A Brief History of Swearing In the Sonic Series

this video is sponsored by squarespace welcome to chow mix you ever just play a sonic game and suddenly damn it damn damn damn it damn damn damn damn damn damn damn it damn damn what's your profanity seriously in my christian minecraft server yeah i don't think so so like i guess now that the dust has settled almost 20 years later what the heck was up with this i thought sonic was supposed to be a family-friendly franchise well believe it or not not only does the series have a consistent history with swearing but this exact swearing helped with the making of a monumental moment in video game history today we're talking about the verbal obscenities within the sonic the hedgehog series [Music] swearing and sonic the hedgehog well it's more likely than you think of course we all know about it from the 2005 hit game shadow the hedgehog this game was a bit of a tonal shock for anyone playing it right when it came out people like to call this game edgy and honestly for good reason lots of guns swearing where's the damn fourth chaos emerald all that fun stuff a very stark difference from what the previous games were going for but hey this isn't necessarily trying to be like those other games this is shadow the hedgehog not sonic the hedgehog it's his game he can do whatever the heck he wants but it isn't just shadow who swears here it's contagious to most of the rest of the cast you've got sonic damn they got away leave it to me i'll chase them down knuckles espio damn we've been detected even this guy shadow damn you i remember playing it as a kid making sure the volume was low enough so my mom didn't hear all the cursing i didn't want my mom to think that the video games i was into at the time were these foul mouth things meant for a delinquent children boy if only she knew because what if i told you that shadow of the hedgehog wasn't even the first game to use profanity and far from the last the japanese voice actor for sonic junichi kanemaru loves sprinkling in some english phrases into his quips but this also includes some light profanity which can be found in both sonic adventure 1 and 2. in the first sonic adventure right here and then also possibly here but in this last one i think he might be saying shoot in which case uh never mind and then we have sonic adventure 2 possessing some profanity in the english subtitles of the intro section right here however this was only within sonic adventure 2 the trial which was a demo of the opening sequence of the game before its release this line was changed in the final release removing the profanity however there's a few instances of swearing within some of the music of sonic adventure 2 namely in death chamber during this line stop being stubborn well i guess you're right [Music] what's funny is that this is the part of the song that's supposed to be a conversation between knuckles and sonic and it's sonic that says it and then there's this line in the adventure 2 version of unknown from me sonic heroes has an honorable mention kind of because it isn't really a swear but it sure sounds like one if you know you know but here it is anyway [Music] yeah i actually know a few people who had to be careful about their parents overhearing this line you know just in case so after shadow i think it's safe to say that sonic team learned their lesson for the most part luckily their next game sonico 6 didn't make profanity a major selling point to their game but there is a single instance of it hidden within one of the songs not just any song the main song of the entire game his world by zebra head features a single swear within take a listen then there's sonic and the secret rings which has this moment i can't even begin to imagine what having all seven rings would do to someone it might even open the gates of hell it's worth noting that he isn't using the word hell profanely here but rather talking directly about hell itself like the place there is a difference it's not really a swear but i'm still including it on this list in sonic unleashed you're able to buy an item called the canned horror which is food you're able to eat yourself or give to chip if you do the latter you get this reaction sonic boom rise of lyric has some unused dialogue with some more adult language this suggests that the entire game was supposed to be a bit darker but lightened up by the final release here's a few lines to help get the picture you guys must have really pissed them off in sonic runners there's a couple of lines with some light profanity like this one from knuckles and then this one from zazz and if we're going to call out the zeti for using curse words it might be worth mentioning that zabok is also known to have a bit of a sailor's mouth in team sonic racing we can hear zebok curse within this line damn this will cost me points and zazz again and sonic in the olympic games wow this guy really needs to work on his language this game even has eggman someone who managed to keep his mouth clean even in shadow of the hedgehog spewing a few obscenities that's about it for the video games but as we all know sonic extends far beyond just video games for instance in the sonic ova it's often debated whether sonic is sticking up his middle finger here or not some say he's pointing up others say he's giving the bird i personally always seen this as sonic flicking off metal robotnik because it doesn't really make sense why he'd be pointing up even given the context of the scene for this next one not only would you have to consume sonic media outside of the video games to find swear words but also in an entirely different language japanese i often hear people say that the japanese language doesn't really have swear words which is technically true they do have words that are considered rude of course but i guess none of that really matters when your character is just straight up use english words to swear this has got to be the funniest workaround ever most kids in the west probably weren't watching sonic x in japanese so they wouldn't have heard the swears and then the kids in japan watching it would hear the swears but wouldn't understand them because it wasn't even in their language it was truly the perfect victimless crime until we look in retrospect like we're doing now oh well the various comics are another source of some of the sailor mouth we've been discussing it's almost always censored but i'm sure you can fill in the blanks you've got this scene with sonic in an arm cast and some very eccentric characters filling out his speech bubble and then a handful of panels with some similar censoring blocking out some of the other characters vile language usually coming from the various villains but in terms of uncensored swear words we can find this panel of silver saying crap this is a word i remember never being sure as a kid on if it was an actual swear word or not but regardless of what your stance on the subject is it's definitely a bit more vulgar than your everyday insult so i'm gonna include it anyways we also have this comic used to promote the game fighters megamix called fighters mega comics get it this game features bark the polar bear from sonic the fighters and in the comic he briefly appears and drops a quick little swear absolutely genius and finally there's a couple scenes within the recent sonic movies in the first movie we have eggman with this line i'm sure you're hella popular with the gems and merles and billy bobs and this glorified gas station rest stop and then this one who the hell do you think you are in movie two there's a few that come from rachel this is still my day and someone is gonna explain to me what the hell is going on here and then this one by sonic himself at the very beginning of the that movie the darkest holy crap so that was a comprehensive list of all the swearing i could find within the sonic series but now i want to go back to talking about shadow the hedgehog again because its swearing and adult themes actually have an interesting connection to the esrb or the entertainment software raiding board if you're in either the united states or canada you might recognize them by this little logo in the bottom left corner of pretty much any video game box art they're the ones responsible for assigning content and age ratings for video games over here and shadow the hedgehog actually helped influence the creation of what we now know as the e-tenant upgrading now it wasn't the first game with this rating that award would actually go to donkey kong jungle beat with the graphical fidelity of home consoles improving especially during the gamecube era cartoon violence was becoming more and more realistic resulting in many familiar previously family-friendly franchises being given a t rating rather than their usual e rating and it might not seem super obvious at first but this actually considerably limits who's able to buy these games partly because it restricts younger kids from actually buying these games by themselves without a parent present but also partly because tea ratings generally dissuade parents from purchasing these types of games for their kids in the first place due to the worry of exposing them to more grown up content this more narrow target audience can be bad for business since it limits who can buy these games in more ways than one something i'm sure plenty of video game companies weren't exactly thrilled about during this era so it's heavily rumored that sega during the production of shadow the hedgehog was one of these gaming companies that helped push this decision to create the e-tenant upgrading and because of this it led to the game being severely toned down believe it or not yeah shadow of the hedgehog was going to be even more edgy at the time of the game's production there was no e-tenant uprating so the game had to decide if it wanted to be e or t because there is no in between obviously a game with guns and death and motorcycles is going to lean more towards the t rating there was no way that they were getting away with an e-rating so at that point might as well make the use of the t-rating and go all in on the edginess right we can actually get glimpses of this from the beta version of the intro cutscene in the finished product the screen turns white as maria gets gunned down by the soldier but in the beta version we can actually see maria getting shot as she falls to the ground there's a bunch of other small changes too like the blood of the black arms being red instead of green but in the end the game was released in time for the e10 and up rating which resulted in it being majorly toned down while doing as much as they still could within the new rating but honestly if you ask me if this game came out today it would totally get a t rating i'm not really sure how they got away with a mere 10 and up because some of the stuff that happens in this game is pretty brutal but anyways from this game on the sonic series would continue to aim for this e10 and up rating for a lot of its preceding games just look at the box art for a lot of them sonico 6 unleashed black knight boom lost world horses and now sonic frontiers admittedly it was pretty hard to find swearing and sonic media outside of shadow the hedgehog so it's not like this is something parents really have to be concerned about for the most part shadow the hedgehog was the only one to really be like this but this type of adult language does pop up every now and again and as an adult i just find it kind of hilarious this has been a brief history on swearing within the sonic the hedgehog series thank you so much to squarespace for sponsoring this video squarespace is the space for your online presence build and grow your brand with their powerful tools allowing you to easily create your own website to host whatever it is you're trying to do whether that be selling products hosting content offering services squarespace is the 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Channel: chaomix

Views: 209,282

Keywords: sonic, sonic the hedgehog, sonic adventure, sonic adventure 1, sonic adventure 3, sonic adventure remakes, sonic adventure remastered, sonic 2022, sonic rangers, sonic frontiers, sonic leaks, sonic news, sonic discussion, chaomix, sonic movie, sonic movie 2, sonic trailer, shadow the hedgehog, sonic swearing, sonic cussing, sonic cursing, sonic swear words, sonic bad words, sonic swears, esrb

Id: 1V5-KRHkanc

Length: 13min 22sec (802 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 28 2022