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Knuckles (2024) - Easter Eggs
Rory Joscelyne • 29 April 2024
VGMP: Unlike Sonic he don't chuckle
Knuckles comes to streaming with Idris Elba reprising his voiceover of the titular character.
Now a comedy, where Knuckles has six half-hour episodes to train deputy-sheriff Wade Whipple into becoming a warrior. There is much to love in this series, as well as a few things to hate. However the series does bring in some interesting Easter Eggs for a keen audience.
Most of these are front-loaded in the series, and thankfully it avoids just being an Easter Egg series (avoiding the traps of Sega Hard Girls) even if the main story arc fails to deliver. Sadly Episodes 5 and 6 include literally no
Easter Eggs to the games - which is a shame but is hardly surprising considering the worst written episodes also include the least Easter Eggs.
INTRO TITLES
The Intro Titles appear at the very end of Episode 1 and recur at the start of the following 5 episodes. The visuals are always the same, but the credits vary from episode to episode. Some of the more generic visuals include some mushrooms (nodding to Mushroom Hill zone and the mushroom universe from the movies), Knuckles doing a spin attack and Knuckles using his climbing ability.
THE FLOATING ISLAND
The intro credits also showcase the Floating Island and Master Emerald, neither of which make an appearance in the series. It's a wonderful Easter Egg to Sonic 3 & Knuckles.
FLICKY
When Wade's animated character is falling, we see a Flicky fly past him. Flicky has been a character longer than Sonic the Hedgehog, starring in his own game way back in 1984. He was added as an animal to be saved in Sonic the Hedgehog on the Mega Drive, and has since become a series staple. Sonic 3D Flickies' Island (aka Sonic 3D Blast in America) features Flickies heavily in a Sonic title, as well as a type of Flicky powering E-102 Gamma in Sonic Adventure.
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG BAND!!
One of the interesting nods in the Title Sequence was a nod to the Sonic the Hedgehog Band - a little known and deleted element of the very first Sonic game. Sonic Team were going to include a Sound Test screen where the band plays the music - and yes, that crocodile is
Vector. He would make his debut appearance in Knuckles Chaotix. This was a very niche Easter Egg.
END OF LEVEL SIGNPOST
At the start of Episode 1, Knuckles runs past a self-made signpost to complete his warrior challenge. It spins like the classic games, and we get a cool homage to Knuckles' signpost artwork.
COOL SPOT
In the Attic where Sonic, Tails and Knuckles live, we can see two small statues of Cool Spot. Cool Spot was the early-90s USA mascot for pop drink 7Up (in the UK he was not the mascot). There were games made by Virgin Interactive for the Sega Mega Drive, Master System and Super Nintendo (among others) which were very popular, giving Cool Spot an international appeal where most American-only mascots do not.
SONIC, TAILS and KNUCKLES' BEDS
While these may be hold-overs from the feature films, each of the Sonic characters' beds is a reference to other media in the Sonic franchise. Sonic's bed is a red car, which is usually how Sonic's bed is represented in the long-running Archie comics series.
Tails' bed is a blue plane, representing the Tornado-2 plane from the first Sonic Adventure.
Knuckles' bed is a red and yellow truck, which is a reference to his monster truck from Sonic Boom.
DRILL CLAW
In the first episode, when Knuckles attacks the builders, he uses his Drill Claw move from Sonic Adventure 2.
HILL TOP ZONE ART
This might be a bit of a stretch, as there aren't any other references in the bowling alley, but this wall art seems to resemble Hill Top Zone in design and palette, however it could also be a generic art of an American woodland. Take this with a pinch of salt, but it definitely reminded me of the Sonic 2 zone.
16 BIT CARTRIDGE MAGAZINE
When Sonic is showing off music to Knuckles, there is a stack of magazines in front of the DJ Decks. One of which is labelled 16-Bit Cartridge in the same font as the Mega Drive artworks.
SONIC & FRIENDS
Sonic tries to show Knuckles that he can do TikTok videos to pass away the time while grounded. He dances to a Japanese cutesy dance track, swaying his fingers from side-to-side. This mimics the Sonic & Friends TikTok-exclusive series, which includes both micro-episodes (approx 40 seconds each) with dance videos of the cutesy styled characters. The series is for very small children, but it's cool to see it represented here.
KNUCKLES' CO-ORDINATES
The co-ordinates for Knuckles leaving Green Hill are quite accurate to several elements of the Sonic film universe. Mapping the co-ordinates to the real world showcases Interstate 90, which is referenced in Sonic's Attic bedroom as a road sign (see right of image). It's also a place called Nimrod, which also doubles as an old 80's insult - probably calling me a Nimrod for having bothered to check.
ARCADE CABINETS
These two are hidden in the very background of the first bowling alley, however they are given pride of place in the second bowling alley during the first fight with the GUN henchmen. These are (presumably mockups of) original Golden Axe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade machines. I assume they're fakes because one of the henchmen smashes through them during the fight. If you're wondering why TMNT is here (and later in Wade's bedroom) it's because Paramount own the movie and streaming rights to that series too.
ICECAP SKI RESORT
Opening up Episode 2, we see this episode largely takes place at IceCap. I really liked the inclusion of this, though the location itself is otherwise completely devoid of Easter Eggs.
MOVIE REFERENCES
Episode 2 includes two very specific movie references. Harry Potter (the sequence really plays like Harry riding a broom) and ET's silhouette against the moon (also used for Amblin Entertainment's company logo). These are cool, but come off as cheaper references since they have nothing to do with gaming.
GOLDEN AXE and DOUBLE DRAGON
Now we're into some hardcore deep diving, but it's also completely inaccurate. In Wade's Room, there are a few shots of Wade's old DVD collection. On one of the lowest shelves we can see two games - Golden Axe on the Mega Drive and Double Dragon on the Master System. The weirdest part of these is that the Master System barely sold in America, and the copy of Golden Axe appears to be a European copy due to the shape of the logo on the spine.
MEGA DRIVE GAMES
Almost impossible to spot are more games on a lower shelf than Golden Axe and Double Dragon (SMS). These are, again, the European cover arts for these titles. I have identified most of them, but have fallen short on the one between Virtua Fighter 2 (using the European-only blue Mega Drive boxart quite distinctly) and the European-specific black/yellow boxart for James Pond at the Aquatic Games.
By the looks of the spine I'm fairly certain it's a Virgin Interactive box (red square logo at the top of the spine) but I was unable to say for certain. If anyone can find a 4K copy of Episode 3, it might help to identify it.
I think this is a consequence of the series shooting largely in the UK. When they went scouting for copies of classic Sega games they could only find PAL copies close to the studio, and I can only assume the set dresser didn't care enough to make sure Wade had American copies of the game. These wouldn't actually play on any American Genesis console.
NINTENDO SWITCH
Inside the Stretch-Hummer in episode 4, we can see Wade's rival, Susie, playing on the iconic Nintendo console.
ANGEL ISLAND ZONE
Episode 4 is the final episode to include any Easter Eggs, but it definitely throws them at you thick and fast during the mid-section of the episode. Here we can see Wade dressed as Knuckles, running through Angel Island zone and collecting rings.
LOOPS AND STARPOSTS
Continuing the sequence, we see Wade is assisted in completing a loop by the wire-work, and we see a starpost. I'm fairly certain this loop de loop (as well as the signpost) are from Sonic 2's Emerald Hill Zone, but the background is still Angel Island Zone, so perhaps it's from that zone instead.
RING BOXES
Knuckles breaks open a TV with 10 Rings inside. A cool Easter Egg.
SONIC 2's SPECIAL STAGE
Wade (as Knuckles) has to complete a very small section of a Sonic 2 special stage, complete with bombs and rings and a drop-down START logo. This was really cool, and a fantastic addition.
BUZZBOMBERS
Sadly inaccurate in colours, it was still cool to see this classic badnik represented in the live action series. Sadly, because of the real-life nature of Jim Carrey's Robotnik, we've not had any inventive looking enemies of this type appear in the movies or this series properly. At least they get a shout-out here,
IBLIS
For some reason the infamous Sonic 06 game gets a reference, with Iblis being portrayed as the main villain to Knuckles' backstory. A cool addition, but a bit weird they didn't go with Chaos. Maybe fire effects were easier to achieve than water effects for this sequence?
That's everything I could find in Knuckles' 2024 Paramount+ series!
We hope you've enjoyed this group of Easter Eggs, and please join our Discord to let us know if there's anything we missed!
Blue Streak, speeds by... Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) is Hollywood's first big blockbuster attempt to bring Sonic to the big screen. A much more popular effort than the 1996 anime movie, this one sees Sonic come into the "real world", but that doesn't mean that it isn't jam-packed full of Easter Eggs. And some of them are references to other Sega franchises.
First things first - DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE. Kung-Fu Master may have the licence for the game, and it may include a few scenes at Arcades, but the story is nothing to do with gaming - and the story it represents is a literal crime. A vile, vile crime. With that out of the way, there are some interesting arcade machines visible throughout this film - all of which are here. So you have been saved from having to watch this vile garbage - and saving you the criminal act of watching it.
Also known as Sonic the Movie, the Japanese OVA was actually a run at a possible series that never materialised, instead leaving us with two episodes hastily stitched into a "feature". And boy, did they push taste and decency for some of this. Other than Robotnik chasing underage skirt, it's largely inoffensive. But unfortunately that story angle wound up kick-starting a long running VGMP joke of Sonic adaptations having to reference breast milk (which the 2020 Sonic movie also references).
I love The Wizard. It's so bad. The first major disagreement between Rory and Jamie in VGMP, Rory fully recommended The Wizard as a movie, whereas Jamie fully rejected it. It's not hard to see why this movie caused such a rift of opinion - it genuinely tries to be a deeper and emotional story, but it's still a Nintendo marketing product (and an out of date one, at that). One thing The Wizard does have, is a lot of videogame references.
The House of the Dead movie brings together two major events in film. It's the first foray by Uwe Boll into video game adaptations - the start of a terrible career. And it was the last ever movie to use the turn-table technique for 360 degree shots, as it was too dangerous to keep using - much like allowing Uwe Boll to have a film career. This film doesn't have many proper references, instead lazily throwing in random micro-shorts from the first three House of the Dead games (in no particular order, for some reason).
The first appearance of Jon Gries in a video game culture movie, and he would return in Noobz (2012) to steal yet another movie. Joysticks is an awful comedy movie, attempting to cash in on cheap teen humour of the time with a big dose of objectifying women. But to it's credit, it does showcase a lot of great arcade cabinets from 1983, and all in fantastic condition too! These screengrabs are ripped from the limited-run Blu-Ray release of the movie, which represents the best this film has ever looked. However this was a relatively low budget feature of it's time, so don't expect prestine visuals.
Tron is an undisputed 1982 classic that had a major impact on 80's culture and gaming aesthetics as a whole. And yet, when we reviewed it, it turns out the movie itself is a big bag of style over substance. The main videogame the movie revolves around is Space Paranoids, and it is not a real game. Several videogames were later made of Tron, but none of those appear in this movie.
The Controller / Video Game Earth Force, is a terrible film from 2006 with graphics that make the PS1 look like Advent Children. Starring Bob Rue as William Fence, this film has become infamous within VGMP as it is the film that nearly caused Jamie to leave the show.
Gamebox 1.0 is an odd 2004 movie starring the guy who played Harvey in Sabrina the Teenage Witch. You could technically call it a dramatic horror, if any of it was dramatic or a horror. As you can see from the shot above, the details were so vital to this film that there's a guy at "work" just staring at a blank screen. Regardless of the low budget nature of the film, there are still a surprising number of references hidden in this movie.
Noobz is an attempt to create an edgy comedy akin to Adam Sandler in his prime. Sadly it lacks the comedic timing, the writing and the production values to pull off such a feat. In the screenshot above you can see the pathetic attempt to add sex appeal to a movie by hastily taking a pair of scissors to the poor actress' tanktop. It's not even a clean line! Released for a limited blu-ray run in Germany (of all places), Noobz still somehow manages to pack in references from (and sponsorship by) the following video game (and video game related) companies; CBS Interactive Microsoft Corporation Epic Games Inc Triforce Sales LLC Apple Inc GAEMS CompuExpert Game Informer Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc Play N Trade Majesco Entertainment Company Square Enix Penny Arcade Lucasfilm Ltd Digital Interactive Systems Corp. Konami Midway Mortal Kombat Warner Bros Entertainment Inc Final Fantasy Tomb Raider Let's go through all the references shown visually in Noobz!
