Sonic x Shadow / Sonadow

About

Sonic x Shadow or Sonadow is a ship pairing between Sonic the Hedgehog and Shadow the Hedgehog. The pairing gained increased prominence online throughout the 2000s, denoted by fan art, fanfiction, slash fiction and other fan content depicting the two as lovers. In 2024, Sega announced a remaster of the video game Sonic Generations titled Sonic x Shadow Generations that includes an added campaign where you play as Shadow, inspiring memes relating the title to the ship pairing, including memes suggesting Sega titled the game as such to hide the artwork or about people stumbling on the art while researching the game.

Origin

It is unclear when exactly the Sonic x Shadow pairing began. Examples of Sonadow fanfiction can be found on Archive of Our Own^[1][2] dating back to January 10th, 2006, with over 3,200 works on the site relating to Sonic x Shadown fanfic. Some of the earliest known Sonadow fan art was posted to DeviantArt^[3] by f-sonic on September 22nd, 2007 and to FurAffinity^[4] by SpaceFoxy on October 21st, garnering over 90,000 views and 500 views respectively in 17 years (shown below, left and right).

Spread

Sonic x Shadow Generations

On January 31st, 2024, Sega announced a remake of Sonic Generations titled Sonic x Shadow Generations during the PlayStation State of Play stream on YouTube^[5] (shown below). The remaster features an added campaign in which players take control of Shadow.

The trailer inspired memes relating the title of the game to the Sonic x Shadow ship pairing, with some joking that Sega chose the name to hide adult artwork relating to Sonadow. On January 31st, X^[6] user @SomeRandomOnWeb posted a meme that gained over 6,000 likes in two days (shown below, left). On February 1st, X^[7] user @sophbun posted a meme that gained over 26,000 likes in a day (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References