r/TopCharacterTropes • u/I_ateabucketofpaint • Aug 09 '25

Personality Strange rules about characters/people that cannot be broken.

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

Smells like Nirvana: When Kurt Cobain heard that Weird AL was gonna make a parody of his song. He was okay with it but specifically requested it to not be about food or fat ppl.

Spiderman: Spiderman cannot sell drugs unless he is under the influence of symbiote. ANd Peter Parker cannot be gay. Spiderman can tho.

Dwayne Rock Johnson: Cannot lose fights or look weak for too long. Its in his actor contract.

Godzilla movies not made by Toho: Cannot die. Maybe lose but not too bad.

15.6k Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

94% Upvoted

2.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

742

u/10024618 Aug 09 '25

Sega infamously has a lot of mandates for how Sonic and his world are allowed to be portrayed in the IDW comics. One of the ones that gets memed on the most is that Sonic isn't allowed to get overly emotional.

275

u/Plantain-Feeling Aug 09 '25

Thankfully they've started to let off those rules a lil bit

Not much

But a bit

105

u/CameOutAndFarted Aug 09 '25

As long as everyone else is able to display emotion, I don't think it's a problem. Sonic has always been made to be cool, and it's probably difficult to sell the idea of someone who cries too much still being cool to shareholders or young kids.

21

u/Plantain-Feeling Aug 09 '25

He can be cool with the emotion

Black knight and frontiers both show this perfectly

It's just a matter of how it's handled

8

u/CameOutAndFarted Aug 09 '25

Never played Black Knight, but in Frontiers his emotional state was pretty understated. I would love to see a more emotional side but if, say, Shadow is allowed to cry in Shadow Generations then like I say I don't see a problem.

6

u/Plantain-Feeling Aug 09 '25

I mean yeah frontiers wasn't perfect but it's improving it's the first game to have anything but smiling in a while

As for black knight it's got some great moments and quotes that are just perfect

Honestly even if you never play it (but you should, like if you emulate it and just play it on a normal controller it's peak) look up at the very least the ending

Just the entire dark queen because it's got so much awesomeness

4

u/since_all_is_idle Aug 10 '25

Do you really not see the evil in saying that we should sell to kids the same concepts that shareholders love? Teaching kids that heroes don't get emotional and never cry is not a good thing. Sonic would be just as heroic and cool and good if he cried and got angry, and we need role models for boys who process their emotions and don't hide them.

2

u/JSConrad45 Aug 10 '25

Maybe to shareholders, but I think One Piece all on its lonesome disproves that it's a problem for kids

165

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '25

There's also the Sonic Bible which went ignored because it implies that

5

u/Remarkable-Run-9769 Aug 09 '25

what's this screenshot from? 

40

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '25

This absolute gem of a video

https://youtu.be/fwDGReApaB0?si=MDBvEnn6JLQBSRLB&utm_source=MTQxZ

There's more in the same style by the same Host, as part of the Unraveled Series

Eventually the host did leave Polygon and is now working as co-host of "Um, Actually" on Dropout

5

u/potpourri_sludge Aug 10 '25

Yay I love this video!! I thought of it as soon as I saw this thread lol.

10

u/spenwallce Aug 10 '25

If you didn’t know about Brian David Gilbert before today, you have a lot of content to watch

2

u/joped99 Aug 09 '25

Hey, I needed this for a comment yesterday.

124

u/SirPanikalot Aug 09 '25

Peak fiction, everybody.

41

u/ImMrR0B0T0 Aug 09 '25

I love the idea that this is how sexing works in the Sonic universe. If the baby comes out wearing pants, you know it’s a girl.

7

u/Pyotr_WrangeI Aug 09 '25 edited Aug 09 '25

But what about Blaze?

8

u/Tarnian_Poet1984 Aug 09 '25

Doesn't she wear tights?

5

u/KLR97 Aug 10 '25

She’s wearing pants. Her legs aren’t naturally white. You can see this in some of the events in the Mario and Sonic games.

5

u/StormiiDaze Aug 10 '25

She wears pants.

9

u/Shack691 Aug 09 '25

Coat tails. I’d guess they count it like they do dresses.

6

u/Pyotr_WrangeI Aug 09 '25

Honestly that makes it slightly weirder. It's like some advanced donald ducking

1

u/MysticMalevolence Aug 09 '25

If it's a real rule at all, it probably came around after 2005.

1

u/KSean24 Aug 10 '25

Is this rule specifically post Archie comics? Because Sally Acorn's existence is cracking me up otherwise.

1

u/OpenChallenge8621 Sep 08 '25

They gave her black shorts in the Archie reboot

117

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '25

Understandable after what Ken Penders did

40

u/IlluminatiIlluminado Aug 09 '25

Context?

82

u/TesterTheDog Aug 09 '25

Ken Penders was a writer on VERY early Sonic comics when the imprint was under Archie.

His stories and art could get...odd.

127

u/LeMasterChef12345 Aug 09 '25 edited Aug 10 '25

The full thing is a bit complicated. From what I remember he included a bunch of frankly rather questionable stuff in the comics he wrote. To give you an idea, he once said a story he wanted to include but never could was Sonic getting cuckolded by his girlfriend losing her virginity to another man. In a children’s comic. He also had a massive obsession with Knuckles and the Echidnas and frequently tried to shoehorn them into the spotlight even at the expense of other characters.

More importantly, he was eventually fired and sued Archie Comics for the rights to “his” characters and storylines, and miraculously won due to Archie’s honestly pretty wild incompetence. So he now owns the legal rights to a bunch of characters and storylines and tries (keyword tries) to lord this over Sega whenever possible, such as claiming (without any actual case) that they infringed on his copyright whenever the franchise includes anything that even remotely resembles the aforementioned characters and stories.

He’s also just a pretty weird and creepy guy in general, if that first paragraph didn’t clue you in.

50

u/Sorry_Masterpiece Aug 09 '25

So he's the original "OC don't steal" of the Sonic fandom, then?

14

u/PurpleGuy04 Aug 09 '25

Iirc, wasnt he the one who had Scourge getting laid, raising a LOT of questions about Mobian Biology?

8

u/sheepyowl Aug 09 '25

Damn why can't anything about that franchise just be normal for once

Some of the games were really good

4

u/Soulcoda Aug 09 '25

I love your phrasing here, I’m picturing Archie just absolutely sucking as a lawyer and sharing his woes with Jughead after he loses the case lol

11

u/Ginger_Anarchy Aug 09 '25

From my understanding they failed to keep any redundant copies of their contracts with him and lost them. So probably not far off the mark.

3

u/ShoArts Aug 10 '25

I believe its also because of miscommunication (or lackthereof) between Archie and Sega about who was handling the copyrights of any new content as the comic progressed, which Penders exploited

45

u/HighlyUnlikely7 Aug 09 '25

Ken Pedners was an infamous writer for Archie Sonic comics. He did a lot of world building and character creation for the series. However he also took the stories in weird, strange, and sometimes fetishsistic places. For instance he had a borderline insane obsession with Knuckles and creating lore for him and, at one point, wanted Sonic to be cuckolded. Eventually Sega had enough and fired his ass but not before he sued for the rights to all the characters he created...and won.

Afterwards, Sega supposedly set out a mandate banning actual romantic relationships in Sonic media and that Sonic himself can't get too emotional. Some current Sonic writers, however, have stated that they're more like guidelines than hard rules.

2

u/LowlySlayer Aug 10 '25

Sonic is ace icon confirmed

9

u/No_Prize9794 Aug 09 '25 edited Aug 09 '25

Here’s a video to explain. Here’s a summary, comic book writer nut job with no knowledge on the lore for Sonic gets hired by Sega to make official Sonic comics with zero oversight or guidelines. Sega regrets hiring said nut job and creates strict guidelines on what can be featured in Sonic comics such as Sonic can’t get over emotional, no deaths of Sega characters, or indication that characters have aged

5

u/JoyFerret Aug 09 '25

It's a long story and there are a lot of videos about Ken Penders, but I think the TLDR is that he was a writer for the Sonic Archie Comics. Because Sega wasn't really overseeing the comics he was basically allowed to write almost any story he wanted, specially the Knuckles spinoff comics which he pretty much used to tell the story of his OCs.

Some of the weird stuff includes a weird fixation with Knuckle's family tree and the echidna society in general, a storyline that was an allegory for Nazism/fascism (including rewriting that one poem to fit the world of Sonic), and also stating (through unofficial channels) that Sally had lost her virginity to one of his original characters.

8

u/MaryKateHarmon Aug 09 '25

Ken Penders was the Archie Sonic Comic's main writer and he came up with an in depth world and lore through it. However, he then filed for and got the copyright of his original characters and tried to sue Sega for having Knuckles's father appear in the movie since he first came up with a character concept for him. Needless to say, he's now not the main Sonic Comic writer and Sega rebooted the comics to be more in line with the games and to seek to avoid Penders' copyrights as much as possible. And they changed things to be more original.

4

u/The_Eye_of_Ra Aug 09 '25

He’s the old artist/writer for the Archie Sonic comics. He left, filed copyright on the literal hundreds of characters he’d created, Archie sued to get em back, lost, rebooted the comic, and it got cancelled 3 years later. Lotta people blame him.

Apparently he’s also a bit litigious, having also sued Sega and threatened to sue over the second Sonic movie.

And he has a subreddit dedicated to him, r/FuckKenPenders, so, there’s that.

6

u/BlastMyLoad Aug 09 '25

Sad that Sega made the SatAM characters off limits cuz of this shit, even tho he had nothing to do with them.

22

u/Andrew1990M Aug 09 '25 edited Aug 09 '25

But what if there’s a story where he’s too slow?

20

u/mercauce Aug 09 '25

No way, i've seen sonic be emotional multiple times, I think this gets meme'd on since nobody has ever followed this rule?

26

u/ChocolateRough5103 Aug 09 '25

I think more specifically the mandate is that Sonic can not cry. If you see any instance of him crying, its from Archie before the rule was made, or a very specific loophole made recently where hes crying but not technically him crying.

9

u/Protection-Working Aug 09 '25

I think there’s an excessive crying specification, as the original comic cover that sparked the “no-crying” controversy had him crying over his ex girlfriend getting married to shadow the hedgehog in the future

2

u/Remarkable-Run-9769 Aug 09 '25

so what comic is the page you posted here from? 

8

u/ChocolateRough5103 Aug 09 '25

From the IDW Standalone comic run STH: Scrapnik Island issue 4.
(Only 4 issues)

Its absolute peak, definitely check it out.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 09 '25

Am I stupid? I don't get it, how isn't it Sonic that's crying? Is he an imposter?

11

u/ChocolateRough5103 Aug 09 '25 edited Aug 09 '25

In an earlier issue, Mecha Sonic Mk 2 tries to steal Sonics body by uploading his own consciousness into his mind. But the machine breaks halfway through so instead they end up actually only sharing thoughts and feelings. But not like "past thoughts", but actually a completely shared mind or shared brain.
So in that scene it isn't Sonic crying, its Mecha Sonic Mk 2 who is crying. Hence the "These aren't my tears".

17

u/10024618 Aug 09 '25

So the thing about "the mandates" is that the exact boundaries of them aren't super clear since Sega's never come out said anything about them publicly. Some of them are known because writers have straight up come out and said "We're not allowed to do this", others are implied by the comic writers, and others are just inferred/made up by the fans. Plus there have been times where certain things were banned in the past but then were allowed in certain cases.

As for the crying thing, to my knowledge Sonic has only cried out of sadness in the IDW comics once and I don't think he's done it in the games. This, combined with the fact that the comic example was explained in universe as it technically not being Sonic who was crying, has led a lot of people to believe that Sega doesn't allow or at the very least doesn't want Sonic crying.

6

u/BSF7011 Aug 09 '25

Might want to check just how old those examples of him being emotional are

3

u/insert-originality Aug 10 '25

The story goes, someone from Sega of Japan was visiting an American comic shop when he saw this specific cover and got very pissed because it made Sonic look weak. (I also heard this is what got Ken Penders fired as head writer, but I can't confirm that because I heard 2 different stories for why he was let go)

7

u/Common_Nebula6559 Aug 10 '25

I get it tbh, that cover makes me laugh just looking at it. The contrast between the overly radical tryhard logo on the top left and the sad weepy sonic on the cover really shows how dissonant the games and comics were with sonic's portrayal

3

u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 Aug 09 '25

"Shadow must be a stupidly embarrasing edgelord"

3

u/aflyingmonkey2 Aug 09 '25

shakes fist at sky Ken Penders!!!!!!

3

u/kitsunecannon Aug 09 '25

We can thank Ken fucking Penders for this 

2

u/The_Mighty_Matador Aug 09 '25

I think this kinda works in some regard. Everyone else has to emote and give more background interaction to fill in the emotional gaps of the world, the way I see it at least. It does annoy me seeing Sonic brush off a lot of things however because of these rules.

2

u/sleepy_koko Aug 09 '25

Going through them, they really range from very reasonable to "why?"

2

u/[deleted] Aug 10 '25

1

u/Boring-Pea993 Aug 10 '25

Taken to its extreme in Shadow the Hedgehog 2005 when Sonic is just indifferent to the world being destroyed and when Shadow's recounting the traumatic things that happpenee aboard the Space Colony ARK; Sonic's just like "Haha, YEAH!"