Ever since the release of issue #4 of Legends of the Dark Knight Volume 2 in 2021, people have been drawing comparisons online between the design of the Riddler's Gotham Casino hideout and the casino area from Sonic Adventure's Station Square. And it's easy to see why.
Both the Sonic Adventure location and the Gotham lair share a ton of remarkable similarities including their placement on the street, the design of the Casino sign, and the presence of a monitor to the left of the entrance, which have all been pointed out repeatedly across Reddit threads, social media posts, and news articles.
The prevailing theory that emerged was that it may have been a possible joke referring to Jim Carrey's portrayal as The Riddler in Batman Forever and Dr. Robotnik in the live-action Sonic the Hedgehog films, but as far as we're aware no one has ever reached out to the artist to confirm whether this is true or not. So last February, we shot the artist Darick Robertson a message over email in the hopes of getting a reply.
Disappointingly, we received nothing in our inbox for almost an entire year. But then out of nowhere, in January 2024, an email from Robertson popped up on our phone, giving us the answers we sought.
Responding to our questions, Robertson claimed it was all just one great big coincidence, suggesting the design of the casino was entirely his own:
"No, the Casino was an original idea from my imagination. Any similarity is a coincidence."
Given the incredible similarities between the two designs, we're not entirely sure this will be enough to convince some members of the Sonic fanbase that they are unrelated.
Nevertheless, it's nice to see Robertson address the comparisons (seemingly) for the first time. We've since sent a couple of follow-ups to Robertson asking whether they've ever played Sonic Adventure as well as when he first became aware of the comparisons being drawn between the two locations. We'll update this article should we hear anything more from him.