Please Note: I haven't played Sonic Adventure 2 or Sonic Heros myself, so I may be missing facts and story details. I also haven't put much research in this so please dont not count all of this as being 100% true. If i missed something please tell me in the comments! (This post has some spoilers for Sonic Adventure 2 and a little bit of Sonic Heros. Though they are old games I dont want to spoil people unless they dont care. You have been warned)
This is something I have been thinking about for a while. In Sonic Adventure 2 there were 2 new characters introduced, Rouge The Bat and Shadow The Hedgehog. This is common knolege to most Sonic Fans. At the end of the game Shadow The Hedgehog "dies" by falling down to earth after the ARK was stopped by both Sonic and Shadow. In the next main game, Sonic Heros, Shadow was proven to be alive. This being because Eggman saved him. This leads to my thought. It seems that Shadow was only supposed to be in Sonic Adventure 2. Basically being a throw away character. But why whould Sega create a character with a very in depth story arc, so in depth that it is vital to the story of Sonic Adventure 2, then throw that character away. The only reason Shadow came back was because he was so popular. I'm sorry, the excuse for Eggman saving shadow does not seem like it was originally planed for Shadow's story Arc. Don't get me wrong, I'm not mad thats Shadows alive as he is my favorite Sonic character but I thought I'd here your guys ideas and opinions. Comment what you think and if you like these type of discussions tell me! I may do more! I hope you all have a wonderful day :)