It’s real

The hedgehog gene (hh) was first identified in the mango fly Drosophila melanogaster in the classic Heidelberg screens of Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard and Eric Wieschaus, as published in 1980. These screens, which led to the researchers winning a Nobel Prize in 1995 along with developmental geneticist Edward B. Lewis, identified genes that control the segmentation pattern of the Drosophila embryos. The hh loss of function mutant phenotype causes the embryos to be covered with denticles, i.e. small pointy projections resembling the spikes of a hedgehog. Investigations aimed at finding a hedgehog equivalent in vertebrates by Philip Ingham, Andrew P. McMahon and Clifford Tabin revealed three homologous genes.

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. 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.,

Unfortunately

The gene has been linked to a condition known as holoprosencephaly, which can result in severe brain, skull and facial defects, causing a few clinicians and scientists to criticize the name on the grounds that it sounds too frivolous. It has been noted that mention of a mutation in a sonic hedgehog gene might not be well received in a discussion of a serious disorder with a patient or their family.

This controversy has largely died down, and the name is now generally seen as a humorous relic of the time before the rise of fast, cheap complete genome sequencing and standardized nomenclature. The problem of the “inappropriateness” of the names of genes such as “Mothers against decapentaplegic,” “Lunatic fringe,” and “Sonic hedgehog” is largely avoided by using standardized abbreviations when speaking with patients and their families.