Sonic Racers

• Starter Racers:
  • Team Sonic:
    • Sonic the Hedgehog (Speed)
    • Miles "Tails" Prower (Acceleration)
    • Knuckles the Echidna (Power)
  • Team Rose:
    • Amy Rose (Handling)
    • Cream the Rabbit & Cheese (Handling)
    • Big the Cat (Power)
  • Team Dimensions:
    • Silver the Hedgehog (Handling)
    • Blaze the Cat (Speed)
  • Team Dark:
    • Shadow the Hedgehog (Speed)
    • Rouge the Bat (Handling)
    • E-123 Omega (Power)
  • Team Chaotix:
    • Vector the Crocodile (Power)
    • Espio the Chameleon (Speed)
    • Charmy Bee (Acceleration)
  • Team Deadly Six:
    • Zavok (Power)
    • Zazz (Acceleration)
  • Team Eggman:
    • Dr. Eggman (Power)
    • Metal Sonic (Speed)
    • Egg Pawn (Acceleration)
    • Sage (Acceleration)
  • Team Babylon Rogues:
    • Jet the Hawk (Speed)
    • Wave the Swallow (Acceleration)
    • Storm the Albatross (Power)
• Unlockable Racers: Super Sonic (Speed)
• Bonus Racers:
  • Pre-Order Bonus: Sonic the Werehog (Power)
  • Digital Deluxe Bonus:
    • Tails Nine (Acceleration)
    • Knuckles the Dread (Power)
    • Rusty Rose (Handling)
  • Post-Launch Racers:
    • Tangle the Lemur (Acceleration) [February 25, 2026]
    • Whisper the Wolf (Boost) [February 25, 2026]

Guest Racers

• Free Post-Launch Racers:
  • From Vocaloid: Hatsune Miku (Boost) [September 25, 2025]
  • From Persona 5: Joker (Handling) [October 22, 2025]
  • From Like a Dragon: Ichiban Kasuga (Power) [November 6, 2025]
  • From NiGHTS into Dreams…: NiGHTS (Speed) [December 24, 2025]
  • From Super Monkey Ball: AiAi (Handling) [February 11, 2026]^note Originally meant to release in January 2026, but was delayed to February due to SEGA wanting to prioritise the Legends Competition
• Season Pass Racers:
  • From Minecraft (October 8, 2025)
    • Steve (Power)
    • Alex (Power)
    • Creeper (Acceleration)
  • From SpongeBob SquarePants (November 19, 2025)
    • SpongeBob SquarePants (Handling)
    • Patrick Star (Power)
  • From Pac-Man (January 7, 2026)^note Accidentally released early on the Epic Games Store on January 6.
    • Pac-Man (Acceleration)
    • Team Ghost (Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde) (Speed)
  • From Mega Man (Classic) (Q2 2026)
    • Mega Man
    • Proto Man
  • From Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (Q3 2026)
  • From Avatar Legends (Q3 2026)

Main Tracks

Donpa Grand Prix

1. E Stadium
2. Rainbow Garden
3. Water Palace (Sonic Rush)

Wisp Grand Prix

4. Metal Harbor (Sonic Adventure 2)
5. Sand Road (Sonic & Knuckles/Team Sonic Racing)
6. Colorful Mall

Boom Boo Grand Prix

7. Mystic Jungle (Sonic Forces)
8. Apotos (Sonic Unleashed)
9. Wonder Museum

Pumpkin Grand Prix

10. Crystal Mine
11. Ocean View (Sonic Heroes/Sonic & All-Stars Racing: Transformed)
12. Pumpkin Mansion

Coral Grand Prix

13. Urban Canyon
14. Market Street (Sonic Unleashed/Team Sonic Racing)
15. Coral Town

Crystal Grand Prix

16. Blizzard Valley
17. Radical Highway (Sonic Adventure 2)
18. Chao Park

Egg Grand Prix

19. Donpa Factory
20. Aqua Forest
21. Eggman Expo

Secret Grand Prix

22. Kronos Island (Sonic Frontiers)
23. Northstar Islands (Sonic Superstars)
24. White Space (Shadow Generations)

Crossover Collabs

25. Minecraft World (Minecraft)
26. Bikini Bottom (SpongeBob SquarePants)
27. PAC-Village & Maze (Pac-Man)^note PAC-Village taking its design from Pac-Man World 2 Re-PAC
28. Wily Castle (Mega Man (Classic))^note Uses elements from Dr. Wily's Robot Manufactoring Factory and Mega Man 2's Wily Castle

Crossworlds

1. Sky Road (Sonic Unleashed/Team Sonic Racing)
2. Roulette Road (Sonic Heroes/Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing)
3. Kraken Bay (Sonic and the Secret Rings)
4. Gold Temple
5. Magma Planet (based on Galaxy Force)
6. Hidden World (Sonic Lost World)
7. Steampunk City
8. Dragon Road (Sonic Unleashed)
9. Holoska (Sonic Unleashed)
10. Galactic Parade (Sonic Colors/Sonic All-Stars Racing Transformed)
11. Dinosaur Jungle (Sonic and the Secret Rings)
12. Sweet Mountain (Sonic Colors)
13. White Cave (Sonic Riders)
14. Cyber Space (Sonic Frontiers)
15. Digital Circuit (Shadow the Hedgehog)

• Cinematic Teaser Trailer
• Announce Trailer
• The History of Sonic Racing
• Summer Games Fest Reveal Trailer
• Kids' Choice Awards Trailer
• Customization and Gadgets Trailer
• Sonic X PAC-MAN Collab Trailer
• Competition Trailer
• Cross the Worlds (Lyric Video)
• Launch Trailer
• Mega Man Collab Trailer
• Minecraft Pack Teaser Trailer
• SpongeBob SquarePants Pack Teaser Trailer
• New Free Characters Update
• PAC-MAN Pack Teaser Trailer

• Achievement Mockery: Just to show how much time the player spent playing the game online, the reward for reaching 4000 points in World Match is an aura effect that has several clocks floating around the player.
• Achievement System: There is an in-game "Challenges" system that grants the player special titles upon completion. For example, collecting all the red rings on any course awards the player a "Star Seeker", which is also tied to the platform's achievement list. However, there are also the Special Challenges, unlocked after getting all the other challenge rewards, and are not tracked by the platform, mainly providing extremely difficult challenges that completing gives a shinier, special title. These Special Challenges include things like collecting all of the red rings, win every grand prix on Super Sonic Speed, and getting all S-Ranks on the Time Trials.
• Achievements in Ignorance: Storm's rival intro with Jet implies that Storm thinks that the Babylon Rogues are racing as a team like in Team Sonic Racing and that him pulling up ahead and winning is just him trying to use that game's team mechanics.
• All the Worlds Are a Stage:
  • The final race of every Grand Prix cup has you race one lap on the three previous tracks not including crossworlds.
  • Northstar Islands, as the name implies, is a tour through multiples zones from Sonic Superstars, namely Bridge Island, Speed Jungle, Sky Temple, Press Factory, and Sand Sanctuary.
  • Minecraft World features all three major dimensions of its home game on a single track. The overworld is passed through in both Laps 1 and 3, though the dimension visited changes between them. Lap 1 takes racers through a portal to the Nether, with Ghasts' fireballs serving as obstacles on a short road, and Lap 3 brings them to The End, with the majority of the time spent there in the air and with the Ender Dragon antagonizing each of the racers.
• Alliterative Name: Eggman Expo, Bikini Bottom, and Roulette Road are tracks that use alliteration in their names.
• Alternate Company Equivalent:
  • At a basic level, some of the items that racers can pick up are very similar to those from the Mario Kart series in functionality:
    • The Wisp Boost items are equivalent to the Mushrooms, where using them grants the user a quick burst of speed. There is a Triple Boost as well, which acts similarly to the Triple Mushroom.
    • The Spiked Iron Ball functionally acts as a Banana Peel, being a hazard that you can lob ahead or behind you that sticks to the track and damages the first racer that hits it.
    • The Drill Wisp acts as the game's equivalent to Bullet Bill (introduced in Mario Kart DS), which turns the user into a Drill Wisp that automatically moves them towards the finish line.
    • The Homing Punch and Rocket Punch items are CrossWorlds' equivalent to the Red and Green Shells respectively, the former being a common item that can target and attack racers ahead of them, while the latter flies straight forward and can bounce off walls. Unlike the Green Shells, the Rocket Punch can be locked on to a target and will home in on their opponent, though this requires the player to actually aim it before releasing rather than the auto targeting of the Homing Punch/Red Shell. These items also come in triple variants.
    • King Boom Boo from SA2 acts like the Spiny Shell from Mario Kart, being a Comeback Mechanic that will attack the racer that is in first place and other racers in the collateral. However, instead of an explosion, King Boom Boo attacks with a trail of flame spires.
    • The Slime item, when used, will block the vision of the racers, slowing them down, just like the Blooper item introduced in Mario Kart DS. Using the Slime also causes the racer to drop all of their items, making it a milder version of Mario Kart's Lightning.
    • The Monster Truck is analogous to the Mega Mushroom from Mario Kart Wii, causing the user's car to grow giant and squish any racers it runs over. Being a completely different vehicle, the Monster Truck handles like a Power-type car. The duration for the Monster Truck depends on a player's position in a race.
    • The Shield granting you invincibility could be the game's version of the Super Star, albeit without the speed boost or the ability to damage other racers by touching them.
    • The Void Wisp sucks in nearby rings and item boxes, and it may pop out in its Violet Void form to eat projectiles and obstacles akin to the Piranha Plant item from Mario Kart 8, which also draws in coins.
    • Rings are analogous to coins in that they increase the player's top speed whenever they're collected. They can also be collected without having to get them off the track with Omochao, similar to the Coin item.
  • Some of the tracks in CrossWorlds are similar to other Mario Kart race courses:
    • The E-Stadium track is similar to the recurring "Mario Circuit" tracks, particularly to its iteration from Mario Kart 8, being extravagant racing stadiums themed after the franchise's main star.
    • The Colorful Mall track introduced in is similar to Coconut Mall from Mario Kart Wii, both taking place inside large shopping malls with equally wide escalators that can be driven up on.
    • Chao Park, despite its similar name and the absurdly cute nature of of the Chao, is not an analogue of Baby Park introduced in Mario Kart: Double Dash!!. However, its structure as a theme park with roller coaster-like loops and hairpin turns, as well as an extended segment in the final lap racing over water, makes it more analogous with Water Park from Mario Kart 8.
• Always Night: The E-Stadium, Mystic Jungle, Pumpkin Mansion, Radical Highway, Dragon Road, Roulette Road, and the Holoska tracks only take place at night, with no daytime variants.
• Amphibious Automobile: All of the car-based machines are capable of driving on water using extra propellers. Drifting is altered whilst on water, turning into an inside drift which boosts jumps.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: After completing all eight of the Grand Prix cups (discounting both Crossover Grand Prix cups), the player is rewarded with Sage's black and red outfit she had for the majority of Sonic Frontiers, along with the game's "Friendship" mechanic where the player can give Donpa Tickets to their favourite characters, with the A.I. Racers from the Race Park unlocked as alternate skins after giving the character 3,000 tickets.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • The game offers various assist options, such as smart steering, auto acceleration, and automatic tricks. There’s also an option to use the control scheme from Team Sonic Racing, averting Damn You, Muscle Memory!.
  • Any character can use any car or Extreme Gear that is unlocked, and the game openly allows both in the same race, allowing for a much more varied field as well as players to play to their strengths, with CPU opponents using each racer's default car or Gear.
  • If for any reason you fall an unreasonable distance behind the competition, Omochao will appear and warp you ahead so you have a tangible chance of catching up. This also allows the game to avoid players waiting around at the starting area to see the Lap 2 transportation ring appear without actually racing a lap, or hanging around on the Lap 1 version of a track when it is due to change up for racers entering Lap 3.
  • The game will give you a prompt to use your item if it is advantageous for you, such as using a White Wisp off-road or when a Warp Ring appears above you, making it easier to tell which items do what in a situation.
  • A subtle one related to the Crossworld tracks is that, when you play on the Donpa Grand Prix for the first time, the game only selects locations to visit that use the gameplay elements employed so far.
    • Only Dinosaur Jungle, Roulette Road, and White Cave will be available when entering Lap 2 of E Stadium, as aside from the mild boat section seen in the formermost course, each are predominantly road-based.
    • Lap 2 of Rainbow Garden, the course that introduces air gameplay, adds Sky Road, Magma Planet, Hidden World, Galactic Parade, Steampunk City, Cyberspace, and Digital Circuit to the available course picks, with their inclusion of testing flight while not yet throwing boat controls on players so suddenly.
    • Finally, reaching Lap 2 of Water Palace, which introduces water gameplay, will add the remaining five Crossworlds to the pool for selection, allowing players to explore those locations after they get accustomed to the remaining controls.
  • Items that put you into autopilot (i.e. Drill and Laser) will always return control to you on a straightaway and after clearing a turn, so you don't have to worry about crashing into a wall due to your lack-of control while under those effects.
  • The character and car/gear select screen shows content that is not released yet greyed out, and also gives the estimated release date, as well as a purchase option for paid characters.
  • Tying with a rival counts as a win against them. You also do not have to be first overall to beat a rival, you just need to place higher than them.
  • For a mere 20 Donpa Tickets, you can retry an individual track of any Grand Prix to try and place higher and/or beat your rival, instead of restarting the entire cup. It will, however, mark that you used them with a ticket next to the trophy in the Grand Prix menu.
  • Similar to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, scoring a trophy on a higher difficulty will also apply it to lower difficulties to cut down on grinding, for example, winning a course's trophy on Sonic Speed that you haven't tried on Normal Speed yet will treat it as if you did prior, but not vice-versa.
  • During races, your chosen Gadgets are displayed, and the ones that activate light up to show they're working and help you gauge which ones work the best for you.
  • If you haven't unlocked Super Sonic yet from beating all rivals in Grand Prix mode, the game will automatically prioritise rivals you haven't won against yet, so you don't need to manually select one yourself.
  • During a Festival Event that requires a specific task to get the point bonus, the game will give a Rental Plate that has the gadgets best suited for it equipped at start, allowing players who have yet to unlock them race on equal footing. Players can still choose their own gadget loadout, with the Rental Plate offering ideas of what's best for the job.
  • Gadgets only available through festivals will be made available for free at a later date, in case a player was unable to participate or gain enough points in time. You'll need to have a Master Plate to be able to buy them with Donpa Tickets, but there's no FOMO gating players out of these gadgets.
  • Due to S-Rank Time Trial scores demanding extreme skills and perfect loadouts, the related unlocks like Challenges and Jukebox albums only need A-Rank scores, outside of the Special Challenge that specifically requires full S-Ranks.
  • Even if you didn't buy the DLC for Sonic CrossWorlds, there's still a chance to play the map online as long as someone in the lobby did pay for the DLC.
  • Patch 1.2 modified the colour of Silver and Blaze's AI Racer skins, as the previous clear grey ones could be easily mistaken for the invincible state.
• Anti-Grinding: The demo prevents you from increasing your plate rank further from a certain point, so you can't have more than 3 Gadget slots until you transfer your progress to the full game.
• Anti-Rage Quitting: The game keeps track of a player's Fair Play Points, which start at 100, and are taken away if the player leaves an online race before it finishes. Lose too many Fair Play Points, and you'll be temporarily disallowed to join online races.
• Apologetic Attacker:
  • If the player plays as Zazz and hits Zavok with a weapon, or if the player plays as Storm and hits Jet with a weapon, Zazz and Storm will timidly say "Sorry, boss."
  • Sage and Eggman both apologize to each other when hitting each other with items. If you're playing as Eggman and you hit Sage, he says "Sorry, Sage! Daddy loves you!", and Sage replies "Nice shot, Father!" If you're playing as Sage and you hit Eggman, she says "Apologies, Father!", and Eggman replies (through grit teeth) "Nice. Shot. Sweetie."
• Arm Cannon: In their reveal trailer, Mega Man and Proto Man have their signature Mega/Proto Busters which they summon for certain animations, such as Proto Man firing his Proto Buster when using an item as if he was using a Special Weapon.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: King Boom Boo's attack is the one item that bypasses most defense items for the hit. The only way to block it is to be fully invincible.
• Art Evolution: The basic body structure of the characters have gotten some minor tweaks, most notable of which is that many characters have lengthened spines and quills.
• Artificial Stupidity: The team AI on the Theme Park races leaves a lot to be desired. First and foremost is that they often do not care for the gimmick of the race and drive the same way regardless of the objective, leaving rings, weapons and each other alone if they do not coincide with their path. They make decent drivers but that is it.
• Artistic License – Paleontology: The dinosaurs from Sonic and the Secret Rings make a return in this game, still possessing the extra set of horns and spikes that they never had in real life and also being massively oversized. The horns and spikes on the Tyrannosaurus are also present on their skeletons, on display at Wonder Museum, though there's also a more accurate Tyrannosaurus skeleton, suggesting that the ones in Dinosaur Jungle are a different species or subspecies (which they would be since they are Living Dinosaurs in a Lost World).
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Monster Truck Starter gadget does exactly what it says, letting the player start with one and demolish the other racers from the word "go". The problem is it's a Comeback Mechanic item and the first few seconds are some of the least important part of a race, and it takes up 3 slots (half a fully expanded Gadget Grid). A player could save it for later, but that gives up using other items. Ultimately this gadget is a fancy way to Troll other players at the cost of playing 99% of the race with a handicap.
• Background Music Override:
  • All DLC characters shown so far do this to some extent:
    • Hatsune Miku sings along to the music like the character select and the victory theme.
    • Hovering over Joker in the character select replaces the character select menu theme with the instrumental of "Wake Up, Get Up, Get Out There" from Persona 5. Similarly, whenever the player finishes a race with him, instead of the normal post-race music track, it will play "Victory" from the same game.
    • The Werehog replaces both the character select menu theme and the race finish theme with the results music from Sonic Unleashed.
    • The Sonic Prime characters replace the character select theme and the race finish theme with a variation that adds more brass instrumentation that makes it resemble the series' end credits theme.
    • Hovering over Ichiban replaces the character select theme with "Asphodelos," the mini-boss theme from Yakuza: Like a Dragon, and the results theme with "YUSHA NO KISEKI" from that same game.
    • Hovering over SpongeBob or Patrick replaces the theme with a piece reminiscent of the television show's soundtrack.
    • Hovering over any of the Minecraft characters replaces the character select theme with a remix of "Comforting Memories", a song that plays in the Overworld and Creative mode, introduced in their home games' Caves & Cliffs update.
    • Hovering over NiGHTS in the characters menu replaces the music with a rearrangement of "Journey of Dreams" from NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams. The post-race theme will be replaced with either "Dreams, Dreams", "Growing Wings", or "Message From Nightopia", with "Dreams, Dreams"' lyrics being added if the player gets in first place.
    • Hovering over Pac-Man or any member of the Ghost Gang replaces it with an upbeat and techno-laden remix of the original Pac-Man theme. Finishing a race with any of them plays an orchestral-techno fusion of "Coffee Break" from the same game.
  • Jukebox mode allows players to set albums for the first, second, and final laps, with final laps having their own high-tempo variants.
  • While the monster truck is active, the background music will be replaced with an instrumental version of the main theme.
• Beware the Nice Ones: If Zavok is pitted against Big as a rival racer, Zavok will feel fear.
  Big: I don't like folks who are mean to my friends.
  Zavok: I sense a tremendous power behind those words. Am I feeling... Fear?
• Big "WHY?!": If Sonic or Cream hits Amy with an item, they'll apologize while Amy cries out "Sonic?! Why?" or "Cream?! Why?" in response.
• Birds of a Feather: Subverted. Zavok attempts to make a favorable comparison with Blaze by pointing out the two control fire, but Blaze views his abilities as a gross insult to her own.
• Blunt "No": Big asks Shadow if he wants to go fishing in his rival dialogue. Shadow of course says no with a smile on his face.
• Bootstrapped Leitmotif: The victory songs for every character who didn't have specific themes before this game follow this trope, used for their victory themes after winning a grand prix or as part of their segments in the Crosstalk promotional videos:
  • Cream gets a remix of her tutorial music from Sonic Advance 2.
  • Omega, as in Team Sonic Racing, appropriates "This Machine" from Sonic Heroes.
  • As the Chaotix aren't racing as a group, none of them use the Team Chaotix theme from Heroes. Vector and Charmy remix Knuckles' Chaotix tracks, while Espio remixes his stage theme from Sonic the Fighters.
  • As the Babylon Rogues' theme, "Catch Me If You Can", went to Jet, Wave and Storm have new themes based on cutscene music from the Riders games.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • The Quick Recovery Gadget reduces the recovery time from getting hit by an item. It is a three-slot gadget, which gives you little space for other Gadgets, but it gives any machine the durability of a Power-type machine (including other Power-types) and could help save you from last-second item spam.
  • All the "Bounty" and ring-gain Gadgets. They might not be as flashy as the others, but the top speed increase from max rings is a huge deciding factor in races, and these help you stay there even during item onslaughts.
  • Power machines aren't as fast as others, have terrible handling and not much acceleration, but they don't lose rings when hitting walls and recover faster from damage. With the right gadget build, Power machines are able to steadily climb the ranks without any flashy tricks.
• Bowled Over: The Bomb item doesn't do much out of the box, exploding on collision when thrown. However, it grows in size over time, allowing it to rebound off the walls and squash other racers before it explodes.
• Bragging Rights Reward:
  • Defeating all rivals in Grand Prix mode unlocks Super Sonic as a playable character, who has maxed out stats and doesn't flinch when hit with items. The catch is, due to his brokenness, he can't be used in any mode besides Grand Prix itself, and there's not much left to do there after beating every rival.
  • Once you've reached 1000 points in a festival track, there are no other unique event items to obtain, and grinding for more points only nets you a higher placement on the leaderboard (which isn't even visible in-game!) told to you a day after the event ends. So long as the player reaches 1000 points, they obtain the same end reward, irrespective of how long they played for after that point.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Custom machines are made by mixing-and-matching parts from other machines, and their name follows the naming trend of "[Front Half] + [Back Half]". For example, if you take the front of Sonic's Speedster Lightning and the back of Shadow's Dark Reaper, you get "Speedster Reaper".
• Breaking Old Trends:
  • The game's AI Racer mode does away with the series' standard use of organizing characters into trios, which led to the last game featuring some odd combinations (specifically putting Vector in a team with Silver and Blaze rather than the less prominent but emotionally closer to him Espio and Charmy or teaming up Zavok with Team Eggman despite hating the doctor). This time, Silver and Blaze are simply used as a duo (known as Team Dimensions) as are Zazz and Zavok (Team Deadly Six). Even Team Eggman is now made into a quartet.
  • Zig-zagged with NiGHTS as a playable character here, where aside from having guest appearances in the Sonic Riders series and having a very strange "playable" appearance in Transformed where they appear as a car instead of being directly controllable outside of their All-Star Move, this is the first non-Riders racing game where they're playable as-is, including being able to drive a car.
• Bring It: Some racers have unique animations if they're set to be rivals against a particular character they have a vendetta against.
  • Metal Sonic typically does an air trick and throws a dismissive gesture at every racer on the track, implying he's trash talking them. However, if pitted against Sonic he instead simply stands up from his seat, clenches his fist in anger gives him a Kubrick Stare by flashing his optics directly at him.
  • Omega usually hypes himself up by flexing his arms like a showman and striking a pose against his opponent, but when put against opponents who enrage him or who he genuinely intends to obliterate once they're off the track such as Eggman, Zavok, Metal Sonic, the Egg Pawn, and Blaze, he stands up towards his opponent to punch his fists against each other while staring at them.
  • Hilariously averted if Zazz is pitted against Zavok, which has Zazz behaving himself and being absolutely terrified by standing around tensed up and timidly shrugging while avoiding eye contact with his boss when he's normally thrashing, shouting and lunging at the camera when talking to anyone else otherwise.
• The Bully: The anti-heroes and villains let out their toxic traits, but some are willing to show respect to those who have proved themselves on or off the track. Jet and Zazz, however, are consistently antagonistic towards the other racers, the former becoming even more of a Jerk Jock and the latter only wanting to cause chaos and drive people off the track. They're even mean to young children like Tails and Cream, being particularly harsh to them both in their rival intros against them and mockingly asking if they're going to cry after they hit them with an item.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • Cream returns in a racing spin-off after being absent since Sonic Free Riders.
  • This is the first major Sonic game to feature the Babylon Rogues since Free Riders, outside of Jet and Wave's appearances in the Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games series and mobile spin-offs like Sonic Forces: Speed Battle.
  • This is the first major Sonic game to feature Zazz since Lost World, outside of his appearances in the Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games series and mobile spin-offs like Sonic Forces: Speed Battle.
  • Generic NPCs from Sonic Forces fill in this game's pit crew, marking their first appearance in six years.
  • This game marks Charmy Bee's return as a playable character following Sonic Heroes, released over two decades ago.
  • Many other Sega characters appear as guest racers, with this being NiGHTs and AiAi's first playable appearances in a Sonic game since Sonic & All-Stars Racing: Transformed.
  • As seen in the "Mega Man Reveal Trailer", after its debut in Mega Man: Battle & Chase in 1997 (with cameo appearances in the Mega Man ZX games), Mega Man's Rush Roadstar makes its return in a full racing game after more than 27 years. On a smaller scale, Proto Man's last playable appearance was in Mega Man 10 over 15 years ago, and returns as Mega Man's co-racer here.
• The Cameo: The festivals show several non-playable characters from their home-games either on the billboard in the main menu when their festival is active, or as decals that can be placed onto machines, such as Spongebob, Patrick and Squidward all being visible during the Spongebob festival. This also doubles as Company Cross-References for all the SEGA-owned properties, such as in the Like a Dragon festival, where Kiryu and Majima are present on the billboard, the Super Monkey Ball festival displays AiAi alongside Palette, Baby, and GonGon, while in the Tangle and Whisper festival, Jewel is prominently shown alongside the duo.
• Camera Abuse: Some of the racers abuse the camera in their Rival dialogue, such as Silver using his psychokinesis to grab it closer to him while Zazz just lunges for it.
• Canon Welding: This is the game that makes the most blatant connections between the games and the IDW Comics, with multiple interactions between the Zeti and the heroes directly referring to events from the Metal Virus arc, and the February 2026 free DLC characters being Tangle and Whisper, who originate from the comics, and even had their own mini-series.
• Cap: Racers can collect rings to gradually increase their top speed, maxing out at 100 rings. The cap can be raised to 130 or doubled to 200 rings with the use of specific gadget parts. Rings over 100 don't raise top speed, but with more to lose before you go below 100 you get a buffer against item attacks.
• Car Fu: The "Spin Drift" gadget invokes this, where holding down the drift button will cause their vehicle to spin in circles, damaging anyone they run into while in this state.
• Cast Herd: The Sonic cast are sorted on the character select screen by their teams, though this only comes in gameplay in Race Park when racing the AI Racers. Team Sonic, Team Rose, Team Dark, Team Chaotix, and the Babylon Rogues are the same as in Heroes and Riders; Silver and Blaze are "Team Dimensions"; Sage joins "Team Eggman" with Dr. Eggman, Metal Sonic, and the Egg Pawn; and Zavok and Zazz are "Team Deadly Six" (despite the other four members of the Deadly Six being absent).
• Celebrity Paradox: Of sorts. The Like a Dragon games all feature Sonic and other Sega franchises as being fictional due to it being based on the real world. One of the protagonists of Like a Dragon, Ichiban Kasuga, gets to race directly against characters from games he's actually played. Additionally, Joker appears, whose friend Makoto is a big fan of Like a Dragon, where both can watch a movie based on it and Makoto remarks in Strikers that Osaka's Dotonbori district feels familiar, referencing the recurring Sotenbori location introduced in LaD starting with Yakuza 2.
• Character Class System: Characters and machines are split into five categories: Speed, Acceleration, Handling, Power, and Boost, the last of which consists entirely of Extreme Gear, which mainly governs what category a character's best machine is in, since all characters can use any machine:
  • Speed characters^note Sonic, Shadow, Blaze, Espio, Metal Sonic, Super Sonic, NiGHTS, and the four Ghosts and vehicles excel at blazing down straighaways at high speed, at the cost of acceleration and handling.
  • Acceleration characters^note Tails, Charmy, Zazz, Egg Pawn, Sage, Wave, Tangle, Nine, Creeper, and Pac-Man and vehicles can achieve top speed quickly, but their top speed isn't as good as Speed types.
  • Handling characters^note Amy, Cream, Silver, Rouge, Rusty, AiAi, Joker, and SpongeBob and vehicles aren't as fast as others, but can handle turns the most easily.
  • Power characters^note Knuckles, Big, Omega, Vector, Zavok, Dr. Eggman, Storm, Werehog, Dread, Ichiban, Steve, Alex, and Patrick and vehicles have modest speed and subpar handling and acceleration, but they don't lose rings for hitting walls and are better at reliably knocking rings out of other players.
  • Boost characters^note Hatsune Miku, Whisper and vehicles charge boosts faster while drifting, but their otherwise middling stats makes them reliant on those boosts.
• Character Customization: You can create your own machines using the front and back halves and tyres of the stock versions, alongside adding different paint jobs and sticking decals over it.
• Character Select Forcing: Making full use of the "Boost Character" Gadget of course requires a Boost character, with your only options being Hatsune Miku or Whisper since it's the smallest group in the game.
• Character-Specific Dialogue: According to a tweet from the game's official account, the game has 500 different dialogue quotes between the roster's racers when pitted against each other as rivals in the Grand Prix mode, as well as attacking each other during races, leading to characters who haven't interacted in canon before doing so in this game.^note Egg Pawn and Metal Sonic do not have traditional dialogue at all, with all their quotes being mechanical noises, similar to the latter's 'dialogue' in earlier games. DLC characters, however, do not have any dialogue, either in-game or as rivals, with stock phrases used by their opponent. The only exception is Hatsune Miku, who sings along, acapella, to the various songs when selecting characters or winning a race, and reacts to various things during the race, but doesn't have any rivalry lines.
  Zazz: (when Jet is his rival) Ahaha, who's this runt? Outta the way, short stack! I'm here to race against the best!
  Jet: Then you found him! There isn't anyone who can match my skill or speed! See you at the finish line, chump!
• Characters Sharing a Slot:
  • In-universe, the A.I. Racers are copies of the cast made by Dodon Pa's racing data. In gameplay, they are treated as separate characters with their own racing records and can appear as a racer in an offline match, even if the character they're based on is already in the race. Despite these distinctions, they appear as selectable "skins" over the character they're copying.
  • Team Ghost plays this straight, as Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde are all selectable under one slot and whichever one is picked will have different animations for winning and losing despite being relatively the same as eachother.
• Chekhov's Volcano: Bikini Bottom prominently features a volcano near the end of the track. On the third lap it will erupt, causing flaming boulders to rain onto the track.
• Clean Cut: Getting hit by the Slicer item will cause the target vehicle to be cut in half with one quick stroke, though luckily it won't hit the racers themselves and the car gets immediately repaired. The opening movie features Amy demonstrating this item on Vector, which slices his car in half.
• Color-Coded Armies: The race park team races and Festival online races will usually put players into different colored teams.
  • Race Park team races have red, blue, and yellow teams, but their vehicle colors won't be changed like in Festival online races. Instead, they are represented by a line that connects and shows who is nearby and on the racer's team. The teams also have their own icons: a blue moon, red sun, and yellow star.
  • The Festival teams have significant Color Contrast, based on the characters they represent, and will change the player's vehicles to match that color for gameplay. For example, the Joker Festival had three teams for Joker, Morgana, and Violet, which are represented as Red, Blue, and Pink respectively.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience:
  • Each item is classed under a color-coded category as shown by the item frame, with a yellow traffic cone for Hazard items, a green shield for Defense items, a red sword for Attack items and a blue arrow for Speed items.
  • Because the signature gold sheen is already used for the giant Travel Rings, the Warp Rings used for certain items are a deep red since they're directly used on the course usually as hazards.
  • In team races, some items like the magnet and King Boom Boo, will have a colored aura indicating which team threw it, so you know if you should dodge it or not.
• Comeback Mechanic:
  • On most game modes, the odds of certain items that can massively disrupt the race like King Boom Boo and the Monster Truck are generally given to racers who are in lower places, which allows them to catch up when they fall behind.
  • King Boom Boo from SA2 acts like the Spiny Shell from various Mario Kart games, where he will attack the machine that is in first place, disrupting an opponent's chances in order to give the user a chance to take the lead. His attack will also leave a trail of blue fire that can also catch those behind the frontrunner.
  • The Weight item are used exclusively on first and second place racers, giving other players the chance to catch up and overtake them.
  • Transformation items work longer if you are in the back, to give you more time to catch up while you can't be intercepted. Conversely, they end almost immediately when used in first place.
• Company Cameo: There is a banner in Radical Highway that says Sonic Team in yellow font.
• Company Cross-References:
  • Magma Planet is in part a 3D recreation of Ashutar from Galaxy Force, an old-school Sega rail shooter that predates Sonic, including the lava serpents and planets in the distance.
  • Like in Sonic Adventure 2, Radical Highway has a NiGHTS hotel (with the famous spinning head now being a hologram). Additionally, one of its street signs reads "38 Amigo Left Lane".
  • Characters from respective franchises of a festival being highlighted will be present on the billboard in the main menu, such as the cast of Like a Dragon franchise (Ichiban, Kiryu, and Majima) or the IDW comics, with Jewel making a cameo alongside the playable Tangle and Whisper.
• Competition Freak: In comparison to the Team Sonic Racing, where teamwork was emphasized, the fact that only one winner can be had here means that some of the cast are taking the competition way more seriously than the others and are obsessed with winning. Of note are Shadow, Omega, Jet, Wave, Storm, Knuckles, Espio, and implied to also be the case with Metal Sonic (who doesn't speak).
• Competitive Balance: The five machine and character classes have strong points and shortcomings to make them all balanced in their own way:
  • Speed characters and vehicles have high speed but lower acceleration and handling.
  • Acceleration characters and vehicles can achieve top speed quickly, but their speed isn't as high as the Speed types.
  • Handling characters and vehicles have the best turning, allowing them to navigate obstacles and curves, at the cost of lower overall speed.
  • Power characters and vehicles have high weight, making it easy to shove other racers around and take less penalties when hit. They naturally are some of the slower vehicles.
  • Boost characters and vehicles benefit the most from Boost Wisps, Boost Panels, and boosts from drifting, but they have middling stats to compensate and have them reliant on those boosts.
• Composite Character: An example in the form of a racetrack. Pumpkin Mansion mixes elements from Pumpkin Hill from Sonic Adventure 2 (the recurring pumpkin iconography and graveyard) and Hang Castle and Mystic Mansion from Sonic Heroes (like the invisible paths illuminated by flames and, of course, taking place in a mansion). The name is even a Portmanteau of Pumpkin Hill and Mystic Mansion.
• Confusion Fu: The Random Track option for Travel Rings can pick from not just every possible CrossWorld, but single laps of regular tracks too (which on single-player, this only happens after winning all non-Collaboration trophies on any speed, while it's unlocked by default online), ensuring nobody knows what to expect.
• Continuity Cavalcade:
  • There are racetrack promotional banners in E Stadium for various locales from Sonic's universe, such as Donpa Motors (and Donpa Holdings) from Team Sonic Racing, along with Kronos and Chaos Island from Frontiers.
  • Eggman Expo features several bits of continuity to Eggman's past schemes and mechas, such as the Egg Dragoon and the Death Egg Robot being stage obstacles.
• Console Cameo: When playing online against other players, they have icons next to their username denoting what platform they're on, where the generic icon for a console platform is a Sega Genesis controller. ^note Due to copyright reasons, you can only see exact icons for the same platform you're on, such as a Switch player only being able to see when other players are also using a Switch, while the console users on Xbox and PlayStation appear with the generic Genesis controller, and PC users have a computer icon instead across all platforms.
• Continuity Nod: See here.
• Cool Gate:
  • The second lap of a race involves driving through a Travel Ring to a CrossWorld track, at the end of which is another Travel Ring that warps the drivers back to the original track. Sometimes smaller Travel Rings show up during the final laps that lead to shortcuts, or are part of the course such as Pumpkin Mansion where they warp racers between the ceiling and floor.
  • The Minecraft World track has its own portals. The first lap has Nether Portals that send the racers through the Nether, while the final lap takes drivers through an alternate path that sends them through an End Portal into the End.
• Cool Crown: One of the Wisps in the Triple Wisp power-up wears a crown, identifying it as the one that provides the strongest and most powerful boost.
• Copycat Mockery:
  • If Big is pitted against Jet as his rival, Big asks if Jet likes to race. Jet, the prideful Jerk Jock he is, is incensed at the cat's dopeful question and repeats it in a mocking tone:
    Big: Hey there! Do you like to race, too?
    Jet: (imitating Big) Do I "like to"? (in his normal voice) Are you kidding me!? DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM!?
  • If Jet is pitted against Charmy as his rival, Charmy copies exactly what Jet says, mocking him for his insult:
    Jet: Ugh! You're so obnoxious! Just get lost already!
    Charmy: (imitating Jet's squawking voice) "Ugh! You're so obnoxious! Just get lost already!" (laughing) Hah, that's you! That's what you sound like!
• Crosshair Aware: Crosshairs will appear in the areas King Boom Boo is about to attack, giving racers behind first place a chance to evade. They also appear if you've locked-on certain tracking items like the Rocket Punch (when manually aimed) or Homing Punch on an ahead racer, or if you're being targeted.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: The game's controls differ greatly from the All-Stars Racing series and Team Sonic Racing, which can cause some whiplash when going into this game from the former three:
  • Accelerate defaults to the bottom face button (X on PS5, A on Xbox, B on Switch) instead of the right trigger (which is now used for drifting), making it more akin to the Mario Kart series than previous entries. It seems Sega saw this coming, as there is an option on the character select screen to change the layout to Team Sonic Racing's instead.
  • The boats don't drift like they do in Sonic & All-Stars Racing: Transformed, instead doing a charge jump when holding the drift button. This has caused many players to try and drift on the boat while making a tight corner, only to go off course and/or run into a wall instead.
  • If the player connects a Nintendo controller to the PC version, instead of using the bottom face button to accelerate, it will automatically switch to the A button on the controller.
• Demo Bonus: The demo released for all platforms allows you to carry your progress to the full game except your Time Trial scores, which won't be entered into the leaderboards nor certain user settings.
• Demographic-Dissonant Crossover: The guests include the kid-oriented SpongeBob SquarePants and more general-audiences oriented Steve and Hatsune Miku being able to officially race against M-rated characters Ichiban and Joker.^note In Japan, where the deals are actually made, Joker's games vary from being rated B and C, which are more like lower and higher end Teen ratings
• Demoted to Extra: After being playable as part of the group of Chao in Team Sonic Racing, Omochao and the Dark Chao are demoted to items this time around, while the normal and Hero Chao only appear in the background of certain tracks as spectators.
• Design-It-Yourself Equipment: Vehicles are customizable in this entry, rather than characters being restricted to one vehicle or board like in past racing titles. Each vehicle has their own unique set of parameters like speed, acceleration, and handling, and parts are swappable between the machines of the class the player chooses at the start of the process, meaning car parts cannot be used on Extreme Gears or vice versa. The player can also adorn their vehicles with various decals on the front or rear and customize their vehicle's colors.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • The CrossWorld in the middle of the track is selected by the lead racer, but if two racers are extremely neck and neck and choose differing paths or the lead drives straight down the middle, the Travel Rings ahead will merge and pick a choice randomly.
  • When you begin to enter a visible CrossWorld (i.e. not the random track option), the music changes to build up to the world you're about to enter. This build up is included for every song that's playable in the Jukebox, including music from the main tracks, music from previous Sonic games, and music from entirely different franchises like Hatsune Miku's album.
  • Rivals have unique dialogue for being tied in score at the end of a Grand Prix (which thankfully still counts as a win for the player).
  • For Season Pass content, if there's anything that isn't available or hasn't been purchased, the Crossover Grand Prix selected will become a proxy Grand Prix that uses one or two of the other tracks from the other cups in place of the unpurchased/unavailable courses. A trophy in this case will only be awarded if all three crossover tracks have been raced on consecutively in one Grand Prix, which the game makes sure to tell players before the Grand Prix begins.
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: Playing as Hatsune Miku adds her voice harmonizing along to certain background tracks, such as the character select screen and race results screen.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • Extreme Gear have a higher skill floor than any other type of vehicle. They have a slow base speed, and can easily be brought to a screeching halt from enemy contact and items. However, they are also the most agile and maneuverable of any vehicle type, and benefit most from chaining together boosts from drifts, tricks, items and boost panels, reaching ridiculously high speeds in the hands of a skilled player.
  • "Technical Drift" is a 2-slot gadget that grants the user sped up drift charge across all levels, but makes drifting more slippery, as if they were racing on sand or ice. This forces the user to adapt to the different racing conditions, but being able to overcome the harder drifting physics essentially frees up gadget slots otherwise taken by the single level "Quick Charge" gadgets.
  • "Ultimate Charge" is a 2-slot gadget that grants a fourth level to the Drift Charge gauge and, whenever the player manages to fill and activate a Level 4 Drift, gives Invincibility for the duration of the boost. Successfully making use of this requires mastery of drifting, but if it can be pulled off consistently it makes the user nearly untouchable, especially if this is being used to cover up the durability issues of Extreme Gear.
• The Dinnermobile:
  • Courtesy of the SpongeBob SquarePants DLC, one of the driveable machines is the Patty Wagon, which is basically a burger-shaped car.
  • AiAi's vehicle, the Banana Cruiser, is shaped like a bunch of bananas, which are his Trademark Favorite Food.
• Distinction Without a Difference: While Miku is both considered DLC and one of the bonus characters, she also released at the exact same time as the game did, meaning she might as well be considered part of the starting roster.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: Hatsune Miku's inclusion comes with five songs on the game's soundtrack that were composed exclusively as part of cross-promotion for CrossWorlds, and she even performs an acapella version of the game's theme song when she wins a race.
• Double Entendre: If Rouge is picked as Sonic's rival, she'll warn him not to get distracted and keep his eyes on the road, to which he retorts that he handles the "curves" like an expert. One must wonder which curves Sonic was talking about.
• Double-Meaning Title: Its title, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, refers to both the Sonic characters racing across different dimensions via ring portal, as well as the game featuring non-Sonic characters racing against or alongside them, crossing over from their worlds.
• Double Standard: If Charmy is pitted against Tails as a rival racer, Charmy will flat-out use this phrase about the two being Kids Driving Cars, especially since Tails doesn't say something like that to Cream nor Sage.
  Tails: Wait! They're letting you drive by yourself? You're too young for that! Stop before you get hurt!
  Charmy: You're not that much older than me! That's double-dipping! No, double standards! I'll show you!
• Double Unlock: To unlock a complete machine, you have to shell out Donpa Tickets for all three of its components before it gets added to your roster.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: Going too fast like using a boost at the best/worst time or in Super Sonic speed can make the course' gimmicks and traversal devices work too well and make you eat a sign or wall that you wouldn't normally have issue with otherwise.
• Down to the Last Play: In Race Park and Festival Mode, it's possible for a team that scored horribly during the race placements and landed in 3rd place (provided the point gap between 1st and 3rd isn't too great) to suddenly shoot to 1st place due to winning the main rule's +10 bonus points. Accomplishing this in-game is a Challenge/achievement.
  Turn the Tables: Win in a group match by using a race bonus.
• The Dreaded: Omega is the most feared racer on the track, though not for his racing skill. Most of the cast are worried that the Killer Robot with the hypercompetitive side making Implied Death Threats will attack them with lethal force in order to win.
• Drives Like Crazy: Discussed with Charmy and Zazz from their rival interactions with other characters. Charmy is a hyperactive kid who just wants to have fun but is not too interested in rules, unlike other youngsters like Tails, Cream, and Sage, all who are mature enough, at least, to follow them. Meanwhile, Zazz is a childish psychopath who loves wanton destruction, which leaves almost everyone but Zavok more than a little concerned.
• Dualvertisement:
  • Miku's inclusion as part of the monthly character releases coincides with a Sonic-themed set of songs, Project ONSOKU, with all five songs appearing in the game itself as part of the in-game music selection as well as releasing as conventional Hatsune Miku song releases.
  • Pac-Man's inclusion as part of the Season Pass coincides with Pac-Man World 2 Re-PAC getting a DLC pack featuring Sonic and a playable Green Hill Zone from Sonic Generations. Not-so coincidentally, both games release a day apart (though their DLC releases later).
• Dub-Induced Plot Hole: Silver and Espio's rival interactions reference an established friendship, something that may come as a surprise to Japanese fans, who never got the game they teamed up in.

• Early-Bird Cameo: NiGHTS features on the back of the game's physical release, despite their inclusion being revealed post-launch.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: As part of the advertising, the official social media released a series of shorts called "Crosstalk", which has characters talking about some of the characters. The first one, focusing on Sonic and Shadow, focuses on the characters less as individuals and more on their rivalry, as well as more on the gameplay of the game. It also doesn't feature either character's Image Song in the background.
• Easy-Mode Mockery: Having "Assisted Steering" on will prevent you from taking most shortcut routes and collecting certain Red Rings, as you need to drive off the main track (like onto shortcut routes) to collect the Red Rings there, which the game even warns you about in the Loading Tips.
• Egopolis: Played for Laughs with the "Eggman Expo" track, which is a gigantic mechanical Floating Island that's shaped like Eggman's logo and head that's basically a massive convention center showcasing all of his creations akin to a theme park and the banners at the beginning proudly advertising his tech as "evil".
• Elite Tweak: The Gadget system allows for some impressive and unique synergies to be created, like using the gadgets that gives small boosts upon ring collection with ones that increase ring draw distance and boost pads giving rings on a character and machine that specializes in boosting in the first place.
• Enemy Mine: Attempted several times by Eggman, Zavok, Rouge and even Storm as they attempt to strike deals with other racers to help them focus on a mutual enemy, but it's turned down every time.
• Everyone's Baby Sister: The game's rival interactions emphasizes that the heroic characters all have this view of Cream. Even the members of Team Dark, who have rougher personalities compared to the other heroes, show some care towards her.
• Evolving Title Screen: The game uses a title screen that is similar to the game's box art at first. After the player unlocks Super Sonic and the secret credits play, the title screen will change to a different piece of art, along with adding the vocals of "Cross the Worlds" to the orchestral menu theme.
• Excuse Plot: Even more than Team Sonic Racing, as there's no mystery behind Dodon Pa's motives this time: Everyone's been invited to race to collect data for Dodon Pa himself, and that's what they'll do. Borders pretty much on No Plot? No Problem!
• Expy Coexistence: The Hidden World CrossWorld features enemies called the "Baku Baku", who are blatantly just fuzzy versions of Pac-Man. Pac-Man is a character available through the season pass, so he can show up in the same place as the Baku Baku. Even the music in the level is very Pac-man esque.
• Eyes Always Shut: Whisper is like this, in keeping with her depiction in the comics, where she's usually got her eyes closed to reflect her Introverted personality.
• Follow the Money: Some high-value rings and Red Star Rings are placed near shortcuts or places where you can cut corners. Some Red Star Rings are placed in prominent view of the main road of a track, signaling that there is a possible shortcut somewhere before them or that one will open up in the final lap.
• Forced Tutorial: The game forces you to complete the first Grand Prix before it allows you to go online or use any of the customization features, with that first Grand Prix having several tutorial pop-ups about the various race mechanics you'll encounter.
• Friendly Enemy: Defied by Sage in her rival interaction with Sonic, claiming that she would rather consider their relationship to be "antagonistic" due to the fact they're competing with each other.
• Furry Reminder:
  • When Blaze hits Big with an item she assures him he'll land on his feet. They're both cats.
  • A minor case in Vector's Rival intro with Big, where the former considers that just being paid in fish for finding Froggy would be a good idea for free food. It makes sense considering his Perpetual Poverty, but also because he's a carnivore.
• Gameplay Grading: Depending on how fast the player is, Time Trial results are graded with B, A, and S-Ranks.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: King Boom Boo wears Cool Shades in this game, presumably because he's Weakened by the Light and there are a large number of tracks that take place in broad daylight.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: While it might seem like individual character stats line up with how characters are in-story, there's a few stats that make it evident that this is not the case. For example, Cream and Big have a higher speed stat than Amy who is their team's Speed character otherwise.
• Gangplank Galleon: The Kraken Bay CrossWorld is a racetrack that takes place during a stormy night at sea, with the racers going through a shipwreck that is threatened by Boos throwing exploding barrels and a giant kraken.
• Gentle Giant Sauropod: The Dinosaur Jungle CrossWorld has a gigantic sauropod whose back acts as a road for the racers.
• The Ghost:
  • Vanilla doesn't appear in person, but dialogue from Cream's rival exchanges implies she's watching from the sidelines. In the Japanese script, she can also bring up Chocola when she races on Chao Park.
  • Trip can be mentioned by Amy on the Northstar Islands course.
  • Froggy is said to be left at home by Big, who explains that he (Froggy) gets motionsick while driving.
  • Maria is mentioned in Shadow’s exchange with Charmy, where he reminds Charmy he only tolerates him because of Maria's wish to protect people.
  • The other members of the Deadly Six are brought up between Zavok and Zazz. Zazz mentions Zomom in his rival interaction against Big.
  • Shahra can be mentioned by Sonic upon entering Dinosaur Jungle.
  • Metal Tails, Metal Amy, and Metal Knuckles are mentioned in their non-metal counterparts' rival dialogue against Metal Sonic.
  • In the Japanese script, if Blaze races on Coral Town, she wonders how Marine is doing.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: Series Big Bad, Dr. Eggman, his creation, Metal Sonic, one of the Egg Pawns, and his A.I. daughter, Sage, all participate in the races (and are playable), as well as the evil Zavok and Zazz. This is acknowledged in the rival interactions, with some of them wanting to get out of the vehicles and throw down with their enemies, while others simply settle for winning in the race. Justified as Dodon Pa's rules restrict and disable any weapons that aren't a part of his machines, which are designed to be non-lethal. Notably, this excludes Whisper's Variable Wispon, for some reason, since she can use a Hover Wisp as as part of her tricks, with her looking towards the player with a shushing motion, as if she knows she's bending the rules.
• Going Through the Motions: The NPCs built using the Avatars in the crowd reuse animations from Sonic Forces, particularly ones that have them cheering or clapping at the other racers. There are also animations that have them crossing their arms that is used occasionally, such as for when they have a camera in their hand, reused from Shadow's victory pose animation from the same game.
• The Goomba: The Egg Pawn. As a generic, unremarkable, mass-produced robot, its presence as a racer is strange and off-putting due to how laughable it otherwise is, with rival interactions showing how the cast suspects something more must be going on or that it's simply Eggman phoning it in. Humorously, it's implied to be the latter, as Eggman's own interaction with it implies he brought it along to simply fill up a spot on the roster, not unlike how he did so in Team Sonic Racing.
• Gotta Catch Them All:
  • Each of the racetracks have five red rings that can be collected to earn extra Dodon Pa tickets, with the first three granting a single ticket, a fourth getting two extra, and getting all five in a single race grants a total of 10 tickets. Collecting all five for the first time will award an additional 20 tickets (even over multiple playthroughs) on top.
  • There are several vehicle parts, decals, auras, and other cosmetics that can collected in the game.
• Graceful Loser: A few members of the cast are accepting of their defeats if beaten. In particular, Big and Cream will praise whoever won the race if they lose.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: Humorously implied to be the case with the playable Egg Pawn, who is implied to have been brought in by Eggman as a way to make himself look better by throwing the race whenever they're against each other. However, dialogue from Eggman and Omega implies that it's wound up developing a genuine competitive streak and intent to beat Eggman at his own game, and judging from Omega's reaction also developed a knack for trash talking.
  Egg Pawn: (Unintelligible beeping)
  Eggman: Do I have some kind of systemic bug in my code that renders my creations rebellious?! I'll crush you for your defiance!
  Omega: Worthless assembly line fodder— I WILL OBLITERATE YOOOU!
• Guest Fighter: In addition to a large cast of Sonic characters, the game also features crossover characters, who mostly come with their own cars or Extreme Gears.
  • The free update guest racers include Hatsune Miku of Vocaloid fame from Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA and Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage!, Ichiban Kasuga from the Like a Dragon series, Joker from Persona 5, NiGHTS from the titular NiGHTS into Dreams…, AiAi from the Super Monkey Ball series and Tangle & Whisper from the IDW comic books.
  • The paid Downloadable Content includes Steve, Alex, and a Creeper from Minecraft, SpongeBob and Patrick from SpongeBob SquarePants, Pac-Man and the four ghosts (Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde) from Pac-Man, Mega Man and Proto Man from Mega Man and select characters from the Avatar Legends and TMNT franchise, each with their own themed stages.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • While the stat specialties of each machine type are obvious, the game doesn't tell you that Handling machines have a higher top speed (on-par with most Speed machines) while drifting. Power machines, on the other hand, lose top speed during drifts. Every other machine maintains their usual top speed while drifting.
  • Vehicles in this game actually need to shift gears like real cars to reach top speed, more comparable to an arcade racer than a traditional kart one. Each vehicle type shifts gears at a different rate, and this is not reflected in their Acceleration stat. For example, Power shifts so quickly that they actually rival Acceleration vehicles in reaching top speed, despite Acceleration being one of their worst displayed stats, while Boost machines have very slow shift times, which is why they take a long time to recover from attacks.
  • The Omochao item has the ability to let you cross over rough terrain without much issue as if you were using a boost to carve through it, if you're collecting their dropped rings, which isn't stated in the game tips.
• Hated by All: Most characters can have a couple of pleasant interactions with one or two other racers at the very minimum, there are two exceptions however:
  • Zavok. Whether he's attempting to compliment someone, demean them, or join forces with them, he is met with derision and/or contempt. Even Zazz only treats Zavok with fear rather than actually giving him any form of respect.
  • Metal Sonic is constantly seen as either an annoyance or a disappointment by the heroes (barring a few showing fear), the Zeti, and the Babylon Rogues, while Eggman and Sage treat his determination to win the race as some sort of error to be fixed.
• Heist Clash: Rouge's rival dialogues with the Babylon Rogues reference an offscreen incident in which she stole a valuable relic while they were attempting to steal it.
• Helpful Mook: The Dark Chao forces everyone to re-roll their items (deployer included), which can inconvenience players banking specific items for certain segments. However, this frequently can end up helping players who have nothing, since they're just handed a free full item stock.
• Hoverboard: The announce trailer prominently features the Extreme Gear from the Riders games, used by both Sonic and Jet the Hawk, with Hatsune Miku, NiGHTS and Whisper from the post-launch characters also shown using one. Unlike the Riders games, Extreme Gear boards are usable by everyone in the roster this time around, which includes characters like Eggman, who only rode Extreme Bikes due to their size.
• Hypocrisy Callout: Tails, as Charmy's rival, tells Charmy that he is too young to race by himself. Charmy immediately calls out the Double Standard to Tails since he is another kid racer; albeit a couple of years older than him. There's also the fact that Cream is no older than them, and Sage, strictly speaking, is only one or two years old.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: It's pointed out a couple of times that Shadow and Sonic are incredibly fast and could outpace every machine in the race if they wanted to, but neither are going to as they find it better if they win without the natural advantages they have over the other characters. Likewise, it's pointed out other characters such as Charmy, Omega, Blaze, Silver, Zavok and Zazz could use other abilities to give them a significant advantage, but they refrain from doing so for one reason or the other^note As Dodon Pa's machines are specifically Zeti proof, it's impossible for Zavok and Zazz to manipulate them if they were ever tempted.
• Iconic Item: The Blue Star^note Although this game's version is visually based on its upgraded counterpart from the first Sonic Riders, the Blue Star II, one of Sonic's two signature Extreme Gears from the Sonic Riders series and one of the most recognizable Extreme Gears, is available in CrossWorlds as an early adopter bonus for SEGA Account users.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: There are four difficulty levels for the game's speed in Grand Prix, Time Trial, and Team Festival modes. From easiest to hardest, it's Normal Speed, High Speed, Sonic Speed, and Super Sonic Speed.
• Implied Death Threat:
  • If Charmy is pitted against Shadow as his rival, Shadow tells Charmy that Maria wanted him to protect everyone from harm, which "unfortunately" includes Charmy, suggesting that Maria is the only reason he hasn't killed Charmy already.
  • If Eggman is pitted against Omega as his rival, Eggman suggests to Omega that they bury the hatchet for the time being. Omega agrees... as long as the burial site is Eggman's head.
• In Name Only: Water Palace and Digital Circuit share the same name and theme as the stages from Sonic Rush and Shadow the Hedgehog respectively, but bare little resemblance otherwise. Internally, the courses are named "Atlantis" and "Virtual Circuit", implying they were not designed to be those stages, but the developers gave them their names as a reference. Eggman's remarks on Digital Circuit^note In English, he compares it to his EggNet, and in Japanese, he compares it to the Ancient's Cyber Space also implies that it is not the virtual world of his supercomputers.
• Inside a Computer System: Aspects of the game's presentation (like the machines having a digital effect when transforming and the road briefly becoming cybernetic when choosing a CrossWorld) as well as key interactions (namely between Tails and Eggman) imply that the characters are not actually going to previous locations, but instead simulations created by Dodon Pa's technology. It is explicitly compared to Cyberspace and even includes a simulation of that, as well as White Space, the world of the Arabian Nights, along with locations the cast has never even been to. This doesn't stop the characters from reacting to the places they're warping to as if they're actually being transported there, such as Amy wanting to stop and say hi to Trip when she races on the Northstar Islands, or Sonic exasperatedly shouting "C'mon, I fixed this!" when he races or enters White Space.
• Intelligible Unintelligible: Metal Sonic and Egg Pawn do not speak verbally. They instead use garbled sounds and almost everyone can understand them.
• Irony: SpongeBob SquarePants is a Handling-type character, which hilariously contrasts with him being a terrible driver without a boating license.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Shadow shows his usual dismissive attitude towards pretty much everyone in his rival exchanges, but he shows respect towards Omega, Knuckles, Blaze, and is supportive towards Cream to take the competition seriously. He will also ask the young rabbit if she's prepared for the fierce competition during his rival intro against Cream in a somewhat concerned tone.
• Kick the Dog: Played for Laughs with Zazz, who takes great pleasure in the other racers' suffering. In particular, when he hits Cream with an item, he excitedly shouts "Gonna cry?! GONNA CRY?!"
• Kids Driving Cars:
  • Among the Sonic cast, who are either teenagers or adults, relatively eight-year old Tails, six-year old Cream and Charmy, alongside the childlike (and technically even younger) A.I. Sage are playable, meaning that they can drive cars here. The amount of kids driving or racing on the track is lampshaded by Storm's rival interaction with Sage and Wave's rival interaction with Cream.
    Storm: What's with all the kids on the track!? I ain't here to babysit! Go play with your blocks or somethin'!
    Wave: What's with all the kids? I came here to race for real, not babysit!
  • Hatsune Miku's officially listed age is 16, and she races alongside the rest of the cast.
  • Joker from Persona 5 is a 16-17 year-old high-schooler, who in his home series, can drive a cat-shaped bus in the Cognitive World. In the real-world, he doesn't have a license. Regardless, he can race alongside the other characters just fine in his own car.
• Kraken and Leviathan: The Kraken Bay CrossWorld is a racetrack at sea that features a huge squid-like kraken monster as a major setpiece amidst a sunken pirate ship out at stormy seas.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Sage from Sonic Frontiers has a blue-and-white palette rather than her original Red and Black and Evil All Over palette. This palette is used to indicate when she feels "positive" emotions like love (a pivotal part of her character arc in that game), especially in regards to her father, Dr. Eggman, and would be something she permanently keeps in the Another Story scenario. Her original palette is available as an unlockable skin.
• Lethal Lava Land: One of the CrossWorlds players can race through is Magma Planet, taken from Galaxy Force: a volcanically-overactive planet with oceans of magma and dragons made of fire.
• Level Ate: Sweet Mountain, from Sonic Colors, is included as a CrossWorld track. Cookies, cupcakes, and frosting with sprinkles line the tracks, donuts hang tantalizingly over the track, and one stretch of the track has the players racing over a river of syrup. There's also a giant Sonic-themed donut with pointy ears for some reason.
  Charmy: Ooh, look at all the sweets! Yum yum yum!
• Level in Reverse: The Mirror Class Grand Prix requires the player to race on the exact same tracks as the other cups, just flipped horizontally.
• Limited Animation: The cast from Minecraft have the exact same jerky stiff animation from their home game where they barely move from a default standing position aside from sitting down, with Steve's trick animation is just him jumping straight upwards without moving his arms. Some emotes have them move more fluidly based on the emotes from the Bedrock edition, but are just as jerky without bendable elbows or knees.
• Limited Loadout: The gadget plates are formatted in a 3x2 grid, with a Normal Plate only having the first two slots open. You have to race a bit to unlock higher-grade plates, with the Master Plate having all six slots opened up. Due to the grid format and the inability to rotate the 2-slot gadgets, you can fit six 1-slot gadgets, but only up to two 2-slot gadgets (the two remaining slots can only be filled with 1-slot gadgets), or two 3-slot gadgets.
• Locomotive Level: One of the CrossWorld tracks is Steampunk City, a massive railroad network with many steam trains, including a gigantic one that crushes players with its cowcatchers.
• Long Song, Short Scene:
  • Due to the second lap of normal races being a Cross World, the Lap 1-2 version of each track theme likely won't have time for a full loop unless you're in Time Trials or intentionally drive slowly.
  • When playing a CrossWorld track in Time Trial mode, you'll begin in a unique computer simulation lobby, as the tracks themselves don't have starting lines. Though you'll only spend a few seconds here, its music is over a minute long. They're also the only place you can hear the Lap 3 version of every CrossWorld song, and some like Cyberspace (a medley of other Cyberspace songs from Frontiers besides "Flowing") are radically different from their Lap 1-2 versions.
• Magikarp Power: The Super Slow Starter gadget gives +20 to all stats during Lap 3. It takes up 3 gadget grid slots, which means you're essentially playing the first two laps with half a grid, but it can enable a wild comeback or help solidify an early lead.
• The Mall: One of the playable stages is Colorful Mall, which takes place in a giant shopping mall filled with stores and balloons based on the Wisps.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: The Extreme Gear vehicles act fundamentally differently from the traditional karts, where their main focus is charging up Drift Boosts and can reach very high speeds, but getting hit will slow you down dramatically.^note This was a modification done after the beta, where the Extreme Gears were overpowered due to their boost synergy.
• Menacing Museum: Wonder Museum is a typical museum... during the daytime. In the night, the Boos make the exhibits come alive, serving as additional obstacles for the racers during their final lap.
• Money Sink:
  • Obtaining everything for vehicle customization will end up being this, especially in the case of the horns and aura effects, which are the most expensive items you can get for vehicle customization (costing 500 and 2000 tickets each, respectively). The decals for each track and crossworld also count because you need to shell out 200 tickets for each of them.
  • The "Friendships" menu is entirely this, in that you can gift the base roster characters tickets to earn character specific customization items like titles and decals and is the only way to obtain the A.I. Racer skins. To give an idea about how much tickets this system requires you spend, maxing out a character's friendship (which is also a Special Challenge) requires you to give them 50,000 tickets. You'll need 23 times that amount if you intend to do this for everyone.
• Mood Whiplash: The Secret Cup starts with the gritty realistic Kronos Island, then the tone shifts on the next course taking place on the far more cheery and cartoony Northstar Islands, which especially sticks out compared to the last course White Space, which takes place in an Eldritch Location.
• Multi-Slot Character: Regular Sonic and Sonic the Werehog (Sonic's werewolf-esque transformation from Sonic Unleashed) are available as playable racers. Super Sonic is also an unlockable character.
• The Multiverse: As outlined in the game description, racers will be warping through Travel Rings entering different dimensions. Among these are White Space and the world of Arabian Nights. Additionally, characters from Sonic Prime (which features Alternate Selves of the main Sonic cast who hail from different variations of the prime universe) will be playable when buying the Digital Deluxe Edition. Lastly, it's also confirmed that other Sega and third-party characters will be playable as well.
• Musical Nod:
  • Ichiban's reveal in the Summer Game Fest Trailer has "Asphodelos" play, the Scenario Battle Theme Music from Yakuza: Like a Dragon. In the game itself, it's used as his idle music when hovering over his character in the character select screen, overriding the normal Character Select theme. His victory theme is a remix of the jingle that plays when a new character joins the party.
  • Joker's reveal in the Summer Game Fest Trailer is accompanied by "Take Over", the Advantage Battle Theme Music from Persona 5 Royal. It is also used as his victory theme when he wins a Grand Prix.
  • This game's version of Roulette Road rearranges the Casino Park theme from Sonic Heroes once more as it did in Team Sonic Racing, but also incorporates the main melody of "Bingo Party", the Team Sonic Racing arrangement of Bingo Highway.
  • Camellia's "Project ONSOKU" song "Denkoh-Sekka" incorporates the iconic opening sting from "Live and Learn", as well as the melody of "Super Sonic Racing" leading into the bridge.
  • While an original track for the game, Eggman Expo's music is a remix of "Theme of Dr. Eggman" from Sonic Adventure.
  • NiGHTS has a full set of themes from both NiGHTS into Dreams… and Nights Journey Into Dreams that will play at random and have different variations based on how well they placed at the end of the race. These include "Dreams, Dreams", "Growing Wings", and "Message From Nightopia", with "Dreams, Dreams" getting lyrics if the player does exceptionally well. NiGHTS' reveal in the New Characters trailer also uses "Message From Nightopia".
  • Each of the characters' Grand Prix victory themes are remixes based off an Image Song, level theme, or leitmotif from a previous game.
    • Sonic's victory theme is based on "It Doesn't Matter (ver. 2)", from Sonic Adventure 2. Super Sonic also uses this victory theme.
    • Tails' victory theme is based on "Believe In Myself (ver. 2)", from Sonic Adventure 2.
    • Knuckles' victory theme is a shortened version of Unknown from M.E." from Sonic Adventure.
    • Amy's victory theme is based on "My Sweet Passion" from Sonic Adventure.
    • Cream's victory theme is based on the Tails & Cream demo theme from Sonic Advance 2.
    • Big's victory theme is based on "Lazy Days (Livin' in Paradise)" from Sonic Adventure.
    • Vector's victory theme is loosely based in "Walkin" from Knuckles' Chaotix.
    • Espio's victory theme is loosely based on Mushroom Hill's theme from Sonic the Fighters^note The stage where Espio is fought in that game's arcade mode.
    • Charmy's victory theme is loosely based on "Speed of Sound" from Knuckles' Chaotix.
    • Blaze's victory theme is based on "Vela-Nova" from Sonic Rush.
    • Silver's victory theme is a shortened version of "Dreams of an Absolution" from Sonic the Hedgehog (2006).
    • Shadow's victory theme is a drum-and-bass heavy remix of "All Hail Shadow" from Shadow the Hedgehog.
    • Rouge's victory theme is a shortened version of "Fly In The Freedom" from Sonic Adventure 2.
    • Omega's victory theme is an electronic remix of "This Machine" from Sonic Heroes.
    • Jet's victory theme is a shortened version of "Catch Me If You Can" from Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity.
    • Wave's victory theme is a loose fusion of two cutscene themes: "Legend of Babylonians" from Sonic Riders and "Full Speed Ahead" from Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity, though primarily the former.
    • Storm's victory theme is loosely based on the song "Eggman Again!", used during a cutscene in Sonic Riders.
    • Dr. Eggman and the Egg Pawn have snippets based on Eggman's personal "E.G.G.M.A.N." theme from Sonic Adventure 2.
    • Metal Sonic's victory theme is based on Stardust Speedway's Bad Future theme, from Sonic the Hedgehog CD (specifically the JP/EU variant).
    • Sage's victory theme is a medley suite of songs from Sonic Frontiers, incorporating "I'm Here", the Kronos Island theme, and a bit of "Maybe If (Amy Mvt.)".
    • Zazz's victory theme is based on the Deadly Six's theme from Sonic Lost World. Zavok's personal orchestral variant from the same game is used as the basis for his victory theme.
    • Sonic the Werehog's victory theme is a short snippet of the night battle theme from Sonic Unleashed.
    • Ichiban's victory theme is "ICHIBAN NO NAKAMA NI NATTA!" from Yakuza: Like a Dragon.
    • Joker's victory theme is a short snippet of "Take Over", the advantage battle theme from Persona 5 Royal.
    • Hatsune Miku's victory theme features her singing a short snippet of "Cross The Worlds", the main theme of Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds itself.
    • Nine, not having an associated theme from Sonic Prime, has a Dark Reprise of "Believe in Myself". Fitting, as Nine is a more aggressive and ruthless Evil Doppelgänger and Alternate Self to the mainline version of Tails from the games.
    • Knuckles the Dread uses an orchestral remix of "Unknown from M.E." for his victory theme, given Dread's status as an Alternate Self to Knuckles.
    • Rusty Rose does not utilize any part of "My Sweet Passion" in her victory theme, despite being an Alternate Self to Amy. Instead, it is loosely based on Collision Chaos' theme from Sonic the Hedgehog CD (specifically the JP/EU variant).
    • The Minecraft characters' victory theme is a short remix of "Infinite Amethyst" from their home game's Caves & Cliffs update.
    • NiGHTS' victory theme is a remixed snippet of "Peaceful Moment" from NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams.
    • The victory theme for the Pac-Man characters is a short remix of "Pac-Man's Park" from Pac-Mania, and by proxy, the Coffee Break theme from the original game.
  • After finishing a race, the celebratory jingle will match the stage, whether it be a remix or the original song:
    • Finishing a race on Sand Road, any of the Adventure era stages (eg. Metal Harbor or Ocean View), or the Northstar Islands course, will play an orchestral re-arrangement of the Stage Clear theme from various Sonic games that has been used from Sonic the Hedgehog 3 onwards.
    • Finishing a race on the Mystic Jungle track will play a brief arrangement of "Taking It Back" — the stage clear music from Sonic Forces.
    • Being based on Sonic Unleashed stages, finishing a race on Apotos or Market Street will play the stage clear jingle from that game.
    • Finishing a race on Kronos Island ends with a brief guitar sting of "I'm Here", the main theme of Sonic Frontiers.
    • Since the White Space racetrack is inspired by the Shadow Generations version, finishing a race on that course will play the stage clear jingle from that game.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: Jet the Hawk dismisses Amy Rose as "the fourth wheel" to Team Sonic and sarcastically asks if they left her behind again in their rival interaction. Amy doesn't take kindly to that one bit.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The lead racer picks what the next part of the track will be, bringing to mind the "Race of AGES" track from Sonic & All-Stars Racing: Transformed, where its main gimmick was the lead racer picking whether the current lap's second half takes place on the water or in the air. The Race of AGES gimmick was itself likely based on OutRun, which is entirely focused around going to different locations based on forks in the road.
  • In the announce trailer, there is an advertisement for a car air freshener based on Sonic's 16-bit sprite, a reference to the Early-Bird Cameo of Sonic in Rad Mobile.
  • One of Sonic's in-game lines when passing another racer is "You're too slow!", which is what he says when doing his side-taunt in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.^note Later Super Smash Bros. games change it to "Sonic Speed!"
  • One of Sonic's lines for winning the Grand Prix (shared with Super Sonic) is "Up, over, and gone!", while another is "I'll play with you some other time!", his win quote when defeating a boss in Sonic Adventure. His line for beating a Time Trial ghost is "Fastest thing alive!"
  • The giant rings in the game function as portals to other worlds, taking a page out of the cinematic universe by Paramount.
  • The stadium fans wave giant flags to support the playable characters, similar to audience members in the Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games series. Several of these flags are taken directly from that game.
  • The "Organ" horn sound is the danger sound from Sonic Spinball but in higher fidelity. The default horn sound is the first note of the Sega chant from the same game.
  • The "Come Race On Our Level" advertisement is a throwback to the 1993 "Blast Processing" commercial, with the comparison between the Sega Genesis and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System replaced by Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds and not-so-subtle allusions to Mario Kart World.
  • In Tails' rival dialogue towards Metal Sonic, he'll tell him that, with all of his previous experiences, "[he] already knows what [he's] gonna do. Strange, isn't it?"
  • Espio's dialogue as a rival against Zazz notes that the former has defeated the latter once before. His dialogue against Cream also has him mention that Vanilla's baking is delicious, which references an episode of Sonic X where she brings the Chaotix a bunch of sweets.
  • Amy and Zavok reference Espio's penchant for poetry, the former asking for an impromptu poem while the latter calls him a Warrior Poet. This refers to Espio's role as the Poet in the (loosely canon) The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog visual novel. While Espio's joke in the novel was that he was terrible at making poems while role-playing, he manages to come up with a reasonably manageable haiku when asked by Amy.
    Amy: This is going to be intense! How about an inspirational poem before we get going?
    Espio: Oh, um... If you insist.
    A line of racers—
    two fated to be rivals;
    only one can win.
  • Shadow's boost animation is taken from his original Sonic Channel artwork, while his trick animations are based on character art from Adventure 2 and 06.
  • Omega will sometimes refer to the Egg Pawn as a "Worthless consumer model", which is what he called his enemies when getting a large kill combo in Heroes.
  • Pac-Man's vehicle, the PAC-MAN Mobile, is based on the car he drives in Ridge Racer V.
  • During the Pac-Village & Maze course, all traditional rings on the course (discounting the 5, 10 and 100 rings) are swapped out for Pac-Man's dots, which make the "waka-waka" sound effect when picked up.
  • The PAC-MAN festival has two 765 Donpa Ticket prizes and three individual 70, 60 and 50 ticket prizes, referencing the Goroawase Number "na-mu-ko".
  • The reveal trailer for Mega Man and Proto Man features several references to their home series:
    • Both Mega Man and Proto Man have their Mega/Proto Busters, with Proto Man being shown firing his when using an item, as a nod to the Special Weapons from the classic games.
    • Their Collab Track takes place in Wily Castle, with the eponymous Mad Scientist harassing the racers in his Wily Machine 2 by firing at them with arced shots from his boss fight, all while in the "Hologram Room" from the second game's ending which even has a field of stars from the Alien Wily fight and when the illusion breaks following the Alien's defeat. The Yellow Devil also appears with its design from Mega Man 1 and its presence in Wily Castle brings its depiction from Super Smash Bros. to mind.
    • Proto Man is seen riding the Blue Star Extreme Gear, as a nod to the Classic games having similar hoverboards like Item-2 and Rush Jet, alongside the name "Blue Star" being a reference to Proto Man's original Japanese name of "Blues".
    • Mega Man's vehicle is the Rush Roadstar, which was his ride in Mega Man: Battle & Chase.
    • After the official Sonic social media accounts posted the reveal trailer, the official Mega Man social media accounts commented that their worlds were colliding, then saying that sounded familiar.
  • One of Joker's tricks has him perform the same pose as his official artwork from Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, as well as a pose from art from his original game.
  • When Frenzy CrossWorld events begin, the announcer excitedly says "Frenzy!" or "Frenzy Time!" in the exact same tone as when Purple Frenzy is used in the console version of Sonic Colors.
  • For the Minecraft DLC, whereas Steve holds his pickaxe in his right hand, Alex holds hers in her left; this is a double reference to the ability to switch handedness in the game proper, and to Alex semi-consistently being shown as left-handed in promotional art.
  • One of the rewards from Ichiban's Festival is the Comeback Kit, referencing "rising up from rock bottom", a major theme from Yakuza: Like a Dragon.
  • Ichiban's victory pose when winning a Grand Prix ends on the same kabuki pose he did at the end of his video to his mother Akane in Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth.
  • On Bikini Bottom's third lap, a geyser will erupt under Squidward's house and send it flying into the sky. It eventually ends up in the volcano (plugging it up) near the end of the track, something that you can see if you wait there for a moment. Both of these events are references to the Sponge-Cano! episode.
  • The Patty Wagon has a more elongated "submarine sandwich" appearance than the classic round shape, which heavily resembles the upgraded version from Sandy's upgrades in The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run. The noticeable middle seam (to give it compatibility with other machine parts) also resembles the extra section added to it in the movie.
  • NiGHTS' outfit and key pose is based on their appearance in NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams. They also replace all the spot effects during races with similar spot effects from the original NiGHTS into Dreams….
  • AiAi's outfit is based on his appearance in Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble.
  • One of Tangle's Air Trick poses is a recreation of her pose on the Retraux cover of Issue #26 by Aaron Hammerstrom, where she leaps through the air.
  • During his rival interaction with Silver, Eggman says "It's just a race! To see who's the fastest!", referencing an infamously memetic mistranslation from the English version of Sonic Riders.
• Nerf: Unlike in Sonic & All-Stars Racing: Transformed, stunts cannot be performed in flight mode. Flight drifting is also stiffer.
• Nitro Boost: The White Wisps provide racers with a quick burst of speed, which allows them to cross terrain like grass or mud without slowing down. White Wisps come in a triple variant, with the third "King Wisp" providing the biggest and most powerful boost. Using the Wisp Boost is one method of avoiding items that spawn above the player (ie. the Weight, Warp Ring, Slime Bucket, and Dark Chao items).
• Noob Bridge: When a players starts the game and tries going round corners, they may be surprised at how many times they bump into railings or fall off the track, and so equip gadgets to help not lose rings when doing so. Players will just assume that the cornering is just like that, or that the games' handling sucks. In actuality, what you're supposed to do is decelerate as you take a corner, then start accelerating again when you begin to leave it. This allows for a tighter steering circle, which largely avoids bumping into the edges of the track. Managing this skill is pertinent in time trials, especially where items cannot make up for lost ground so easily in online play.
• No-Damage Run: The "Safe Driver" challenge requires the player to finish a Time Trial without touching a wall once.
• Non-Indicative Name: Zavok and Zazz's team in Race Park is called "Team Deadly Six", despite the other four members of the Deadly Six being absent.
• Noodle Incident: Rouge the Bat has earned the ire of both Team Chaotix and the Babylon Rogues for different past transgressions.
  • Rouge outbid the Chaotix Detective Agency for some lucrative government contract jobs.
  • According to the Rogues' Crosstalk video covering her, there were at least three rare artifacts Rouge stole before the Rogues could, one of which they had been preparing to swipe for weeks. These are also alluded to in their Rival interactions.
• Nostalgia Level:
  • Tracks return from the previous Sonic Racing games, though they and other tracks directly based on existing locations have new layouts. Eggman Expo, though, plays the trope straight by being a museum of Eggman's most iconic machines and bases.
  • The three tracks in the Secret Cup are distinguished by being based on the three most recent mainline Sonic games at the time of CrossWorlds' release, and have much more of a "lifted straight from their original game" appearance than the other tracks based on existing locations.
• Not So Above It All: Downplayed for Cream. While her using items in races is the norm for everyone, there are her Rival interactions that reveal a minimum level of mischief to someone like her.
  • She doesn't engage in Trash Talk like the others due to her age and politeness. That said, responding to the likes of the mean-spirited Eggman, Zazz, and Zavok that she will defeat them in a race and make some of them "apologize" is the closest thing to a "taunt" from her.
  • It's implied that she is aware that Vector has feelings for her mother Vanilla and teases that he may get on her good side if he allows Cream to win.
• Nothing Personal:
  • When Shadow hits Omega with an item, there's a chance that Shadow will quip that it's "nothing personal" between the two, with Omega even commending Shadow for a good hit.
  • Several characters have nothing but kind words for Cream, with Sonic downplaying his usual snark against her. Only the truly obnoxious and/or villainous characters — like Jet, Zavok, Zazz, and Eggman — are shown going out of their way to antagonize her. Downplayed for Shadow, who politely but firmly tells her in a rival interaction to treat the race as a competition, instead of just for fun.
    Cream: Please don't be mean to me out there, Mr. Shadow!
    Shadow: Are you here to compete or not? Just do your best, nothing less.

• OOC Is Serious Business: If playing as Zavok or Zazz, and one of them is your rival, Zazz shows genuine fear and nervousness towards his leader, in contrast to his usual wild and barbaric behaviour that he displays towards the other characters.
• Obvious Rule Patch:
  • The Warp Ring allows you to jump towards the next racer in line and even squash them if they're unprepared. Because it lets you close large gaps rapidly, it won't spawn in item boxes unless you have the respective Gadget. Likely due to its high potential for glitches, the Warp Ring Gadget is unavailable online.
  • The Spin Drift Gadget lets you spin during a drift, but it stops if you do a Counter Drift so you're not constantly a threat during curved areas of the track, forcing you to trigger your current drift boost to start another spin.
  • You're able to customise your machine with decals, but none of them are allowed to stack on top of each other or overlap their areas to discourage players from drawing obscene images with decals.
• Original Generation: Sixteen of the racetracks in the game^Namely...E-Stadium, Rainbow Garden, Colorful Mall, Urban Canyon, Wonder Museum, Donpa Factory, Chao Park, Coral Town, Crystal Mine, Aqua Forest, Pumpkin Mansion, Steampunk City, Blizzard Valley, Golden Temple, Magma Planet, Eggman Expo are original track settings not based on any existing Sonic or SEGA stages, though some are original ideas based on existing concepts (such as Pumpkin Mansion being a combination of Pumpkin Hill and Mystic Mansion, and Magma Planet being reminiscent of Ashutar from Galaxy Force).
• Palette Swap: While players can unlock a set of skins for the characters, they're treated as separate characters by the game, as races finished with the original character and the alternate skin of said character are tracked separately and the original character can show up in offline races while you're using the alternate skin.
  • All characters in the base roster have an unlockable AI Racer skin (which are used by the Rival teams in the Race Park mode) that are rewarded for reaching the fourth level of a character’s friendship^note Reaching this level requires 3000 tickets.
  • In addition to her AI Racer skin, Sage also has her "Dark Sage" appearance from Sonic Frontiers as an unlockable skin after clearing all base-game cups.
• Pet the Dog: When Shadow is hit by an item by either Cream or Amy, he'll compliment them on how they managed to score a hit on him, considering he still has elements of his Competition Freak characterization interacting with other racers.
• Player Nudge: Sometimes in Time Trials if the recommended path line is turned on, it will direct you to weird and often risky places that are actually shortcuts which are often places you didn't know about, allowing you to practice taking them when racing in the other modes.
• Portal Endpoint Resemblance: When the next CrossWorld is up for selection, the one that isn't the Random choice changes the floor to resemble that of its destination, such as the Roulette Road choice turning the ground into a giant roulette table pattern.
• Pragmatic Adaptation:
  • As this game is primarily a kart racer, Extreme Gear doesn't control quite like it does in Sonic Riders, and there is no air/gravity gauge to maintain. But, much like the Riders games, the Gear is still dependent on boosts and tricks for optimal play.
  • The multi-terrain aspect of Transformed included every character's vehicle having unique forms for land, sea and air with some having intricate transformation sequences. Due to this game's modular approach with vehicles however, the sea and air forms are represented by equipment replacing only the wheels, like the air terrain applying winged jet engines to the vehicles.
• Prehistoria: The game has the return of Dinosaur Jungle from Sonic and the Secret Rings, which features Sonic and friends racing around jungle-like areas that are littered with dinosaurs.
• Prepare to Die:
  • While Omega doesn't outright threaten him, his pre-race Trash Talk against Sonic implies this.
    Omega: I will win, and then inform your next of kin.
  • Omega goes one further against Vector, saying that he is preparing his Taxidermy Protocols for the crocodile.
  • Omega's comment after getting struck by Blaze is "Initiating regicide!"
  • Omega agrees to bury the hatchet with Eggman... as long as the burial site is Eggman's head.
  • Storm tells Espio that he can stay invisible forever, because Storm's gonna turn him into a ghost.
• Product Placement: A selection of real-world brand decals are available to use in-game, including AirAsia, Alienware, ASUS, Beyblade X, Curry House CoCo Ichibanya, Demaecan, Don Quijote, HI-CHEW, Ichiran Ramen, Kura Sushi, Lenovo, MSI, Puma, RAZER, Samsung, and V-JUMP.
• Promoted to Playable:
  • An Egg Pawn is now part of the playable cast this time around, as they were previously NPC racers in the original Team Sonic Racing.
  • This is the first time that Sage is playable in any Sonic game since her debut in Sonic Frontiers, unless one counts the True Final Boss of the base game, where the player controls SUPREME while it's being piloted by Sage.
  • This is the first time Vector's fellow Chaotix, Espio and Charmy, have been in a major racing spin-off. With Cream's addition, this is the first time in years that all the original Sonic Heroes teams are playable on a console game.
  • Zazz is now a selectable player for the first time since his debut in Lost World, outside his playable appearances in the Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games series.
• Pun:
  • If the player plays as Sonic and hits Big (who likes to fish) with a weapon, Sonic will say "Here's a whopper, Big."
  • If the player plays as Zazz and hits Vector (who's a detective) with a weapon, Zazz will tell him to get a clue.
• Purposefully Overpowered: Super Sonic, who can be raced after beating your rival in each of the first seven Grand Prix, and unlocked by beating every rival character. He has max stats in every category and isn't affected by items; as a result, he can only be played in the Grand Prix mode.
• Racing Ghost: The player's personal best in a Time Trial's course will appear as a ghost on the track for the player to race against after finishing it.
• Rainbow Pimp Gear: While experimenting with custom machines, it's possible to end up with a completely ridiculous-looking machine even before applying a new paint job to it, with the DLC machines seen in gameplay previews being stand-out examples such as a car that's awkwardly glued to half of a minecart which sticks out because of its voxel pixel style or even a semi-realistic car that clearly clashes with the opposing half from the Patty Wagon. Both also being Handling-type machines allow you to mix the two, which looks as goofy as you'd imagine.
• Redemption Rejection: Done in Sage's interactions with Blaze and Silver.
  • Blaze seeing Eggman have a daughter whom he genuinely loves gives her hope that Eggman will change, only for Sage to rebuke that her father is fine the way he is before threatening to conquer Blaze's dimension.
  • Silver assures that there is no Eggman Empire in his time period and offers Sage a chance to become a force for good. Sage deducts that this only means she needs to work harder to ensure her father's vision.
• Retraux: The teaser trailers for the Minecraft and Pac-Man Season Pass content make strong use of these, with the Minecraft trailer being made within the original game and the Pac-Man trailer incorporating the original game's elements seamlessly, up to and including the titular Kill Screen that triggers when Pac-Man collides with the ring in the maze.
• Rewards Pass: The Festivals are available for a limited time, with each player being able to participate in special team-based races to earn points within this period. Every 100 points, player can earn all sorts of decals, Gadget parts, and Donpa tickets by playing this special mode, requiring 1000 points to obtain all of the unique cosmetics. After 1000 points, the player will earn extra tickets per 100 points.
• The Rival: In the Grand Prix mode, players can choose a rival. This rival will become a more difficult racer and share unique interactions with the racer you choose, and the difficulty will go up by one level if the player chooses. Defeating every rival is necessary to unlock Super Sonic. The Race Park mode has a similar mechanic with the Rival Race teams, which are A.I. copies of the main cast created by Dodon Pa that provide extra multiplayer-focused challenges.
• Robo-Speak: If Omega is pitted against Sonic as a rival racer, Sonic will mock his stilted robotic speech pattern with this line:
  Omega: Sonic the Hedgehog. Fastest thing alive, after Shadow. Best Chaos Control user, after Shadow.
  Sonic: [robotically like Omega] Omega. Loudmouthed robot. Finishes today's race, after me!
• Rocket Punch: One item used to attack other racers, which looks like an actual missile with a Red Boxing Glove (or green) on the end. The green variants usually bounce across the track unless you lock onto a racer ahead, which turns it into a homing projectile, while the red ones home in by default.
• Running Gag:
  • Storm mistakes all of the hedgehog characters for Sonic, and mistakes Sonic himself for Shadow.
  • Many rivals against Metal Sonic complain that Eggman always uses him and never any of their own metal copies. Espio complains that he doesn't even have a metal copy.
• Screw Destiny: A semi-villainous example. A rival interaction between Sage and Silver has Silver state that the Eggman Empire doesn't exist in his future and thus advises Sage to give up on world domination and focus on more constructive goals. Sage replies that she'll work harder to override Silver's future.
• Sdrawkcab Speech: The achievement/challenge for winning all of the Grand Prix on Mirror Class is "malS dnarG" — spelling "Grand Slam" in reverse.
• Second Place Is for Losers: Unlike most other kart racing games, there is no silver or bronze trophies for placing second or third in a Grand Prix, and the player won't get a trophy mark on the grand prix they finished.
• Secret Character: Super Sonic is a character that is only unlocked once every rival is defeated.
• Series Continuity Error: In one of his rival interactions with Blaze, Vector inquires about her team spirit for "Team Blaze" from the last time they raced. However, Team Sonic Racing actually had the team called Team Vector in that very game.
• Shadow Achievement: The "Special" category of Challenges isn't unlocked until the base challenges are completed, and they do not count towards the Platinum achievement/trophy lists on any platform. They have steep accomplishments that reward a special title, including Data Overlord (Win against Rival Teams at the Race Park 240 times) or Reach for the Red Stars (Obtain all Red Star Rings on all courses).
• Sherlock Scan: If Omega is chosen as a rival, his interactions always start with him analyzing the player character's traits and occupation/hobby to determine if they are deemed a serious threat, not threatening at all, or somewhere in between. Accuracy may vary based on the player character's response.
• Ship Tease:
  • One of the dialogues between Sonic and Amy while racing the track includes both of them flirting each other. Also, in one of their rival interactions, Sonic will tell Amy that he can’t play favorites, and Amy will reply that she was going to say the same thing to him.
    Amy: Got your attention, Sonic?
    Sonic: You've got my attention now, Amy!
  • Blaze's rival interactions with Sonic are full of this. Blaze tells Sonic that he "always brings out the best in her" while Sonic tells her that nobody gets him "fired up" quite like her. One of Sonic's item dialogue with Blaze even has him say "All's fair, right Blaze?" , a reference to the famous phrase, "All's Fair In Love And War".
  • Several of Vector's Rival interactions, especially with Cream, mention his crush on Vanilla, with Cream herself teasingly encouraging it. This is the first game to explicitly acknowledge his crush after it was ported from Sonic X into the IDW comics.
• Shout-Out:
  • Wonder Museum is a track that takes place in a museum. In the first lap, it takes place during the day, but on the third lap, it turns to night and the artifacts come to life.
  • Sand Road has a poster for a Chao in Space spin-off called The Dark Chao, which is based on the promotional material for The Mandalorian.
  • The unlockable title for performing ten 1800° midair tricks is "It's Tricky!", referencing both the Run–D.M.C. song and another racing game with crazy midair tricks that used the song as its theme, SSX Tricky.
  • In Knuckles' rival interaction with Eggman, the latter will say:
    "How about I let you in on a secret? If you drive backwards at the start, you'll find a shortcut!"
  • Vector will comment on Pumpkin Mansion, saying "A haunted house! Split up, gang, and look for clues!"
  • When Knuckles is pitted against Storm as his rival, Knuckles is ready to face him again, hoping he isn't rusty. Storm retorts by saying he'll "rock you like a hurricane."
  • In Big's rival interaction with Storm, the cat will compliment the albatross' gloves, saying "They look sturdy but easy to wear."
  • In the Colorful Mall track, there are banners for a toy shop that use a similar font to Toy Story.
  • The narrator for the Ghost Ticklers" Pumpkin Mansion video claims that the video's cameraman became the track's 68th ghost, and adds that "there's always room for one more."
  • On the day Jurassic World Rebirth was released, the official Sonic Twitter made a promotional poster parodying the movie's logo, with the game's Tyrannosaurus chasing after Shadow's car. For bonus points, it references the film's T. rex river attack scene which was incorporated from the original book.
• Shown Their Work:
  • An exhibit sign at the Wonder Museum course shows the two major clades of dinosaurs, Saurischia and Ornithischia, with birds being theropods and thus saurischian dinosaurs.
  • In Sage's rival interaction with Big, she mentions that she has data on 32,000 species of fish, which is approximately the same amount of bony fish species in the real world.
  • Some of Steve and Alex's animations are based on typical player behaviour in multiplayer where the crouch and "punch the air" actions are used to visually communicate with other players.
• Single Player Gauntlet: The offline Grand Prix mode has the player participating in four races in a fixed format and order, earning points depending on the place they finished at: the first three races are on different tracks and the final race is a three lap race that goes through the previous three courses. Getting first place in the final race also gives 18 points instead of the standard 15 on the other three tracks.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World:
  • The Holoska CrossWorld is based on Sonic Unleashed's own ice level, Cool Edge, which is located in the northern polar ice caps and is said to be the coldest place on Earth.
  • The Blizzard Valley track is a snowy mountain mining site occupied by Eggman. Not only are marked areas a lot more slippery than usual, it has off road sections filled with snow that will slow the racer's momentum if they drive over it.
• Songs in the Key of Panic: When the player reaches the final lap, the race track's theme will change accordingly, having either a variation that is played at a much faster tempo, or the song itself is changed to reflect the high energy situation of the last stretch. All racetracks, including the CrossWorlds, have a "Third Lap" variant that can be played and/or set in the Jukebox.
• Sore Loser:
  • A good chunk of the racers do not take losing well, and some won't even accept tying with the player in their post-first/final race rival interaction in the Grand Prix.
    Omega: File graceful_loss.exe not found.
    Zazz: That ain't fair! This is stupid!
    Jet: I can't believe I lost to that... that...!
  • Many racers will refuse to clap in celebration if they come in second or third place in the post-Grand Prix victory screen; Sage, Omega, and Zavok simply stand there, Zazz sulks in the corner while shooting the victor the evil eye, Shadow, Eggman and Metal Sonic stand with their arms crossed in dejection, etc.
  • If Sonic ends up in 10th place or lower, one of the lines he'll say is "If we were racing on foot..." while sulking, implying that he thinks he'd have won the race easily if he just didn't use any car or Extreme Gear at all.
• Spin Attack: The Spin Drift gadget is a 2-slot gadget that when equipped causes your racer to spin around whenever you drift, letting you deal damage to anyone who touches you while the spin is in effect.
• Spin to Deflect Stuff: The Tornado is a Defense-type item that not only works as a small area attack, but is primarily used to defend yourself against most projectiles and things thrown at you via a Warp Ring like Slime.
• Squashed Flat: When a racer is hit with the Weight item, run over by a racer using the Monster Truck item, hit by a Giant Rocket Punch, or crushed by another racer using the Warp Ring item, the racer goes completely flat for a few seconds.
• Stay in the Kitchen: In the Japanese version of Amy's rival interaction with Jet, Jet tells Amy to give up, go home, and bake cakes.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute:
  • The Monster Truck item is basically a Super Mode for all racers that changes the background music while active, which brings to mind the iconic and absent "All-Star" attacks from previous Racing titles.^note Likely removed for the same reason as DLC characters are unvoiced, namely working out All-Star attacks for the collaborative characters.
  • Metal Harbor partially takes place onboard a few aircraft carriers and has a flight zone, making it very reminiscent of Carrier Zone from Sonic & All-Stars Racing: Transformed, sans a water route.
• Take That!:
  • Following the announcement of Mario Kart World, the official Sonic Twitter account couldn't resist throwing a jab at the former's lack of crossplay.^note Nintendo first party titles have never appeared on other consoles, only Nintendo systems or mobile, and there's only a handful of titles that have crossplay between the console and mobile versions.
  • Sega would take a second stab at Mario Kart World through the Come Race on Our Level commercial, referencing to the company's Sega Genesis "Blast Processing" commercial, which also threw shade at Super Mario Kart. The commercial shows the not-Mario Kart World allegory^note Notably, the original ad showed Kart uncensored; this coverup was likely done this time due to Nintendo being very litigious, especially in terms to what they consider "copyright", and the pixelated footage is clearly a copyright-friendly mockup based on the general cartoony series aesthetic as a beat-up camper van while the narrator unenthusiastically mentions "going out on the open road", referencing the Wide-Open Sandbox aspect of World (that would ultimately prove to be divisive) and there's a cow in the background as an obvious reference to the memetic playable Cow.
• Temporary Online Content: Occasionally, there will be a limited-time festival running, which has players compete in special online races to earn points towards exclusive rewards like decals, titles, and even gadgets, usually on the weekend after a character's release.
• Terrifying Tyrannosaur: Several Tyrannosaurus act as obstacles for the racers in Dinosaur Jungle. The opening movie has one stomping on Eggman. The skeletons in Wonder Museum will come to life at night and act the same way as when they were alive.
• Theme Music Power-Up: Activating the Monster Truck item changes the background music to an arrangement of the title theme "Cross the Worlds".
• Thememobile: Several personal machines are directly themed after its owner's appearance, such as Hatsune Miku's Diva Macchina being themed and shaped like her traditional "gray shirt, blue tie and skirt" appearance. The front end is based around her large Girlish Pigtails and the back end having a similar pattern to her skirt with the blue trim alongside the underside even featuring her iconic blue tie, which is clearly visible in her victory screen. It also carries her musical theme with what appears to be active pulsating speakers on the front and an audio visual screen on the back.
• This Cannot Be!: If Zavok is the rival during a Grand Prix, Zavok will say "Impossible!" if the player passes him during the race.
• This Is a Competition:
  • In his Rival interactions, Shadow dismisses anyone who isn't taking the race seriously, essentially asking his opponents to race seriously since he's giving it all, and any niceties is a waste of time on the track.
  • Almost everyone as Omega's rival has to remind him of this. Specifically, this is just a friendly kart race, not a death match.
  • The Babylon Rogues are dead serious about this being a competition, and take issue with the likes of younger participants being on the track (such as Cream, Sage, Tails and Charmy) or those who may violate the sanctity of the race (Zazz) and often dismiss any attempts at friendliness.
• Time Trial: Like other games in the genre, the player can race solo on the many different racetracks in-game. Unlike in normal races, all three laps are of the same course, no Travel Rings spawning during the second lap. Players are also given three item boxes on the course to use, with two containing a standard boost while the third contains a Triple Boost. CrossWorlds are also available as a racetrack in this mode, with its own third lap music variant. A Racing Ghost based on the player's personal best time trial time will be created upon finishing it.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • In Sonic Riders games, Eggman and Vector could only ride bike Extreme Gears. In this game, they can ride hoverboards just as well.
  • Cream has always been a Nice Girl who only had polite things to say to her competition, even if they were dismissive towards her. That rarely changes here, but she'll fully stand her ground if they start to talk bad about her.
• Transforming Vehicle: Cars are once again able to transform, as in Sonic & All-Stars Racing: Transformed, with boat and plane forms as suited for the terrain. New to this installment is a Monster Truck power-up, which causes the user's car to turn into a monster truck that can flatten racers it runs over. Notably, Extreme Gears do perfectly fine on water, effectively turning into surfboards until you reach land again, while flight sections adds a pair of engines to allow them to fly.
• Trash Talk: The Rivals dialogue usually has two racers smack talking each other, though of course they vary from person to person. Some like Cream and Amy try to keep to niceties, others like Sonic and Vector are snarky but generally light hearted, and folks like Shadow and Zazz don't hold back with their declarations.
• Turned Against Their Masters: Lampshaded by Dr. Eggman in his rival dialogue with Egg Pawn. As, apparently, yet another robot to defy Eggman's orders, the doctor has to wonder if there's some kind of bug in his computer coding that's causing this repeated trend.
• Under the Sea: The underwater city of Bikini Bottom from SpongeBob SquarePants is a DLC racetrack. Naturally, none of the non-native cast has any problems racing underwater.
• Uniformity Exception: Downplayed and Lampshaded. There's nothing particularly special about the Egg Pawn that is playable in the game, it doesn't have any distinctive qualities in its appearance, and the fact that Eggman brought it as a competitor is questioned by multiple members of the cast in their Rival Interactions. Some outright dismiss it for The Goomba it is, while some characters suspect it's a very special Egg Pawn. It's implied in Eggman's pre-race rival dialogue that the Egg Pawn is there for the doctor to get an easy victory, though commands it to make it look like it's trying and to not make it too challenging for him to win.
  Sage: Why would Father pad out the roster with one of these generic models? Perhaps I am missing a detail? You. Race me.
• Unlockable Content:
  • The Secret Grand Prix cannot be accessed in the game until the player has beaten all of the other Grands Prix on any speed difficulty with a gold trophy. Mirror mode and the ability for regular courses to become selectable CrossWorlds during the second lap is also unlocked this way.
  • Super Sonic is only unlocked after the player defeats all 23 rival racers of the base roster on any difficulty.
  • Super Sonic Speed is only made available for all modes should the player win all 7 Grands Prix (discounting the Secret and Crossover Grands Prix) on Sonic Speed.
  • Players can unlock more vehicles by either purchasing their full parts with tickets or competing and winning against Rival teams in Race Park mode.
  • The Friendships system provides the method of unlocking the AI Racer skins for the base 23 playable characters, each unlocked by reaching Level 4 friendship with a particular character.
  • Various songs from past Sonic games (as far back as Sonic Adventure and Sonic the Hedgehog CD) can be unlocked by getting 3 or 6 A ranks on courses in Time Attack.
• Unrealistic Black Hole: The Violet Void item returns from Team Sonic Racing, functioning mostly the same as it did in that game: it creates a black hole around its user that sucks up item boxes, rings, and item attacks, but it won't harm anyone else nearby.
• Variable Mix: Every song in the game, including the CrossWorlds and the songs found only in the Jukebox, have a "Final Lap" remix with stadium chants. When you're 1000m from the finish line, the remix gains applause as well. Finally, in the Grand Prix Final Round, the tracks for the first two laps use a "Final Lap" version that doesn't have the chants or applause.
• Video Game Perversity Potential: A minor case where because each custom machine is named after the first and second halves used to make them, a popular combination between fans is the "Hot Lady" ([Hot] Hatchback + Little [Lady])
• Visual Pun: Guest Fighter Ichiban's car is shaped "Like a Dragon" (the title of the series he comes from).
• The Voiceless: With the exception of Hatsune Miku (who also does not have any rival interactions with the Sonic cast), none of the guest DLC characters have voices. Neither do the Werehog, Nine, Dread, and Rusty.
• Warrior Poet: Discussed and Downplayed. Zavok calls Espio one of these in one of their rival interactions, though is disappointed to be facing him, and Amy asks Espio to give them an impromptu poem. Espio himself doesn't incorporate poetry into his methods of racing on the track.
• Waxing Lyrical:
  • One of Knuckle's victory quotes after winning a Grand Prix is him saying "That’s why I’m the best of ‘em!", referencing his Image Song from Sonic Adventure, "Unknown from M.E.". ^*"Here I come, rougher than the rest of 'em! The best of 'em!"
  • One of Amy's victory quotes after winning a Grand Prix is her saying "Follow me inside! Outside! Through the stratosphere!", referencing Team Rose's Image Song from Sonic Heroes, "Follow Me".
  • One of Rouge's victory quotes after winning a Grand Prix is her saying "I won the happy life of a dream", a paraphrase of lyrics from Rouge's Image Song from Sonic Adventure 2, "Fly in the Freedom". ^*"Nobody taught me to hint / Win the happy life of a dream"
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Upon seeing Metal Sonic, Zazz is delighted at the thought of "a robot Sonic" as that means he can enjoy destroying him as often as Dr. Eggman is willing to rebuild him.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Discussed in a couple of scenarios:
  • Omega can't outright shoot or get his revenge on Eggman during this game because there are safety parameters that prevent him from trying to attack him during the face. It doesn't stop him from threatening the man, however.
  • Despite their power over technology, the Zeti's powers have no effect on Dodon Pa's cars, meaning they can't manipulate the race in their favor. As for Metal Sonic, Sage, the Egg Pawn and Omega, Zavok and Zazz both imply that they'd simply use their own strength to destroy their opponents, or ally with them.
• Willfully Weak:
  • Discussed in Big's rival speech with Sonic. Big points out Sonic would be much faster on foot, but Sonic prefers to keep it fair.
  • Big's lowest-place quote is "You're welcome, everyone!", implying he intentionally went easy on them.
• A Winner Is You: The game has virtually nothing in the way of story, and the ending from clearing the first seven grand prix circuits is similarly minimalist: a screen congratulating you for winning the Grand Prix circuits, followed by a credits sequence in which Orbot and Cubot watch a slideshow of screenshots from the game.
• Wintry Auroral Sky: The Holoska CrossWorld is a Slippy-Slidey Ice World where racers can see an aurora borealis in the sky that is also illuminated by glowing whales.
• Wolverine Publicity:
  • The Cinematic Teaser Trailer stars Shadow the Hedgehog rather than Sonic himself, with Shadow's spotlight in the trailer tying into Sega's Year of Shadow event that was taking place in 2024.
  • While the trio of Team Sonic, Big Bad of the series Dr. Eggman, and Breakout Character rival Shadow, are obvious, the game's marketing also puts focus on Jet the Hawk, a character who hasn't been important to the series since 2010. His appearance on the primary key artwork and banners, as well as gaining an official bio before anyone else, makes him quite prominent for a character who is only given focus in a specific sub-series, albeit thematically fitting given he's the original and most iconic rival of the prominent Sonic racing games. For "Crosstalk", the Babylon Rogues as a whole were the focus of the second crosstalk before more staple characters of the series like Tails and Amy, and would also feature commentaries by Jet and Wave rather than Sonic and Tails afterwards for a few episodes.
  • Hatsune Miku and Joker are an example of this, in that Miku is a Virtual Celebrity music star with hundreds of songs she's performed and a fanbase of millions, while Joker is the face of his own franchise at the moment, compared to Ichiban, who is from a game a large amount of the game's target audience likely haven't played. In particular, Miku is unlocked from the start in every single copy, is promoted alongside the Sonic cast in various tie-in songs, and is the first one to have a Festival event, following Joker's own Festival during the pre-release Open Network Test.
  • The Kid's Choice Awards trailer prominently features SpongeBob SquarePants, since he's a globally recognized character, and, at least in Japan, barely anyone even cares about the other two franchises mentioned.
  • The Gamescom trailer announcing the Pac-Man and Sonic The Hedgehog collaboration was 90% about Pac-Man, who is older and more well-known by far than Sonic himself, being one of the first arcade games ever released.
  • CrossWorlds: The Animation is heavily focused on Shadow, even though it released a year after his dedicated year.
  • The only characters from the IDW comics announced for the initial DLC plans are Tangle & Whisper, who are universally the most beloved IDW original characters in the comics, and also the most requested even before someone noticed Whisper's Extreme Gear.
• Wrong Context Magic: Jet and Cream have a few misconceptions on how Silver's psychokinesis and time-traveling works; in the Crosstalk video about him, Jet believes Silver is cheating because his psychic abilities allow him to know who will win, and believes his telekinesis is making his vehicle fly, something Wave dismisses outright. Cream also asks Silver to not use his time travel to skip ahead in the race, despite his time travel not being something he can call on command.
• You All Look Familiar: The NPCs that fill out the racetrack's pit crew or crowd along the sidelines reuse the same few models built from Forces' Avatar customization system, with the most recurring ones being those that wear a tracksuit and helmet and two characters who a hat cheering. There's also an NPC that appears with a camera, crossing their arms.
• Your Size May Vary: As seen in the Kids' Choice Awards trailer, Squidward is shown as a giant towering over the racers, including SpongeBob and Patrick whom he is normally a head taller than in canon. Plankton also is visibly taller then the racers despite ranging from roughly the size of a golf ball to microscopic in canon, and that's not even considering how gigantic the Humongous Mecha he's piloting is.