Heartburn is credited to electronic musician Ben Briggs and creator Lythero, with this version labelled Chaos Controlled plus Reverb in its file tags. It builds on Metal Sonic, Dr Eggman's robotic copy of Sonic introduced in Sonic CD, whose silent, menacing design made him a favourite for fan music and edits. The reverb treatment helped the clip circulate as a short standalone sound for memes and edits, where fans reuse video game music to signal a rival arriving, a challenge starting, or a scene suddenly turning serious.