Stream of Consciousness #5 - Fridge Logic Edition

Fridge Logic is what occurs when there is a moment of logical inconsistency in the storyline of a movie you're watching, book you're reading, or game you're playing, and you don't notice it until well after it's all over - but once that thought comes up, you can't help but go, "Huh?"

Okay, so I was thinking about the ending of Sonic [3] and Knuckles (specifically, the ending that Sonic receives.)  As most Sonic fans should know, this involves Sonic and the Master Emerald plummeting through the atmosphere.  If the player has not collected all 7 Chaos Emeralds (or, alternatively, the Super Emeralds, for Sonic 3 and Knuckles,) the Master Emerald suddenly decelerates, leaving Sonic to continue his descent empty-handed; when he lands in the Tornado (piloted by Tails) and returns to Angel Island, he's got nothing to drop off, and the island plummets into the ocean over the course of the credits.  If he does have a complete set of 7 Emeralds, the Master Emerald stays with him and is caught by the Tornado along with Sonic himself, and Sonic and Tails leave the Master Emerald back in Knuckles's care before flying away; during the credits, Angel Island rises up into outer space for some reason.  (Um... what?)

Yet, I have to say that despite the outer-space issue, the good ending (the one where Sonic gets all the Emeralds) has to be the canonical one.  Why?  Because Sonic's plummeting into the Earth's atmosphere from orbit, which would logically lead to a hell of a friction burn.  There should have been nothing left of him but ash by the time Tails caught him.  Which leads me to believe that Sonic must have been protected during his descent by the Master Emerald.  Which was undergoing the very same friction burn at the time.  Logically, all of that strain very well might have been too much for it to take (yes, I know that this is the Master Emerald we're talking about, but there's still got to be some limit to how much energy it can give off in one go,) and the point where it leaves Sonic is... well, once it's offscreen, it either disintegrates, or it shatters from the strain and then the pieces disintegrate (or, alternatively, survive and wind up scattered across the bottom of the ocean.)  Hey, if Knuckles can shatter the thing, then so can the sheer friction of plummeting through most of the Earth's atmosphere.  If Sonic has the Chaos/Super Emeralds, however, he gets to be Super/Hyper for part of the descent, which means that the Master Emerald doesn't have to protect him quite as intensively, and once the Super/Hyper mode wears off, the Chaos/Super Emeralds are there to share Sonic-protecting duty with the Master Emerald, which means that its energy doesn't get depleted and it survives the trip long enough to land in the Tornado.  (Now, the question of how the Tornado - or Sonic and/or the Master Emerald, for that matter - isn't pulverized by the impact is a question for another day.)  Which means, basically, that if Sonic screws up, there's no more Master Emerald.  And I don't think that Knuckles would take that very well... *shudder*  Which means that the only reason the bad ending doesn't include a small red dot hurling itself over the edge of Angel Island is so that the player isn't traumatized.