Fanon Discontinuity / Sonic the Hedgehog

• The most extreme fans of the original Genesis Sonic games disown anything made after Sonic 3 & Knuckles (with the possible exception of 2017's Sonic Mania, which uses the same gameplay engine). Hell, there are a select few elitist classic fans who outright dismiss anything after the very first game, because to them its sequel (somehow) started the trend of Sonic games being filled with Sonic's friends by merely introducing Tails.
• Others draw the line after Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, or Sonic Heroes depending on personal taste, be it because of the subsequent games' quality, the gradual shift of gameplay to the speedier and more reflex-oriented "Boost" formula, because of shifts in tone (too dark like Shadow the Hedgehog or Sonic '06 or too lighthearted like Colors and Sonic Rush Adventure), or whatever other reason you can think of.
• The team boss battles in Sonic Heroes are often ignored from a plot standpoint, as they raise a lot of questions if they're taken as really happening. Such as Team Sonic being willing to throw the 6-year-old Cream off a skyscraper just because Amy is being a Stalker with a Crush, Amy thinking doing the same to Sonic will make him want to marry her, Team Sonic barely reacting to Shadow still being alive and immediately fighting him, and Teams Chaotix and Rose getting into a fight even they admit makes very little sense.
• The "Shadow with amnesia" plot point is dismissed by a part of the fanbase because it takes two games to be resolved and has some contradictions.
• Games disowned even more often include various spinoffs such as Sonic Shuffle, Sonic 3D Blast, Sonic's Schoolhouse, Sonic R, and Sonic Labyrinth; as well as the PS3/X360 release Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) (which retcons itself).
• Sonic Free Riders is often disowned by fans due to being a poor follow-up to the original two with forced Kinect controls, along with its wildly disliked characterization and odd story choices (Amy and Team Dark Took a Level in Jerkass, Vector is on Team Rose for the first and only time). It's even missing from the official "Encyclo-Speed-ia" because Ian Flynn forgot about it.
• This doesn't apply too much to the Sega Saturn version of Sonic Jam, which is overall thought to be an excellent compilation with great bonus content, but it does apply to the Game.com port, which is considered worse than Sonic's previous handheld outing, Sonic Blast for the Game Gear. Due to the Game.com's technical limitations, the game suffers from blurry, monochrome graphics and laggy gameplay, and is missing many levels from the Genesis originals. While Sega had only licensed the game to Tiger and was not involved with the game's development, many Sonic fans pretend that Sonic's next handheld outing, Sonic Pocket Adventure, which has much better graphics and gameplay, is Sonic's real first video game made for a non-Sega handheld console.
• In particular, a large portion of the fans who draw the line at Sonic Adventure 2 are waiting for a game called Sonic Adventure 3 to happen. This is regardless of any other games with "Sonic" and "Adventure" in the title, such as Sonic Rush Adventure or Sonic Unleashed, whose Japanese name is Sonic World Adventure; or how close the gameplay is to the Sonic Adventure games, such as Sonic Heroes and Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), both of which borrow heavily from those games. They will dismiss any Sonic game made between Sonic Adventure 2 and the point whenever their theoretical Sonic Adventure 3 will be released.
• Sonic the Hedgehog 4 had Sega state that Sonic and Knuckles' stories in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 take place at the exact same time. Nearly every Sonic fan laughed at the statement, citing just how impossible it would be for events simultaneously involving both characters to happen at once. It doesn't help that Sonic the Hedgehog 4 itself is discontinued by longtime fans as well, especially with the general consensus that Sonic Mania turned out to be the Sonic 4 fans had truly hoped for.
• There are a few fans who ignore the connection between Sonic Mania and Sonic Forces. They pretend that Encore Mode in Mania Plus is the follow-up to Mania's original story and ignore Forces (even though the actual chain of events is suggested to be the Phantom Ruby displacing Classic Sonic into the events of Forces, followed by Encore Mode happening after Classic Sonic returns to his own time. Despite the official manual for Mania Plus stating this, said fans prefer to turn a blind eye to it).
• The games have always taken place on some kind of alternate Earth... if going purely by the original Japanese canon. Western media in the 90s (such as comics, cartoons and a few instruction manuals) described Sonic's planet as being called "Mobius", with "Mobians" being the collective name given for its Funny Animal residents. Even though this was dropped from Sonic Adventure onwards when the Japanese canon was established as the international one, enough Western fans have grown up with this idea that they still use the terms "Mobian" or "Mobius". Even some of the fans that don't have nostalgia for the older Western localizations have been known to use "Mobian" as a shorthand for "Funny Animal character with a Sonic-styled design and proportions", fan artists in particular for the sake of easier communication. "Mobius" itself may be used by those who believe that certain elements or settings of the series are too surreal to convincingly take place on a version of Earth, but this is to a much lesser extent given the existence of other fantastical Fictional Earths seen in media. As of the 2020s, however, the terms of "Mobius" and "Mobian" have been slowly falling out of use overall.
• A number of fans prefer to view the Game Gear/Master System titles as taking place in an Alternate Continuity as opposed to being canon with the mainline titles. This is largely due to the 8-bit titles having a couple of inconsistencies with the rest of the mainline titles. Most notably them retaining the Early-Installment Weirdness of there being six Chaos Emeralds, as opposed to seven as established in the console games beginning with Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
• The IDW comics were initially stated to be an Alternate Continuity, but Word of God later declared that they were canon after all. Naturally, many fans who don't like the comics ignore this due to feeling that certain aspects don't gel well with the game continuity.
• Likewise, the creators behind Sonic Prime consider the show to be part of the games' continuity. Sonic's characterization in the show, while acceptable in a new continuity, is considered to be at odds with certain portrayals he had in the games, so many fans ignore this statement, since they just can't see the show's Sonic as being one and the same with the games' Sonic. This also causes some other differences in continuity to make no sense, such as certain flashbacks contradicting what was shown in the games.

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