Sonic was designed to be recognized. He's a blue anthropomorphic hedgehog who works in a primarily visual medium.

While Shakespeare excelled with the written word, I doubt he could crouch down and rotate his body more than a few dozen RPM without getting dizzy and needing a lie down or whatever British people do when they get overwhelmed.

Time to make a really bangin' Shakespeare video game.

This might come as a shock to you, but I don't know what Michelangelo looks like and I don't think I would recognize him. I can however name all the most prolific furry artists of our time.

We have a handful of portraits of one, and hours of animated material of the other. Who do you think gets looked at more? If that survey was actually conducted that was a huge waste of time.

Holy shit, people are more aware of things relevant to the time they live in and the things they actively take part in than things from literally hundreds of years ago that are difficult to establish as relevant in a modern society because it has no tangible relevance to the current era?! THE CHILDREN ARE DAMNED!

Seriously, is there anything more to these lines of thought than a fear of being outdated?

Realistically, is that a bad thing? Who cares what he looked like. Plenty of people don’t recognize people like Socrates, DaVinci, etc. does it matter if people can recognize them?

As there are exactly zero images of Shakespeare that can be considered genuine, it would be a miracle if anyone would recognize him. Some people might recognize the one or other portrait with debatable relation to him, that's it.

This is "Mario is more recognisable than Mickey Mouse" all over again lol

Maybe they should put Shakespeare's remains in an fMRI machine to find out.

I remember when the same was said about millenials except the comparison was between Ronald Mcdonald and Jesus/George Washington.

Y'all in here doing your best to defend the shitty education you got.

Why?

Well, Shakespeare is known for his writing. Do you know every face of every writer you like? Sonic is a character, not a writer. Weird comparison.

“The younger generation recognizes 100+ Pokémon but almost no domestic bird. “

Yeah, most birds don’t spout their own name constantly though. Imagine a dove yelling “Dove! Dove!” while shitting on your head.

In addition to all the other comments on how this is just Gen A hating on Gen A+1, it's pretty easy to miss possibly the biggest reason Sonic stands out: he's fucking BLUE

Is this purely a visual comparison of appearance or also work like “to be or not to be”

Or did they simply ask. “Do you know who x is” and take peoples word for it if they say yes.

If you dug up shakespeare, I wouldn't recognize him either and I'm a millennial.