Sonic the Hedgehog (live-action movie)

Trivia:

When the first teaser poster was released, Naoto Ohshima, the character's original designer, and Yuji Naka, former head of Sonic Team, said they disliked Sonic's appearance. The first trailer caused a massive fan backlash. On May 2, 2019, director Jeff Fowler announced on Twitter that Sonic's design was going to be altered to make the character "the best he can be." The movie's scheduled release moved from Thanksgiving weekend 2019 to Valentine's Day 2020. When a new trailer and poster were released on November 12, 2019, fans and viewers alike praised Sonic's new look.

Garry Chalk makes a cameo appearance as the Navy Chief Of Staff who appeared along with the government and military officials discussing the power outage Sonic caused. Chalk had previously starred as the voice of Dr. Robotnik in "Sonic Underground" (1999), and as the voice of Grounder in "Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog" (1993) and "Sonic Christmas Blast” (1996).

The other movie in which Tom and Maddie were watching was the 1988 comedy “The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!”.

When Sonic was seen flipping through the channels on the hotel television, one of the programs that flashes across the screen is the short film “Gopher Broke” directed by the film’s director Jeff Fowler.

What attracted Jim Carrey to this film more than anything else was that his daughter was a big fan of the Sonic the Hedgehog games growing up.

Jim Carrey remarked during his press promotion for the film that "very little of the dialogue from the pages of the script ended up in the movie". He also was given a lot of creative freedom for his non-verbal scenes, receiving basic instructions like "Here's the room and this is the music, just do something to go with it".

Jeff Fowler expressed this statement explaining the Sonic references being placed in film: "It's not like you're going out of your way in terms of the story to put these things in. They are what they are, which is just a way of rewarding fans for their years of enthusiasm and getting to see some things that they would recognize but some that the rest of the audience might not."

Jim Carrey entirely improvised Dr. Robotnik's dance scene. Carrey also recommended the song to be "Where Evil Grows", which he had listened to during his youth.

The Mushroom Planet was directly based on the Mushroom Hill Zone from the first level of the game “Sonic & Knuckles” (1994). In that zone the various mushrooms could be used as springs and platforms for Sonic to jump on.

When Sonic starts rolling along on the ground, two sounds from the video game series play simultaneously: the iconic "Spin Attack" sound, and the "Dash Pad" sound.

Dr. Robotnik informed his assistant, Agent Stone, that he was trained by "Native American Shadow Wolves." This is an actual unit of trackers who are part of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Ben Schwartz who voiced Sonic, also provides the facial motion-capture for Sonic as well.

Crazy Carl, the local who trying to capture Sonic in one scene shows a wildly inaccurate drawing of Sonic. This is a reference to Sanic, a pop culture phenomenon about poorly-drawn portrayals of Sonic. The film's original design of Sonic drew complaints, with some fans comparing it to Sanic.

During his speeding antics inside the motel room, Sonic can be briefly seen doing his balancing pose from the original game. This particular reference was requested by Tyson Hesse.

Ben Schwartz was a fan of the Sonic the Hedgehog games during his youth prior to voicing the title character himself for this movie.

Sonic using rings as portals that lead to different areas has been a mechanic since the very first game, in which Warp Rings would take Sonic to the Special Stages. When activating the portals, the iconic "Ring Loss" sound plays, and when entering/exiting them, the even-more-iconic "Ring Pickup" sound is heard.

Dwayne Johnson highly approved of the "Is the Rock the president?" line in one of the spots, in which he did played the games during his college years.

Roger Craig Smith who voiced Sonic in the video games highly approved of Ben Schwartz voicing Sonic in this movie.

Dr. Robotnik having a slender body is actually a call-back to Sonic the Comic, where he started out being thin before gaining weight.

Dr. Robotnik's truck is a Freightliner Argosy truck. This was the exact same truck used for Galvatron in “Transformers: Age of Extinction” (2014).

During the highway chase scene, a figurine of the virtual pet Chao, from the game “Sonic Adventure” (1998), can be spotted on the dashboard of the family van.

This film was released the year of the 60th anniversary of Sonic’s developer Sega.

The film was delayed due to extra work put into redesigning Sonic after the backlash of his initial design in the teaser trailer. Making this film the third time Paramount had to completely redesign a character in the middle of movie production due to negative reception. The first instance this happened was Megatron from “Transformers” (2007) after fans complained he looked nothing like his original design from the toy line and TV show. About a decade later, “Monster Trucks” (2016) had to be postponed for a full year due to the main monster's original design being so visually frightening that it terrified kids in the test audience.

When Sonic is looking at Longclaw's map of other possible planets to go to, a drawing of a Chaos Emerald can be seen. While one of the planet drawings bears a resemblance to the logo of the Sega Saturn, the successor console to the Sega Genesis. The planet is crossed out, a possible reference to the Saturn console having a lack of Sonic games released, which was a contributing factor to the Saturn's lack of success. The only games released for the Saturn was Sonic 3D Blast, Sonic Jam, & Sonic R.

Dr. Robotnik's playlist of songs lists Crush 40, a band who has composed music for various Sonic games.

While Sonic's actual top speed has never been revealed, early in the movie he is seen testing his running skills on Tom's radar gun. At that point, he reaches the speed of 300 m.p.h. In the first trailer of the movie, Sonic reaches a speed of 760 m.p.h. on the radar gun. In reality radar guns would not be able to display that high of a speed.

When Sonic blinks, his upper eyelids are the same color as his fur, while his lower eyelids are the same color as his muzzle. This is a reference on how Sonic originally had flesh-colored eyelids that were later changed to fur-colored. On a similar note, when Sonic closes his eyes, one can see a line of small-but-present black eyelashes. He also had these in the game Sonic Adventure and the anime series Sonic X.

Throughout the film, Sonic's speed and running powers vary and fluctuate. According to producer Tim Miller, "the speed changes over time because he evolves, because he can't do everything at the beginning of the movie. He takes some time to figure out the speed: what the effect looks like and what it does to the rest of the world around it."

Sonic's sneakers, upon closer inspection, have a tiny Puma logo on them. They are based on the Women's Dare Mesh Sneakers made by Puma.

While it looked like Sonic was speed reading a large pile of Flash comic book issues. He was in fact speed reading and speed rereading the same four Flash comic book issues which were issues 285, 277, 273, & 335. All four issues were part of the Flash Volume 1 comic book series which ran from March 1959 to October 1985, and was then revived from May 2020 to August, 2023 with a total of 296 issues. This comic book series was known for its main focus on Barry Allen as the silver age Flash. While all four of these issues were randomly selected, the only thing they share in common is that they were all written by Cary Bates.

Ben Schwartz did recorded a harmonized version of the famous SEGA chant used in most of their game which unfortunately did not make it into the final film itself.

The "zones" from the Sonic games have been adapted as parallel worlds in the film. This isn't completely unheard of in the Sonic the Hedgehog fandom. In the early issues released by Archie Comics, the "Zone" term was used to describe the different regions on planet Mobius. This didn't last long but it does showcase how different creative teams have interpreted the various levels in Sonic's games.

Was filmed under the working title "Casino Night," this is a reference to the level "Casino Night Zone" from “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” (1992).

According to the pre-production descriptions of the movie it mentioned Sonic originally battled and being hunted by "lizard warriors" during his escape from his home planet. These lizards ended up being replaced by the Echidna tribe in the final film.

Longclaw's maternal relationship with Sonic in the film may be a tribute to "Stay Sonic" (a guidebook to the world of Sonic the Hedgehog published in the United Kingdom in 1993 by Fantail), in which Sonic stated he was found by an owl named Sophocles during his youth.

Sonic isn’t able to swim in the film, as well as in his own video games. This originally stemmed from the misconception during the development of the first Sonic the Hedgehog video game that hedgehogs are unable to swim. However, according to Fay Vass of the British Hedgehog Preservation Society: "Actually, hedgehogs are great swimmers, they only get into trouble when ponds have steep edges and they can't get out. But hedgehogs love a swim."

Sony at one point had the film rights to make a movie based on the Sonic the Hedgehog video games. No movie ever got made despite that Sony hired screenwriters Brad Bird, Paul Wernick, Rhett Reese, David Berenbaum, and Phil Johnston to write up their own drafts of the screenplay. In the end, Sony’s film rights to Sonic ended up in the hands of Paramount on October 2, 2017.

Yuji Naka had claimed that he approached the filmmakers about making a cameo appearance in the movie, but the filmmakers never responded to him.

Van Robichaux, one of the writers of the movie upon writing the script originally wanted the tone to be in a PG-13 rating range. However, the movie ended up getting a PG rating, when it was decided it should be more family-friendly.

The movie crew used the movie “Ted” (2012) as an influence, which was another live action movie featuring a computer animated title character.

After Paramount released a Japanese trailer featuring Sonic as a baby, many accused the studio of riding the coattails of the success of "Baby Yoda"(Grogu) from “The Mandalorian” (2019). This however was declared coincidental , since Baby Sonic was likely planned months in advance and “The Mandalorian” only premiered in November 2019, around the time the film would've originally been released had it not been delayed.

Director Jeff Fowler was asked why the Super Sonic and Chaos Emeralds elements of the game were left out of the movie, in which he responded with: "It didn't make sense to obviously bring in the Super Sonic thing just yet. I mean, there were very early versions of the script and the outlines where... because we knew that's something that's very important in the fan mythology, or the mythology that fans love. And Chaos Emeralds are definitely a huge part, even going back to the first Sonic the Hedgehog (1991) game in '91, and it was definitely something that we were kind of trying to see. Like, 'Does it make sense to include one of these?'"

When the movie was released in Germany, there was an outcry among Sonic fans, when the YouTuber Julien Bam was casted as the German dubbing voice of the title character, despite that he did not had any prior voice acting experience.

In other video-game/animated media, Sonic is always depicted as having conjoined eyes (as if he's wearing a visor/glasses). The film's design of him however depicts him having two normal eyes, but a homage to his conjoined eye design was made when a strip of white hair lands on his nose between his eyes.

Among the many items in Sonic's lair is a license plate with "ND4 SPD" as its lettering. This is a nod to the iconic phrase "need for speed" from the Top Gun films, as well as the title of the racing video game franchise which also got its own movie adaptation in 2014.

At one point, Paramount’s top choices for the lead roles was going to be Dylan O'Brien as the voice of Sonic the Hedgehog and Chris Pratt as Tom Wachowski.

The character Tom Wachowski shares the same name as the main protagonist in the creepypasta titled “Sonic.exe”. However there is no connection to this movie and the story.

Ben Schwartz wasn’t needed to be on set to play his role, but he was familiar with what happened on set, and explained that three different methods were used to create Sonic during the filming. All three of these methods were done in an effort to make sure that James Marsden's eye line was set correctly, so that way it would actually look like he really was talking to a bipedal blue hedgehog. According to Schwartz - "We had three different versions of the doll. One that I guess you'd call a doll, one that you would hold. And then for James also they had like a tennis ball. The whole thing that James and Jeff Fowler the director who's been amazing, was eye lines. They didn't want it to look like James was just looking at a person. They wanted to know exactly where Sonic's eyes would be and stuff like that, which I thought was so great. So there was like three different versions of Sonic".

Green Hills, Montana(the town in which Tom, Maddie, & Sonic reside in) was named after the Green Hill Zone, the first level in the first Sonic game. While Sonic’s original home bares a strong resemblance to the level itself with the bridges and loops.

During the baseball scene, Sonic's running animation when running at high speeds around the baseball diamond bears a strikingly resemblance to the pencil test animation for the game “Sonic CD”.

The scene of Sonic attending the bar in a rather unconvincing disguise of a cowboy hat and baggy shirt. Is a tribute to how Sonic frequently used a variety of disguises in “Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog”.

Ben Schwartz was a fan of the Sonic games prior to inheriting the title role. He mentioned his favorite Sonic game is “Sonic & Knuckles” (1994). Schwartz also owned a Sega Game Gear as a child, and played the handheld port. While prior to the movie’s release, Schwartz did invested in buying a Sega Genesis Mini, and he expressed that he ended up beating the original “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” game on the mini console.

The scene in which Dr. Robotnik was pretending to be chased by a virtual simulation of a T-Rex is a throwback to when Jim Carrey was considered for the role of Dr. Ian Malcolm in the dinosaur film “Jurassic Park” (1993).

The street in the opening sequence bears the name “Mega Drive”, named after Sega's console (named Genesis in North America) which featured many of the Sonic’s earlier video games.

The film was originally meant to be filmed in Atlanta, Georgia but was then changed to Vancouver, Canada.

During Robotnik's dance sequence with the VR screen, he can be seen pretending to be skiing; when he does the movement, it is highly identical to what Jim Carrey had done for his role as the Grinch in “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” (2000).

Adam Pally, was originally among the actors who auditioned for the role of Tom Wachowski. He didn’t get the role, but he did ended up portraying Tom's deputy Wade.

On May 29, 2018, it was reported that Paul Rudd was in talks for a lead role as Tom, who at the time was referred to as "a cop who befriends Sonic and will likely team up to defeat Dr. Eggman." Paramount however later clarified that this was not true, but they did considered Rudd for the role at one point of the movie's production.

Despite voicing the title character, Ben Schwartz's name was not given the top billing on the movie's poster, although Jim Carrey's name got top billing on the poster. Likewise, James Marsden was given top billing on the poster, even though he isn't visible on the poster. This has created a confusion to some in thinking that he's the voice of Sonic. Schwartz does get a "Ben Schwartz is Sonic the Hedgehog" poster, though, and gets top billing during the scrolling closing credits. In the movie, Carrey gets an "and" credit behind Neal McDonough as Bennington, who was only in one scene, much of which is viewable in the trailers. Even though, Bennington hardly says anything due to Robotnik constantly interrupts him.

Sonic's nickname the "Blue Devil" is also the name to the car driven by his robotic doubleganger Metal Sonic in the kart racing game "Sonic Drift 2" (1995).

The scene of Sonic running laps inside of a washing machine is a nod to an issue of Sonic the Comic, in which Sonic runs on a generator wheel to test his own speed which lead to an accident which ultimately gave him his famous blue fur.

When Sonic and Tom fight against Robotnik's drone, Sonic remarks that he "can't believe Amazon is going to deliver packages with these things." Sonic is referring to Amazon's "Prime Air" program which is still trying to get off the ground in development..

When Sonic is dodging Robotnik's laser fire during the chase scene throughout San Francisco, he at one point strikes a pose that is very similar to the one he makes on the "Sonic Adventure" (1998) box art.

When Dr Robotnik first appears, he's seen wearing a pair of rectangular sunglasses. This is a homage to Warden Zobotnik, an alternate counterpart from the Archie Comics "Sonic Universe" series issue #29. While Robotnik does don his iconic goggles during the final battle.

San Francisco plays a major part in the film. As Sega did once had a branch that was headquartered in the city, until it was closed down in 2010. The Sega logo however is still easily visible from Highway 101.

The game "Sonic Unleashed" helped reinvented Modern Sonic and made his speedy platforming palatable to a whole new generation of gamers. While the film does pay tribute to the title by incorporating one of its most famous levels directly onto the silver screen. Dragon Road Act 1, the level in which Sonic runs along a fictionalized version of the Great Wall of China, is featured in the movie. The only difference is that the structure is the actual Great Wall of China.

The roadhouse known as "The Piston Pit" is in fact a nod towards one of Dr. Robotnik's favorite machine parts. Particularly in the finale of Sonic's first game, which takes place in the Final Zone, in which there are a handful of pistons that Robotnik uses to try and crush Sonic with.

This is the first movie Jim Carrey stars in that was based off of a video game. He had previously been approached to adapt the "Leisure Suit Larry" games into a film back in the 1990s, which never came to be.

Sonic's bare feet were never shown throughout the movie, as he was always seen wearing socks or shoes.

In the scene where two raccoons were seen digging in the trash, the garbage cans that the raccoons were to be in were made safe and secure with the input of the raccoons' trainers. Prior to the shooting, the trainers brought the raccoons to the set in their carriers. The crew had to stand behind a fence during the filming. The trainers would place food on the garbage cans and then opened the carriers. In which the raccoons ate the food while they were being filmed for the scene. In the scene where we see the raccoon run out of the doggy door, the raccoon was being released by the handler. The raccoon was released by one trainer from Kennel A to the right of the dog door and walked approximately six feet to the dog door. The other trainer called the raccoon using a buzzer and food. The raccoon went through the dog door and entered Kennel B. The trainer then closed the door of the kennel.

During his solo baseball game, Sonic describes himself as being a south paw and is shown pitching with his left hand. However, in a later scene, he can be seen writing down his bucket list with a pen in his right hand. Furthermore, during the climactic chase scene, Sonic is seen repeatedly throwing rings with his right hand. This apparent inconsistency may be a reference to the fact that Sonic's dominant hand has been debated by gamers for years.

While there is no actual town in Montana called Green Hills, there is however a luxury property called Green Hills Ranch. The ranch is located west of the small town of Lavina.

Dylan O'Brien, Freddie Highmore, Dane DeHaan, David Tennant, Nick Robinson, Josh Gad, Will Forte, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jim Parsons, Charlie Day, Drake Bell, and Adam Devine were all considered to voice Sonic for this movie.

Early in the movie, Sonic's powers were activated when he's under stress. This is similarly how Sonic The Comic's interpretation of Super Sonic is unleashed, unlike in the games, the transformation is triggered by the exposure to chaos energy,

During the discussion of Dr. Robotnik, the General mentioned the doctor's role in "the uprising in Azerbaijanistan". This a portmanteau of the real life Asian nations Azerbaijan and Afghanistan.

Tom's car is a 2016 Toyota Tacoma TRD Off-Road Double Cab 4x4 V6 [GRN305].

When Sonic was playing ping-pong by himself, the table is a road sign (for Hill Top Avenue, a reference to the name of a level in one of the earlier games) and the "net" is actually comprised of Coca-Cola cans in a straight line.

Chris Evans, Jake Johnson, Michael B. Jordan, Bill Hader, Jason Segel, Justin Timberlake, Adam Pally, Ansel Elgort and Milo Ventimiglia were all considered for the role of Tom Wachowski.

After Jojo gave Sonic her pair of old red shoes, Sonic was seen with a new pair of socks on after donning his new footwear. While it wasn't specified on where he got his new pair of socks, it is implied that Jojo was the one who gave him the socks along with the shoes.

This is the first time Sonic appears in an American produced movie since his cameos in "Wreck-It Ralph" (2012) and "Ralph Breaks the Internet" (2018) which were both released by Disney and used for special permission.

Upon the movie's release, it surpassed "Pokémon: Detective Pikachu" (2019) as the highest-grossing video game adaptation domestically.

Robotnik has a button on the circuit breaker in his bus that is labeled with the "badniks." Badniks were the name sometimes used for the robotic enemies Sonic has faced throughout the years in the games. In this movie, the Badniks are the drones Robotnik deploys after Sonic. Even though they were never addressed by that name.

During the flashback scene, young Sonic was seen giving Longclaw a sunflower. The same type of flower that is found in the first level of the first Sonic game.

The echidna tribe that attacked Sonic and Longclaw during the flashback scene is a homage to the warmongering Knuckles Clan from “Sonic Adventure” (1998), which was a tribe of echidnas who tried to steal power for their own ends.

Sonic’s line “Gotta go fast!”, was the title of the English theme song from the “Sonic X” (2003) series.

According to director Jeff Fowler, Knuckles the echidna was originally meant to appear in the film with a major role to the plot. In the end, it was decided to leave him out of the story in order to keep it simple. The goal was to "nail" Sonic and Robotnik, establishing their classic rivalry against one another. Fowler stated with the following: "There's a lot of great characters in Sonic universe, but it's the most important thing is just to get Sonic set up and just tell a little bit of an origin story with him, and just do it in a way that really makes everyone fall in love with him as a character and just be rooting for more. And then, if all that goes well, then we can kind of open it up and bring in some of these other characters that fans know and love. And yeah, I mean, no one's more excited than me to have that opportunity."

At one point when Sonic tries to go to San Francisco and is told that the city is a straight shot west. He then speeds off and then comes back being all wet and says he ended up running into the pacific ocean. The time it took Sonic to do all this was about 5 seconds. If he left from the closest point in Montana to the closest part of the west coast to the Pacific ocean and went in the straightest, shortest distance to the ocean is approximately 500kms(300miles). Based on the calculations, Sonic ran over 34,000km/h (21,000 mph).

Sonic was shown at one point sliding underneath a vehicle in order to escape weapon fire from Robotnik. His pose while sliding is identical to both the sliding part of his somersault animation in the “Sonic Advance” games and his sliding animation in the modern games, such as “Sonic Unleashed” (2008), “Sonic Colors” (2010), and “Sonic Generations” (2011).

No traffic was allowed during the filming of the scene involving a turtle trying to cross a road, and ended up being saved by Sonic from almost getting ran over. Before the turtle was placed on the highway pavement, the pavement was cooled down with ice water. That way, the path to be walked by the turtle did not have any known hazards and was checked by its handlers. The turtle ended up walking on the pavement from point A to point B with ease.

Jeff Fowler explained that he wanted to feature Tails in the movie as a nod to the fans and the wider Sonic world. Fowler expressed with the following: "There's so many great characters in the Sonic world and we really wanted the focus of this film to be Sonic or Robotnik, just because that's how we were all introduced to these characters back in the first game," he said. "[Tails] was just a way of saying to the fans, 'Look guys, we love these characters, too. We might not have been able to include them in this story, but we would love to include them in future stories'. "There are other characters like Tails that we would have so much fun working with, and hopefully we'll get the opportunity to do some stories with him."

Robotnik's red flight suit represents the iconic red suit he generally wears in the video games.

Dr. Robotnik keeping Sonic's quill in a cylindrical container, in which the design resembles the Chaos Drive first introduced in “Sonic Adventure 2” (2001).

An engraving on a stone on Sonic’s home world looks similar to the stones found in the Labyrinth Zone in the original Sonic the Hedgehog video game.

In the scene where Tom and Maddie looking at an apartment ad on Maddie’s laptop, it is possible to see that the name of the owner of that apartment is "Amy Rose," a reference to Sonic’s love interest of the same name.

During Sonic’s baseball playoff scene, the name of the visiting team is "Spring Valley." This was the name of the stage from the Sega Saturn game “NiGHTS into Dreams”.

Sonic was shown owning a race car bed. This is a reference to his Archie Comics counterpart, in which he also owned a similar type of bed. While the wheels on the race car bed are based on the modern Springs' design from the video game series.

Van Robichaux originally wrote a scene in which Dr. Robotnik had a coffee maker named the “Mean Bean Machine” (item) after the Sega Genesis game “Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine” but it ended up being cut from the final film.

The town of Ladysmith which is located in British Columbia, Canada served as the filming location for the town of Green Hills, Montana.

Maddie's first name was originally reported to be "Annie", but was it ended being changed to Maddie in the finished film.

In a deleted scene, it was revealed that Crazy Carl owns a camper featuring a license plate bearing the number "1NOM155". This license plate number is a reference to the Sega Dreamcast game “Crazy Taxi”, and it is the license plate number belonging to Axel’s taxicab.

Colleen O'Shaughnessey is the only voice cast member from the Sonic the Hedgehog games to reprise her role as Tails for this film and the following films. Colleen expressed with the following statement: "It's just unbelievable and joyous and beautiful and amazing. All the excitement and love I've received from the fans has been so gratifying, with all these tweets telling me they were hoping that I would get to play Tails in this film. They've had my back and have been so supportive since the beginning."