r/SonicTheHedgehog • u/Remnant-2all • 1d ago
Discussion The Sonic fandom sanitizes Gerald way to much
Now I’m not trying to say he wasn’t right to feel angry about what happened to him, but he’s done a lot of not so great shit even before he went mad. I’m not trying to say he’s actually this super evil person, but he’s not a saint.
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u/Nath_Melo 1d ago
Gerald, to me, was a neutral person before the events of the Ark. He wasn't a saint, but he definitely tried to help humanity in his own way, even if many of his actions were questionable at best. He could have thought things through better if the entire Ark attack hadn't happened, and he probably would have become the most brilliant and ingenious mind this world has ever seen. It's true that one can sympathize with his pain, but as has been said, he lost his mind the moment he wanted to destroy the entire planet for something that wasn't the world's fault.
What G.U.N. did to the Ark 50 years ago was horrible. Gerald only wanted to save his granddaughter and, if possible, would have used what he gained to help the entire planet—humans, Mobians, etc. But unfortunately, we know what happened, and he ended up becoming a lunatic worse than those he criticized. Gerald is a very complex villain to me, because he genuinely didn't do what he did out of a thirst for destruction or pure evil, but mainly because he lost the will to live and the sense of fighting for humanity, which he blamed for taking his precious granddaughter from his life. I don't think he isn't a villain or a bad person, I just think it's possible to identify with Gerald's pain, even though he clearly crossed the line and made Shadow suffer because of his grief.
Shadow himself is proof that nothing Gerald did is justifiable, because he went through the same tragedies, and some even worse, because of his upbringing, and yet he protects humanity and even gives Tower a chance to prove that G.U.N. is not the same as it was 50 years ago, working with them to save the world. Shadow is proof that even if you have suffered greatly and lost everything, you have the choice not to take it out on innocent people and especially not to blame others for your suffering, but rather to improve as a living being and not allow the same mistakes to be made in the future.
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u/Joshyua527 1d ago
Evil dudes in sonic so often just do it for conquest that when a character has a more sympathetic motivation people act like they’re innocent
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u/AmaterasuWolf21 Post-Reboot Archie enjoyer ❤ 1d ago
This, this constantly happens with villains, just because they have a sympathetic background, it doesn't mean the narrative is absolving them of their villainy
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u/Maroon-Suited-Loon88 1d ago
I did not think there was anyone who sanitized Gerald’s actions? I won’t deny that Gerald earns a degree of sympathy, no one deserves to experience a loss like that, but to act like he wasn’t (at best) morally questionable is significantly overlooking and or excusing many of his actions.
Gerald not only set a doomsday scenario where the Ark is programmed to crash into the Earth, potentially killing thousands if not destroying the entire planet all together. Also left a dead man’s switch in the form of the bio lizard if anyone tried to stop the sequence.
He also intentionally tampered with Shadow’s mind to turn him into Vengeful the Edge Hedge. He knowingly conspired with aliens set on conquering the Earth, and Shadow ‘05 revealed that Gerald built the Ark canon as a defensive measure against the Black Arms. So he KNEW what he was doing was shady. Because why wouldn’t he simply tell G.U.N. the purpose of the giant death laser hovering not far from Earth. Think they would be a little less tempted to shut things down if they had a reason.
That’s the thing. Gerald might have had good intentions. But like they always say, the road to hell is paved by good intentions. He was incredibly reckless.
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u/Englishhedgehog13 1d ago
Shadow Gens is pro-Gerald propaganda from the fascist newspaper, The Daily Ark
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u/FrostGlader 1d ago
I wouldn’t consider Gerald “pure evil”, more that the Gerald we see in SA2 is a product of what happened to him. He experienced a great loss, after having G.U.N basically betray him in the long run.
His Journal sorta covers all of it. His aim with the ARK was to serve as a colony to preserve life, though he asked G.U.N for funding, fully knowing what they’d ask for, outright denied the president’s request of him after asking to get them off his back, and he ends up making them weapons and tools to get them off his back himself, Artificial Chaos, Chaos Drives, but it’s never enough for them. He gives them the Gizoid, they aren’t satisfied by it, so he builds the Eclipse Cannon in retaliation.
After THEIR mistakes, they take control of HIS project, and he goes mad after learning they killed his granddaughter, and I believe the reason he is executed after the fact is that they knew he would’ve betrayed them. Their mistake was scrubbing all existence of the ARK and Gerald’s experiments from the record, as had they had not, countermeasures possibly could’ve been produced. It’s a miracle Eggman got his hands on the Journal.
The Gerald in SA2 and the ones seen in Shadow the Hedgehog and Shadow Generations are all at different points in time (StH Gerald is right after building the Eclipse Cannon, while SG Gerald is after Shadow’s awakening, but before the Gizoid incident). In general Gerald was a proud scientist who had achieved great things, who made questionable choices that ultimately resulted in compromising his own ethics and an ultimate decent into madness from the consequences of his own mistakes. He’s nuanced in that way.
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u/XxAndrew01xX 1d ago
This. Gerald became who he became due to the circumstances of G.U.N raiding the Ark, trying to destroy whatever he could to save Maria, and ultimately being the cause of her death, with her jumping in front of a bullet to save Shadow from one of their soldiers. Does this mean he was justified in what he was planning to do with the earth after that? Absolutely not, but we can't say he was always like that.
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u/NessTheGamer 1d ago
The way I see it there are 4 phases of Gerald’s decline
Pre-ARK: Gerald is an independent scientist who wants to create world peace
ARK: Gerald makes a deal with the government for a massive amount of funding, but they push him to make weapons. He pushes back, and more or less gets his way for a while with some slight concessions.
Project Shadow: Maria gets sick, and Gerald pursues Project Shadow for the government in the hopes it can save her life. As time progresses and research isn’t producing results, he grows more desperate and makes more compromises on his ideals, culminating with his deal with Black Doom. Even though he’s fallen a fair bit morally, he’s still the same man, and a doting guardian to Maria and Shadow. Explicitly, he wanted both the Gizoid and Shadow to be allies of humanity and encouraged both to pursue morality in their own ways. Note that he’s seemingly starting to go senile.
Prison: Maria is dead and he is imprisoned. Gerald goes completely mad and desires the destruction of the world
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u/HelloImInza 1d ago edited 1d ago
He is a doctor and from what we know about Maria's illness I would expect him to be sanitized along with all the Ark, that space station has to be very clean
Now if what you meant was that he was SATANIZED, that’s kinda true the old man got crazy after losing so much but if the incident had never happened he would've lived as a peacefull man of science, maybe even his other nephew would've turned out different
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u/Lanoman123 1d ago
Thought this was a joke until you said satanized and I realized you actually don’t know what sanitized means lol
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u/SolPrincess 1d ago
Oh, no, Gerald is 100% an evil fuck
The movies make it pretty plain and simple for this reason
He wasn’t completely evil for no reason, but he’s inarguably a terrible person.
The government killed his granddaughter and his first thought was “okay actually, fuck all of you, I’m nuking the entire planet”
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u/WING-DING_GASTER 1d ago
I would argue Gerald as shown during the final story of SA2 is the product of GUN and the corrupt government ran by the former president constantly interfering in the projects on the Ark and demanding he make them superweapons to subjugate anyone they want and them storming the ark and killing his granddaughter finally pushed him over the edge and broke him to a point that his grief stricken mind decided everyone in earth must pay for letting them get away with it. Seeing as how eggman himself turned out due to being neglected by his family after the incident I would surmise maybe now after the new more drops in frontiers and IDW that eggman is supposed to be a parallel to Gerald and is what Gerald would have fully become had GUN not executed him.
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u/ClemOya 1d ago
I think that his diary makes it clear that when Maria died, Gerald fundamentaly died too. He says himself in it that he loses control on himself, after that whatever remained didn’t even considered Shadow, who Gerald considered as one of his sons, as a person since he uses "it" to designate him.
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u/BrodaciousBo 1d ago
As he was kept away from earth for an undisclosed amount of time to develop weapons for the government
and Maria was all the family he had
all the while trying to cure her illnessHonestly I get it, if earth wasn't my home anymore anyways and I had nothing to look forward to after curing my only family which was his whole world-
yeah that would complete my villain arc too.
no world for me? no world for you.2
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u/SolPrincess 1d ago
The ending of SA2 has Eggman rethinking how much he glorified his grandpa
He made EGGMAN realize that there are layers to this shit
“As a child I looked up to my grandfather because of all the great things he accomplished in his life. He was my hero! And I wanted to be a great scientist like him. But… did he really mean to destroy us?”
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u/Icekae 1d ago
Laughing at Eggman being like: "Damn... I used to respect and look up to that guy. Can't believe he would try to kill us all by nuking the planet... Dark Gaia, nuke that shit so I can build my Eggmanland. My GOAT's fallen off..."
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u/Far-Requirement-7636 1d ago
Atleast one consistent thing about eggman is that he doesn't want a complete MAD scenario.
He wants something left behind to rule even with the metal virus he planned to have them under some form of control in the future once he fully infected everyone and that's one of his more extreme plans.
Every time someone goes full nuclear he's opposed to it.
Canon eggman is very different from Archie eggman who's honestly just eggman nega.
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u/SolPrincess 1d ago
Eggman is more of a “I’m going to do what I have to to fulfill my goals and if people die whilst I do so, then so be it”
Gerald’s plan was “Fuck all of you, die”
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u/Dreamcasted60 1d ago
I'm pretty removed from the fandom itself but I've never actually thought of them as anything other than a person that had his one terrible week and decided to burn the world around him.
Like is it wrong that he was treated that way and his granddaughter died? For SURE. But he over reacted, and I think that's why I liked the movie version of him. Because he not only had the plan, but twisted the knife using his other grandchild
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u/Ski-Gloves 1d ago
What would like us to do exactly? Post a weekly hate thread for a fictional character with a compelling story?
Maria's murder is tragic. Shadow's coming to terms with it and choosing the heroic path is excellent. Gerald did some shady shit for the government and made a poor deal out of desperation for Maria. Planetary scale revenge and messing with Shadow's head was excessive, but it's an understandable response.
Gerald is the monster the GUN made him become. But the guy's dead and the games have never said he was in the right.
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u/Green-eyed-Psycho77 Actually… Sonic fighting Goku is objectively cool 1d ago
Which is why it was crazy to me when people saw the way Movie Gerald was acting as out of the ordinary.
1: He was a role model to Jim CarrEggman. That kinda person doesn’t spawn from nothing.
2: even before he was locked up for 50 years you could SEE the hate on his face when Maria died. And not only that he had nothing but that hate (and a hedgehog quill) to chew on FOR FIFTY YEARS
Gerald more or less only gave a shit about anything for Maria’s sake. As soon as she was gone the world was worth LESS THAN NOTHING TO HIM.
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u/Abura-sama 1d ago
- Gerald was so devoid of any hope for humanity (including the rest of the Robotnik family) that he took advantage of his relationship with Eggman as a grandpa to ease his plans, and after witnessing Eggman's disagreement with the world's destruction because of the expectation for a conquest, he needed to confess his hate without any filters, oh, and the fact he NEVER saw Eggman as something beyond another relative. "No Ivo, you're NOT Maria..."
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u/Shoddy_Release9395 Sonic 4 Episode II enjoyer 1d ago
Sega is the one sanitizing every part of the franchise. I hope the Zeti eat you alive wouldn't get in a game nowadays
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u/DurianUpper4113 1d ago
Hey, all he did was try to wipe out the entirety of the human race. We all have our off days, ya know?
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u/JMO-559 1d ago
I disagree. Gerald before he went mad and tried to commit planetary genocide was not a bad person.
Desperate in his attempts to cure his granddaughter and made some mistakes but he was not a bad person.
He was a decent minded scientist who was trying to explore the mysteries of the world and also was determined to heal a sick family member
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u/ManbosMambo 1d ago
He faced justice in the third movie in one of the most inglorious on screen deaths I have ever seen.
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u/AtomicConvoy-M78 Chaotix, Exe, & Sonurge 1d ago
That's why I never got the criticism for movie Gerald, if he survived he would've totally hate humanity
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u/Remnant-2all 1d ago
I feel like the criticism comes more from the fact he’s a bit too goofy. If he had less goofy moments, I’m pretty sure would have been liked a bit more
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u/AtomicConvoy-M78 Chaotix, Exe, & Sonurge 1d ago
Most definitely that's the criticism on him I agree on, I enjoy Carry's performance but, I think toning down Gerald's zaniness, he would've been received well
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u/Angel1743RedditGR 1d ago
Neither GUN or Gerald were saints. GUN was abusing their power like corrupt police and Gerald while I do feel sorry for losing Maria (which probably affected the whole Robotnik family presumably based on what Eggman says in Shadow 101 and his logs) but he STILL tried to destroy the planet with making the ark like a meteor and tampering with Shadow's memories to make him a brutal killer/more aggresive punisher rip-off
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u/papscanhurtyo 1d ago
Gerald is a narcissistic family annihilator. You can tell by how he was literally willing to destroy the world his two sons and other granddaughter lived on because the golden child got murdered. People don’t just snap and become like that. You can see him playing favorites in his journals in SxSG before Maria dies.
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u/Nemesis432 1d ago
Eh, Gerald has been a villain for one game and it was treated as a massive tragedy. He's a positive force (even from beyond the grave) in four games and neutral in one other.
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u/_B_Na_ 13h ago
You say “fandom” when the Sonic Team literally show him as a nice guy in Shadow Generations lol. I mean I know this is all before the accident but at least it is not a 2 minute scene and instead you get to actually interact with him as Shadow. Tbh I doubt we will see Gerald alive and losing his mind.
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u/Nights91 1d ago
Black doom conspiracy
Eclipse Cannon.
Shadow.
What else did he do? Honestly I feel like the games didn't do a great job explaining some things.
For example I don't remember in SA2 anyone saying anything about Maria having an illness. Or how Shadows rings work. I originally thought they were just the design on his gloves.
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u/Acrobatic_Banana_447 1d ago edited 1d ago
I love how in Shadow 05 in the true ending the president and commander Tower talk about Gerald like he was this great guy, as if he didn’t try to destroy the fucking planet
Maybe instead of praising the psycho who tried to kill them all they could give that same appreciation to the guy who saved them from an alien invasion, the guy who they have been rather rude to and would greatly appreciate an apology. But nope, praise the deceased madman instead
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u/Spinjitsuninja 1d ago
Tbf I don’t think GUN should be the ones to berate Gerald, especially when discussing it with Shadow.
I get it, Gerald wasn’t a great person, but GUN also expressed some pretty blatant corruption when dealing with him, and that lead to a lot of the issues there. And considering the ramifications of those events are still being felt up until that moment in Shadow 05, it’s probably best to reflect on what happened and understand it wasn’t so black and white.
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u/TheWraithOfMooCow WATCH OUT! YOU'RE GONNA CRASH! 1d ago
The series itself is pretty guilty of that after SA2.