In our play-through of the new game Mother Russia Bleeds we came across a couple of cameos from the Hotline Miami and Sonic the Hedgehog franchises.

Well, technically, one is a full blown honest-to-God cameo from the former franchise, while the other is a character that looks suspiciously like an iconic character from the Sonic games.

While we don’t consider cameos, in-jokes and references spoilers, boss appearances kind of are. If you do consider what a boss looks like a spoiler, especially in a game that can be finished in less than 5 hours, stop reading now.

The first cameo comes from “The Fans“, the main group of playable characters in Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number. In our review of Mother Russia Bleeds we compared these two games, so it’s not too surprising to see.

While fighting your way through Level#6: The City, you’ll see the group of vigilantes chilling out in the background of a street. They don’t really do anything and only silently watch you fight, but it was a strange experience seeing them there.

As both Hotline Miami games and Mother Russia Bleeds are published by Devolver Digital, we wouldn’t be surprised if the developers of the two games chatted about this inclusion. Regardless, it’s a nice touch you may miss while playing.

Less subtle is the boss of level 6 who is bears a stark similarity to Doctor Eggman /Robotnik from Sonic the Hedgehog.

Because this boss isn’t strictly named after the character, and we’re pretty sure that the devs of this game didn’t get the proper licensing to do include the genuine article in their game, this character just looks like Robotnik. But come on, that’s definitely Robotnik , he looks very much like Sonic’s nemesis.

From the bulbous body to the bald head and red jacket, this is a deadringer for the villain from Sonic. Oh, and, as a boss fight, he behaves just like Robotnick too. You’ll see in the pictures below that he’s piloting a complicated machine and, once you’ve defeated him, he’ll be ejected from it and land on the floor.