Sonic the Hedgehog - Sonic is a huge Legend of Zelda fan

Sonic Heroes: "Four Swords was cool, but fans would freak out if I changed eye color, let alone had palette swaps. Maybe we could get my friends in on this?"

Sonic Rush Adventure: "Wind Waker is cool! I want a boat!"

Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric: "Finally, I got somebody to make the action-adventure with ability based progression game I wanted to star in! This can't possibly be a monkey's paw!"

Also note how this all began shortly after Sega went third party. Perhaps when Sonic Adventure 2 was being ported to the GameCube, he decided to give some then-recent Nintendo games a shot to see who he was now being associated with. Maybe that "Sonic in Melee" hoax was started by Sonic to put pressure on Nintendo.

This is now canon to me.