"Two of these genes, desert hedgehog and Indian hedgehog, were named for species of hedgehogs, while sonic hedgehog was named after the video game character Son

"Two of these genes, desert hedgehog and Indian hedgehog, were named for species of hedgehogs, while sonic hedgehog was named after the video game character Sonic the Hedgehog.[15][16] The gene was named by Robert Riddle, a postdoctoral fellow at the Tabin Lab, after his wife Betsy Wilder came home with a magazine containing an advert for the game Sonic the Hedgehog.[17][18][19] In the zebrafish, two of the three vertebrate hh genes are duplicated: SHH a[20] and SHH b[21] (formerly described as tiggywinkle hedgehog, named for Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, a character from Beatrix Potter's books for children) and ihha and ihhb[22] (formerly described as echidna hedgehog, named for the spiny anteater and not for the character Knuckles the Echidna in the Sonic franchise)."