Audience-Alienating Era: The brief period in the 1960s where Archie attempted to reinvent him as a conventional superhero is pretty much universally lambasted by fans for being an extreme case of In Name Only, on top of being incredibly mediocre in their own right.
Awesome Music: "Omphale's Spinning Wheel" by Camille Saint-Saens. "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?"
The Fire of Creation arc, by Garth Ennis, Aaron Campbell, eta al.: Taro Kondo, a war criminal who took part in atrocities at the Rape of Nanking, develops a niche for himself as a spymaster and criminal overseas while his brother is dispatched by the Shadow in the US. Dismissing his brother without a thought, Kondo leads an expedition to secure uranium for the Japanese empire while providing underage girls to his superior to rape at his leisure and leading his men to massacre an entire village as a diversion. When he has the ship the Shadow and his allies are on sunk, Kondo promptly orders any survivors to be gunned down and later betrays and murders his own allies. Faking the uranium's potency to force his superior to commit seppuku in failure, Kondo briefly taunts him with the truth before beheading him and promises to pay a "visit" to the man's daughters himself before he sells the uranium to the highest bidder.
The Shadow/Batman, by Steve Orlando, Giovanni Timpano, et al.: Shiwan Khan, the Shadow's Arch-Enemy, is a descendant of Genghis Khan and a cunning psychic who is the most evil student to emerge from Shamba-La. One of the leaders of the Silent Seven alongside Ra's al Ghul, Shiwan Khan assists in "culling" the human population and keeping a control over the numbers to dominate the world. Lacking his partner's well-intentioned goals, Shiwan resurrects others as slaves, mentally torturing Batman and the Shadow, physically torturing the latter as well before even reviving one of his friends and killing him in front of the Shadow. Happily destroying all in his path, Shiwan Khan is a man who sees the evil lurking in the hearts of men, only to enjoy it in his quest to rule it.
Draco in Leather Pants: The Cobra is written to be a Vigilante Man who kills for the sheer fun of it and to gain criminal influence of his own, but some readers don't see the Shadow's problem with him and think that his war on crime wasn't worth the Shadow's effort to stop.
The Black Falcon (due to his similarities to the Riddler), Marvin Bradthaw (for his Pragmatic Villainy moments and for managing to destroy the Shadow's original Sanctum), The Cobra (an Evil Counterpart to the Shadow), the eight Gas Mask Mooks known as the Salamanders, and Master of Disguise Fifth Face are among the best-liked villains in the series despite only having one appearance apiece.
All of the Shadow's agents have decently large followings, but Fair for Its Day characters Jericho Druke (with his The Big Guy moments also being liked) and Dr. Roy Tam, Cliff Marsland The Mole (especially since he may have inspired The Green Hornet), Reformed Criminal and Scarily Competent Tracker Hawkeye, and Ace Pilot and former soldier-of-fortune Miles Crofton are less prominent than some of the others but no less popular.
Rook Loy from Double Z is one of the most well-remembered henchmen in the series due to the suspenseful scene where the Shadow has to navigate the booby traps in Rook Loy's house.
While the pulps often reflected the stereotypes of its day, it was a policy of long-time editor John Nanovic to constantly chip away at these elements in the magazine's stories. The Shadow would be notable for having African-American, Jewish and Chinese-American characters who were useful and often crucial parts of The Shadow's team. Nanovic also instituted two important rules: First that outside of plot-relevant needs, the main villain had to be a White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant — "Fu-Manchu"-style villains, or other ethnic Big Bads were by and large out. One of the major exceptions to this rule was Shiwan Khan. Second, he dogged Gibson to drop the "Asian Speekee Engrish" Chinese characters, encouraging him to introduce Dr. Roy Tam (who spoke perfect English) and to soften the dialect of other Chinese characters.
Shiwan Khan himself, though widely perceived as a typical Yellow Peril antagonist, was given a lot more nuance than most: he's specifically noted to be Mongolian rather than Chinese or nonspecifically Asian, his ideals are never suggested to be anything more than selfishness and ambition, lacking the overt nationalism of some of his contemporaries, and in some of his appearances, he's directly opposed by the Chinese Roy Tam and the Tibetan Marpa Tulku.
Hilarious in Hindsight: The Green Box introduces two ex-cons named Hawkeye and Tapper who become regular agents of the Shadow, with Hawkeye going on to appear a lot more out of the two. Tapper's name is one letter away from Trapper, and M*A*S*H would also feature enclosed associated characters named Hawkeye and Trapper, the former of whom eventually eclipsed the latter in prominence.
My Real Daddy: The Shadow himself actually originated from the radio show Detective Story Hour, which was a radio adaptation of the publisher Street & Smith's Detective Story Magazine. His creators in this context are attributed toward the trio of David Chrisman (the advertising agent who sponsored the show), William Sweets (the show's writer-director), and Harry Engman Charlot (the scriptwriter who created the name "The Shadow"). These three came up with the general idea of the Shadow as a creepily voiced storyteller with an Evil Laugh. However, their creation of the character is almost entirely overwhelmed by writer Walter B. Gibson, who went on to write The Shadow pulp magazine and who fleshed out the character in far more detail than Detective Story Hour ever did (i.e. adding the Shadow's persona of Lamont Cranston, his use of field agents, his mastery of disguise). The sheer amount of detail Gibson added completely overwhelmed the one-note character Chrisman, Sweets and Charlot had made note Doc Savage creator Lester Dent even commented that "The Shadow when placed in your [Gibson's] hands was a laugh, nothing more", and thus Gibson is widely considered the true creator by fans and historians alike.
Nightmare Fuel: As awesome as the Shadow is and as he's firmly planted on the side of right he's no nice guy and he has no qualms about harming you or even tricking you into killing yourself and if you're one of his agents, you'd best behave yourself and do as he orders... Not to mention all of that creepy evil laughing...
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Many fans dislike the Joker Immunity aversion of the series and wish characters like the Black Falcon, the Cobra, the Red Blot, and the Golden Vulture had survived to have at least one rematch with the Shadow.
The Shadow and his conflict with his Evil Counterpart the Cobra could have been more unique and morally complex if the Cobra was a genuine Knight Templar and not a Manipulative Bastard using the cover of vigilantism for more selfish goals.
Realm of Doom features the Shadow's confrontation with "Thumb" Gaudrey, the last member of The Hand, The Syndicate the Shadow first encountered sixteen novels ago and has been taking a little time to dismantle piece by piece ever since. This had the potential to be an epic confrontation where Thumb sought to learn from the mistakes of his dead fellow bosses and was especially driven to avenge them, but many readers feel the story is a fairly by-the-numbers Shadow vs. gangster tale.
One example stands out, however. Isle of Fear takes place in Jamaica, portraying the island natives as practising ignorant and brutal human sacrifice, including children. The conclusion has The Shadow using hypnosis to terrify them into giving up voodooism and "go back to your Christian churches". The French colonists are meanwhile shown to be innocent residents dissatisfied they couldn't "stamp out" the native religion. To top it off, The Shadow's ending monologue says the greatest cause of death in history is ignorance, despite the story itself being horribly ignorant of Jamaica - for one, the nation colonised by France and practising Voodooism is Haiti, not Jamaica.
Covered Up: The theme song "Original Sin" was originally the title track for a Pandora's Box album written and produced by Jim Steinman and was later more famously covered by his frequent collaborator Meat Loaf (with some lyrical alterations: only the movie version features lines about "who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men").
Cult Classic: While the movie bombed on release, that was more due to stiff competition from a number of highly-acclaimed movies coming out around the same time. Many who saw it at the time or on video release remember it quite fondly.
Burbank, who relays messages to the Shadow from his agents, only appears in a couple of short scenes, and gets no major personality traits but is well-liked for the interesting Worldbuilding behind the technology he uses and the way he fits into the Shadow’s operations.
The sentient dagger Phurba has a pretty small role, but is quite popular for having some good Creepy Awesome (and Creepy Good for the most part) coolness.
Hilarious in Hindsight: Shiwan's Narmy boasts that he's "the last descendant of Genghis Khan" became this when genetic studies confirmed that about 0.5% of the world's population are the likely descendants of Genghis or his immediate male relationsnote Given the current world population of 7.6 billion, that works out to 38 million people. One of his present-day descendants is an actor who's built a career around playing his own ancestors on Chinese-Mongolian TV.
Narm: The Lanes are hypnotized by a... cigarette billboard.
Lamont's nightmare that he tears off his own face, revealing Shiwan Khan's undeneath.
Come to think of it, Shiwan Khan in general. Any guy who can hypnotise you into killing yourself and does so for fun is pretty NF.
Cranston isn't above this himself. He terrifies Claymore until he's a Laughing Mad. drooling buffoon, and then sends him running *gleefully* out a high window after casting the illusion of it being an exit door.
The Phurba is pretty scary as well.
Older Than They Think: This applies to the action figure line that accompanied the movie. One would believe that Dr. Mocquino, the Voodoo Master, was a toyline-specific villain, but he did, in fact appear in the pulp magazines and radio show.
The increasingly nervous and Properly Paranoid museum curator, assistant curator, and security guard who are present when the coffin of Genghis Khan arrives all do a good job of combining humor and fear into their brief screen time.
Mentor Archetype Tulka is only in one early scene, but his impressive powers and benevolent nature make an impression.
Special Effects Failure: In the establishing shot on the bridge, the Shadow's long cloak is supposed to ominously billow out behind him, but he isn't wearing one. This is because the cloak was intended to be a CG element, but there wasn't time to composite it in. Less "Special Effects Failure" and more "Special Effects Absence". The goof becomes the punchline of a extremely long-term and obscure Brick Joke18 years later in an episode of 30 Rock. The episode "The Tuxedo Begins" largely plays out as an extended riff on The Dark Knight Trilogy, but at one point Alec Baldwin is standing in a suit before a (faux) city skyline, and a clumsy post-production cape is inserted to the shot behind his back.
The final confrontation between The Shadow and Khan, where Cranston destroys a hall of mirrors with telekinesis, is so obviously green-screened as to be wince-inducing. Of course, given that the film-makers were unable to shoot the original scripted confrontation, it gets a slight pass, even if John Lone's "hit by glass shards" reaction is hilariously over-the-top (especially considering the amount of damage he acts like he's taking versus the amount he actually takes).
Visual Effects of Awesome: The Shadow himself walking out of the shadow he cast against the wall after the Mongol warriors use it to pinpoint him and nail him to the wall with crossbow bolts (but only managed to pin his cape to it).
The pinball machine:
Narm: One of the messages during the Attract Mode is "AIDS is real - Protect yourself"
, features actual extra-terrestrials as the villains.