Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)/Headscratchers

• A lot of the game's plot falls apart if you think about it. Fridge-inducing moments include: why Mephiles had to merge with the Iblis of the present, rather than the Iblis in the future despite having the power to travel through time; how Elise knew Silver when she was unconscious during the entirety of his visit to the past; the infamous blue Chaos Emerald time loop; for that matter, where any of the seven Chaos Emeralds are during the plot at large, Elise not crying for ten years of her life, including after she finds out her father is dead, and why so many levels end with nothing accomplished. All this is probably a good reason for the Reset Button Ending.
  • Well, it's been theorized that Mephiles could only merge with Iblis while he was in his pure flame form, and not when he was in his normal monster form due to being released by Elise's death. As for the Chaos Emerald thing, supposedly the game was supposed to be a Continuity Reboot. It would keep all main characters, but for all intents and purposes, the previous games never happened. So in the story at least, the Chaos Emerald was never used to fight Perfect Chaos, the Biolizard, and so on. As for Elise not crying, let's just say she's a Twilight Fan Girl, so the death of her father doesn't bother her, but the love of her life - who she just met earlier that day, and is of a different species - dying... That cuts her deep. As for why nothing was accomplished... Well, let's just say that some of the characters have no idea what they're doing half of the time *cough* Sonic, Silver *cough*. Also, it was probably part of Mephiles' plot to keep everyone distracted long enough for him to accomplish his plans... What? His plans might be overly complex, but he's not incompetent.
    • The Chaos Emerald is a future version of the one we saw in previous games. As for Elise, I'd say the Duke made it so crying about his death wouldn't trigger the end of the world.
• What exactly was the point of Blaze's sacrifice at the end of Silver's story? So she stops Iblis from ruining the future... Except that the future is still ruined. Wouldn't it have been smarter to help Sonic and Shadow take down Iblis in their time rather than taking out Iblis at a point in time when it doesn't really help anyone?
  • Two reasons. One, because taking Iblis to a seperate world/dimension/whatever removes him from Silver's world, thus giving it a chance to recover, and two, because obviously this game didn't have enough Epileptic Tree-spawning events already.
  • Up until the Big Bad Big merge, the game was in a stable time loop. If they did manage to stop Iblis along side Sonic and Shadow, it probably would have come back again some other time. There was at least a 200 year gap for something like that to happen.
• When Rouge gives Omega the Chaos Emerald, and Omega prepares himself for the The Slow Path, one of the preparations he mentions is "External access no longer permitted". And indeed, when Shadow and Rouge found/find him in the future, they're unable to even rouse him from his standby mode. So... how did the humans of the future manage to reprogram him to go after Shadow?
  • Because that was the Omega from the future. I assume the External Access thing was only for the standby period.
    • The Omega with the Chaos Emerald was the Omega from the future. That's the whole point of The Slow Path, you sit and wait until it's the future.
• Why didn't Amy tear Elise's head off when she kissed Sonic back to life?
  • She has priorities. If she didn't let Elise revive Sonic, the universe would be pretty much done for.
    • Cutscene in Silver's storyline after the Sonic boss battle, after Silver tells her Sonic will destroy the world:

Amy: If I had to choose between the world and Sonic, I would choose Sonic.

• • • But if she stopped the kiss, she wouldn't have either.
• Two questions for the Shadow Story: why were we randomly put in a hand glider thing when getting to the castle? And after the fight with Egg-Cerberus (why is he called Cerberus anyway?) they get transported to... a place... where, how and why?
• Why not just transfer Iblis to someone about to die?
  • Because as soon as that person dies, Iblis is released and free to wreak havoc.
• In Sonic the Hedgehog 2006, there's a mission with Silver where he tries training procedures done by the Soleannian Guards. However, it takes advantage of Silver's abilities. Including levitation. Now tell me this. How is this possible for the guards? Do they have superpowers or something?
  • The game is just that bad. That or the guards use trampolines.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation is in full effect, or else the Soleanna guards are idiots. Further evidence: In Sonic's playthrough, there's a point where Sonic needs the guards to open a gate so he can go rescue Princess Elise (the person they were hired to protect). The guards make Sonic solve a logic puzzle before opening the stupid gate.
• Alright, in Sonic 06, this bugs the hell out of me: What exactly did Eggman plan to do with Mephiles once he contained him? Because he spends the start of Shadow's story trying to get the Scepter of Darkness, and later tells Shadow to retrieve Mephiles if he wants answers, then all evidence of that is dropped part way through. If the Scepter was the only thing tough enough to contain Mephiles, and it's made of MAGIC... then how the hell does Eggman think he can make something that can hold an ultra powerful science botch up that's nothing short of sinister, given Eggman's record of his creations being failures. Not to mention that anything that Eggman tries to tame USUALLY turns against him anyway and clocks him in the head. Considering that Mephiles' one true desire is to fuse back with Iblis so the two of them can eat up time and all that... that leaves to question how Eggman would have thought this was a good idea. And better yet... WHAT was he planning to do with Mephiles anyway? My only logical guess is that he intended to use him like a battery to sap his time travel powers so that his time machine could work even better. Which would end badly the moment that plan is set into motion anyway...
  • Eggman probably planned on using Mephiles to control time (same reason he wanted Iblis). I mean, he wanted to rule over all time. Not just have the ability to time travel, but constantly rule over the past, present, and future. And why does Eggman think he can control Mephiles? Simple, his ego. He thinks of himself as the greatest genius in the world, so what's to make him think he couldn't control Mephiles? And while it is true that dealing with Seald Evil In A Can has been problematic in the past (Chaos for example), he may actually know what he's doing this time.
    • This is further supported by the fact that the machine he had already managed to reverse-engineer from the Solaris project, he had no control over whatsoever... Coupled with Mephiles and Iblis pretty much being the original components for the project from which the machine spawned from in the first place. It also helps that he had no idea whatsover what the future was actually like, coupled with the fact that nobody he encountered who had been to the future actually specifically knew the connection between the Solaris project and the devestation they saw or didn't know the connection until after their encounter with him (with the exception of Silver, but he and Eggman had neither the chance to speak or any reason to assume their respective involvements were important, just about everyone present in that scene had different things on their mind). Not that knowing the association between Mephiles/Iblis and the apocalypse would necessarily stop him from trying to meddle with forces that man should not meddle with, this is Eggman we are talking here...
  • Similarly, what the hell did he plan to do with Iblis? He kept kidnapping Elise, so he wanted Iblis, but what was he gonna do? The same thing with Mephiles?
• Also, wouldn't an easier plan to trap Iblis be that they seal him in Mephiles? Not fuse, but trap. Considering that the seal breaks when the host either dies or cries, and Mephiles is shown to have an extended lifespan (I doubt he's immortal if 200 years leads to lightening of fur color and eye color looks like it's clouding), and we know Mephiles either can't cry (lack of eyelids first off, and dude's too heartless to even channel any other emotion other than hate and fixation for power), or wouldn't stoop to that. So, if Iblis was trapped in the same way as he was in Elise, then the only way Mephiles could have released him was to either bawl like a baby, which would never happen, or die... which would not only make it impossible to fuse to Iblis, but would erase all other Mephileses (Mephili?) from the time stream so that neither of them can fuse either. Not only that, but it would drive him more insane than he already is knowing that Iblis is RIGHT THERE, and he can't get to him... but then, that's kinda torture... which sucks because he's my favorite in the series, but the only really logical and safe method...
  • Because there's pretty much no chance that that would actually work. Having the one thing he wants already inside of him seems like Mephiles would have no problem simply fusing. Plus, the sort of lifeform Mephiles is might exempt him from sealing anyway.
• And finally... for a time master, you'd think that Mephiles would know that if he were to destroy Shadow, especially before Shadow goes back in time, that he would erase himself as well. Why? Because Shadow inadvertently created Mephiles as we know him now. The simple fact that Mephiles only hates Shadow for trapping him in the Scepter and leading history to have no trace of him anywhere, only to show up again, and everyone scratches their heads at his identity, which drives Mephiles into a rage, in which he attacks Shadow of his time and sets forth the events that lead to that Shadow doing the very same to this Mephiles to the next timestream's Mephiles. Not only that, but Shadow's calling of his name mere minutes after the newly created Mephiles is trying to flee the hell out of this horrible horrible lab with dead bodies and a pissed off hedgehog, is probably the reason Mephiles took that name anyway... so, Mephiles trying to kill Shadow would be a bad thing for him, because he'd kill off all Mephili that are like him... think about it... if none of that happens, then Mephiles could have very well been a mass of darkness living in solitude in the empty halls of the abandoned lab, where probably no one would venture, and he would have probably never interacted with anything... so, this is all Shadow's fault, and Mephiles is showing to be self destructive trying to get rid of him...
  • Who's to say Mephiles actually knew that Shadow was in the present, the future, then the past in that order? Sure, he may have control over all time, but we don't know if he payed that much attention to Shadow's entire journey. And if he did then why NOT attack Shadow when he refused to join him? He may very well know he's not going to die yet, because he hasn't gone into the past and sealed him yet. That way he could beat him all he wanted with no consequence. But let's say he did kill Shadow, who's to say a paradox would even occur? Mephiles might have so much control over time, that he can prevent paradoxes from even forming. And well, even if Shadow never did seal up Mephiles in the past, it's pretty much a garnet that Mephiles would've still been searching for Iblis. His whole goal was to find him and join together so they could destroy time as Solaris. Even if Shadow never sealed him, and he never took Shadow's form, he probably just would have stolen someone else's shadow, and then gone on his Iblis hunt. If anything, Shadow prevented Mephiles' goals (if only for a short time).
  • Does Mephiles even know that the Shadow he met before is the Shadow of the future? He seemed surprised that Shadow forgot him so for all he knew Shadow just happened to be there in the past and no time travel was involved.
• In Sonic 2006, Mephiles attempts to get Shadow to join him by saying that humans hunted him down at some point between Silver's time and the present. But then he also basically says flat out that he is the reason that Shadow wound up persecuted. Why is he surprised when Shadow refuses his offer?
  • They Just Didn't Care on storywriting.
  • Because the circumstances that caused the situation doesn't matter - the fact is that if the government got spooked enough, they would turn on Shadow and persecute him as a scapegoat even though he helped saved the damn world. That's a pretty good point to bring up if you want to make a character question their motivations/the side they're on. And remember, Shadow didn't refuse because Mephiles was the cause, he refused because he didn't care if the world turned on him one day.
    • Mephiles is only partly responsible for the destruction of the world. Iblis was the one who physically tore up all the buildings, and set the world ablaze. (Just wanted to clear that up.) Though, even if Mephiles did destroy the world, he wasn't the one who went and hunted down Shadow. The humans did. They were the ones who blamed Shadow for the disaster, and they were the ones who reprogrammed E-123 Omega to capture him. Even if Mephiles caused the the desolation of the future, he technically wasn't behind Shadow's capture.
• In Sonic 2006, why does Mephiles want Shadow to join him? There doesn’t seem to be a practical reason for having someone capable of defeating him hanging around - apart from the ‘keep your enemies closer’ idea, but I doubt Mephiles thought Shadow wouldn’t see through something like that. The only other reason I can think of is that, knowing Shadow’s very powerful, Mephiles wanted to use him as a backup plan to kill Sonic in case Silver failed, but again there are problems: by this point Shadow considers Sonic to be an ally, and also Shadow isn’t as easy to manipulate as he used to be in Sonic Adventure 2 and his own game. It also spawns this question: how much does Mephiles know about Shadow’s life? He’s talked about Shadow’s future but does he know anything about the ARK incident or Black Arms?
  • And why does Mephiles tell Shadow that he will be hunted down and imprisoned in the future? If he didn’t reveal this to Shadow, then he wouldn’t be able to do anything about it, the events would inevitably happen and Mephiles wouldn’t have to worry about Shadow messing up his plans. Unless he made up the whole story to mess with Shadow’s head…?
• What just bugs me about Sonic 2006 is that the fans say there were three godlike entities in the game, Mephiles, Iblis, and Solaris, and that the former two controlled Solaris, and that two new entities were created at the Solaris Project. Except, that's not the case- Mephiles was Solaris's mind, so he IS Solaris. Once he fuses with Iblis, it's still Mephiles, just in a new body - Iblis, who was Solaris's body.
  • Correct, sort of; Mephiles is Solaris's mind, but Iblis is merely Solaris's raw power. Without Mephiles, Iblis isn't able to take Solaris's actual form, instead having to manifest as a beast that could be described as "Perfect Chaos, only made of lava." Iblis and Mephiles together make up Solaris; independently, neither of them can even begin to be what Solaris is.
• Just what the fudge happened to the Master Emerald during all of this? I mean, yeah, gathering the seven chaos emeralds make sense, but you know... The Master Emerald can make you super as well. They'd have twice as much energy, and it would actually make sense when all three of them go super.
  • Considering how time and space is basically broken, I doubt they chose where they went. Probably just went where ever they could and started searching, and they didn't end up on Angel Island.
• So if Iblis is released when its host dies, what did they plan to do when Elise died of natural causes? It had to happen eventually, unless she gets immortality from Iblis, which wouldn't make much sense since she grew while he was in her.
  • My guess? They'd "transfer" Iblis to a new, willing(?) vessel once Elise was on her deathbed.
• How the hell does Silver's era exist? During "the present," Mephiles kills sonic, Elise cries and releases Iblis, and Mephiles merges with him and becomes Solaris to destroy time. In order for Silver's scenario to exist, Iblis would have had to have been released and then NOT immediately merged with Mephiles - which doesn't make a damn bit of sense, since Mephiles was the one who released him in the first place.
• If Mephiles had the power to time travel and the power to just flat out kill someone in seconds with that cheap laser all along then why on earth did he not just go back in time and kill Sonic to make Elise cry the minute Sonic and Elise started to get close? Why did he need Silver to try doing the job? Or alternatively since Iblis can also be released if it's host dies why didn't Mephiles just flat out kill Elise instead? Is Mephiles that stupid or what?