| “ | R.I.P. | „ | |
| ― Pendrive |
Sonic_The_Hedgehog.exe, better known amongst fans as Pendrive, is the main antagonist of the spanish creepypasta El Pendrive Azul, created and written by Sinuois roughly around March 20th, 2011. Being a computer program who lies on what's seemingly a modified copy of Sonic the Hedgehog (1991), he is responsible for the tragedies that Gonzalo and others deal with in the creepypasta itself. Despite the story on him, much of the entity itself, and his goals, and whether or not it is even an entity at all in the first place are left unknown, being more of an enigma. He notably predates the original Sonic.exe, leading towards later claims of plagiarism when the pasta was rediscovered in late 2023 by the EXE community. He is currently set up for a remake being made of his story.
The Enigma
Much of the knowledge around Pendrive is ambiguous in many aspects, from not being even sure if the entity is supernatural, or just entirely technological in nature. What is known, is that Pendrive comes from a game that is stored on a blue pendrive which is the central item in the creepypasta of the same name, and being the implied cause of the death of Gonzalo's friend, and is the one responsible for the horrors that Gonzalo experienced afterward in the events of the pasta itself. What Pendrive is can be summed up as an enigma, but one thing that everyone can be sure of is that its actions lean towards being malicious due to fact that he has victimized both known viewers of the game itself.
The Tale
The following is a summarization of the original pasta of El Pendrive Azul. There is a remake being planned which is to overhaul the entire story, so this will eventually be outdated. If you would like to see this version of the story, click here.
The tale of Pendrive begins with the main protagonist, Gonzalo Guzmán Caamaño, being visited by his best friend. Something is off, considering how he seems terrified, is shaking, and was visibly pale. In his state he pushed a blue pendrive into Gonzalo's hand, and urged him to take it, the clear intensity of his state shocking Gonzalo, as his friend would break down, before his cries turned into screams, as he began to seize, quickly dying moments later to the horror, greatly disturbing Gonzalo, as memories of that night afterwards was left ambigious. The story picks up after his friend's funeral, with Gonzalo going to his room, holding in tears as he's going through the events of the night in his head, before he would remember about the one little thing that had happened that night, the pendrive.
After finding the pendrive, he plugged it into his PC to figure out what was on it, finding a file named something in a garbled text, and an exe file that didn't work, not until he renamed it to Sonic_The_Hedgehog.exe. Opening it revealed that it was a surprising sight, it was a Sonic game! Feeling curious, Gonzalo began to start to play the game, the first level being Act 1 of Green Hill Zone, which was entirely accurate, and seemed to be like how it was on the Genesis, except, after making a mistake and getting damaged, Gonzalo felt unnerved seeing red squares spread from Sonic's body as oppossed to the expected rings, unsettling him, but he kept going on despite a sense of unease. He completes the level, and that's when the last bit of normalcy for the game leaves, and the rest of what he sees is just disturbing.
Green Hill Act 2, or what was garbled text in the same manner as the file from before, started immediately off, the background had changed, into a slowly shifting mass that resembled the color of blood, filling Gonzalo with dread. To his horror, when he tried to leave the game nothing seemed to work, he tried all of the keys that he could, nothing was able to do it, growing in desperation before the screen began to distort, a warning that was followed by a flash flickering on the screen, causing Gonzalo paralysis, forcing him to watch the screen as female screams began to come from his speakers, the screen changing to a close up of Sonic's face, eyes crying blood, before text saying "R.I.P" started rapidly filling the screen, the screams getting louder, terrifying Gonzalo as he was unable to move, as the screen was filled with the text.
After a moment the text faded back to black, the screaming fading away as well, as in his paralysis, Gonzalo realized that he was going to end up like his deceased friend if he didn't do something. This fear was accentuated as a large countdown filled up the screen, a large 10 filling the now black screen, as Gonzalo struggled in his paralysis to break free. Ten... nine... eight... the countdown continued as his struggles seemed to slowly work, as he gained control of his body, dropping to the ground just as the countdown reached two, a bloodcurdling scream scaring him to pull his PC's power cord off, shutting the computer down, before he pulled the pendrive out, which Gonzalo promptly smashed into pieces, stopping whatever had happened, as he slowly calmed down, still shaking from the experience. It is revealed that he wasn't sure if he wanted to talk about it for some time, but there was one thing that he was sure about; he didn't want to know what was waiting at the end of that countdown.
Trivia
- The true nature of the file in the story is intentionally left ambiguous for everyone to make their own interpretations of.
- Sinuois, the creator of the story, did this because he believes true horror is found in ambiguity, the unknown.
- He is perfectly content with any interpretations of his story, regardless of how outlandish or downright nonsensical they might be.
- He's also perfectly fine with people tying Pendrive to Sonic.exe as well (fanart depicting them together or alternate takes tying their origins, or being shown alongside EXEs in general), as long as the authors are aware that El Pendrive Azul comes from an entirely separate background fully unrelated to Sonic.exe.[1]
- His favorite theory (regarding what the file truly is) is the one where it is described as a troll game created with the mere intention of pranking people and scaring them, which went too far. This theory has become the most popular interpretation, even getting to the point where people downright assume it is the full truth.
- However, it is worth noting that he has stated that no theory he has ever seen has ever lined up with his original vision for what the file truly is, completely deconfirming all assumptions for what the file truly is in canon.[1]
- Many say JC ripped off this pasta in order to create the Sonic.exe creepypasta, since this story predates it and both have a lot of similarities. However, this is false for a plethora of reasons.
- First, JC never said he knows Spanish, something he would totally let us know since he was quite known for being an egocentric person. Second, it was an obscure pasta even around the Spanish creepypasta community, so if JC didn't know Spanish it would've been completely impossible for him to even come across the story in the first place. Third, both pastas share similarities that really end at a surface level, since both pastas are quite different in structure. One is about an interdimensional entity that wants to trap his victims through a disk in order to take their souls and play for eternity, and the other is an unknown thing that might not even have any ties to the paranormal. Both pastas share things like the fact the protagonist’s friend is the one who hands in the game before dying, or the Sonic with bleeding eyes. But both of those things were already stablished tropes at the time, and don’t really amount to anything more than a coincidence.
- Many argue that both stories sharing a similar file name for their cursed games is unarguable proof of said plagiarism. However, we must take into account that the original Sonic.exe story was originally named Sonic.AVI, and that Creepypasta wiki mods forced JC to change the title of the story in order to not reclassify the story as a movie pasta.
- The game is described in the story as 8-bit. However, this was confirmed to be a mistake, since the game described resembles the 16-bit version of the game more, with a few differences like the presence of a colorful background in the title screen, or the multiple “rings” spilled when hit, which were both features the 8-bit game didn’t possess.[1][2]
- The story takes place in Chile, the same country its author was born in.
- It also takes place on the year it was written as well, 2011.
- A bit after the Youtube release of the story, there was also an official written transcription released on the site known as Taringa!, released in the 14th of July, 2011. Strangely enough, this upload has a few very minor differences in its script compared to the original release, which would lead to its current labeling as the 1.1 variant of the story. Due to the closure of Taringa!, it was believed to be lost media until an upload of the page to Youtube was found by the lead artist of the remake's team, leading to the realization that the seemingly edited variant of the story found in Creepypasto Wiki was the 1.1 variant of the story all along.
- The most notable difference found between versions is the addition of the protagonist's full name at the very start of the story. Aside from that, most changes only really consist of minor word changes.
- Sinuois, the original creator of the story, has begun work on a remake of this story alongside a team of talented artists. The story is complete and fully written, however, it won't be released just yet, as he wants to release it as a video accompanied with the art done by the team illustrating the story. A page done on the remake's canon is in the works, and will be published alongside the story when it comes out.
- Despite popular belief, the R.I.P screen which features the bloody Sonic and the countdown screen happen separately from each other.
- Sinuois has confirmed the Sonic present before the countdown isn't pixelart, but rather, a really detailed drawing shrouded in darkness. Sonic also lacked any expression in his face.[1]
- Whether the "red background" in the story means that the sky itself was red or the entire background was replaced with a completely red screen is unknown, due to the story's vague wording. When asked about it, Sinuois stated he forgot, so we won't ever truly know for certain.[1]
- Sinuois stated he was 14 when he wrote the story back in 2011. If that’s the case, he should be around 26 years old now. (As of late 2023.)
- Additional information from Sinuois back on October 12th, 2023 reveals that during Summer 2011 (which in the southern hemisphere is during the December-March period), during a chat with his friend, Sinuois offered for the friend to give him any theme, and Sinuois, who had been writing since he was 13 and was into Creepypastas such as Squidward's Suicide, would write a creepypasta all about it.[3]
- According to Sinuois, the story, which took about 2 hours to write, scared his older brother, 16, at the time, calling it "a little scary".[4]
- Pendrive was originally going to be featured in the Friday Night Funkin' mod, Sonic Legacy, in the song "Blue Drive", which was mistakingly called "Deferment" before the song's actual name got revealed. The song was scrapped because of Azuri (now named Itzil), the composer of the song, leaving the team.
- Pendrive's voice was stated to be soft, yet distorted. Similar to that of HAL 9000's from 2001, A Space Oddysey.
Gallery
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Interview done in private with the author.
- ↑ https://x.com/sinuois/status/1725973135965421954
- ↑ Source from conversation from EXE_Criticism and Sinuois. https://x.com/sinuois/status/1712665038928945152
- ↑ Ditto. https://x.com/sinuois/status/1712665223709052979