Knuckles the Echidna (Sonic Cinematic Universe)

Knuckles the Echidna is one of the two tritagonists (alongside Maddie Wachowski) of the .
He is a powerful red extraterrestrial echidna with the power of chaos energy that gives him incredible strength and the sole survivor of the echidna tribe after they were wiped out by the owl tribe. He formerly worked with Dr. Robotnik to find the Master Emerald and defeat Sonic, only to be betrayed by Dr. Robotnik and allied with Sonic against Dr. Robotnik. He is the film's adaptation of Knuckles the Echidna from the video game franchise.
He is voiced and motion-captured by , who also plays Chief Bogo in the franchise, Heimdall in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Roland Deschain in The Dark Tower, Bloodsport in the DC Extended Universe, Stacker Pentecost in Pacific Rim, and Truck in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, while he is voiced by in the Sonic Drone Home short.
==Appearance==
Knuckles' appearance is mostly similar to that of his video game counterpart, being a fierce-looking red colored echidna with two twin spikes on his big white boxing glove-like gloves, hence his name. He sports red shoes with a yellow-orange stripe around it, and green cuffs. He also has silver plates on his shoes with six dots each. He has a muzzle and spines that point down like dreadlocks. He also has a white horizontal crescent-shaped stripe on his chest.
==Personality==
A confident, hardened, solitary, proud, aggressive, determined, gruff, and a quite tough echidna, Knuckles is more than proud of his echidna heritage. His judgment is quite low, as shown by his quick alliance with Dr. Robotnik when he barely knows him and his determination to destroy Sonic just for his affiliation with Longclaw, for whom Knuckles holds deep grudge ever since the owls slaughtered his clan. Knuckles' main flaws are his gullibility, naivety, and impulsiveness, being manipulated by Dr. Robotnik throughout the film, unsuspecting the Mad Doctor's true plans, and jumping quickly to over-the-top guesswork. To achieve his ends, he does not hesitate to destroy everything without worrying about the damage he leaves behind. He also doesn't understand the second degree, can take everything at face value, and dislikes Sonic's jokes, finding them mostly insulting.
Knuckles is also overconfident in his abilities and can be dismissive of his opponents, finding Sonic pitiful when they first meet and judging most people he meets quite coldly. His cynical nature actually hides his deep sadness at the loss of his people whose honor Knuckles has long sought to restore. His contempt for Sonic briefly faded when he learned that the hedgehog had also lost everything on that same cursed day, but Tails' sneak attack made him believe that Sonic was trying to deceive him. During their final confrontation, Knuckles showed more than immense determination against Sonic even when he was losing the advantage against him.
After Dr. Robotnik's betrayal and Sonic saving him from drowning, Knuckles in turn saves him, showing that he possesses some sense of honor. Afterwards, Knuckles began to question himself, not really knowing what he wanted until Sonic convinced him to help him stop Dr. Robotnik. Following Dr. Robotnik's defeat, Knuckles was accepted as a friend of the Wachowski family despite his previous deeds and was shown to be able to have a good time though he remained socially awkward and cocky but did indeed have a good heart.
==Other Media ==
===Sonic the Hedgehog 2: The Official Movie Pre-Quill===
In the official prequel comic to the 2022 film Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Knuckles is investigating the most desolated corners of the galaxy in his search for Sonic the Hedgehog. However, as he explores the landscape of an unknown planet, a volcanic eruption causes the echidna to lose his footing and falls into a deep chasm. Although he survives the fall, the landing weakens him enough for a trio of scavengers to restrain him before taking him through a ring portal to a place called Casino Night, where arena fights are held for gambling purposes.
Knuckles is shackled inside the arena where he is forced to fight against a gigantic, two-headed, lobster-like beast for his freedom. Because he is chained down, Knuckles is barely able to avoid the beast's first strike and then gets irritated when his chains get stuck in the creature's grip. He soon becomes infuriated enough to break free of his restraints and knock out his opponent with a single punch, winning the fight. 
Afterwards, Knuckles approaches the three scavengers that captured him and recognizes their tracking skills as he asks them to help him locate Sonic. The scavengers eventually begin tracking a electronic signal of someone they believed to be the hedgehog. However, after numerous failed attempts to find the individual, Knuckles decides to travel to one more place that he believes they could find a lead.
==Quotes==
==Powers and Abilities==
===Powers=== 
*Superhuman Strength: Knuckles' main power is his immense physical strength. He can easily break through large rock structures, perforate metal and blow up Robotnik's robots with one punch. Throughout the movie, Sonic was never able to best Knuckles in terms of strength. Knuckles' strength can also be further increased by Chaos energy. Because of this immense strength and Knuckles himself is aware of his own strength in addition to his own simplicity, he tends to smash through obstacles before him instead of evading them like Sonic or Tails do. By applying pressure with his hands, Knuckles was able to reconstitute the Master Emerald from the shards. He can also punch through mountainsides and use it to climb. He was hold back Sonic's chaos energy-enhanced spin attack with just one hand. When Knuckles was training, he was able to effortlessly pick up a massive boulder and shatter it with a single punch. During is final fight with “The Buyer”, Knuckles was shown lifting a gigantic metal sphere over his head and launching it with ease.
**Enhanced Leaping: With Knuckles's incredible strength, he's able to jump at great distances.
**Power Fists: With his immense strength and chaos power, Knuckles is able to rapid punch repeatedly until he's finally able to catch a reflexive Sonic off guard. He's also able to punch a baseball through a scoreboard and a good distance away. 
*Superhuman Durability: Knuckles is capable of taking heavy blows that would cripple or kill an ordinary human such as a high speed car impact. He also took the full brunt of Sonic's attacks without suffering any major damage. During the fight in the Master Emerald's temple, Knuckles took the Sonic's full power attacks while being punched through the rock but quickly recovered. During his fight with “The Buyer”, Knuckles got launched into cars with enough force to make the cars explode, as well as getting thrown through the top of a tall building and falling to the ground, and got back up relatively quickly.
*Superhuman Speed: Although not as fast as Sonic, Knuckles can run very fast, at least faster than a human and fast enough to catch onto a running car. Using Chaos Energy also allows him to increase his speed for both running and moving. While running bipedal, Knuckles is shown to run on all fours quite ably. He was also shown to be able to track Sonic's movements when the latter was moving at supersonic speed.
**Superhuman Reflexes: Knuckles also possesses amazing reflexes, being able to track and react accordingly to even Sonic's supernatural speed movements and intercept his high-speed charges with a punch at just the right time. When a construction worker fired a nail gun at him, Knuckles instantly caught the nail in mid air.
**Superhuman Agility: Knuckles is very agile, as shown by his ability to jump far and move quickly. By using his Chaos energy, his agility is enhanced.
*Enhanced Dexterity: Knuckles was able to throw pieces of a lawn tool at a construction worker with perfect accuracy in order to pin him up against the wall.
*Chaos Energy Empowerment: As one of the few beings possessing this power, Knuckles is able to manifest a form of bio-electromagnetic energy that can increase his natural abilities like his strength, speed and durability and accumulate enough energy to produce explosions and shock waves. When tapping into this ability, Knuckles will start generating red energy that causes his quills and eyes to glow red. Also like Sonic, Knuckles can generate a lot of energy related to his emotions such as anger.
**Bio-Electrokinesis: Knuckles can emit red colored electricity from his body. His bio-electricity also allows him to generate a trail behind him as he runs, identical to Sonic. Or he can charge his fists, making his attacks much stronger and more deadly, or he can create powerful electric shock waves with a single blow.
***Shockwave Generation: With his Chaos bio-electrical energy he can create powerful energy shockwaves. He used this against Sonic in their first fight Knuckles forced him into the ground even in Sonic's chaos-powered state he released a red shockwave that knocked everything around him down, including Doctor Eggman's bowl of popcorn, and caused Sonic to bounce back up before pinning him to a tree while in midair.
**Energy Absorption: Knuckles can also drain his own chaos energy back to his body if it was ever steal from him. This was shown in his final fight with "The Buyer" when he drain his stolen chaos energy back from The Buyer's giant robot suit
*Telescopic Vision: While it is unknown to how far he can see, Knuckles was able to see a group of construction workers walking onto the Wachowski property while he was on the top of a tall hill.
*Gliding: Knuckles can glide for short distances, and is strong enough to carry passengers while in flight, such as Wade Wipple.
*Pyrokinesis: Although not an ability displayed too often, Knuckles has the power to summon and control the "Flames of Disaster", which sets his fists on fire and enhances the power of his punches. Knuckles mainly only uses this power in extreme situations, as the Flames of Disaster are very destructive, and take a lot of energy. Knuckles can also use the Flames of Disaster to propel himself off the ground, and simulate a more suitable form of flying than his gliding ability.
===Abilities=== 
*Master Hand-to-Hand Combatant: Trained from an early age, Knuckles is a qualified hand-to-hand combatant, even after he had to learn to fight on his own as a child. His combat experience proved superior to that of Sonic. According to Tails, Knuckles is the most dangerous warrior in the galaxy.
*Skilled Digger: Thanks to his strength, Knuckles is able to dig very deep and move underground.
*Determination: Knuckles is A very determined echidna when it comes to achieving his goals (however it can also be a weakness).
*Intelligence: Knuckles has shown a decent amount of intelligence for an Echidna. However, despite Knuckles being pretty smart, he is also capable of being quite naïve in certain situations, such as trusting the wrong person or letting his temper get the better of him.
==Weaknesses== 
*Simple-mindedness: Perhaps Knuckles' greatest foible. With a bit of generous treatment and smooth-talking Knuckles trusts others to a fault, not understanding the concept that others are perfectly content with manipulating him. When Robotnik betrayed Knuckles was so stunned that he didn't know what to do at first.
*Arrogance: While he is a skilled fighter, Knuckles is very arrogant when it comes to his goals.
*Anger Issues: While Sonic said this as a joke he is actually correct as Knuckles does have serious anger issues.
==Trivia== 
*Italian is the only language where Knuckles shares his voice actor with his video game counterpart.
*Juan Carlos Gustems, voice of Knuckles for the film in Spain, previously participated in the Sonic franchise as the announcer in Team Sonic Racing.
*Like in the video game and Sonic X, Knuckles was used by Eggman/Robotnik as a pawn when he lied to him. Another commonality he shares with Sonic X but not from the video games is that Knuckles is not from Earth, instead hailing from the planet Mobius just like his Archie, Sonic the Comic, and Sonic Underground counterparts, even though the original Sonic the Hedgehog games including Sonic the Hedgehog 3 where he debuted in, were said to take place on Mobius.
*Patrick Casey claimed in the podcast about the writing of the second film that there was an early draft of when first Knuckles met Robotnik, he would bring him to Angel Island to show him how the island was falling into the ocean and needing to bring the Emerald back to save the island. However, this was scrapped because the writers wanted the two to get to earth right after the Mushroom Planet.
* It's unknown if he actually restored the ultimate power (the Master Emerald) to the home of his people as he claimed to Sonic that it was is goal to do so when pinning him to the tree, despite retrieving it at the end, he apparently didn't come back to his original home after that and questioned what they should do with the Emerald. 
**However Casey claimed that there were talks about an ending where Knuckles takes the Master Emerald with him somewhere and guards it forever, but was considered a sorrowful ending for him due to him starting off lonely until finding new friends, thinking he shouldn’t take out that responsibility by himself.
*There were talks about a sequence of what became of the echidna after his tribe passed away after the battle with Longclaw, where Knuckles would be captured by an alien species then end up being put into a grinding grain and forced to painfully push it in a circle for years, explaining why he got so big and strong, then gets thrown into a fighting pit and battle his way out of it and finally starts the attempt to complete his tribe's mission. The writing team were close to going with that idea until they considered all the latter too much for the plot. A similar thing however made it into Sonic the Hedgehog 2: The Official Movie Pre-Quill, where Knuckles was captured by an alien species who brought him to the Casino Night Zone and forced him to battle a giant monster.
*Similar to his video game counterpart, Knuckles' favorite food is grapes and unlike Sonic, Knuckles is able to swim.
*A running gag throughout the film is Knuckles shaking hands with someone and indirectly crushing them with his immense strength.
* Knuckles mistaken for a porcupine by Stone is similar to the Knuckles from Sonic X where the French Dub mislabeled him as a porcupine instead of an echidna.
*Unlike his video game counterpart, Knuckles does not live in nor has no known conncection to Angel Island and was not the sole guardian of the Emerald Master as in the films he shares the position with Sonic and Tails, additionally along with Sonic, his childhood is shown while that of his game counterpart's is a mystery.
*Knuckles never addresses Tails by his actual name in the film, instead referring to him as "Fox". 
**However, in the short film "Sonic Drone Home", he does refer to Tails by his name.
*According to Knuckles, the reason he weighs a lot, it's from having a body with more than 1,000,000% of muscle, although this doesn't make much sense, due to its small body size.
* He seems familiar with machines, since he mentions the name when he gets surrounded by Dr. Robotnik's Badniks on the cliff, which might mean that his original home planet has a form of technology (however, it is not likely as advanced as the ones of Robotnik as Knuckles refers holograms as to magic).
*In the Knuckles TV show, it's shown that he now owns the cowboy hat akin to the one he wore in the 1996 film Sonic the Hedgehog OVA.
* Knuckles knocking the Master Emerald out of Robotnik in a single blow is similar to his first appearance in the video game Sonic the Hedgehog 3, where he surprised Sonic while in his Super Sonic form, causing him to lose all the emeralds in a single attack, a feat that he never reproduced again.
*Knuckles is the first anthropomorphic character to interact with Agent Stone. Sonic and Tails do not interact with Agent Stone until the third movie.
*Knuckles speaks in a very slight British accent due to his voice actor Idris Elba being British himself.
*Knuckles is the first character in the "Sonic Cinematic Universe" to be directly responsible for another character's death onscreen. It is also the first onscreen death to occur in televised Sonic the Hedgehog media since Molly's demise during Sonic X (although Molly's demise was censored in English versions of the anime).
*Knuckles's goal in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was to destroy Sonic in order to avenge his tribe. However, in Paramount + series Knuckles, he tells Wade Whipple that his tribe told him to find the Master Emerald and protect it.
*Knuckles has never shown his gliding ability until in his own TV series.
*Knuckles has apparently been betrayed a lot in his life prior to meeting Dr. Robotnik.
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