Big the Cat

**Big the Cat** is a character from the *Sonic* franchise.

A very large purple cat who lives in the Mystic Ruins along with his pet Frog, Froggy. During the events of Sonic Adventure, Froggy ate a piece of Chaos which made him act strange and swallow the Chaos Emerald Big had found. Worried about his friend, Big set out to rescue him and gets caught up in the events as a result. Since then, he's become a good friend of Amy and Cream.

Despite his large size and strength to match, Big is a very gentle creature. He's also very laid-back preferring to spend his days fishing and sleeping in his house. Despite that however, Big is always there when his friends need him and really shows his true power when they're in danger.

## **Appearance**

Big is a very large and burly anthropomorphic cat. The majority of his body fur is purple with dark violet stripes. A striped pattern runs up his arms and long tail. His feet are covered in dark violet fur up to his ankles as well as the outer tips of his large, triangular ears, while his upper legs, back, and sides are covered in purple fur. White fur covers his chest, torso, muzzle, and inner ears. He also has black eyes with pale yellow sclera.

His preferred attire consists of yellow gloves, sandals, and a matching belt with a gold buckle. He usually keeps his fishing rod with him.

## **Personality**

Big is carefree and laid-back. He cares a lot for his friends, especially Froggy. He enjoys fishing and brings his rod with him wherever he goes. He is often giddy and optimistic, especially when with his friends. However, he is not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, as he has a short attention span and has a hard time understanding even the simplest of metaphors. Similarly, important things sometimes pass right through his mind. This does not mean Big is stupid, however, but more so that he is a slow thinker. Quite comfortable with himself, Big acknowledges himself that he is not very intelligent without being burden by it. In fact, he is quite surprised himself when he realizes that he is right in an argument. In addition, his simple way of thinking lets him see important points that others, in their considerations of more complicated matters, have overlooked. For example, he genuinely believed Dodon Pa was a good person while everyone else believed him to be evil because he knew that Dodon Pa worked with Wisps, who only like nice people.

Despite his shortcomings, Big is loyal and reliable to his friends, and always sees the best in those he likes, even when others try to convince him otherwise. He also dislikes how many people worry about so many little things and them hurrying about all the time, which is probably why he chose to live in the Mystic Ruins jungle without technology.

Big encourages others and is not the selfish type. Big has an ability to stay calm in any situation, even when he has lost Froggy. Big is amazed by a lot of things and is almost always upbeat, even when he is in danger. One of the only instances of the cat losing his upbeat nature comes in *Sonic Heroes*, when he momentarily loses hope of finding Froggy and sadly suggests going home before Amy rekindles his spirit.

## **The Adventures in Gamesphere**

### **Gamesphere Accounts**

In Chapter 4, Big is present in Zack's Beach Party fishing by the docks when Asuka, Katsuragi, Hibari and Ayame jumps in his line of fishing but he doesn't seem to mind.

In Chapter 6, Big is present at the 31st Annual Gamesphere Legacy Awards.

In Chapter 7, Big is seen attending a festival somewhere in the PC Kingdom.

In Chapter 10, Big is amongst the many guest inside an amusement park in the PC Kingdom.

## **Abilities**

### **Physical Abilities**

Big is regarded as one of Sonic's strongest and toughest friends. He possesses superhuman strength, enough to lift and throw entire cars and boulders larger than himself with little effort, shatter rocks and metal with brute strength, and even knock away objects with such force that they ignite fire.

Due to his large size, Big does not possess any noticeable speed or agility compared to other characters. However, as demonstrated in *Sonic Heroes*, he capable of running at rather high speeds by normal standards and can even keep up with Amy Rose. He also has enough agility to grind on rails.

Big has extreme amounts of toughness and durability due to his bulk. When struck by attacks, Big's bulk will cause most strikes to just bounce right off him, and he can in some cases, when giddy enough, not even feel the attacks at all. Big's toughness also makes him impervious to conditions and substances that would otherwise be hazardous to normal people such as poison gas, waters well below sub-zero temperatures, and harmful energy barriers.

Big is a very capable swimmer as seen in *Sonic Adventure* and *Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut*, being able to swim to far depths and through underwater grottos and even walk on the bottom of pools like he is walking on dry land. Big also seems to have rather advanced climbing capabilities, given how Big is able to appear in high places where there is nearly no means of climbing up there.

### **Moves and Techniques**

Most of Big's fighting moves and techniques involves the usage of his Fishing Rod. When using his Lure Attack, Big uses his Fishing Rod to hit opponents or throws his Fishing Rod's lure out and strikes opponents with it from afar. Other offensive moves involving Big's Fishing Rod is his Big Fishing technique, where Big swings his lure around so it becomes a large, lethal weapon to knock opponents into submission, and his Lure Whip, where Big captures opponents in his Fishing Rod's treat and trips them. For traversing the environment, Big can use his Umbrella Descent to glide through mid-air by folding out his Fishing Rod's umbrella during a mid-fall.

When not using his Fishing Rod, Big can attack by using Body Press, where he drops his entire body down on enemies, crushing them and create powerful energy shockwaves. In *Sonic Heroes*, Big could also perform variants of the Spin Attack, such as the Spin Jump, where Big can leap into the air and curl into a spinning ball to deal damage to anything he lands on, and the Homing Attack, where Big jumps and home in on an enemy to attack. He can also use his Battering Ram to knock down opponents.

When not attacking opponents alone, Big can call upon Froggy to perform special moves, such as Froggy Rain, where Big has Froggy and his friends drop down upon enemies from above, and Froggy Poison, where Big has Froggy poison enemies.

### **Miscellaneous Skills**

Big is a highly experienced fisherman, being able to fish just about anything up from the waters with his Fishing rod, ranging from regular fish of various shapes and sizes to hostile robotic Choppers and even Froggy when he was under the influence of Chaos.

Big has an excellent sense of smell. As seen in *Sonic Heroes*, Big was able to catch Froggy's sense on the outskirts of Bullet Station while the latter was (seemingly) held captured deep within said location. Big's main weakness, his low intelligence, is also a strength in certain situations, such as in *Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood*, where Big's simple way of thinking was the reason why he was immune to Voxai mind control.

Big also appears to have some skills with machinery despite his nonurban habitat, seeing as he flew Tails' Tornado 2 from Eggman's airship and managed to land it safely. As seen during Dodon Pa's Grand Prix, Big also has excellent skills when it comes to driving and racing in racecars like the Frog Cruiser.

### **Color Powers**

Main article: Color Power
By harnessing different variants of Hyper-go-on from Wisps, Big can use specific Color Powers to transform into a certain form, such as a drill, a laser or even a planet, each one possessing its own unique abilities. So far, Big has been able to transform into the Cyan Laser, Yellow Drill and Indigo Asteroid. However, these transformations require a steady supply of Hyper-go-on to be maintained.

## **Trivia**

* In *Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood*, Big is the only non-optional character (besides Sonic) to not be affected by the Voxai Overmind's brainwashing. He is also the only Support-Class character who has a damaging POW move.
* Due to his gameplay style, Big is one of the most unpopular and is considered one of the most infamous characters in the *Sonic* universe. This infamy has resulted in Big turning into a meme of sorts, particularly by the official Sonic social media.
* In *Sonic and the Secret Rings*, he is also the only character aside from Sonic himself that does not take the name of an Arabian Nights character. It was revealed in Big's journal that apparently Shahra transported him to the world of the Arabian Nights as well, most likely by accident.
* Big the Cat was the only playable character in *Sonic Heroes* who does not appear in *Shadow the Hedgehog*.
* In *Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing*, Big the Cat is the only *Sonic* character to have his name written out in full in the racing stands. It is written "Big the Cat" unlike the names of other characters such as "Tails" and "Shadow".
* Without counting Shadow, Big is the second oldest hero (behind Vector) from new-generation games.
* In *Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg*, there is a big purple cat-like enemy that wears a brown belt, looking very similar to Big.
* Big appears in almost every level as a cameo appearance in *Sonic Adventure 2* for Dreamcast, but those cameos were removed in the GameCube version. He can still be viewed in some story sequences by rapidly pressing the A or B buttons throughout the scenes. Big's cameos in the levels of *Sonic Adventure 2* were put back in for the Xbox 360/PS3/PC re-release of the game.
* The original Dreamcast version of *Sonic Adventure* contains a glitch with Big. For the very first time playing as Super Sonic (the first time relevant to the save file being used), when Big appears, his colors glitch out, causing him to appear as a patchwork of pinks, reds and oranges. He maintains this glitched color scheme throughout the playthrough. This glitch does not re-occur in repeat playthroughs of Super Sonic's story thereafter, and was fixed in subsequent re-releases of the game.
* Big is one of two *Sonic Heroes* characters to not appear in *Sonic Generations*, the other being E-123 Omega.
	+ Both, however, appear as secret collectable statues.
* Big's gameplay in *Sonic Adventure* is similar to *SEGA Bass Fishing*.
* Big's voice actor in *Sonic Colors*, Kyle Hebert, is credited in *Sonic Generations*. This suggests that Big was at one point going to be included in the game.
* Big the Cat was claimed to be officially retired, "for the time being at least", by Ken Balough. Despite this announcement, Big had made cameo appearances in several *Sonic* games such as *Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed*.
* Aaron Webber, the PR of Sega America, claims Big to be his favorite *Sonic* character, often involving him in his shenanigans on the official *Sonic* social media pages such as Facebook and Twitter.
* Big's voice actor from *Sonic X* and *Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing*, Oliver Wyman, reprised the role for Big's appearance in *Lego Dimensions*, replacing Kyle Hebert as the current voice actor for the character. This is the only known instance of a *Sonic* character reverting back to their prior voice actor after the role was re-cast.
	+ Hebert returned for the role in *Team Sonic Racing*. This makes Big the only *Sonic* character to have their voice actor re-cast to one of their previous voice actors, and then back to their most recent voice actor again.
* Whilst answering questions about *Sonic Forces*, Aaron Webber stated that Big the Cat was not in the game because he was on a fishing vacation with Froggy, and also said (seemingly as a joke) that had Big not been on vacation Eggman would have been unable to take over the world.