Knuckles the Echidna

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Knuckles the Echidna "OH NO!" Gender: Male Type: Guardian Fighting Echidna Age: 16 Species: Echidna Portrayed by: (English) Michael McGaharn (Sonic Adventure) Brian Drummond (Sonic Underground) Ryan Drummond (2000) Scott Dreier (2001-2004) Dan Green (2005-2010) Travis Willingham (2010-2019) Dave Mitchell (2019-present) Idris Elba (2022) Fred Tatasciore (2022) Adam Nurada (Sonic Prime) (Japanese) Nobutoshi Canna (1998-present) Subaru Kimura (2022) Status: Alive Media of origin: Sonic the Hedgehog

"As far back as I can remember, I've been living here on this dark island, always guarding the Master Emerald from anything that could harm it. I don't know why I was given this job, why it was my fate... destined to be here... forever."

— Knuckles, Sonic Adventure

Knuckles the Echidna (ナックルズ・ザ・エキドゥナ Nakkuruzu za Ekiduna^?) is a fictional character from the Sonic the Hedgehog series and the main protagonist of his own upcoming TV series of his name. He is an anthropomorphic echidna and the current guardian of the Master Emerald, a powerful ancient relic which is his solemn duty to protect from anyone seeking to abuse it. He is also the sole remaining descendant of the Knuckles Clan and the last of the echidnas on Earth. His dominant traits are his superhuman strength, and the two spike-like knuckles on each of his hands, from which his name is derived from, which he can use to dig with and climb walls.

Why He's Tougher Than Leather

1. A loner by nature, Knuckles is independent, headstrong and serious, yet gullible and short-tempered to a fault.
2. He is entirely devoted to his duty, spending most of his time on Angel Island protecting the Master Emerald, and rarely cares for anything that is of no importance.
3. When his friends and others are in need of his help, Knuckles can always be relied on being willing to leave his post and prove himself a faithful and good-hearted hero.
4. He is one of Sonic's greatest rivals and best friends. In fact, he can well be considered Sonic's best friend next to Tails.
5. Like all other Sonic characters, he has good designs.
6. He has his own unique storyline in Sonic 3 & Knuckles that takes place after Sonic's events, where he mostly fights Eggrobo and also fights Mecha Sonic as the final boss.
7. Knuckles has plenty of amazing, hip-hop/jazz stylized music in Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2, like Unknown from M.E (his main theme), A Ghost's Pumpkin Soup (the infamous Pumpkin Hill theme), and Space Trip Steps.
8. He spawned some internet memes, like the Ugandan Knuckles meme, his "Do I look like I need your power?" line from the second Sonic movie, his "Me'm! Approved!" line from Sonic Boom, and his iconic line from Sonic Adventure: "OH NO!".
9. Like Shadow, he's pretty relatable to introverted kids.
10. Nowadays he seems to be much more trusting to Sonic than he was at first glance, since they're shown working together instead of fighting most of the time.
11. In Super Smash Bros Ultimate, he appeared as an Assist Trophy along with Shadow.
12. His unconfirmed but implied love chemistry with Rouge.
13. He usually has great voice actors portraying him, like Michael McGaharn (at least in the E3 Demo of Sonic Adventure) Scott Dreier (Sonic Adventure 2 - Sonic Battle), Dan Green (Sonic X - Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing), Travis Willingham (Sonic Free Riders- Sonic Forces), Adam Nurada (Sonic Prime; Season 3 sounded better than before), and Idris Elba (live-action movies).

"OH NO!" Qualities

1. He's extremely gullible, often tricked by Eggman into believing that Sonic is the enemy which is a great cause for many of their confrontations, though he still fixes his mistakes by doing what's right and as mentioned in WHTTL#8, they don't fight each other anymore. Unlike Sonic, Tails, and others in terms of animated series and movies, he did not have a good start going on-screen, especially in the Sonic OVA and Sonic Underground, which are pretty rough starts.
2. It appears that he's been sleeping on the job, since he's hardly seen guarding the Master Emerald in the recent installments.
3. While most of his actors do a good job voicing him, Michael McGaharn (Sonic Adventure; due to sounding similar text to speech voice), Bill Wise (OVA, due to sounding not only very unfitting, but also sounding like he has a southern accent), Brian Drummond (Sonic Underground; due to sounding more higher-pitched and younger), Ryan Drummond (Sonic Shuffle), Adam Nurada (Sonic Prime; depending on your opinion, due to trying too greatly hard to sound tough, though doesn't sound really too bad), and Fred Tatasciore ("Sonic Drone Home", depending on your view due to trying too hard to impersonate Idris Elba's voice peformance) gave poor/mediocre performances.
4. Much like Sonic's, design, his design is a bit too exaggerated, as he resembles red dog with dreadlocks rather than an echidna, although this may be intentional however.
5. In Sonic X, he's more short-tempered and gullible and picks fights with Sonic for little reasons. Also, he's became a butt-monkey.
6. He, along with many characters in recent appearances, has suffered from character derailment, being often treated as a joke and the dumb hothead who doesn't trust anyone and anything, or a background character that is used for badly executed comic-relief moments in later titles like Sonic 06, Lost World and Generations.
   • This "funny" aspect about Knuckles's flanderization was very easy to notice in his Sonic Boom incarnation.

Trivia

• According to the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 manual, Knuckles' favorite food is grapes. This is referenced many times through the series.
  • That said, real life echidnas eat invertebrates like worms, ants and termites as opposed to grapes (or any fruit, for that matter).
• He was originally going to have a Jamaican accent, despite being based on an Australian creature, for example watch this video.

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