank look while his mind was literally in the past.
  • Tikal's sending them back in time mentally, with their mental selves temporary manifesting a new body. Their original body goes into some sort of trance while this happens.
• If that is the altar for the Master Emerald, then what is the Hidden Palace Zone?
  • Well given the name it's probably a place where the guardian hides the Master Emerald when they know there's danger.
  • I assumed that the Chao Colony altar was abandoned and Hidden Palace built to replace it. When Hidden Palace was damaged and rendered unsuitable for housing the Master Emerald, Knuckles just took it back to the Chao Colony altar.
  • It's possible that they're one and the same, only heavily condensed.
    • But Hidden Palace is under ground!
    • Still counts as invoking the Chaos Architecture trope, since it was not confirmed that they're different locations within the game, nor that they're the same, for that matter.
    • Them being the same place would create a pretty damn big plothole in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, given how intrinsic Hidden Palace is to the story despite being one of the shortest levels in the game.
  • Maybe Hidden Palace was the original altar, but at some point it was decided to move the emeralds to a different location, and a new altar was built outside. If we go by Sonic 1's prologue, the emeralds give energy to all lifeforms, so they may have decided to move them to open air so that they would be able to better spread their energies. Or maybe the outside altar was the "regular" altar, while the Hidden Palace one was a separate altar whose function was transforming the emeralds into Super Emeralds, possibly as part of a ritual, explaining why they don't seem to be in Super Emerald form when seen in the outside altar in the flashbacks. As to why the Master Emerald switches places between S3&K and SA1, it makes sense for Knuckles to move the emerald to a secret underground structure to hide it from Sonic, who was invading the island to steal it (at least that's what Knux was told by Eggman) during S3&K. After that, he probably moved it back to the outside altar so that he could easily check on it without having to get to Hidden Palace.
  • As said above, the two altars are most certainly separate places. As to which came first, they couldn't have built Hidden Palace after Chaos's initial rampage, as the Chaos Emeralds were no longer in Angel Island afterward; only the Master Emerald.^note This was that led to Angel Island's creation, going by official sources. The Chaos Emeralds used to cancel out the Master Emerald's power, so once Chaos took them Chaos Emeralds with him to wreak havoc on the world, the Master Emerald raised the landmass into the sky. So if the Emeralds had been brought to the place, the island would have fallen to the sea, as shown in this game. Add to that the fact Yuji Naka stated that Hidden Palace is supposed to be the place the Emeralds come from.
    So the outdoor altar was likely built second. As for why it was built, one of the lead Sonic Mania devs stated that in ancient times, the Chaos Emeralds went missing from Hidden Palace when they drifted off into the special stage dimension. By connecting the dots, we can surmise that the Emeralds originally resided in Hidden Palace, presumably hidden from the people in the surface above, until their powers caused them to teleport into the SS dimension. Then at some point, they were discovered by the people in the surface^note either they found portals to the SS dimension like the ones players use to access the special stages, or the Emeralds had warped back out of it at some point, who in turn built the outdoor altar. That's where they resided until the Knuckles Clan attempted to grab them.
• Regarding the Inferred Holocaust: Really, none of the characters give a shit about an entire metropolis destroyed and its population presumably killed? "All's well that ends well", Tails? What?!
  • Well, he is young and naive (He is only a little 8 year-old). Even though he is smart, he may not fully comprehend life & death.
    • All he comprehends is that the immediate threat has been dealt with.
  • I guess he felt that it could have been so much worse.
    • The people could have all escaped. It's not like we see any waterlogged carcasses floating about.
    • In the Sonic X anime, the following episode after the Perfect Chaos battle has the citizens fixing it up.
  • In the cutscene before the final battle, we hear several Station Square townies cheering for Sonic to defeat Chaos, so we can assume they survived somehow.
  • Or, you know, Tails' line was just a mild Dub Induced Plothole, seeing how it wasn't in the Japanese script. Just another "Is that what Chaos Control is?"; no need to try to make sense out of it. There's no chance all inhabitants survived, seeing how Chaos started his attack on the city without any warning.
• Eggman's goal. He didn't seem to think his plan too well. His plan in this game is to create the ultimate city over the ruins of Station Square. The...flooded ruins, that is. If his plan was to build a city over a flooded land mass, why not just build it in the middle of the ocean somewhere? And who other than Sonic does he expect to come to this city knowing that he just rendered countless people homeless in this act? And why need Chaos when he has his own military might? He's got a flagship, countless war machines and even a nuke at his disposal to do away with Station Square at any time and Chaos himself fails to defeat Sonic, Tails and Knuckles despite having the Emeralds to himself. But I guess my real gripe is: You've got an almighty morphing god of destruction entirely composed of a mixture of infinite energy and your archenemy's greatest weakness who grows stronger with each gem of infinite power you feed him. Why would you waste all of that on destroying a city just to make an apparently better one over it when you could hold the entire world under threat of global flood?
  • It's possible that after having Chaos flood Station Square to destroy it and kill everyone he would drain it and build Robotnikland IN the ruins of the city rather than atop it.
  • It's hilarious in hindsight because he actually does destroy Station Square in one game and builds Eggmanland on top of it.
• Eggman tells Gamma "You're not as advanced as Beta is"; why make the second robot in the E-100 series less advanced than the first? If not better, why not at least make it as good?
  • Eggman knew Gamma would beat Beta, so he outfitted Beta with a new design to make him beat Gamma.
  • Resources/expense? Or maybe Gamma is designed as a production model - Eggman does seem surprised that Gamma wins at all, and he does go on to use him as a mass-production model with the similar robots in Adventure 2.
  • He may have meant advanced in experience and skill. Beta was built earlier so had taken in data from practice and input Gamma had only just started. What surprises Eggman is that Gamma learns so quickly and becomes more intelligent than his brethren.
• Why make the first robot "Beta" and not "Alpha"? Is Zero supposed to be codenamed "Alpha"?
  • Zero was tasked with finding Amy so he could get intelligence from the bird she had.
    • But if you're going for theme naming, why start with the second letter of the Greek alphabet?
    • ZERO is E-100 Alpha. It's possible that he was built as an Alpha Version, or a prototype, of the E-100 Series. Eggman then went on to build the more advanced E-101 Beta, then started production on the E-100 Series with E-102 Gamma, E-103 Delta, E-104 Epsilon, and E-105 Zeta, and then on and on until E-123 Omega, after which point he moved on to the E-1000 Series.
• Why does Eggman make his robots compete with each other and banish the losers (Beta after losing a fight to Gamma, and the other E-100s after Gamma finds Froggy)? Surely he could fight Sonic and co. better if he used all his robots, even if they're not all quite up to the same standard?
  • Eggman's empire has no room for failing robots.
    • Although to be fair, Beta only failed because Eggman created a Thunderdome situation between him and Gamma on some kind of whim. The winner decided the design model for the rest of the elite E-Series (though ironically Delta is given Beta's design after he fails).
    • Their failure wasn't rewarded with destruction, just removal... though apparently not necessarily from the ship, as seen in Zeta's case. Windy Valley and Red Mountain were places Sonic went, and Hot Shelter... well, Sonic might have gone there at some point, but he didn't. In any case, Sonic... probably had already gotten the Emerald from Windy Valley by the time Delta was sent there, and Epsilon's animal was likely already freed from the robot at Red Mountain by the time Sonic got there, so they didn't get a chance to encounter and battle him.
    • There's some added Fridge Horror, since in Gamma's story, he nearly defeats and kills Sonic on his own. Imagine how he would have fared against four identical E-Series models.
    • Note he didn't just banish them, he upgraded them before sending them to work in other locales. Also keep in mind he was still short one Chaos Emerald at the time and Sonic was on the attack. Keep his best bot close at hand to distract the main enemy and have the flunkies do the grunt work, that way Chaos is even more liable to be perfected before the heroes can intervene. Might also add Fridge Brilliance as to why ZERO and Beta are lurking in random areas afterwards, when Eggman was short all of the Emeralds.
• What does the admissions office at Twinkle Park say to the couples who aren't cute enough?
  • Simple, go spend some time stuffing yourself silly at the local burger joint.
  • Nothing; the closest thing to human interaction being involved in letting prospective park-goers in is that the elevator comes down or doesn't. Or, in the case of those who have a cart pass but don't pass inspection to get into the normal park, the door to that part just doesn't open while the door to the cart section lets them in.
  • The sign outside Twinkle Park that Amy was all excited over said "cute couples get in for free." It never says that single people or non-cute couples cannot enter. They just have to pay the admission fee before the door will open.
    • I don't think the question implied they couldn't enter. It asks what they say to them. Which is a good question; there's really no polite way to say that unless the couple in question clearly doesn't want to be seen as "cute". And being impolite to your customers is needless to say not very good for business. If you see this deal advertised in real life, it's probably a safe assumption that they'll really let any couple in for free as long as they're presentable and aren't rude to the staff or other customers, so that could be the case in Twinkle Park as well.
  • One can infer that it's a semi-regular promotion, e.g. "Cute couples get in for free on Fridays or something." And the day that Sonic and Amy need this policy just happens to be a Friday.
  • It could also simply be a case of buzz-generating wording. You don't necessarily need to pass some kind of Cuteness Tribunal to be judged worthy of free entry (which itself has some questionable implications for insecure teens going on a date) so much as any couple that looks or seems doe-eyed and in love, which is "cute" by itself.
  • It'd be a pretty straightforward promotional gimmick. All couples who walk by are cute couples, because the goal would be to get people in the door and start spending money. Waive the fee to make people think they're getting a good deal and tell them they're getting special access to ingratiate them to you.
• Before the Egg Hornet fight, Eggman says his plan is to use Chaos to destroy Station Square and build an empire over the ruins. Why spend so much time and effort harvesting Chaos Emeralds when he had a missile on standby the entire time, ready to launch on the city at a moment's notice?
  • I would guess Bond Villain Stupidity.
  • Either that, or the missile was kept around as a "last resort" in case the Chaos Plan failed. We see Eggman, in this game, at least, is a fan of having contingency plans, even going as far as having an second Egg Carrier on standby just in case Chaos betrayed him (which he did).
  • Chaos was likely intended to be a more controlled method of destroying the city (had he been obedient). Eggman could have him destroy parts of the city systematically according to his plans and possibly to let people submit or evacuate in time. Not to mention at the end of it all, far more people are liable to obey your whim with a terrifying god of destruction at your side. Using the missile was the sign of his Villainous Breakdown and just deciding to screw it and blow everyone to smithereens.
  • Seconded; assuming the missile was nuclear, it would have rendered what remained of the city uninhabitable, leaving nothing for Eggman to rule over. By the time he decides to launch the missile, he's clearly having a Villainous Breakdown, and probably lost all inhibition or reason about how he was going to achieve his goals.
• Speaking of the missile, what would Eggman do if he got to it before Tails? Detonate it at point-blank range?
  • Likely just to set off the timer, even if that takes out some of the franticness of the race beforehand. In Sonic X it is indeed a timer bomb, and Tails was the only one there experienced enough to deactivate it in time.
  • Also, see above, but Eggman's clearly a bit unhinged when he tries to fire the missile, so he probably wasn't thinking straight.
  • Moments ago he had tried to nuke Station Square with himself in it. Clearly he had just gone through a Villainous Breakdown and didn't care about self-preservation.
• The passageway to Angel Island never appears by the end of Amy's story because she's the only character that doesn't go to Ice Cap or Red Mountain, but chronologically it should have happened by that point in the timeline.
  • Yeah. I suppose with no means for her to destroy the monkey and thus enter Red Mountain, there'd still have to be some sort of barrier that's not there for other characters to keep her out of Ice Cap. You can't simply assume that the other characters got the Ice Stone and didn't use it for the rest of her story, especially since Sonic and Tails getting it doesn't stop Big from also getting it, and vice versa; similarly, you can't assume Cream hasn't left it there yet, particularly post-Final Egg. There's just no logical barrier that remains consistent with the other stories.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation, my dear.
    • Except that the Adventure Fields otherwise do a pretty good job of NOT segregating them, and keeping up with the environmental changes that are occurring in the parallel stories.
• How does the Jet Booster allow Gamma and the others to hover when it's not connected to them?
  • It's probably an etheral connection, or the development team didn't care.
  • Magnetism.
• How much of the Mystic Ruins area is part of Angel Island? We know everything through the cave near the station is Angel Island because it leads to Ice Cap and the Master Emerald altar. But in the flashbacks the Lost World pyramid and the Emerald altar are on opposite sides of the same gate, yet in the present, the Lost World pyramid is in the jungle where Big already lives.
  • Just the Island is Angel Island. the ruins were part if the tribe of echidnas who worshipped Chaos.
    • But we know the tribe had access to the Emerald shrine, which is on Angel Island, and we know from the flashbacks that the shrine and the pyramid were originally in the same area, so logically the jungle area SHOULD be part of Angel Island. It wouldn't explain why Big lives there though, or why there's a connecting minecart line.
    • The border between what became Angel Island and the rest of the land must have been between the emerald shrine and the Knuckles clan's city.
    • It's actually pretty obvious when you look at it. The large crater where Eggman built the Final Egg is where Angel Island was before it was lifted into the sky. This is confirmed by the Japanese strategy guide, which also states that the murals of Chaos were left as a warning by survivors of the Knuckles Clan. As for the reason for the minecart line, looking at the rock walls in the Mystic Ruins shows a noticeable "seam" between Angel Island and the existing mountain, which already had the minecart line.
    • An NPC says that the mountain directly to the left of the train station (the one that Knuckles breaks through) wasn't there a few days prior. That's where the border is.
• After Gamma's younger brothers are banished from the Egg Carrier, how does E-105 not only end up back on board but also heavily upgraded?
  • Either Eggman willfully repurposed E-105 into something needed in the Hot Shelter, or he returned after the Egg Carrier crashed into the ocean, saw the upgrades E-101 Beta gave himself, and decided that two could play that game.
  • Notice all of Gamma's brethren are upgraded when you later face them. Beforehand they just have Gamma's hand and laser gun build. It's possible rather than just kicking them out, Eggman "demoted" them, giving them an upgrade and then giving them a less flattering job patrolling other areas for his benefit.
• It's established in dialogue that the Tornado is Sonic's plane. Why did Tails slap his own logo all over it while it was in his workshop?
  • It is Sonic's plane, but Tails is the one who gets the most use out of it along with performing all the maintenance, so he probably feels he deserves a bit of recognition for his work. Also, to be fair, Sonic's name is still painted on the main body of the plane. Either that, or it could be symbolic of their relationship. Sonic's name is on the main body of the plane, he is the driving force of the two, Tails has his logo on the wings and the back fin. Without those the plane would just be a weird car instead of being capable of flight. The two different sections compliment each other just like the two friends.
• How do people enter the casino if they can't fly, glide, climb walls or Light Speed Dash? Whose idea was it to install a switch that generates rings in order to open the door? And why did Sonic bother when he was already travelling with Tails?
  • Well, this is a world that changes in small-but-important ways depending on whose story it is. In Emerald Coast, Big doesn't get the spring at the top of the ramp, for example, and the dash ramp that shoots Sonic over the water isn't there for Gamma. (Good thing, too, as it'd cut him off from the end, which is just a few feet from that point.) One assumes that an ordinary person (such as the woman whose son is concerned about her) doesn't have these challenges to overcome, as good for her as it might be to make her entry somewhat hard.
  • The sign states that the Casino isn't open at the moment. That's also why there aren't any NPCs inside the casino itself.
• After Sonic fights Knuckles, he says "Knuckles, don't tell me Eggman tricked you again?", and Knuckles responds "Me? What about you?!" How did Eggman trick Sonic?
  • He probably didn't mean Sonic was tricked, it was more like him calling Sonic out on never trying to explain that Eggman was tricking Knuckles, which can be seen when they both just get into the fight eagerly. Seriously, Sonic doesn't even try once. Basically Knuckles was saying: At least I THOUGHT I had a reason for fighting, why the hell did YOU accept for no real reason?
  • Also note that this is a deviation from the Japanese script. Knuckles' only answer there in all three renditions is a frustrated "S, shut up!".
    • After having examined the three different versions of the dialogue surrounding the confrontation again...
    • Knuckles has a big ol' blind spot in his common sense when it comes to the Master Emerald. Whenever he thinks someone has it or a piece, he goes after them without it even occurring to him that it might just be a Chaos Emerald. (Working with the idea that both the ME and the CEs give off the same signal, even his tracking ability was telling him there was an Emerald of some sort there, and putting that together with what Eggman — who, I might add, is a known villain to him, just powered up the monster he's been wanting to fight, and clearly said something with the express intent to "faze" him — told him Sonic was after, he came to the false conclusion.) But unlike with Eggman, where he demands it from across the room, here, he comes out punching before Sonic and Tails even have the honor of knowing why. That alone makes a fight understandable.
    • Knuckles never specifies which Emerald he wants, though in Sonic and Tails' stories, what he demands is "the Emeralds [they] have". However, most Japanese nouns have no plural form, so when Knuckles demanded the Emerarudo, he knew he meant the singular Emerald (as heard in his story), i.e., the Master, but they interpreted it as the plural Emeralds, i.e. Chaos Emeralds. Perhaps they remembered what happened last time Knuckles wanted Chaos Emeralds, and are determined not to let that happen again. Still, some communication could have resolved this point, forcing Eggman to gas them or grab them with that claw again:
  Sonic: Huh? You mean these Chaos Emeralds?
  Knuckles: ...Oh. Dang that Eggman! Sorry, Sonic, I'm actually after Master Emerald shards. Hey, if you see any around, lemme know, okay?
  Sonic: You got it!

  • Plural emeralds still works in English, as the ME was broken in various pieces at that point, and there was no way Sonic had the whole emerald when Knuckles already had some of the shards himself.
• Apparently somebody, somewhere, has approved a plan to build a highway with loops.
  • I have a theory about that, but nothing to really back it up. You may notice that for Speed Highway in this game and Radical Highway in the sequel, the parts of the "highways" with loops aren't driven on by normal cars and in fact, aren't connected in any car-accessible way to places where they do drive. Well, my thought is that the world is surrounded by Chaos Energy or something. It "likes" things like rings and loops, so it forms rings that hover in mid-air and spin, and for loops, if there are none around, it tries to make them, too, out of whatever it can find. After finding their roads and things bent, broken, and twisted in attempts to make loops, they decided to build loops themselves, out of everything's way, so the energy will leave the things they want to remain flat alone. And as an added bonus, they make neat things for Sonic to waste a second or more on while trying to get to the latest objective.
  • The level contains flying cop cars as enemies too.
    • Well yeah, but they're Badniks built by Eggman, not actual cops.
• What on earth is that prison inside Red Mountain, and why is it full of weird dancing monsters?
  • They're the Sonic X Treme enemy designs that never saw the light of day outside of the drawing board. RIP.
  • The Sonic News Network wiki proposes the theory that a prison may have formerly been built into Red Mountain, which seems plausible enough - although why you'd build a prison inside a volcano is beyond me. Personally, I always took the firy interior of the volcano, combined with the presence of the prisoners and tombstones / skulls about, to mean that Red Mountain is the Sonic equivalent of Hell, and that the ghost prisoners are the souls of the damned carrying out their "sentence" for their sins in life. A harsh interpretation, perhaps, but it's backed up by one of the mission descriptions in Sonic Adventure DX:
  A fugitive has escaped from the jail of burning hell! Find the fugitive!
• Why did Zero have to travel from Station Square to the Mystic Ruins to rendezvous with the Egg Carrier, when it was already shown to be perfectly capable of flying over the city and dropping him off? (You could perhaps argue that the city is too crowded to be able to get a precise fix on him, but there didn't seem to be an issue regarding Sonic when he was in Zero's immediate vicinity.)
  • Possibility: Zero was returning with Amy and Birdie to Eggman's Base in the Mystic Ruins. The Egg Carrier, which had just taken off from Eggman's base earlier (see Knuckles' Story) picked him up on the way out.
• Why did Zero chase Amy through Final Egg when Eggman had already taken Birdie's Chaos Emerald?
  • Zero wasn't there to see Eggman take the Chaos Emerald, and Eggman never cancelled his order to catch the bird. Zero was therefore still following his orders.
  • Either that, or It's Personal. Zero is shown to be fully capable of feeling emotion, such as when he gets incredibly frustrated at Amy evading him. Maybe after getting repeatedly bonked on the head with her hammer, Zero was just pissed at Amy and out for revenge?
• Why didn't Tails change the Tornado 2 back to its original mode so that he could make a landing?
  • It depends on which version of Tails' mistake you go with. In Sonic's story, there was no landing gear in the Tornado 2's transformed mode. However, in Tails' Story, he didn't install the landing gear at all. The latter is supported by the fact that the Tornado 2 seems to be hovering, even before the takeoff, when Tails takes off with it.
• How does Froggy survive in the salt-water around Emerald Coast?
  • The influence of Chaos' tail?
  • In case you haven't notice, it's not exactly a normal frog.
• The dialogue is kind of odd in a couple of places, and I think somebody made a mistake somewhere. Interestingly, both involve dialogue spoken near the waterfall, and both involve Knuckles. First, in one version, Robotnik says the exact words, "You are so easily tricked!" which Knuckles later echoes by saying "Now we'll see who's so easily tricked!" when he's alone on the Egg Carrier. Thing is, Robotnik's line wasn't said in Knuckles' story, and it probably should have been, instead of what was said. The other part is that Knuckles says something about having "unfinished business" in both Sonic's and Tails' story, but not his own; there, he phrases it quite differently. But in his story, you can go over to NPC-mode Sonic, and he'll ask what happened to your "unfinished business". Weird.
  • It might have been intentional. Since this game uses rashomon style, we never get to see the "real" version of that event. So it may be a hint that Robotnik really did say that, and Knuckles left it out of his version since he found it be really insulting.
• Why did Chaos need his tail if Chaos 4 (a shark-like form) has a tail? And for that matter, since he's made of water, why couldn't Chaos just grow a new tail? While we're at it, why does Chaos even need a tail at all, since Perfect Chaos gets no benefit from having one?
  • Maybe the tail wasn't the main focus? Froggy did ingest a Chaos Emerald.
    • Either that or It's Personal. It would be about the equivolent of chopping off someone's arm and running off with it.
    • Remember how Chaos forced himself into Froggy, who then stole the Chaos Emerald and ran off, trying to swallow more in the process. It was most likely Chaos using Froggy as a smaller vessel to bring him the Chaos Emerald, since a giant water monster probably wouldn't be the most stealthy way to get the last few chaos emeralds.
    • That's exactly is. This is more clear in the Sonic X adaptation of the game, where we see Chaos forcing himself into Froggy's mouth and possessing him, then making him swallow Big's emerald and run off. Big even points out that he's acting out of character.
• In Tails' story, why does it even matter who gets to the Emerald or Capsule first? Okay, it definitely matters if you beat Eggman to the missile. That I get. But Sonic is on the same side as Tails! They have the same goal! It's not like, in the boss and character battles, you have to hit the other guy more times or get the finishing blow; you just fight without Sonic even being involved! I do understand that "it's a video game, and they needed a slightly different goal to make his stages different from Sonic's, but, you know, in-universe. (And no, this is not someone who finds his stages hard. This is someone who routinely beats Sonic and Eggman even in the mission type where they're supposed to be faster.)
  • Tails' story is all about building his self-worth and proving he is a hero. He goes from being little more than Sonic's sidekick, to saving Sonic on Red Mountain and taking him to the Egg Carrier, To finally taking on Eggman himself in Station Square. The only reason he's able to do that is because he was able to face Sonic on equal terms and win, proving his own abilities and giving himself the confidence to save the day.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation. Sonic's side of the story implies that there were no races involved in the levels shared by them, and they were just put in Tails' story to separate his gameplay from Sonic's.
• How exactly did Eggman break the Master Emerald to free Chaos? I know the Egg Carrier has a huge powerful laser, but Knuckles was sitting right under it. Surely he would noticed or felt something happen to it rather than just hear a shatter.
  • You said it yourself. The Egg Carrier has a big, powerful fucking laser. Or maybe Eggman managed to plant some explosives around the Master Emerald while Knuckles was asleep or something.
  • Knuckles fell asleep in that cutscene, so he missed what happened. As for how Eggman accomplished it, he probably aimed the Egg Carrier's laser in the direction of the Master Emerald, using its energy signature as a guide. That way he would be able to free Chaos without having to deal with Knuckles.
• Why did Tikal show the visions of the past as a bunch of inconsistent flashes without context? If she was really trying to tell Sonic and friends what Chaos was, wouldn't it make sense to show them all the visions in order? Or, rather, just retake her physical form and explain that Chaos would destroy the world if left unchecked?
  • Tikal did not know Sonic, or of his altruistic nature or power, so it may not have come to her that just pleading for his help would have gotten results like with every other character he meets, instead frantically trying to show as many people as possible what they are in for, while being in too much of panic to quite get how little context she is giving them.
• A plot hole between at least three story arcs occurs when Gamma captures Froggy. In his own story, he is teleported by Tikal and is instantly in the Egg Carrier afterwards. In Big's story he is chased by Big all the way to the Final Egg launch base. In Knuckles' he's....leaving Red Mountain for some reason and Knuckles follows him with Big nowhere in sight. While the Rashomon plot style occurs a lot, it usually still leads to one same conclusion (eg. Sonic or Gamma winning their battle, but either one sparing the other and both continuing their mission the same way). With this plot change, neither of three can quite co exist.
  • Maybe Tikal has the ability to take over people's bodies while they're witnessing her visions, so she took Gamma to the Egg Carrier, and what Big and Knuckles saw was possessed Gamma. So she doesn't really teleport them, as much as she "guides" them. Or alternatively, Gamma's robot body is still functioning and following its coding even when he's "unconscious", and since his coding made him follow Eggman's orders, Gamma's body took the frog back to the Egg Carrier on its own. As for Knuckles and Big not seeing each other, Knuckles probably started tailing Gamma first, then Gamma found and caught Froggy, prompting Big to start chasing him, without noticing Knuckles who was sneaking around to avoid being seen. Knuckles' story just doesn't show the moment in which Big enters the scene, as it skips from the moment Knuckles starts following Gamma to the Egg Carrier's launch.
• After the Egg Carrier starts falling, Sonic tells Tails to get Amy off, which he does. Problem is, from Sonic, Knuckles and Big's viewpoints the Egg Carrier somehow stays up in the air for enough time after this to allow them to go off and have a boss fight. The thing is, after Tails flies down and drops off Amy, the ship has already crashed, along with Eggman. So, what, were Tails and Amy just sitting around twiddling their thumbs for ages before jumping off? Because it's either that, or somehow the entire confrontation with Chaos 6 lasted on;y a few seconds.
  • Egg Carrier's altitude and fall speed is never specified. And although its large wings are folded at that point, a plane with all engines off can still glide for quite a while and cover some distance.
    • But Eggman got off the ship at the same time as Tails and Amy. But that's impossible with the events that took place, unless Tails and Amy were just standing there doing nothing for no apparent reason.
    • Nope, Eggman stayed there to aid Chaos during the boss fight, then left after this one was defeated.
    • That's the exact point I'm making. He stayed to aid Chaos, but he somehow still got off the carrier at the same time as Tails and Amy, even though they began getting off the carrier before the that fight even occurred. So unless Tails and Amy were just ridiculously slow with getting off it and flying down to earth, there's no way that Eggman could have been crashing to the ground at the same time.
• Who told Eggman that Froggy had swallowed part of Chaos and had his tail? Chaos can't talk.
  • Dude's got security and sentry bots everywhere, he might have had some bot rigged for night reconnaissance that happened upon the moment when Froggy fused with part of Chaos. Or it's a plot hole that we shouldn't think too hard about.
  • Some of the Tikal flashbacks imply that Chaos is able to communicate with people somehow. Perhaps he has telepathy?
• In Super Sonic's story, why did Tikal give Sonic yet another vision just as he was about to look for look for the last emerald to prevent Chaos from getting it? He didn't need any more convincing to stop Chaos, and it was only due to her intervention that Sonic was late to the last emerald and Chaos got to attain his ultimate form. Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!
  • There's a little more to it: Tikal explained that Chaos couldn't be contained, because he'd still have all his anger festering inside him. She kept Sonic away from the last Emerald so that he could turn super, give Chaos a good thrashing, and let him come down from all that pent-up rage so that he could see with clear eyes the resurrected Chao. Defeat Equals Friendship is in full play here. As far as Tikal's concerned, Chaos' destruction of Station Square is minor compared to what might be were Chaos to be simply trapped in the Master Emerald for another thousand years.
    • Actually Tikal was all for sealing Chaos up again. It was Sonic that decided neutralizing his anger was a better option. Presumably Tikal showed Sonic the second vision to show him her plan of sealing him up by demonstrating how she stopped him last time. She certainly had no plan about Super Sonic as she wouldn't know of his existence or that he could get the emerald after Chaos had them all.
• Why is there no one to say anything when you cheer on #'s 7 or 8 in a Chao race? Regardless of who you're actually playing as, #1 (the one you enter) is always backed by Sonic, with the next five being backed correspondingly by the other playable characters. You'd think the remaining two would have Eggman and Tikal^note Even though she is long dead physically, she still does speak to the playable characters as a spirit. Not like this whole thing is canon anyway, since you can still play as Gamma even though he, too, is supposed to be "dead" after his story ends., the only others with both names and voices, behind them?
• Why does Amy appear in the wrong area when she goes to the past? Why is she the only one? All the other times, if the cutscene trigger is in the temple area, that's where they start, and if it's in the altar area, they start there, but for Amy, she starts in the temple area and has to (eventually) go through the door behind her.
  • My best bet is that the developers just wanted to give the players something else to do during these relatively action-free scenes. Plus, by giving the player the option to explore the temple in front of them, the player could learn more about the culture and circumstances Echidna tribe as a result. Or they just didn't care.
  • Possibly this was remnants of how Amy's story was meant to play out. Maybe she was supposed to obtain the Warrior Feather power-up (which would suit the theme of the ancient Echidna tribe) in that area before she could encounter Tikal, similar to how Tails gets the Rhythm Badge, but this was changed to being the first high score prize for Hedgehog Hammer instead.
• What exactly caused the Egg Carrier to crash? It can't have been the engine damage from Sonic's fight with Chaos 6 because it started falling before that happened. And if it was the destruction of the cannons in the Sky Deck, then why did it take so long for the ship to drop altitude?
  • Gradual damage from explosives, equipment destruction (be they robots or weaponry), the incredibly stormy weather, and the entirety of the cast generally wrecking havoc across the carrier.
  • Probably the damage sustained during Sonic and Gamma's fight. It was just after it that Tails claimed the ship was losing altitude, and the adaptation in Sonic X made it clear that it was the cause.
  • If you look closely, Sky Deck 1 and 2 take place on the transformed Egg Carrier's left wing (1 is under the wing, 2 is on top of the wing), and Sky Deck 3 takes place in the center of the ship between the Sky Deck entrance and the bridge (That part isn't readily apparent in the final game, since for some reason the final game doesn't include the object that shows the Egg Carrier around the stage, but it shows up correctly in the AutoDemo). It's the destruction of the left wing that caused the crash, and in the FMV where the Egg Carrier falls, you can clearly see the left wing is in a heavily damaged state.
• Why did Knuckles agree with Tails that Sonic is the only one who can fully unleash the Chaos Emeralds' powers? He (Knux) has the ability to go Super as well, if Sonic 3 & Knuckles is to be believed.
  • Probably because Hyper Knuckles is not required to get in the game. Remember Super Sonic is required for the very last fight with Eggman while Knuckles doesn't need to super to take on Mecha Sonic.
    • Are you suggesting that he never transformed into Super Knuckles in canon?
    • It was around the Adventure era where the "only male hedgehogs get super forms" rule came into existence, so it could be that Super/Hyper Knuckles had already been quietly retconned out of existence at this point (it was only two games later where it was firmly established that Knuckles doesn't have a super form anymore).
• Eggman? At the end of the day, you basically won. Your goal, destroy Station Square, was accomplished. Even if Chaos betrayed you, he's not gonna be bothering anybody else now. Why didn't you build Robotnikland upon the ruins of SS?
  • Presumably Sonic was the reason he didn't. Eggman no longer counted with Chaos to keep him at bay and threaten the rest of the world, so Sonic would have kicked his ass again if he had tried to pull that off.
  • Also, both his Egg Carriers have been downed and his various facilities in and near Station Square were presumably destroyed, either by the player characters or Chaos. He's lost a lot of resources, so it's doubtful that he has the capabilities of building his city at the moment. Even if he did, rebuilding his power base would presumably take higher priority.
  • The ruins of Station Square were flooded at the time, in no state to build anything.
• When E-102 Gamma is in in "Action Stage" mode, he's running on battery power which is confirmed by him shutting down when the timer runs out. But when he's in "Adventure Field" mode, he's not running on battery power and thus not in danger of running out of energy. Why is there such an operational discrepancy?
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation at its finest, but - consider this. Gamma isn't in "battle mode" when he's wandering around Station Square. However, he is in "battle mode" during the stages. Perhaps he has a specialized battery that allows him to utilize his gun, the jet hover, but it can only go on for so long. When he's not utilizing it, though, his normal internal generator is enough that it doesn't need a "timer".
• Is Robotnik really that cheap enough to not afford and implement any sort of water-proofing for his robots? Even for the high-end models like the E-100 series? Maybe then, E-102 Gamma wouldn't be so susceptible to water and thus be forced to activate hover-mode whenever he approached a body of water that was at least a foot deep.
  • Until then, he very likely has yet to caught up to that. That or he just didn't care enough for his robots. Adding to this he may have an ego of sorts, expecting them to almost perfectly carry out their mission.
• When Zero got beamed up to the Egg Carrier, why didn't Sonic jump into the beam? Granted, there's no guarantee it would've worked, but he could have at least tried it.
• Chaos obviously attacked Eggman in the jungle near Lost World and Final Egg. So how did Eggman end up on Angel Island?
  • We don't know for certain if he attacked him in the jungle. It's more likely that the sequence of events went something like this: After finding Eggman, Chaos briefly re-joins with him so that he would help him track the Emeralds down again. Eggman's radars pick up the Emeralds' energy signature coming from Angel Island's direction, which is strong enough to make them think that all 7 Emeralds were located there. Once they arrive, Chaos betrays Eggman, having no more use for him now that he seemingly has access to all Chaos Emeralds. Knuckles finds the beaten up Eggman lying on the floor, goes to investigate, but Chaos sneaks up on him and attacks him from behind, knocking him out. Then proceeds to absorb the Emeralds, finds out he's still missing one, so he leaves to look for it. Sonic and Tails arrive, you know the next.
• How did Big take off in the Tornado if its landing gear was disabled? He clearly didn't turn it back to its original mode.
  • Considering that Big lives a simple life in the middle of a forest, maybe he isn’t aware of the concept of landing gear, and was able to fly the plane because he didn’t know it was unable to fly.
  • There's no reason to think that the Tornado can't take off without its landing gear deployed. It just means the pilot will be in for a rough ride if they do (the Tornado can land without landing gear, too, but it's not a soft landing). Trying to take off and land without the landing gear repeatedly would be a bad idea, but Big doesn't do that. He just takes off and lands a second time, presumably rendering the Tornado nonfunctional until Tails repairs it later.
• When Gamma got back from capturing Froggy, Eggman told him to go get the bird from Amy's cell. This raises a question: why didn't Zero hand the bird over when he captured it instead of throwing it in a cell with Amy? Hell, since the bird can easily fly through the bars, why did he think locking it up was a good idea in the first place?
  • Zero wasn't programmed with much in the way of intelligence. His mission was to capture Amy and Birdie and let Eggman deal with them later. The conditions of the cell wouldn't concern him, and in any case, Birdie can't escape from the room the cell is in.
• Robotnik's "Plan B" was apparently to blow up Station Square with a missile. Wouldn't it make more sense to bombard the city with his other Egg Carrier? At the very least, you'd think he'd have more control over what gets destroyed, and to what extent.
  • He tried to nuke Station Square with himself in it. Clearly he had just gone through a Villainous Breakdown and wasn't thinking straight.
• Why didn't Zero just go inside the Burger Shop to check for Amy? He clearly saw her enter.
  • Faulty/imperfect AI? Wasn't Zero Eggman's first attempt at a robot without an organic battery? That may be the reason he went back to using animals for the rest of the E-100 series robots.
  • If you quickly move behind Zero or take cover in Amy's Action Stages, he'll look around in confusion with holographic question marks over his head. Object permanence apparently wasn't a high priority in his programming.
• Eggman openly admits that the Egg Carrier "pales in comparison to the power of Chaos"... yet his contingency plan in case Chaos betrays him is another Egg Carrier. If he knows the Egg Carrier is nowhere near as powerful as Perfect Chaos, then why make that his contingency plan? All he achieved was to waste yet another giant fortress.
  • With no Chaos Emeralds and a very limited set of inventions, it's possible that the Egg Carrier 2 was all he had left, and he was just desperately throwing everything he had left at Chaos. As for the line about the Egg Carrier 2 being his "contingency plan", it's possible that Eggman didn't want to admit he'd lost, and pretended to have contingency plans for everything.
• During the Egg Viper fight, why does Eggman keep opening the cockpit and inviting you to attack him? Ok, the first time he's probably just being passive-aggressive, as he says "See if you can make it through here, Sonic!", implying he doesn't think you'll actually be able to. But why does he keep doing it after you've hit him multiple times?
• Why did Knuckles get 3 visions from Tikal but all the others only got one? Come to think of it, Knuckles seems to be more connected to the story's events than anyone else. His story gets fancy FMVS at the start and end, his story starts at the very beginning of the whole plot with chaos being released, he fights chaos more than anyone else and actually defeats chaos 6, taking the emeralds back from him, he gets more visions which gives him a complete picture of what happened in the past, he's descended from the clan that started this whole thing and the reason why he guards the emerald is finally revealed. If it weren't for Sonic arbitrarily being the one chosen to fight Perfect Chaos, this could very well have been a Knuckles game so why was Knuckles given so much focus up until that point?
  • Given this game's development lasted less than 2 years, and had to be a launch title on Sega's newest console it's likely things got lost in the shuffle. Evidence to support the idea Knuckles' was planned to have a bigger role comes from the adaptation of Sonic Adventure in Season 2 of Sonic X. The Chaos Arc gives Knuckles a role that's on even footing with Sonic, most notably they both see Tikal's final vision together rather than it just being Sonic. Given that arc restores the Dummied Out dialogue between Sonic and Eggman before the Egg Viper boss, it can be assumed the staff at Sonic X got some behind-the-scenes notes and at one point of development, Knuckles was going to have a larger role.
• Why does Amy never search for Gamma after the game, find his body, and bring what remains she can scrounge together to Tails to get him fixed? It's not like he would refuse. He fixes up Gemerl and Omega decades later in the IDW comics. All Amy would have to do is ask and Tails would be all like "Sure, Amy. I'll fix your robot friend for ya. I'll even make sure his new body doesn't need a Flicky or anything to operate."