History VideoGame / ShadowTheHedgehog

** In the same level, you can also punch or shoot Cream if you're feeling particularly dastardly. Notably, the player's dark meter goes up ''extremely'' quickly if they do this.

* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: Dark and edgy the game may be, but while tearing the Black Arms to pieces is fine you can only defeat human G.U.N. minions via NonLethalKO. The story also goes out of its way to mention that little, if any, casualties have occured despite the destruction of whole cities. The possible exception is the pilot of the Blue Falcon, who plummets offscreen in horror upon defeat.

** In the opening FMV, we can see that the moon is still broken as per ''Sonic Adventure 2''.

* GameplayAndStorySegregation: If you have a dark/hero side character following you, they will obviously get mad if you attack soldiers that are on their side; however, [[ViolenceIsTheOnlyOption sometimes you are forced to do so in order to proceed in the mission.]] Also, ''all'' enemies will attack you on any level, regardless of whose side Shadow's on. The worst case of this is Black Doom. You can repeatedly go against him and even battle him, [[WelcomeBackTraitor yet later missions still have him try to get Shadow to work for him]].
** When a second player takes control of your ally, they can attack any soldiers, including ones on their own side. [[NeverMyFault They'll still chew out Shadow for attacking the enemies they themselves defeated]].
* In both the cutscenes leading up to Space Gadget and Lost Impact, Shadow is riding into space along with Sonic (and presumably an off-screen Tails.) Lost Impact occurs when Shadow steals the cyan Emerald powering the spaceship, seen in a container, and the alarm triggers his flashback. On the other hand, Space Gadget has Sonic and Shadow notice Black Arms around the ARK and prepare to confront them. During the ensuing race, Sonic and Shadow are competing for said cyan Emerald, which is on the outside of the ARK in this scenario. The only problem? The *exact* same scene was used for the inside of the ship in both cutscenes, so the cyan Emerald can still be seen at the very end of the Space Gadget cutscene, apparently in the heroes' possession *before* they've found it.
** For another example involving the same Emerald, in order for Shadow to complete the Neutral mission of Space Gadget, the Hero mission must fail. This is because they share the same objective: the cyan Emerald. Despite Sonic ostensibly racing Shadow for the Emerald, it remains there indefinitely after Sonic has "won." What's more, Sonic himself is never seen in the stage in any capacity. Since Shadow ends up obtaining the Emerald no matter which route is chosen, it can be assumed that story-wise, the Neutral path involves Shadow simply claiming the Emerald but ignoring the idea of allying with Sonic, rather than Sonic obtaining the Emerald himself as the level suggests.

** The final boss of each ending is determined by the mission Shadow completes on the sixth stage. Dark path pits Shadow against Sonic and Diablon, Neutral path pits Shadow against Eggman in Egg Dealer mech, while the Hero path has Shadow fight the Black Doom.

* HeelFaceTurn: G.U.N. became much less antagonistic to Shadow after the events of this game, to the point of hiring him as an agent. A few people think Rouge may have had something to do with it.

** Each level has keys that you can use to unlock secret doors. Some of the items are useful, including The Last Way teleporter that sends you ahead in the level (past the area where you must Chaos Control to get past). But some are rather useless, including the armored car in Lost Impact...in a cramped space station filled with areas you must spin dash under or use rail cars to get to. Helpful! Westopolis is bad for similar reasons as you get access to the same vehicle but, while it can actually be used here, there's no reason to use it when you can move much faster than it. Black Comet and Final Haunt respectively have secret doors that grant you access to turrets to shoot down the Black Arm gunships but there's very little reason to do so as they are optional enemies to fight.

* ICanRuleAlone: [[spoiler:Following the Dark path all the way to the end, involves Shadow helping Black Doom by gathering the Chaos Emeralds, and ultimately joining him in subjugating the planet under the Black Arms after dispatching both the GUN Commander and Sonic. However, if the player takes the Neutral option in the final stage of the Dark path, Shadow instead betrays Black Doom by taking the Chaos Emeralds for himself, ultimately defeating Black Doom, and then proceeds to subjugate the planet under himself.]]

* ICanRuleAlone: [[spoiler:Following the Dark path all the way to the end, involves Shadow helping Black Doom by gathering the Chaos Emeralds, and ultimately joining him in subjegating the planet under the Black Arms after dispatching both the GUN Commander and Sonic. However, if the player takes the Neutral option in the final stage of the Dark path, Shadow instead betrays Black Doom by taking the Chaos Emeralds for himself, ultimately defeating Black Doom, and then proceeds to subjegate the planet under himself.]]

* ICanRuleAlone: [[spoiler:Following the Dark path all the way to the end, involves Shadow helping Black Doom by gathering the Chaos Emeralds, and ultimately joining him in subjegating the planet under the Black Arms after dispatching both the GUN Commander and Sonic. However, if the player takes the Neutral option in the final stage of the Dark path, Shadow instead betrays Black Doom by taking the Chaos Emeralds for himself, ultimately defeating Black Doom, and proceeds to subjegate the planet under himself.]]

** Each level has keys that you can use to unlock secret doors. Some of the items are useful, including The Last Way teleporter that sends you ahead in the level (past the area where you must Chaos Control to get past). But some are rather useless, including the armored car in Lost Impact...in a cramped space station filled with areas you must spin dash under or use rail cars to get to. Helpful! Also bad are the secret doors for Westopolis (similar to Lost Impact, it gives you a bad-controlling lowrider with no special weapon which you get 75% of the way through the level) and Lethal Highway (a minigun with 80 ammo, which is pathetic if you were hoping for a MoreDakka rampage). The worst is Mad Matrix, which only gives you an alternate path to the Goal Ring. This is only remotely useful if you're trying to save some time to A-rank the neutral mission, and even then it's far from necessary.
** The weapons you unlock for completing certain endings are ''extremely'' {{Nerf}}ed [[InfinityMinusOneSword Infinity -1 Swords]], particularly the [[VideoGame/SonicAdventure2 Omochao Gun]] and [[VideoGame/BillyHatcherAndTheGiantEgg Egg Vacuum]], which are powerful but have a laughable ammunition capacity (even when leveled up!) that hardly makes it worth the effort.[[note]]Unless you want to easily A-rank Lethal Highway's Hero mission, or Air Fleet's Dark mission.[[/note]]

** Cryptic Castle features the Black Arms as the bad guys and Dr. Eggman's robots as the ''good guys'', but Eggman is the ''Dark'' questgiver of the stage. So then he'll be constantly complaining about Shadow destroying his robots even though that is what gives points for the mission!
** In a cutscene example, before the Sonic and Diablon boss fights, Sonic calls out Shadow for siding with the Black Arms.

** In the same level, you can also punch Cream if you're feeling particularly dastardly.

* FightingBackIsWrong: A major complaint about the game is that even though all enemies of all sides will attack you even when you are helping them, your partners will still reprimand you for killing their allies even though they are trying to kill you and you are defending yourself. Sonic and his friends call you out on attacking the GUN soldiers even though the GUN soldiers are attacking you, Eggman and Black Doom get mad when you destroy/kill their robots/henchmen while [[NeverMyFault making no attempt to get their forces to stop trying to kill you]], and Maria even calls you out for attacking the GUN soldiers in her level even though they are trying to kill you both.