How/why Dr. Gerald Robotnik went from gigantic lizard to tiny black hedgehog for his ultimate lifeform experiments?

>then it was creating an animal with regenerative abilities that could use it.
This is exactly why it’s a lizard. Don’t ask me why it has a panther growl though.

Wasn't shadow created like 50 years before the present time line? How can he be a copy if sonic didn't exist back then?

There’s a mural like this In SA1 showing him fighting Perfect Chaos as well. A glowing hedgehog has always been prophesied to defeat some evil.

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wtf

See If you replay the final levels of SA2 you will see Gerald made reproductions of A LOT of constructions of the ancient equidnas, he even made his own emerald altar. The echidnas predicted a guy who looks just like Gerald (Eggman) with an emerald and a superpowered Super Saiyan hedgehog (Super Sonic) so Gerald created Shadow, the hedgehog with SS quills and Chaos powers.
At the end of the game even Shadow realizes the real ultimate-life form (the living being who can masterfully harness Chaos power) is Sonic.

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because hedgehogs > lizards. it can't really be the 'ultimate' lifeform if its a lizard when hedgehogs are better

Except the writer litterally responded to fans asking him shit and confirmed at least some of the stuff about the contradictions between Shadow's origins and the implcations that Sonic may have actually been the final shadow were intentional ambiguities.

Not to mention Rouge's report in the Japanese guidebook outright calls attention to some of that shit too

maybe he should have taken the rings of his wrists off desu

Scalie phase vs furry phase.

I think it was implies that the biolizard was the real ultimate lifeform while shadow was some other kind of project

>Not to mention Rouge's report in the Japanese guidebook outright calls attention to some of that shit too
Source? I've never seen this

throw it all awaaaaaaaaay
youtube.com/watch?v=OxLH0nnUnCY

>sonic is the real ultimate lifeform
oh fuck

info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_Adventure_2_-_The_Truth_of_50_Years_Ago...

Note how it basically outright says the timeline doesn't add up for Shadow both being in the ARK incident yet somehow was still worked on by Gerald after the fact to instill the altered memories to want to activate the ARK's crash course sequence

If the final battle goes on long enough Shadow eventually realizes and says Sonic is the ULF. Subsequent writers apparently never got that far.

that's why if there's an adventure 3 they should have it take place directly after adventure 2 and branch the timeline... nothing after that was worth keeping story wise

Fuck it i'll dump the pasta

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It [the idea that the biolizard was based on Perfect Chaos and Shadow was based on Super Sonic in the SA1 Mural] is a theory which may be true since we know Gerald studied Ancient Echidna stuff and the Eclipse Cannon is based on their tech, but some info also disputes it.

to address that and "Sonic is the real ultimate life form" for those who don't know: Watch this youtube.com/watch?v=fPvtm9Ms_1g 2 hour narrative analysis, and this youtu.be/1ZJuLcakn3Y?list=PLGTfwcb8YUlCTQtR_GB0_gziC4SNGV0r_&t=639 shorter, less serious but still touching on real stuff video; and this info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_Adventure_2_-_The_Truth_of_50_Years_Ago... excerpt of a in universe report from Rouge from the Japanese guidebook

Here's a tl;dr tho

>GUN and the government are separate factions, and Rogue is a government spy sent by the president to spy on GUN and Project Shadow, as established in supplamentrary material, where her reports (combined with dialog in the Japanese script) calls into question if the Shadow we see in game is the actual finalized result of Project Shadow (since Gerald was apparently still working on the project even after/during the Ark was sieged and Shadow was allegedly captured) or a prototype/replica, with altered or fabricated memories

>Furthermore, we see through the Artificial Chaos enemies, the Ancient Echidna/Maya iconography around the Eclipse Cannon's control center and the Cannon's Core, and the Chaos Drives which power the GUN enemies that Gerald was studying Angel Island and the Master/Chaos emeralds as well as Chaos himself, which has made people theorize, as mentions, that Shadow is based on the Super Sonic mural, and the Biolizard is on the Perfect Chaos mural (though the latter theory here is disputed by the Rouge Report which established the Biolizard is a Lizard due to their regenderative properties

1/?

cont:

>The Japanese script has Gerald saying Shadow's memories were altered, and there's more lines in general establishing that Shadow may not be the real Shadow at all; with Rouge's report also noting that there's discrepancies which makes it make no sense for Shadow to have been sent down from the Ark after it's raid when Shadow was already active and with Maria, while Gerald was in custody, yet for Gerald to have still been finalizing shadow after that point

>Lastly, During the final fight against the Final Hazard, if you take long enough, it also is stated by Shadow that he';s having trouble keeping his super form up, whereas Sonic is doing fine (which is why Shadow ends up dying at the end of the game) and that he thinks SONIC is the ultimate life form, not himself

There's a few potential ways to interpret all of this

The most basic is that the Biolizard is the prototype and Shadow is the final result, and his memories were just altered by Gerald to make him think Maria wanted revenge instead of the people of Earth to be happy so Shadow would execute Gerald's revenge plot, and that his comments of Sonic being the Ultimate Life Form was just him saying Sonic is better then he is, or that if Shadow was indeed based on the Super Sonic mural, that Sonic is the prophesized ultimate life form that Shadow was an attempt at creating by Gerald

But the more interesting possibility is that Shadow IS an earlier prototype or replica: Either created after the ARK incident/while Gerald was on earth in Prison Island (hence why Shadow was also stored there), with totally fabricated memories (Something the Sonic X anime implies, and we know Sonic X used cut/dropped game plot concepts); or that he was a prototype left on the ARK which was then captured by GUN as the capsule was sent down by Maria, while Gerald continued his work and made the Final Shadow; or that there were in fact TWO capsules sent down (Sonic X outrigh shows two capsules)

2/?

cont:

With THOSE possibilities, it would mean the ACTUAL, real shadow was...

Sonic himself.

This isn't just crazy fan speculation: This is what would have been meant by Shadow saying Sonic was the True Ultimate Life Form, would explain why Sonic could use Chaos control, and ties into the whole dialog Sonic and Shadow have throughout the game where shadow keeps commenting that sonic "Isn't just an ordinary Hedgehog" and asking who he is. You even see Sonic pondering what "the ulitmate life form" means in the credits with Amy.

In fact, the game's writer OUTRIGHT replied to people asking if if this was the original intention on twitter (mobile.twitter.com/mizuhano/status/931341136655822848), where he said that it was all intentionally ambiguous, as in that was one potential interpretation they had written the game around alongside the others I mentioned. Subsequent Sonic games threw out this sort of intentional ambiguity and LORE since Heros wanted to go in a simpler direction and Shadow was never intended to come back, but the idea of Shadow not really being Shadow was re-used in Heros and Shadow the Hedgehog's plot, and Gerald researching Ancient Echidna stuff was confirmed in Sonic Battle.

3/3

give me the abridge version, my attention span is too small

user that WAS the abriddged version summing up the info in those 2 videos

is even more of a tl;dr of it

this theory is actually pretty interesting. and its the first instance of an origin story actually being hinted at inside of a sonic game. sonic created by eggman's grandfather as the ultimate lifeform, only to perpetually be fighting with his grandson... damn