Miles Prower (AKA, Tails from the Sonic games) consistently ranks as one of the most annoying video game characters of all time. Though we suspect that’s mainly to do with the fact he constantly taunts the player with his invulnerability. However, if you dig into Tails’ back-story it’s horribly depressing.
In his Youth Tails was bullied, in fact the nickname “Tails” was first used by bullies to make fun of the fact that Miles had, well, two tails. The only person the young fox looked up to was Sonic, sadly though Sonic was simply too fast to keep up with. So Tails dedicated his life to emulating his idol, spending every waking moment learning how to run so he could eventually catch up to Sonic and help him in any way he could.
So what happened when he finally caught up to Sonic and not only proved that he could run just as fast as he could, but also freaking fly, giving him an entire axis of movement Sonic could only dream of? He was made into the side-kick and was forced to keep the offensive nickname people used to bully him when he was a child. Damn, Sonic, that’s cold. It’s almost like you were jealous of the kid who could do everything you could and more and crippled his self-esteem to keep the status quo. Douche.
Oh and Miles Prower is a play on the phrase “Miles Per Hour”. Which we’d have figured out 10 years earlier if anyone called Tails his actual real name.
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Except Tails’ backstory is never focused on. Or rather, the depressing part isn’t. Even in Sonic Adventure, they just show him being sad and then running after Sonic, they never show him being bullied or abandoned, because that’d make him too sympathetic! His backstory can be depressing, but it’s not fully explained and dwelled on to get the proper emotional impact in the games, so, Shadow still has the most depressing backstory in practice.
I remember that Sonic TV show called “Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog,” (yeah, the REALLY trippy one.) and, Tails’s backstory was kinda different. It goes like: Tails is an abandoned child, who couldn’t find a home, but when he meets Sonic, he admits he hates his name as “Miles”, so Sonic lets him join and he starts to call him “Tails.”