What were your headcanons, as kids?

[Big Panda]

When we're little, we don't always understand certain concepts and come up with our own interpretations, we make connections that aren't there, or we just come to the wrong conclusions.

I made many a misconception about Sonic in my childhood, and maybe you did too. Share them here, if you remember them.

...

I used to be under the belief that Station Square, or at least the big city that was flooded in Sonic Adventure, was the deserted city in the Land of Darkness in the Sonic OVA. This came from the fact that the city was sinking into the ocean.

I used to think the "stages" in the classic games were being played out on literal stages, as in, at a theatre or something.

[JezMM]

These are kinda meta ones rather than anything related to lore, but:

I literally never noticed the discrepencies between Eggman's in-game sprite and cartoon/comic appearances when I was a kid.

I thought the Sonic games for the Master System ALL came before any of the mega drive ones, because I assumed when a new console came out, games ceased to be made for the previous one (likewise thought the puzzle game Yoshi was Yoshi's debut, not Mario World).

Lore-wise:

I generally took a lot of the stuff Sonic the Comic presented as canon, since I only had constant access to said Master System games, and thus had no way of knowing what aspects of their adaptations of various storylines/elements from the Mega Drive games took artistic license, despite being familiar with those elements.  For example, I knew the Chaotix and Special Stages came from the games and weren't comic creations, but I accepted Sonic the Comic's idea that the Chaotix came from "the Special Zone" as canon.  Also Super Sonic being a seperate, out-of-control chaotic entity.  Also for the majority of my childhood, I knew Metal Sonic as "Metallix".

 

I always assumed Scrambled Egg from Sonic 2 8-bit as being set in outer space, like within the thick of an asteroid belt.  The game's manual never states one way or the other, but it seems the fanbase at large considers it to be an underground cave setting.  Personally I'll never unsee it as an outer space location.

[Mad Convoy]

I used to think that Sonic hated Amy. Mostly because he kept running away from her and seemed genuinely terrified of her, which did not look like the dynamics of a mutual romance at all. Apparently its canon that he secretly likes her too though.

I also have a memory from back when I was first getting into Sonic in 2010. One song I discovered when researching Sonic was an upload of Dreams of an Absolution on Youtube, which is Silver's theme song. I was impressed and wanted to learn more about the character, and so checked the comments to see what I could find. It is at this point that I note that the upload in question referred to the game the song is from as "SONIC THE HEDGEHOG" and not the usual Sonic 06, which wasn't really helpful. The comments referred to it as being a great song from the worst Sonic game ever, but again wouldn't say the name of any games that fit the category. That is, except for one commenter, who said that the worst game in the franchise is Sonic Adventure 2...

And that, friends, is how I became convinced that Silver debuted in SA2. I went to go watch cutscenes of SA2 to find Silver, and all I got out of it was crying about Shadow's death. Eventually, I just googled Silver and found that he debuted in Sonic 06. It looked really cheap, ugly, and jerky to me so I just dropped it and stuck to liking Dreams of an Absolution and Silver.

[blueblur98]

i used to think sonic's backspines were a cape.

[McGroose]

When I was a little kid, we didn't have a genesis or any consoles. We had a really old computer that could be used to play the S3&K PC collection, my favorite childhood game. while I was being a little dipshit trying to figure out how to get past the Carnival Night barrel (actually 100% Knuckles run cause I couldn't figure out that barrel), my sister showed me the other Sonic disc we had for PC. I tried to install it, but I could never get the installer to work properly. 

She said that she played it for a little bit and then it just stopped working suddenly. She told me that the game involved Sonic going through deserts and quick sand to stop time-traveling zombies from taking over the world, and I believed her.

It was just a copy of the US release of Sonic CD.

[Metal the Mario]

When I was little and got to the end of Gamma's story in Sonic Adventure for the first time, for some reason I didn't catch that Beta actually shot Gamma before he exploded. I thought he was just pushing him out of the way, and that Gamma simply collapsed and exploded on his own from sheer emotion/sadness over losing his "friends." In hindsight, that actually made the ending even sadder for me.

This one's a little out there, but when I used to play Pumpkin Hill in SA2, I would mishear the lyric "I know dat it's here, I can sense it in my feet" as "I know Daddy's here." It made me think there was some deeper lore involving Knuckles having a long-lost father who was buried there.

Having grown up playing the Adventure games and watching SatAM (via rented VHSs from Blockbuster) at the same time, I was always expecting Knuckles and Amy to show up in the latter at some point and wondering why they weren't there. You can imagine my excitement, then, when I eventually got into the Archie comics. =P

[Osmium]

Now this isn't a total misconception since depending on what you look at it's semi true, but through my whole childhood I was always under the impression that Sonic was a total and utter cunt. I never played much Sonic as a child so I wasn't really exposed to the actual more nice-guy persona Sonic had in games and X at the time I grew up. It probably didn't help that StC, which was one of the first Sonic things I got used to pretty much confirmed that for me. Eh. 

[Big Panda]

For the longest time I thought Sonic got his speed from his shoes.

[Osmium]

Just now, Ernest-Panda said:

For the longest time I thought Sonic got his speed from his shoes.

Well to be fair the Western stuff loved to toy with the idea. 

[Riseodvi]

I have two weirdly distinct memories from seeing a friend play the Sonic Gems Collection when I was really young: Sonic having his Adventure design in CD, and Shadow being in Sonic Drift 2.

The first one can be explained by me not really having a distinction between Sonic's old and new designs at the time, but the second one had me confused. I hadn't really thought about it until I was older and I realized that if Shadow was first introduced around the early 2000's, it didn't make sense that he would be in a Game Gear game. I looked it up and sure enough, Shadow wasn't in the game.

It's weird because even now I have this clear image in my head of Shadow's character portrait for the game. If I had to guess, I might have somehow misinterpreted Metal Sonic as Shadow.

[PC the Hedgehog]

I got y'all beat. I thought Eggman was a WOMAN the first time I played Sonic 1. And no, I don't know why. I was a dumb kid who didn't pay attention to sprites.

I also thought Eggman's name was "Dr. Robonik", because the host of Nick Arcade always called him that.

Also when SatAM first aired back in 1993, I thought DiC took creative liberties and made Tails into a girl. Turns out "girl Tails" was Sally.

[Big Panda]

I thought Knuckles was a girl. Because I used to think the difference between boys and girls was long hair.

[Osmium]

8 minutes ago, PC the Hedgehog said:

Also when SatAM first aired back in 1993, I thought DiC took creative liberties and made Tails into a girl. Turns out "girl Tails" was Sally.

...so what did you think when Tails and Sally were onscreen at the same time? 

[Badnik Mechanic]

Amy's spikes don't go down... they go up.

 

Took me 20 years before I realised they went down... and Sonic CD was my favourite Sonic game for at least 5 of those 20.

[PC the Hedgehog]

36 minutes ago, ShroomZed said:

...so what did you think when Tails and Sally were onscreen at the same time? 

The sneak preview they did of SatAM was the episode "Super Sonic", which didn't even have Tails in it. Obviously once Tails showed up in the series, I figured it out.

[Person]

I thought Tails was a squirrel or a cat until Sonic X came out. 6 year old me really had no idea what a fox was.

And I though NiGHTS and Klonoa were Sonic characters that I had no idea about.

Spoiler

I also thought Shadow was the coolest character in existence, which is flat out wrong

 

[Big Panda]

In StC, since Tekno almost always had one eye hidden behind her hair, I thought she was a cyclops.

[Dannymax440]

I always thought the modern series took place 3-4 years after the classic games because of how the characters looked all grown up. Imagine my dumbfoundedness when I found out that both Modern and Classic Sonic are both 15.

[Pawn]

Sonic the Comic's version of Nack/Fang was essentially canon to me. I didn't think of him as the bungling, ridiculous opponent from Triple Trouble, but as the "technical wizard" (as Vector so eloquently put it) with a utility belt full of gadgets. He was as gifted as Eggman, but with a decidedly less ambitious goal: money. This motivation lined up with his original incarnation, as did his choice to roam the "Special Zone". The artists drew him progressively leaner and scruffier looking as time went on, so I eventually forgot about his shorter, more angular design.

I acknowledged that the game variant wasn't originally a part of the Chaotix, though, since he wasn't even mentioned in the 32X game.

[Flyinpenguin117]

My first game was Shadow, when I was 11. I had a lot of weird impressions the first time through.

At first, I thought Shadow was straight-up evil, and wondered why Sonic was working with him.

The first time he showed up, I honestly thought Tails was a girl (though to be fair, this was when he was first voiced by Amy Palant)

I never found Cream in Cryptic Castle the first time I played it, so I thought she was Amy's pet rabbit. And I had no idea who or what the hell a "Cheese" was supposed to be, the first time I did find her.

Since I never played SA2, I thought Shadow's backstory had always been vague and mysterious, so none of the game's contradictions or nonsensical plot holes really stood out to me.

The way Rouge talked to Shadow made me think she was in love with him.

[A super No.1 washedupgamer]

This is embarrassing but...

I did not know the things flying in the background in sky sanctuary were actually the egg robos. I thought they were just balloons.

I also used to think knuckles was a girl. 

I used to watch my big brother play the blue spheres game on sega genesis and I thought it was a minigames where sonic was playing checkers.

I used to be afraid of the chemical plant zone water until my brother told me that it was koolaid.

[FReaK]

I used to call eggman "the evil driller" when I was a kid. mainly because i played a ton of Sonic 2 and always got stuck in chemical plant in the early days. So all I did see of eggman was the EHZ boss..the driller, kek.

[Ayliffe]

I wouldn't exactly call this a "childhood" misconception (I still thought this until about, what, four or five years ago?), but when I was younger I thought that Sonic Adventure was a straight-up reboot of Sonic from the stuff I'd seen online, the massive tonal differences between the Adventure games and the classics, etc. Seeing classic and modern as totally different characters in Generations prob didn't help matters either.

Then I got 'round to actually reading up about/playing SA1 properly and it aaaaaaaaaall made sense. 

[Pawn]

I also thought that:

- the name of the Egg Mobile was the "Egg-O-Matic" for a loooooooooong time, courtesy of AoStH

- the name of Sonic's Spin Dash was "Screwdriver Attack" before Adventure, thanks to my dad

- Metal Sonic was actually a formidable foe until playing CD, as he appeared so in Sonic the Comic

[Alienrun]

You know, I'm honestly really thankful that I didn't have any MAJOR misconceptions as a kid, if anything I was attentive enough to spot some subtle things in Sonic 3 growing up that I surprisingly found out was true years later! For example my memory of Sonic CD as a kid was extremely hazy, one thing I do remember was that there was a part of the game where Sonic was really small and that the levels were constantly "changing" a lot and it left me really confused. (I mainly watched my older brother play at that age.) So years later when I found out those things were true I was rather surprised! I was like "woah this game is legit!".

Though there is one misconception that was big enough to stand out...

I legit thought Tails was a monkey in Sonic 3 for a while...well at least at first. For whatever reason I never questioned his flying ability though. It only makes it more funny that years later I stumbbled upon this video...

...and one of the jokes was "I thought Tails was a monkey!"...like...that just put the biggest smile on my face!

If you want to know why I thought that, it was because the first enemy in Sonic 3 was that monkey robot, and I made the conclusion that they looked the same.

...I can't remember if anyone in our family thought that Knuckles was a girl...if we did it probably wasn't for very long. Speaking of knuckles though, I thought he was a bad guy in Sonic 3, as I'm sure most people who played the games without reading the manuals did, so that's a thing I can't really blame myself for thinking. (If it wasn't clear by now I never got passed Sandopolis partly cause the ghosts were super scary there lol)

 

A more meta one is that I always interpreted Sonic as this super nice dude who could do no wrong...now that doesn't mean he wasn't cool, its just that his coolness was by pure coinsedence always matched for the situation at hand. I always thought it was cool that an animal would go out of his way to stop a human from mechanising his home world, ironically the only Sonic game in existence that I feel gets Sonic's characterazation as close to my childlike mind's interpretaion of him is...Sonic 06! (then again I like the story of that game so whatever)

 

Lastly...I didn't know if Sonic Tails and Knuckles were capable of talking, AND assuming they were, I didn't know how much talking they did. For the record though I NEVER imagined them cracking dumb jokes at each other, I imagine they were serious most of the time. That might be part of why I feel Sonic 06 gets the characterazation right...at least for Sonic!