During the game's soft launch, dataminers discovered references to various obscure characters from throughout the franchise. While some of these characters would be added in subsequent updates (such as Bean the Dynamite from Sonic the Fighters and Doctor Fukurokov from Tails Adventure), there were also several listings for various characters from non-game Sonic releases that were either considered "off-limits", or are known to have contentious licensing issues. These included characters such as Sally Acorn from the 1993 animated series "Sonic the Hedgehog", Nicole the Holo-Lynx from the Sonic comic book series produced by Archie Comics, and Cosmo from the anime series "Sonic X". Whether or not these were meant to be temporary placeholder listings is unknown, and the developers reacted on social media with general uncertainty to if they were allowed to use them, but they would all go unused regardless due to the game's cancellation.