Head writer for Sonic SatAM, Ben Hurst, shared the original backstory for Nicole’s past, to be revealed in Season Three before the show was unceremoniously cancelled:
Nicole was a little girl who was best friends with Princess Sally, bonding over their shared intelligence as Nicole was something of a child genius. Robotnik then lured Nicole into his lab, which he uses to shove her brain into a satellite, killing her body in the process. Robotnik put her brain into the handheld computer and threatened to destroy her mind if she disobeys his orders, demonstrating by temporarily killing her, something that she experiences and recognizes. Says Hurst, “Robotnik pushes another button and there’s a hollow sound. A moment later, in a hollow voice, Nicole whispers, ‘I died. I was gone.’” Throughout this pitch, Hurst mentions that the last thing Nicole says before she’s uploaded to the computer is “No, I, uh…” which is horrifyingly repeated every time her computer is shut off.
However, in the satellite, Nicole gained “unsuspected awareness and abilities.” She realized that he had combined her ability to reason and emote with “the light speed processing power of a super computer,” giving her “the powers of a God,” including the ability to telepathically control anyone on Mobius. She then realized that she would be used to eliminate the planet’s free will, and after analyzing billions of future scenarios, each with the same dystopian end, she decided the only way to stop this future was to alter herself.
She first wiped Robotnik’s mind to forget what he had done to her, and made him give her computer to the King to give to Sally. Once she belonged to Sally, she sealed away the human and emotional parts of her psyche, as well as the knowledge of her ultimate control over the planet. Through this somewhat-death, Nicole “ensure[d] that the world will continue to have free will, if they are willing to fight for it.” The only thing able to bring her back would be a threat to her satellite, though a mechanism could turn her back to computer mode once the crisis passed.
Following Nicole’s disappearance, she was declared dead, and an inconsolable Sally was given her computer, in a twist of irony naming it after her dead best friend.
Sometime during Season Three/the planned finale movie, Sonic’s consistent questions would awaken Nicole, who tells him her tragic backstory, and eventually Nicole would be restored to her full self again. “She returns as a little girl without any extra powers, except that she’s a genius,” though Hurst did consider other powers from her experience of computerization, was well as another ending where Nicole permanently died, though he wasn’t inclined towards it.
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