Eric Sparrow

Eric Sparrow is a fictional character skater who is the Custom Skater's friend initially at the beginning of Tony Hawk's Underground. However, he eventually turns out to be the main villain of the game. He keeps his villainous role throughout Tony Hawk's Underground 2, and Tony Hawk's Proving Ground.

In THUG, Eric portrays a friend that betrays the main character and steals their fame. In THUG2 and Proving Ground, Eric portrays a cocky pro skater.

Eric was voiced by Benjamin Diskin, who also voiced Nigel Uno, Hoagie Gilligan, the Delightful Children from Down the Lane in Codename: Kids Next Door, Eugene in Hey Arnold!, Knuckle Bine in Hunter x Hunter, Ban in The Seven Deadly Sins, Sai in Naruto, Kai Miyagusuku in Blood Plus, Frank in Little Witch Academia, Gurio Umino in Sailor Moon Crystal and Jack in Beastars.

Role in Tony Hawk's Underground

In THUG, Eric Sparrow is your Custom Skater's best friend, the two live together in their hometown of New Jersey. At the start of the story, Eric tells them that Chad Muska is going to be skating a demo in New Jersey. After the demo, Muska starts driving around New Jersey and stopping at local skate spots to check out the local skaters in action. Not wanting to miss an opportunity to impress a pro, the Skater performs some tricks wherever Muska stops his car, and Muska compliments him and encourages them to go down to Peralta's, the local skate shop, to get sponsored and then gives them a new skateboard. The Skater then heads down to Peralta's and asks for the owner, Stacy Peralta, but is nowhere at the skate shop, and one of Stacy's "people" tells them that if he wanted to get Stacy's attention, the Skater would have to impress Stacy's "people". After the Skater impresses Stacy's "people", the skate shop is robbed by the Drug Dealers on Elm Street. The Skater then heads to the Drug Dealer's house on Elm Street to reclaim the skate shop's equipment. After the Skater reclaims the equipment, Eric feels that he should get revenge on the dealers and burns their car. After he burns the dealer's car, he is terrified that the drug dealers will find him so he mentions that his cousin has a place in New York (Manhattan) where they can stay. The two would make their escape to the subway as they head to Manhattan.

At Manhattan, the Skater is filmed skating all over the borough, just to get the attention of Peralta, a company which sponsors skateboarders. Peralta is impressed and agrees to offer them and Eric a lift to Tampa, where the Tampa AM skateboarding competition is taking place.

Eric and the Skater arrive in Tampa in a car with a bumper sticker that offends the local police. Eric is arrested, and the Skater must bail him out by doing favors for the police. Eric deliberately doesn't send in the Skater's application, so that there is less competition. The Skater impresses the locals and competition judges, and is allowed to compete. The Skater beats Eric, who throws his skateboard to the ground in frustration, and joins a sponsor of their choice (Birdhouse, Zero, Girl, Flip or Element) and travels to San Diego.

In San Diego, Eric meets with the Skater again, and is on the same sponsor team as them. When the Skater and Eric both impress the team manager, they board a flight to Hawaii.

In Hawaii, the Skater searches for a spot that has been untouched by skaters. The Skater eventually finds the rooftop of a tall hotel, and calls Eric to film them skating on (and off of) it. Eric has the Skater do some combos, until when a police helicopter arrives, Eric insists that they should leave, but the Skater wants to seize the moment of this challenge, and performs a McTwist off of the hotel's roof, over the helicopter, and onto the rooftop of the adjacent building, with Eric capturing it on video camera. Eric and the Skater's team then travel to Vancouver.

In Vancouver, after the Skater is done doing some locals favors, he heads to Slam City Jam to attend their team's video premiere, after hurriedly finishing parts for it. To the Skater's surprise, shock, and anger, Eric had edited the filming of the rooftop jump to his own benefit. Todd immediately makes Eric a Pro, and presents him his own pro-model board. After confronting Eric, who couldn't care less about their plight, the Skater enters the Slam City Jam contest as a Pro, despite still being an Amateur, and takes on a series of Pro competitions. The competition resolves into a one-on-one session between the Skater and Eric. The Skater wins, and is declared a Pro by Todd. After the Skater designs his own deck and gains a shoe sponsor, the team decides to go to an international Pro skateboard demo in Moscow. While practicing for the demo, the Skater reconciles with Eric, and the two do a double-performance together. However, this soon revealed to be an act of deception.

In Moscow, the Skater follows a drunken Eric as he steals the keys to a Russian tank, which Eric says they are allowed to take a test spin in, and takes it on a joyride through the streets of Moscow. After attempting to stop it, the Skater loses control, and the tank crashes into a building, and a large pile of rocks falls onto the entry hatch on the roof of the tank, trapping them inside. Eric, who apparently set up the Skater, runs off, leaving the Skater to be arrested. The team then expels the Skater from the team, and leaves them stranded in Moscow. The American Embassy then bails out the Skater, but he can only get back to New Jersey by doing favors for locals.

The Skater returns home to New Jersey, only to find that Eric has many sponsors, a record label in the making, and now only skates for money. Eric reveals that he has been plotting to bring the Skater down from the very beginning, and that the money is all that matters in professional skateboarding. The Skater resolves to show Eric how wrong he is by making a "soul skating" video; a collection of pure skateboarding exhibitions featuring a team of the best professional skateboarders selected by the Skater and Stacy Peralta. The release of the video is very successful, and provokes Eric into challenging the Skater to a final skateboarding line in return for the unaltered Hawaii tape he refused to show at the Slam City Jam. After the Skater wins, they take the tape and walks away from Eric, who curses angrily at them.

On a second run-through of the game, there is an alternate ending. Instead of the Skater following Eric's line again, a deleted scene shows him flashing the tape at them, but in a final frustrated move, the Skater elbows Eric in the jaw, snatches the tape, and walks away as Eric faints onto his car.

Role in Tony Hawk's Underground 2

In THUG2, Eric is in Team Bam.

In the second cutscene of the game, Eric finds himself, along with the Skater, Rodney Mullen, Mike Vallely, Chad Muska, Bob Burnquist, Eric Koston, Paulie Ryan, and Wee Man, sitting in a chair tied-up and barely conscious. Later waking he screams in terror as Bam pranks Eric by threatening him with a chainsaw causing him to wet and defecate in his pants. He gets defensive by saying it's sweat and he had a fruit salad even though no one believes him and everyone near him moves away due to the smell.

After that, Eric is Team Bam for the rest of the game until the tour stops at Berlin, where the two teams swap Eric and the Custom Skater for one day. After they are finished in Berlin, the two teams swap again and Eric attempts some trick off a ledge, but ends up crashing into a Hot Dog vendor. If Kyoto is selected, Eric is standing on a mon behind a torii saying "I'm big in Japan," then falls off the gate, in which Mike V says "That is so disrespectful to their culture."

After that, the tour stops in Australia. The two teams are done in Australia, the Skater is about to get eliminated due to causing Team Hawk to be a bit short on points compared to Team Bam, but after the Skater is about to be eliminated, Rodney Mullen realizes that they tallied the points wrong, so it was a draw, Eric didn't get enough points for his team. After they realize that it was a draw between both teams, a local Australian boy approaches Tony Hawk and asks him to sign an unofficial VHS movie titled "World Destruction Tour", produced and directed by Nigel Beaverhausen. The challenge was to see who could embarrass Nigel the most. Eric steals Nigel's clothes thinking it will be enough to win the challenge. To which Bam berates him calling him an idiot and gives the clothes to the Skater to embarrass Nigel. The Skater then causes birds to defecate on sunbathing women at the beach, and "beaver blast" near construction workers, while dressed as Nigel, then leaving Eric nothing to contribute, the Skater wins and Eric loses, so Eric gets sent home. As he laments being unable to go home, Nigel falls and lands on top of him.

Role in Tony Hawk's Proving Ground

Eric returns in Proving Ground as a rival in career mode, he is first encountered when the player starts "Bob's Comp Episode" in Baltimore Inner Harbor, with the goal "Revert Manuals".

Once the player starts the "Revert Manuals" goal, a cutscene starts with Eric arriving on a Tony Hawk's Underground skateboard. Eric starts by calling out the Skater and the two engage in an argument only to be stopped by Bob Burnquist. Throughout the career episode "Bob's Comp Episode", the Skater is basically defeating Eric in skateboarding competitions, until the two settle their beef at a local competition in Baltimore Lansdowne. Bob Burnquist points out that Baltimore Lansdowne is Eric's local park, notifying the player that Eric has relocated from his home in New Jersey to Baltimore.

After the Skater beats Eric in his own local skate park, the Skater defeats Eric again at Baltimore Inner Harbor, where they first met, at a skateboarding competition. After Eric's defeat, a cutscene is shown where Eric had to give up his car to the Skater as a result of his loss. Eric's car actually bears a resemblance to the car that he owned in Tony Hawk's Underground that appears at the ending cutscene where Eric confronts his old rival about the Hawaii tape that wasn't aired at the Slam City Jam.

Eric isn't heard from again until the player finishes Career Mode, where Eric is featured in a magazine interview ranting that the Skater's success was still as not as great as his, with Bob Burnquist interrupting Eric and telling him to, "respect the kid that kills competition".

Trivia

• Although he does not physically appear, Eric is on the rankings for the Project 8 skaters, changing position constantly. He starts out at the bottom.
• Fans of the Tony Hawk game franchise cited Eric Sparrow as a "Most hated video game character"
• In the credits of Tony Hawk's Underground 2, Eric is mentioned by the news reporter, he's still recovering and is called "Butt Head".
• The green & yellow skate shoes that Eric Sparrow wears in both Underground games are based on the Duff Gambler shoes.
• Eric Sparrow's trait is wearing the left side of a long sleeve clothing tucked.
• Eric Sparrow also appeared in the Neversoft logo of Tony Hawk's Underground (2003) as he gets grabbed and eaten by the sewer monster "T.H.U.D."
• In the three appearances that Eric made in he sported different skateboard decks, In Tony Hawk's Underground he used the Flip Sorry Red deck, In Tony Hawk's Underground 2 a Bam Margera HIM 3 Pink deck and in Tony Hawk's Proving Ground he used the Tony Hawk's Underground logo deck.
• Tony Hawk's American Wasteland is the only game that Eric never made an appearance in nor is he mentioned.
• It is possible that Eric has a case of Pyromania during the events of Tony Hawk's Underground; however, it wasn't never mentioned nor resurfaced again in his later appearances.
• In Tony Hawk's Proving Ground, Eric dresses rather more on the hip hop apparel side, making him rather unrecognizable.
• By the time of Tony Hawk's Underground 2, Eric has grown a tuft of facial hair on his chin after being clean-shaven in THUG.

Gallery

Eric Sparrow in THUG

Eric Sparrow in THUG2

Eric Sparrow in THPG