The 1990s was a golden era for new video game mascots. Crash and Spyro ruled the roost for Sony and Star Fox and Banjo were iconic Nintendo newcomers, among a lineup of others. But there was one who stood above all.
Of course, I’m talking about the Blue Bomber, himself, Sonic The Hedgehog for the Sega Genesis. A gaming staple for more than three decades, he’s starred in dozens of video games across nearly every platform, spawned a successful film franchise, a comic book series, cartoons, energy drinks, action figures, a line of plushies - and even spaghetti in a can. – Sonic The Hedgehog Pasta.
New from Franco American. – [SLURPING Sound] Goooood. But behind those giant, inviting eyes lies a secret *so* sinister, it nearly broke the internet in the 2010s - and *shattered* more than a few childhoods along the way.
**Sonic. Ribs chases Tails and kills him** I’m sure the image of the lovable family hedgehog dripping red with the entrails of the furry friends he brutally murdered was on *no one’s* Bingo Card when Sonic first took the world by storm in the early 1990’s. But internet subculture has a way of twisting even the most wholesome pop-culture artifacts.
– Not so fast… So lace up your red sneakers, cause I’m about to dash into a deep dive on the origins of this viral horror story, its creator, and the legion of equally demented spin-offs it inspired. ♪ Metal Music ♪ (Zac runs onto screen at super speed) Welcome to Horror History. – What’s all that writing on the wall anyway?
Did you write that? Uhh, yes. Sonic The Hedgehog debuted in 1991 as Sega’s answer to Nintendo’s flagship character, Mario, who launched in 1985 to rave reviews and millions of dollars in sales, propelling the company to a 90-percent market share of the *entire* gaming industry.
Needless to say, Sega wanted in on the action, intent on creating its own mascot to rival - and perhaps even surpass Mario. A mascot that would showcase the speed and power of the Sega Genesis - something cool and rebellious that would be emblematic of 1990’s pop culture. Enter Naoto Oshima - the game artist and designer responsible for Sonic’s original design.
Armed with a company mandate to reject all things Mario, down to the most minute detail, Oshima got to work, helping to incite a console war waged in *opposites. * If Mario was cheerful and easygoing, Sonic would be cocky and edgy. Mario was short and stocky with round features and a red color scheme in line with Nintendo’s logo, so Sonic would be thin and athletic, with sharp features and blue fur to match Sega’s logo.
The prevailing sentiment above all others was that Sonic had to be *fast*, another kinetic contrast to the competition’s iconic plumber boy. – They say he’s incredibly fast. Well, what’s the hurry, Mister?
Hmm? And about his attitude. Smarty pants!
Why can’t he be more like that nice boy, Mario? [Sonic DASHES out of frame]. Oh!
Little brat! That strict *Nin-ten-don’t* approach also informed the design of Sonic’s arch-nemesis, the mad scientist, Dr Ivo “Eggman” Robotnik. Dude looks like an evil, twisted version of Super Mario and the two share a lot of common design elements.
– Genesis does! – Sixteen bit arcade graphics. – You can’t do this on Nintendo, Genesis does!
The counter-programming worked, and the hedgehog with an attitude went on to sell 15 million copies in his first game. Catapulting Sonic into worldwide super stardom. By the middle of the nineties, Sega controlled a 65 percent market share majority - up from a measly 6 percent share when the Sega Genesis debuted in 1989 - all thanks to Sonic’s dominance.
–[Bowser] You worthless, weak little nothing! Sonic the Hedgehog launched a franchise filled with a roster of new characters almost as beloved as Sonic himself, like Tails the Fox, Knuckles the Echidna or the dark anti-hero Shadow the Hedgehog. Each of these characters would go on to achieve *icon status* in their own right, across a slew of mainline games and spin-offs, scooping up legions of new fans with each new release that followed.
I wasn’t born until a couple of years *after* Sonic’s debut, so I don’t have a whole lot of nostalgia for that first wave of games from the 90’s, but I did have some Saturday morning cartoons like Sonic X, and of course the memes that spawned from those animated adaptations. –[Dr Robotnik] Snoo PINGAS usual, I see! While Sonic never managed to fully eclipse Mario, he may have the upper hand in the world of memes and internet culture, which led to an internet phenomenon that was never intended to be played for laughs, as the Sonic IP found itself becoming the subject of a Creepypasta.
Creepypasta is derived from the word Copypasta, a text phrase often copy and pasted around the internet. Naturally, a *Creepypasta* was a *horror story* that was copy and pasted around the internet. The central hub for these stories became Creepypasta.
com, an infamous online community that made a name for itself trading tales of terror and urban legends, authored by anonymous users. Household names like Slender Man, Jeff The Killer and Eyeless Jack all got their start as Creepypasta text stories thanks to a rabid user base built on word of mouth. When I was a teenager getting into horror content, I first became aware of Creepypasta stories via narrations on YouTube, where creators would upload spoken readings of these stories set to creepy music, and I found myself re-introduced to Sonic for the first time since I saw him zooming around the colorful world of Sonic X.
**Tails brutal murder scene in Sonic. exe** But how did we get here? To understand how Sonic’s clean family image was *punctured* by the darkest whims of the internet, we’ve got to take it back to that original post that started it all.
(IMPACT) ♪ Suspenseful Music ♪ The original Sonic. exe story was uploaded to the Creepypasta Wiki on August 9, 2011 by a user with a fitting handle: JC The Hyena, real name Jack Cranely - a self-described “Prince of Everlasting Darkness,” a “major macrophiliac” (which is apparently someone who fetishizes giant humans) and a proud member of the furry community, who likes to, quote: crush and smother things with his butt. You know, all the makings of greatness for an iconic author of our time.
(sigh) The story he wrote begins with a Sonic mega-fan named Tom receiving a package in the mail from his best friend, Kyle, who he hadn’t heard from in 2 weeks. It contained a hand-written letter and a CD labeled in black magic marker with the name “Sonic. exe.
” In coding, the suffix *. EXE* refers to an *executable* file, a file that can run directly on a Windows computer. You insert the CD, and the file will execute a program.
And given all the bloody *executions* Tom is about to bear witness to, I think the title is more than appropriate. The letter contains a warning: “I can’t take it anymore. I had to get rid of this thing somehow before it’s too late.
He’s after me, and if you don’t destroy this CD, he’ll come after you too. He’s too fast for me. Please, Tom, destroy this godforsaken disc before he comes after you too… Don’t even play the game, it’s what he wants, just destroy it.
” So how do you think Tom handles the news? Multiple choice: Does he (A) give Kyle a call or swing by his place to check in on him? (B) reach out to someone for help?
Or (C), heed Kyle’s warning and destroy the disk? Spoiler alert, it’s none of those things, he puts the disk in his computer and runs that thing. – [Gamer:] “Oh!
Kyle is not gonna be happy about that. ” Upon booting up the disc, it appeared to be a ROM of the original Sonic the Hedgehog game. He saw the title screen from Sega Genesis classic, the lush backdrop of blue ocean, bluer sky and green trees in the distance.
But when he pressed start, the screen warped into something else for a split second, a scene ripped straight from the pages of Dante’s Inferno; the blue waves replaced by an endless, blood-red ocean. The release year, 1991, that was burned into the corner of the screen next to the Sega copyright logo was replaced with the number of the beast - 666. But the most striking change was Sonic himself, the character’s big, inviting eyes gone black and red, now dripping with blood.
…I don’t know how Tom managed to memorize EVERYTHING on an image that only flashed on screen for a fraction of a second down to the copyright year. Guys, I’m starting to think this story might be untrue. –[Tails] You really think someone would do that?
Just go on the internet and tell lies? After 10 seconds of black, Tom is taken to a creepy character select screen, with eerie music - a distorted version of the “Caverns of Winter” track from the classic Super Nintendo RPG, Earthbound. Sonic is nowhere to be found on the character select screen.
Instead, Tom can choose to play as one of three supporting characters: Sonic’s trusty sidekick, Tails; The Hedgehog's power-punching frenemy, Knuckles; or the animal-rights abusing, perpetual thorn in Sonic’s side, Dr Robotnik. – PINGAS! Assuming that the game was just hacked, Tom chooses Tails and enters the Green Hill Zone - the first stage from the original Sonic game.
Though the layout of the level is different, everything seems *relatively* normal… until Tails happens upon his first corpse. It’s a bloodied, rotting carcass of an animal. In the original game Sonic can save small animals by freeing them from Dr Robotnik.
The grotesqueries continue as Tails moves deeper into the stage, discovering more dead animals, all of them mutilated. Exposed entrails, hacked off limbs, blood on the leaves, the works. Tom is shocked.
His stomach turns, on the verge of upchuck. But he can’t seem to walk away from the keyboard. Not unlike Tom’s own face at that moment, Tails *also* wears a sad, disturbed expression, seemingly unable to process the bloody massacre he’s stumbled upon.
As the stage progresses, the carcasses disappear, and Tails comes to a dead stop. Tom hammers away at the keyboard, trying to make his character move, but nothing works, causing him to wonder if the game crashed. But that’s when he sees it.
Standing at the opposite edge of the screen, his back turned to Tails, eyes closed, is the Blue Bomber, himself - Sonic. Tails is thrilled to see his old friend - at first. But his smile fades, relief quickly giving way to fear.
*Without* Tom’s fingers hitting the keys, Tails begins to move on his own, slowly closing the distance between them. As he inches closer, loud static plays on the soundtrack - louder, more abrasive with each step forward. He calls out to his friend.
But Sonic is unresponsive. Tom feels an overwhelming sense of dread, powerless to stop whateveris about to happen. His intuition is proven correct a moment later when Sonic opens his eyes, revealing the same glowing red orbs from the title screen.
The screen cuts to black for a few seconds before an unsettling message appears: – Hello. Do you want to play with me? From there, the game boots up a brand new level - a floating isle of fire.
Tails wears a traumatized look on his face, crazed with fear. He turns to face the computer screen, seemingly breaking the fourth wall, gesturing as if he were begging Tom to do something. Back in control of Tails, now, he continues through this tropic hell level, eager to help the distressed fox out of this apparent nightmare… Until the evil-eyed Sonic returns, lips curled in a deranged grin, his arrival punctuated by a haunting, villainous laugh… (Sonic Laugh) This time, he *chases* Tails throughout the level.
Tom desperately pounds the keyboard, trying to outrun this demonic version of his favorite character, but it’s not long before the footrace becomes an *air raid. * Halfway through his sprint, Sonic takes to the sky, gliding a few feet off the ground, inching closer and closer with outstretched hands. The tips of his white gloves swiping at the air just behind the fox’s spinning twin tails, intent on *ripping them* from his body.
(IMPACT) ♪ Intense Music ♪ With his player character, Tails, seemingly about to face certain peril, Tom’s eyes welled up with tears. We don’t know how old Tom is, but we can assume he’s a kid who might actually be scared by this type of thing. As Sonic closes in on him, Tails trips and falls.
At this point, the music stopped, and Sonic vanished. Matching Tom’s own tears, Tails begins crying, himself, but this twisted Sonic just grinned as blood dripped from his eyes, perversely satisfied. Suddenly, he lunges at Tails just as the screen goes black.
– You’re too slow. Want to try again? Tom was unable to believe his eyes, left to contemplate: did Sonic just *murder* Tails?
Before he gets an answer to his question, he’s whisked back to the character select screen. Tails is no longer playable, with his icon now locked on-screen, trapped in a state of perpetual anguish with black eyes and his orange fur sapped of all color. This time, Tom picks Knuckles, hoping the Echidna’s super-sized fists can help him *punch* his way out of this nightmare.
But the cycle of hedgehog-related trauma continues in the same fashion: hellish levels that pervert the original game’s vibrant landscapes; ghostly, disembodied screams; a haunting score; disturbing screen flickers and unstoppable threat in the form of a once beloved mascot. Unnerved, Tom shuts off the game and takes a nap, hoping to soothe his disturbed mind, but instead, he’s assailed by a vivid nightmare where he’s trapped in a pit of darkness as the anguished screams of Knuckles and Tails play on a never ending loop. “Help us…” they say.
“Why did you give us to him? Run away, before he gets you too. ” The cries are snuffed out by Sonic’s demented laugh.
Now it’s the Hedgehog’s voice that pierces Tom’s eardrums, taunting him. “You’re a lot of fun to play with, kid, just like your friend, Kyle, though he didn’t last long. Won’t be long now until you join him and all my other friends.
” Sonic appears in the dark, glitching out like an old TV on the fritz. He grabs Tom, and leans in close, black eyes dripping blood. Tom wakes from the nightmare in fright, but apparently, it wasn’t disturbing enough, because he boots up the game again, claiming he can’t rest until he figures out *why* this was all happening.
Maybe he felt that beating the game would cure him of his nightmares, or maybe the game itself had started to influence his mind. In any case, he chooses the only available character remaining, Robotnik, and is loaded into a dark hallway covered in red stains. Robotnik looks more disturbed the further he gets into the level, but Tom eventually reaches the dark Sonic.
But instead of a Game Over screen, the experience ends with static taking over the screen, followed by Big Blue’s homicidal alter-ego staring directly into the camera, bathed in shadow, and grinning an unnaturally wide smile of razor-sharp fangs. Tom describes the image as “hyper-realistic”, but not hyper-realistic like the Sonic character seen in the original trailer for the Sonic movie… that was its own type of horrifying for Sonic fans. JC’s story describes an image so real you could see individual strands of hair in his blue fur; so real he thinks he might even *feel it* if he dared to reach out and touch the screen.
The sound of that evil laughter blared again over flickers of red static before the coup de grace - the cherry on top of this Eldritch horror: a message written in blood: “I AM GOD. ” The story ends with Sonic lunging at the screen before Tom’s computer shuts down of its own accord. Too stunned to move, Tom just sits there, replaying all the pixelated carnage and mayhem he’s witnessed.
But there was one more message that somehow flashed on his screen: – Ready for Round 2? Finally understanding Kyle’s cryptic warning, he desperately tries to remove the disc from his computer to no avail. After a few panicked moments tick past without resolution, the computer boots back up one last time, accompanied by a familiar voice - *not* a voice from the computer.
This time, the voice is *in the room* with Tom. *Behind him. * It says, “Try to keep this interesting for me, Tom.
” Spooked, he turns to the voice, and finds a Sonic plushie sitting on his bed, smiling a hideous grin with bloodstained eyes. Like most Creepypasta stories, which are almost always told in the first person, it just ends right there without resolution, leaving the implications of what just happened up to the reader or listener. In the end, Sonic.
exe is yet another religious horror. Like many horror stories with religious themes, a character is punished for reaching for the forbidden fruit. In biblical stories, Eve reaches for the apple in the Garden of Eden, in The Exorcist Regan plays with the forbidden Ouija board and in Sonic.
exe Tom plays the ROMhacked Sonic game despite his friend’s warnings. Maybe there’s a subtextual moral about the ethics of using pirated software, but I kinda doubt it. It was written by a teenager who was clearly heavily influenced by video game and internet culture, where piracy is not exactly frowned upon.
The I am God message makes this red eyed Sonic seem like this story’s equivalent of a demon, which is often what we see in these types of stories where a character is punished for dabbling in the occult. I may have made the comparison to The Exorcist, but that comparison only works when looking at the themes, because the general reception to these two horrors could not be more different. In fact, the popularity of Sonic.
exe has more to do with what came *after* JC The Hyena uploaded his story than anything he cooked up himself. After the post went live, he was raked over the coals for a story that many felt was poorly written, derivative, and riddled with enough clichés to send a fortune cookie writer into retirement. But something would happen that would cause this story take off as fast as the blue blur himself.
[AD BREAK 3] ♪ Dradful Music ♪ Earlier I mentioned the influences of the author, JC the Hyena, and the most obvious ones were other Creepypasta. There was another haunted game Creepypasta that came out the year before and got pretty big. It was called BEN Drwned.
Personally, I don't remember exactly when *I* was first exposed to Sonic. exe, but it was most likely sometime around 2012, when CreepyPasta narrations were becoming popular on YouTube. As a massive Legend of Zelda fan, I was very aware of BEN Drwned, which is about a college sophomore who discovers a haunted Nintendo 64 cartridge of The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask.
Like Sonic. exe, madness ensues. It’s obvious that this was probably the single biggest motivator behind Sonic.
exe, but BEN Drwned was also a product of just a general fascination that gamers had with glitches and creepy video game secrets in an era before online patches and over the air updates to games. There had always been urban legends about games that would be circulated on the playground at school when I was a kid, but as gaming became the biggest topic online, more people became aware of some of these eerie easter eggs. And one of the secrets that came to light was from the Sonic franchise way back in 1993, during the release of Sonic CD - Sonic’s first outing on Sega’s *at the time* latest and greatest console, the Sega CD.
The new system boasted superior sound and graphics, more fluid gameplay, and even an animated OP. ♪ Sonic Boom! Sonic Boom!
Sonic Boom! Trouble keeps you running faster! ♪ Beyond the cartoony cutscenes, the game, itself, was pretty standard fare for hardcore Sonic heads: Bright sprites, old school platforming, and loop-de-loops taken at breakneck speed.
But *this* particular release featured a hidden sound menu, accessed by inputting a specific code, that - once activated - unlocked an alternate version of everyone’s favorite hedgehog that *rattled* unsuspecting players. Roll it. No pun intended.
♪ Sonic CD Scary Song ♪ Sonic’s distorted features combined with that chiller of a song raised more than a few eyebrows. But it was the Japanese text that sent conspiracy theorists into a tailspin. The text translates to “Infinite Fun.
Sega Enterprises. Image by Majin. ” According to The-Gamer-Dot-Com, “Majin” was reportedly the childhood nickname of Sega designer Masato Nishimura, who also voiced Sonic in the game.
But the word “majin” *also* translates to “a powerful supernatural being with god-like powers. ” This detail opened the floodgates to endless speculation, with many fans excited at the prospect of Sonic hiding a more devilish disposition beneath the quills of his impeccably blue coat. Whatever Sega’s true intentions were, the reaction was a blip on the radar compared to what followed the launch of Sonic.
exe almost two decades later, in the summer of 2011. Just a few days after the story’s first birthday, it would receive an adaptation that elevated it to legendary status. On August 13, 2012, MY5TCrimson, a college game developer based in Ireland - real name Adam Gavigan - sent the Sonic.
exe fanbase into a frenzy when he released a *video game* that faithfully recreated every detail from JC The Hyena’s original story - and made it playable. MY5TCrimson keeps a lower profile online, but the project seemed to be a labor of love for the source material, and likely good practice for him as a game developer. To the overwhelming delight - and horror - of everyone who dared boot up the game, MY5TCrimson *did not* skimp on the details… All the key elements that made the written story a hit were present and accounted for.
Everything from Sonic’s glowing red eyes and eerie smile to the glitchy visuals, the haunting soundtrack, even the weirdly specific sound effects referenced by JC the Hyena as if the reader had played every Sonic game and memorized every sound. And of course, the game delivered, with the brutal deaths of Tails, Knuckles, and Dr Robotnik. Painstakingly - dare I say *lovingly?
- recreated for players to lose their minds over. And they did. – [Markiplier:] “Can I go left, now?
I can. I can go left. Ah!
No! Ah! God!
” – [Pewdiepie:] “No, I’m not! No, I’m not! No more rounds!
What? ! What do I do?
! ” Top gaming creators of the day like Markiplier and Pewdiepie played the game on their channels, and leveraged the massive popularity of their respective audiences to get the word out. Around this time, the original text story was boosted by some video narrations, most notably a reading by the legendary Mr Creepypasta.
– Sonic… his eyes were pitch black. Bleeding, with two glowing red dots staring right at me. The game kind of came to overshadow the story, with the images presented in it becoming synonymous with the idea of Sonic.
exe. I don’t think I’d be here talking about it if the game hadn’t made the story what it is today -- in the same way the The Godfather probably isn’t relevant today if not for the movie. But maybe the biggest draw - the element that gave the game *real* staying power - were all the Easter Eggs and personal flourishes baked into the code.
These subtle - and not so subtle - touches elevated the source material to new heights of depravity. Most notably, a Game Over screen that shows the severed heads of Knuckles, Tails and Robotnik mounted on bloody pikes as Evil Sonic grins in celebration… And secret rings that - when collected - unlock a *hidden* ending that darkens some already *pitch-black* lore. It starts with the *I AM GOD* screen that follows the final stage.
After a few seconds of static, the game asks if the player is Ready for Round 2, before jumping to a Game Over screen Tails is chased by the demonic Sonic, who is perched inside a giant gold ring elevated with massive demon wings as psychotic laughter plays in reverse. There’s a cryptic poem that doesn’t seem to be as deep as you would think. The names referenced were later found out to be his friends from college.
From there, we’re able to play as *Good Sonic* for a short while as he navigates a shadowy wasteland. For about two seconds, you’re overcome with relief at the inclusion of a Sonic character that *isn’t* hell-bent on dealing death, but the reprieve doesn’t last. We’re treated to a series of taunting messages that race across the bottom of the screen.
“You had a chance to comply,” reads the first message. “Now you’ve come too far. ” More text reveals the names of Evil Sonic’s victims… There’s Jerry and Jake and Kyle and Alice.
And an ominous invitation for *your* soul to join all those who came - *and died* before. This vision from Hell ends with - oddly enough - the sound of a computer modem dialing up internet service *blaring* on the soundtrack as Sonic runs through a level filled with what looks like the bones of oversized animal carcasses - each one picked clean. There’s no official explanation from the developer, but the dial-up sound could be alluding to the internet’s role in spreading the Sonic.
exe lore. There could be some parallel between the real story going viral online by way of sharing, and the fictional game disc being shared from friend to friend and spreading the curse. Whatever the case, it ends with this very 2012 internet horror sequence.
(Haunting sounds) The final message in Japanese says: “I killed until all my strength had disappeared. And yet, they die for the sole pleasure of the devil who has risen to torture me. ” – [Gamer:] “What the f***?
I’m sorry, but, like, what the f*** is this? ” The game ignited a firestorm of like-minded creators who took to every corner of the internet, eager to contribute their own talents to help grease the wheels of the runaway train that Sonic. exe was quickly becoming.
(IMPACT) ♪ Suspenseful Music ♪ Fans flocked to DeviantArt and flooded the site with hundreds of pieces, online shops like Etsy and eBay began to mint and sell Sonic. exe-themed merchandise, and YouTube played host to musicians and animators trying to capitalize on the trend. While some were played for comedy… – Great Scott!
You’re Sonic! What are you doing? …most of these fan-made offerings largely stuck to the script, leaning into the blue-haired villain’s most destructive tendencies… – So many souls to play with.
So little time. Wouldn’t you agree? HAHAHAHAHA!
But some of my favorite fan animations were the ones that *flipped* the script. An animator named BoomBuster posted a trilogy of incredibly polished shorts earning *tens of millions* of views. Each short vignette depicts a violent, *near-fatal* encounter between Sonic.
exe and one of three playable characters from the original CreepyPasta: Tails, Knuckles and Eggman. But instead of having them die horrific deaths at the hands of the Blue Demon like they do in the source material, BoomBuster shows mercy. Each character *survives,* finding unique ways to outsmart Demonic Sonic and live to tell the tale - even if they can’t manage to kill him outright.
Tails’s section has him trick-or-treating on Halloween Night when he hears a ghoulish howl on the wind. He turns to the sound, finds nothing, then turns back, where he’s met by a neighborhood-wide *bloodbath. * Sonic.
exe has *literally* painted the town red, and now he has Tails in his sights. Tails ultimately gets away by stabbing Sonic. exe in the eye with a cross, which falls in line nicely with my analysis of the character being a demonic version of Sonic.
The Knuckles episode takes place later that night, and after fighting off the red-eyed entity, we’re treated to a post-credits scene of the real Sonic ending up on the wrong end of a scare prank. – This is gonna be the best scare prank ever! Knuckles will scream his spines out going, ‘Ahhh!
’ [Sneaks up on Knuckles. Knuckles knocks him out]. The finale sees Dr Eggman defending his Chaos Emerald from Sonic.
exe in a space station, ending in a mecha battle against Sonic’s dangerous doppelganger. Of course, these are just the highlights. For every successful video, there’s a counterpart from a creator who probably just discovered static noise filters and earrape sound effects, a screen recorded anime music video, or an overly autotuned Roblox animation.
– He is coming now? AHH! !
! Back on the Creepypasta. com site, a blue tidal wave of imitators followed, diluting the story’s core appeal with countless derivative and ever more poorly crafted spin-offs.
What began as, at the very least, a cool concept, devolved into a sea of mediocrity that crowded the space and undercut the true potential of the original concept. By the end of 2013, Sonic. exe’s popularity had reached critical mass.
CreepyPasta moderators had become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of spin-off stories being uploaded to the site on a daily, almost *hourly* basis. In their view, too much bandwidth was being dedicated to these derivative stories - rebranded as “SpinPastas”. In a move that surprised some and angered others, the stories were *removed* from the CreepyPasta Wiki and reassigned to a different wiki site called TrollPasta.
Each dismissal was accompanied by a note from the site admins who wrote, “Due to the poor quality of this story, we have decided to remove it from our site in order to clean up old and subpar content to make way for much more new and higher quality content… We would also like to say that we hold nothing against the author, nor any “group” associated with it such as the Sonic. exe fandom. ” The fandom cried foul, but none of that stopped new stories from pouring in, with new iterations leveraging the popularity of Sonic’s extended gaming family; even though the formula was already getting pretty stale.
Characters like Amy Rose, Sally Acorn, Cream the Rabbit and Ray the Flying Squirrel found their way onto the pages of this new crop of spin-off . exe stories, largely retreading the same ground already covered in JC The Hyena’s original upload. There was Sally.
exe, an almost *beat-for-beat* Sonic. exe knock-off that essentially did little more than replace the blue hedgehog with his chipmunk girlfriend, Sally Acorn. Tails Doll.
exe re-imagines a Tails plushie as a demonic entity living inside a Sonic racing game. Sunky. exe is a parody of the Sonic.
exe lore. In this story, “Sunky” is a smaller, chunkier version of the Blue Blur. All he wants to do is play and have fun with his friends, but the evil Dr “Ro-butt-nick” keeps spoiling all the fun.
The CreepyPasta gatekeepers found themselves smashing roaches, just when you think you’ve killed them all, another one springs up to breed a fresh infestation. These stories didn’t die, they multiplied. Even The Hyena, himself, got in on the action, expanding on his original lore with a poorly received follow-up called Sonic.
exe Round 2. In this prequel-sequel that takes place before, during and after the events of the original story, the reader follows a hardened detective trying to solve a series of gruesome murders tied to the Sonic. exe game.
During his investigation, he learns that Tom, the original story’s protagonist, hanged himself shortly after playing the game. He later links the deaths to a bizarre cult that worships an interdimensional entity known only as “X. ” Like MY5TCrimson’s adaptation of the original Sonic.
exe game, these new SpinPastas birthed game adaptations of their own. While most of these games *shamelessly* repurposed Crimson’s work with new skins, marginally improved sprites and slightly altered level design, there were a handful that showed genuine inspiration. The best of the bunch offered more surrealist, mind-bending takes on Crimson’s original game - with buckets of extra gore.
But they also managed to class up the gameplay - deeper, more complex levels; secret zones and multiple endings that took genuine skill and foresight to unlock, whereas the original Sonic. exe game was more of a playable cutscene. First, there’s Sonic.
exe Project X… (Sonic screen music) . . .
which features branching narrative pathways that encourage the player to make choices in real time. The sum total of these choices leads to one of seven possible endings, both good and bad - a major departure from the linear horror experience of most other . exe games.
But the next Sonic. exe fan game of a fan game had maybe the most haunting atmosphere of them all. (Terrifying Sonic Music) (IMPACT) ♪ Intense Music ♪ Sonic.
Ribs, what I consider to be the most ethereal take on the Sonic. exe game formula, blends elements from the first three Sonic The Hedgehog games, infusing them with dark, malevolent energy that twists and distorts the Sega Genesis classics in a way that many players found delightfully deranged when compared to the rest of the . exe games on offer.
Ribs also boasts one of the more hair-raising Sonic designs ever conceived, owing to the Blue Demon’s missing chestplate and exposed ribcage. It also leans into the fact that it’s an . exe game by making you interact with Windows text boxes that talk to the player.
Another standout, Sonic. EYX, uses the letters, EYX, which are meant to evoke the image of an all-seeing, all-knowing omniscient *eye. * This game allows the player a window into the origin of Sonic’s demonic possession.
While completing levels, you’re bombarded with a series of fourth-wall breaking messages and screen glitches urging the player to stop before it’s too late. If you ignore all the warnings, you’ll end up in a dark cave - the demon’s secret lair. The entity takes over Sonic’s body - the hedgehog reborn as a monstrous abomination with an arcane symbol on its chest, a single, all-seeing white eye, and an impossibly wide mouth filled with bloody shark teeth.
– [Speedy:] [Sonic. exe chases Ray. ] “What’s going on?
! ” [Ray is murdered. ] “Ahhhhh!
” Your mileage may vary with each of these titles, but the one thing each outing has in spades is an endless supply of death scenes. ** Tails Death ** ** Knuckles Death ** ** Eggman Death ** ** Knuckles Dies Again ** ** Sally Death ** ** Eggman Dies Again ** ** Tails Dies Again ** Not content with terrorizing *just* the Sonic universe, indie game developers with a penchant for edgier fare were more than happy to spread the carnage to other IP. Mario.
exe reimagines Super Mario as an unholy plumber terrorizing a young boy named Lucas… (Evil laughing sounds) Toy Story. exe blesses us with a *headless* Woody and a Buzz Lightyear that meets a fiery end as Andy’s childhood bedroom is set ablaze. And the always loveable Pikachu is transformed into a psychopathic poltergeist in Pokémon.
exe. And then there’s *Sanic. exe* an entire reskin, which is as crudely put together as Sanic himself.
– [Linx] Well I guess it’s up to Eggman. – [Eggman] Pingas! – [Linx] Pingas, I mean.
I guess it’s up to Pingas. If you’re not familiar with Sanic, he’s a meme spawned from this 2010 video where a user named Onyxheart offered a tutorial on how to draw “Sanic the Hegehog” in Microsoft Paint, while an obnoxiously loud version of the Green Hill Zone theme from the opening level of the first Sonic game blares in the background. So what started as a teenage authored creepypasta story had become an entire genre of video games.
It’s impossible to say which of these copycats pushed CreepyPasta moderators over the edge, but the mind-numbing flood of lo-fi and high-concept Sonic. exe imitators forced them to make an executive decision. Fearing the floodgates would never close without decisive action, the moderators *pulled* JC The Hyena’s original Sonic.
exe post from their site, and banished it to the place where Creepypastas go to die - the TrollPasta Wiki. The hammer was dropped on January 14, 2014, along with a message explaining the decision. It read… “The reason we deleted Sonic.
exe… wasn't just because [it was] well below our contemporary quality standards, but because having [it] on the wiki caused us to get a bunch of ripoffs of them every single month. ” Many fans were shocked and outraged, calling the move callous and unfounded. But the loudest screech came from the Hyena, himself.
The author of Sonic. exe, was just as surprised as anyone when his strange tale of hedgehog-induced trauma took the internet by storm in 2011. Three years later, the party was over.
But instead of using the rejection to fuel his writing chops for his next great creepypasta story, he instead wrote a manifesto, which he posted to his profile on furaffinity. net, one of his most frequented online haunts. So my browsing history is now permanently ruined and I’m gonna have to set fire to my computer after this.
Anyway, the statement reads: “BULL. FRIGGIN. HORSE SH*T.
As you can see, I am *FURIOUS* with the fact that my masterpiece, which has won the hearts of millions and has made a massive impact on the internet, is being brought down by a bunch of jealous, arrogant, retarded *FURRY-HATERS. * *BUT. * That does not mean I am just going to sit down and take this lightly.
NOOOOOOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE. They have been messing with the bull, and now they've called out the horns! He goes on to declare war on the moderators and calls for every Sonic.
exe fan to spread the word, make more fanart, “block the haters”, and basically just spam the internet to keep Sonic. exe alive. “We need to prepare for our victory over the Haters!
The Haters need to *BLEED* for their 'crimes'! ” What? Dude is completely unhinged.
“Rejoice, my fellow Sonic. exe Fans! Our glorious little *Hellspawn* shall have the laugh yet!
*THIS* will be his ultimate victory! The absolute subjugation… *OF THE INTERNET ITSELF*! !
! ! ” Now when I first see a post *this* charged in the modern day, my first thought is that it’s post-ironic humor.
However, post-ironic humor didn’t become popular until 2019, and this statement was posted in 2014. It’s very much in the era of the actual rage-post which memes in the post-ironic era might have been making fun of. Also, just judging from his overall online presence, I don’t think him having some kind of personality disorder is out of the question, and I’m not trying to make fun of him for that, but it could suggest that he might have been serious.
With the rant. The tirade was largely met with crickets. There was no great uprising.
And honestly the movement kind of just ended at this point; the fan community moved on to other pursuits. Or should I say, moved onto other fur-suits. In 2017, three years after that online tirade went viral for all the wrong reasons, JC was interviewed by a user named C0RPS3 on the DeviantArt website.
C0RPSE was responsible for spreading the rant originally posted on FurryAffinity, and increasing its visibility within the Creepypasta community at large. During the interview, JC admitted that he could have taken the criticism better - been more mature about it. He said if people chose to hate his work, they were welcome to do so because that was *their* prerogative.
He said he was happy to continue doing the work he found fulfilling, and refused to let negative backlash derail his artistic drive. Which I think would be a respectable take, but again the “artistic drive” he’s talking about is just him *unironically* making furry artwork. At the end of the DeviantArt interview, JC also teased a Sonic.
exe reboot. He claimed he had taken some of the less inflammatory, more constructive criticism to heart, and was inspired to write the version of the story he *wished* he’d written on that first go-round back in 2011. On Halloween Night, 2017, the TrollPasta Wiki received an upload that sought to correct all the narrative wrongs of the original telling.
(IMPACT) ♪ Suspenseful Music ♪ Sonic. exe, The Remake, Chapter 1, received little fanfare, and users that bothered to click on it did so more out of morbid curiosity than genuine excitement, as the . exe community’s best days were already far behind.
But the reception was surprisingly… *mixed. * While JC’s writing chops weren’t radically transformed from the days of old, this new story added layers and revelations that worked to deepen the characters, tackle more existential questions like of creation, and expand the lore outside of just Tom and Kyle. Some of the early comments seemed to see it as an improvement, but many also seemed to have the sentiment that it was too long to read.
But most saw this as somehow a downgrade from the original, and users lambasted what they viewed as the same tired tropes from the first story. I can kind of see where people are coming from by claiming this version is worse. The first one didn’t focus on the surrounding details of who Tom was, because it wasn’t really important to the story.
So there was wiggle room with the believability of it all. You’ll recall that I assumed Tom must be a younger kid. In this one it specifically references them being in college.
The first one was also told in first person while this one shifts the perspective to 3rd person, so there’s dialogue, and JC is not great at writing dialogue. Despite the reception, the conversation surrounding the remake’s release helped revive interest within a long-dormant Sonic. exe community and some new games hit the scene, like The Sonic Nightmare Series in 2017, revamping the Sonic.
exe formula with a focus on plot and lore with the gameplay taking more of a back seat. The series tells the story of Exetior, a demon who escapes from hell to possess Sonic the Hedgehog. Then, later that year, on August 15th, 2017, Sega released Sonic Mania to commemorate the 25-year anniversary of Sonic the Hedgehog.
Fans saw this as a much needed return to classic 2D side-scrolling goodness, and this was the most highly rated Sonic entry in 15 years. Paramount Pictures also acquired the movie rights for Sonic around this time, and the movie came out to much fanfare in early 2020, quickly taking the title as the highest grossing video game movie in US history. It felt like Sonic was back in the public consciousness in a way he hadn’t been since the 90s, and maybe the stage was set for a .
exe Renaissance. But JC the Hyena’s moral shortcomings killed the revival before it ever got off the ground. The first domino fell when JC’s ex-girlfriend sent a series of direct messages to popular Sonic.
exe gaming creator LuigiKid, outing her ex as a pedo, and LuigiKid, who thankfully is not actually a kid, took to his channel in an attempt to expose the banished Creepypasta author. Within one day, JC had responded and admitted to sending explicit material to a 14 year old girl and engaging in -- let’s just say -- illegal role play chats with a 14 year old boy. Oh no.
This is so shocking. Who could have ever guessed that the furry internet fetish art guy turned out to be a predator. I di -- wow.
Who saw this coming? Man. Dang it.
Dang! When asked why he committed the crime, he expressed remorse and said his poor judgment was a result of “stress-induced weakness,” owing to problems at home with his parents and difficulties keeping up with college classes. But he maintained that he’s *not* a pedophile.
For those of you who don't care about terminally online internet drama, this is what every weirdo says after being caught. JC eventually confirmed with an apology on his Twitter and FurAffinity accounts before closing them. Why is this important to the Sonic.
exe story? Well, apparently the ex girlfriend took over the rights to Sonic. exe.
I don’t know what, if any implications this has legally. People have been making their own Sonic. exe spinoffs for a decade at this point, and I doubt there were ever any licensing deals with JC.
It’s probably more of a symbolic thing so that the fan community can continue making stuff without feeling icky about being attached to a predator. (Throwing up sounds) While the peak of . exe popularity has waned considerably compared to its heyday, the fan base persists thanks to semi-regular releases.
The first of which after JC’s cancellation was a mod for the turn-based rhythm game Friday Night Funkin’ called Vs. Sonic. Exe, where Sonic can dance battle against Boyman and the gang.
♪ You Can’t Run ♪ It features multiple playable versions of Sonic, where deep cuts like Sonic CD’s Majin Sonic and the . Exe Plushie make appearances. There’s even a story mode where the characters have to dance their way out of the cursed Sonic.
exe realm that they’re trapped in. More recent releases like Sonic. exe One Last Round and Sonic.
exe Destiny offer new ways to bend the lore, with a much deeper roster of characters to choose from, and richer game design that’s more elegant and complex than previous entries by orders of magnitude. And the visibility of these efforts is raised by creators like LuigiKid and LiNX 4, who still host regular Lets Play streams, dissecting Sonic. exe games new and old in front of audiences that number in the millions.
And for those who believe Sonic. exe animations *peaked* when BoomBuster dropped his trilogy more than a decade ago, look no further than Shin Sonic, released back in October of 2024. ♪ I’m moving with speed in the name of the fire!
Boom Boom! Liar! Zoom Zoom!
Die ya! ♪ And, as of writing, Sonic fans are currently anticipating the release of the third movie Sonic The Hedgehog 3. This time, Sonic, Tails and Knuckles will face off against their greatest threat yet, Shadow The Hedgehog.
– Say something, you fake Hedgehog! Now each Sonic movie so far has made a nod to the internet culture that surrounds the character, from the Sanic reference in the first film… – There is one person who’s actually on to me. He calls me the Blue Devil.
…to the “gotta go fast” line in the second movie. – OK, I can do this. I gotta go fast!
Gotta go fast is the chorus of the theme song from Sonic X, which is a bop, and the phrase is often mockingly attached to bad Sonic artwork. So maybe this third installment, which will introduce a dark Sonic, will give some kind of nod towards the Creepypasta icon: Sonic. exe.
Either that, or something like this… – Snoo PINGAS usual, I see! If you love horror, make sure you subscribe to CZsWorld for new horrors every week, ring the Deathbell and select all notifications, so you don't miss an upload. And I will see you in the next one.
Assuming we both survive.
