10 Things Your Favourite Video Game Developers Want You To Forget

4. Sonic's Original Overly-Obsessed Girlfriend (Who Was Called Madonna) - Sega

Back to Sega, as all the meetings surrounding what Sonic was designed to "be" i.e. everything Mario was not, resulted in a character that fell entirely into faux-"badass", "cool dude" tropes, circa the late 80s.

As such, Sonic was lightning fast to counter Mario's platforming, he came with fangs (because... viciousness is cool?), played in a band (he was the lead singer) and worst of all, had a long-legged hourglass figure blonde girlfriend called Madonna, who would chase him around everywhere.

Straight out of the godawful, "A woman is nothing without her man!" mentality, Sonic creator Naoto Ohshima described this idea of an entirely dependant woman as a "male fantasy", though the fact it was being applied to a teensy hedgehog is probably something of an immersion-breaker.