Other moments and characters from the series are mentioned in passing, whether Sonic is talking to his friends or to himself.

When Tails asks Sonic if he is a burden on him, Sonic tries to cheer him up by helping him remember that he prevented Eggman’s missile from detonating on Station Square in Sonic Adventure (cue screenshot of Tails watching the missile flying overhead) and saved him from the Deadly Six in Sonic Lost World (cue still of the nefarious Zetis from the game’s announcement trailer). Retro flashbacks are used throughout the game, taking players back to previous titles. The flashback is not a CGI recreation of Knuckles knocking Sonic out of his super form and taking all the Chaos Emeralds, but rather a direct screenshot from the classic Sega Genesis game with the red echidna flashing his infamous chuckling grin. Knuckles later discovers a pyramid-like bunker in the game, which brings him back to the moment he first met Sonic and Tails on Angel Island. The militant Koco that Knuckles guides (as well as the war medals that shape Knuckles’ Memory Tokens) pay tribute to the Knuckles Clan, whose members were just as stubborn as they were. The military unit of Ancients that the Koco resided in met the same fate, albeit in a different cataclysmic event.

The rampaging Perfect Chaos would annihilate the echidnas, forcing clan member Tikal to sacrifice herself to seal him inside the Master Emerald in the process. In the short, he speaks about how his role as guardian of the Master Emerald came as a result of his ancestral Knuckles Clan trying to steal the emeralds in order to gain the upper hand over the neighboring countries they were fighting. After Sonic releases Knuckles from his cyber cage, Knuckles explains he was exploring the ruins of Angel Island before he got transported to Ares Island, as seen in the animated short Sonic Frontiers Prologue: Divergence.

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