Knuckles the Echidna

Knuckles is an echidna, or spiny anteater (although that name is misleading, as they are not related to normal anteaters, but they ARE spiny and they DO eat ants.) Physically, he is the tallest of the Big Three characters (the other two being Sonic and Tails, duh) but is shorter than Vector the Crocodile and maybe a couple of others. Anyway, for a "Mobian", he's large, muscular, and mean-looking. He can punch straight through solid rock with those fists of his, and the spikes on his knuckles also help him climb totally vertical walls, even when they're made out of metal! He can also glide, which most echidnas cannot, but he's special...how, he's not sure...
And then there's the question of how he talks. Almost everyone seems to agree that he SHOULD have some kind of accent (and I agree; after all, since he's been raised in a totally cut-off environment all his life, it only makes SENSE that he would sound different from a person who comes from Mobius proper)--but WHICH accent is the problem. Most people tend to portray him talking like he's from Jamaica, mon!--due to his "dreadlocks". (i.e., his head-spines. Which I have decided are just that: head spines. But since the echidnas, in real life, are much older than hedgehogs in terms of evolution, then, maybe, his people have started to evolve out of some of their animal characteristics--so they no longer NEED sharp spines, so they are now going soft and starting to resemble normal hair.) But that always bothered me slightly because echidnas are from AUSTRALIA, not Jamaica, myte! Okay, sure, he DOES first appear in a tropical island setting where music containing steel drums is playing, and YES it does sorta look like he has dreadlocks, but it STILL bugs me. However, the only place I have ever seen ANY reference to his species' real-life roots "down under" is in the anime Sonic cartoon made by Sega (or as the REAL fans call it, the "Sonime"--I'm not willing to go QUITE that far yet), in which Knuckles was a great adventurer who wore an Australian Outback-style hat. But he doesn't talk with the accent to match (he sounds American in the translated version. His appearances in Sonic Underground are better than I feared, now that I've finally seen them, but nothing to write home about.)
That's the physical stuff, but it's the background and personality that makes Knuckles such a fascinating character, and my favourite. First of all, he's the last of his kind, the only echidna left that anyone knows about. But he's only 15, which means that whatever happened to his people must have happened fairly RECENTLY. (Well, he's 15 when he first appears, in Sonic 3--in my story he's 17.) The game booklet's introduction only says that they were a great civilisation and they disappeared suddenly. But what happened to them? Did they die? Did they leave? Was it sudden and unexpected or pre-planned and carefully executed? If they died, then who or what killed them, and why isn't it/they still around on the island? If they left or disappeared, was it on purpose or by accident, how did they make an entire city leave at the same time, and where did they go? Why the ruins? And no matter what, the big question is: Why didn't whatever it was get Knuckles, too? Why was he left behind, or not killed? Did he choose to stay behind, or did he just not know what was coming and was left behind by accident, or was he just lucky and the deadly killing whatever didn't get him somehow?
These questions are part of what makes Knuckles so intriguing and so much fun to write about, and they are addressed in my story, "Shadows of the Future", which can be found on this site's Fanfic Page. I am aware that I'm NOT the first one to write about what happened to Knuckles' missing people. But this is my own version, not copying anyone else's. (I wrote it BEFORE I knew anything about the Knuckles' comics storyline, or Sonic Adventure, you should know.)
Enough about his background, his RECENT past, present, and future are interesting, too. First of all, he's a good guy who's not ALL good. He seems to be willing to do ANYTHING to protect his Island, which he has proclaimed himself Guardian of--including KILL people! (Compare this to Sonic, who only bashes open robots to let the little creature inside go free--and you'll see Knuckles is a MUCH darker character.) This is borne out by the games themselves alone. Even though he was tricked when he was fooling and bothering Sonic and Tails in Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles, he was still DOING nasty things, and you get the feeling that if he felt something or someone was a real, serious threat to the Island, he'd do those nasty things and more again in a heartbeat. But I liked him even then! From the day I read his bio in the instruction booklet, and saw his face on the box of "Knuckles Chaotix" (never mind that at the time I thought he was a lady hedgehog!), he was just INSTANTLY the character for me. And if you ask me, (which you didn't) the fact that he was introduced as a BAD guy just makes him even cooler.
But he's still a good guy! Figure that out! He's a DARK good guy, almost like a character from Babylon 5 or Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He's complex. He's both bad and good. He's got a serious, difficult job to do. He's smart about some things, and dumb about others (he knows EVERYTHING there is to know about Floating Island, and a lot of nature lore, and how to work high-technology stuff and read ancient texts, but he's completely ignorant about the outside world and has NO street-smarts.) He's brave about defending the Island against attackers, but totally, completely bashful when it comes to women and any group social interactions. Oh, and he considers himself "not a team player"--so even after he BECAME a good guy he didn't JOIN the others--and he absolutely cannot stand crowds. (Hey, that last one is like me!)
In other words, he's a three-dimensional, well-rounded and well-written character--and because of that, he tends to attract OTHER writers towards writing about him instead of the more standard hero of the games, Sonic.
And as for his future? Well, the main thing most female Sonic-fans want would be for Knuckles, who is the very last of his kind and must be INCREDIBLY lonely, to get a girlfriend! (In the comics he already has one, kinda, but I'm not using that storyline as I don't like the way the echidnas have already been brought back and all that.) That loneliness makes him sympathetic as well as mysterious, and is yet ANOTHER reason to like the character...



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Floating Islanders have visited Knuckles since May 16, 1999. Of course, he was always too busy Guarding the Island to pay much attention to a bunch of gawking tourists, but that never stopped them...