How Gerald "finished" Shadow and his revenge plan despite being in prison

[Darth InVaders]

On the Sonic Wiki it claims GUN had Gerald continue his work (sourcing it to a Prima Guide) but this is obviously wrong for reasons I will get into in a moment... 

To figure out how Gerald finished Shadow and his revenge plan we need to look over the things we know for sure:

Gerald knew beforehand that GUN was going to shut down his research and the ARK research facility, and imprison all who knew about him (he said so in the recording that played in Shadow's game Last Story: "The government plans to shut down this research facility. The government plans to cease all of our research... and imprison all who know about you." and in SA2 Last Story "They were sent to destroy the research project that I had been working on. My colleagues at the research facility, my granddaughter Maria, I hope you are all safe." - this also proves the Sonic Wiki wrong) Clearly from these words, Gerald did not know the full murderous extent of GUN's plan where everyone except Gerald would die, and Gerald would be the only one imprisoned.

After being imprisoned, Gerald somehow was able to view the casualty reports (SA2: "I found Maria's name among those who died when the ARK was shut down.") and somehow reprogram Shadow's memory ("Based on my original projections, I was able to complete my project; Shadow."), the Biolizard, and the ARK with the Eclipse Cannon (evidenced by the calculations written on the prison walls of Prison Island). He also continued to make his diary/journal (to make it possible to quote him) and set up the video of his execution to be played before the world.

So how could Gerald have "finished" Shadow and set up all these things to happen after his death?

Well, first things first, Shadow was technically finished being created before GUN's assault, but then Gerald needed to do more with him when he started his revenge plan. This is evidenced in Shadow's memories.

But going to before the need for a revenge plan, since he knew beforehand that Proj Shadow would be shut down and he would be locked out (and imprisoned) he probably created backdoors so he could hack back into the computer systems at a later time - he after all created a program to play and give Shadow encouragement to defeat Black Doom. All he would need are the resources to access this from prison: an internet enabled computer primarily - well in Sonic X he is shown in his prison cell with a computer, and I'm certain that is similar to what happens in the game continuity (although the computer may have been in the prison library where it was supposed to be supervised - like it would be in real life - but Gerald's awesome hacking skillz made it nearly impossible to catch him).

From this computer, he saw the casualty report with Maria's name - well, unless that was publicly available to him which is possible. He also continued typing entries into his electronic diary / journal.

As he went mad and began evil schemes by writing on the cell walls (which probably shows his computer was somewhere else like a library), he then used this computer to hack back into ARK's computer systems. He reprogrammed the Eclipse Cannon so that when the 7 Chaos Emeralds were placed into its core, it would allow itself to be overcharged and become a planet destroying explosive and then redirect energy to the ARK to shift the colony into a collision course with the planet. He programmed the system to release the Biolizard to attack anyone who interfered with his plan (and probably hacked the Biolizard's brain to be his attack dog too).

He would need someone to get his plans in motion. So he would have also had to have found Shadow in the computer systems and hacked his brain to change Shadow's final memory of Maria, altering it from bringing hope to humanity by letting humanity live for their dreams or whatever to revenge for her death; also he would have to implant the instructions to get the plan in motion. Obviously this requires that either GUN had hooked Shadow and the Biolizard's brains up to something or Gerald was able to broadcast something remotely into their brains over the airwaves sort of like WiFi or Bluetooth or something - the idea of Gerald hacking their brains is slightly more plausible because they are artificial lifeforms that he created, and he may have created a way for himself to do such a thing.

As for broadcasting his execution video message - the one thing that hangs up many people on how could he have done it when he was already dead - it is not that hard. He only needed to figure out 2 things: the file path to where his execution video would be placed in what in computer speak is called the "directory tree hierarchy", and also the pattern used in naming the file his video would be stored under. For example, GUN tends to store execution videos in the "execution" folder which is inside his own folder which is inside some other folder called a parent directory on GUN's intranetwebserver; and they tend to name the file after the prisoner's number with the word execution and the extension ".mp4". For this example, let's say Gerald's prison number is 6192001, so his predicted file path and filename would be something along the lines of "http://GUNintranetwebserver...\parentdirectory\robotnik_gerald\execution\6192001execution.mp4" (apologies for mistakes, its been a while since I dabbled in this technical shit and I never had to deal with an intranet - and the "..." is just because there would clearly be a longer file path). The file would be a broken link in Gerald's programs until GUN makes the video and places it where it is supposed to go. Voila, GUN unwittingly finishes his work for him.

[Diogenes]

Why make all these assumptions about Gerald hacking everything when we already know he messed with Shadow's head to get him to carry out his revenge.

It's like you're creating a problem just so you can claim to solve it. You're pulling all this master hacker shit out of nowhere for what can simply be explained by Shadow acting on Gerald's orders.

[Darth InVaders]

Because we know Gerald was in prison from start to finish during the creation of his revenge plan. We also know GUN was not letting Gerald continue his work on Shadow, but he still somehow altered Shadow's memory. And Shadow does not seem like he has the ability to reprogram the Eclipse Cannon to do a doomsday dive at the planet plus do the master hacking needed to broadcast Gerald's final warning execution video across the planet. Also Gerald had to do some master hacking to broadcast that video encouraging Shadow to defeat Black Doom.

Occam's Razor: Gerald demonstrated hacking ability, Shadow did not, shit happened that needed hacking to be done.

[Shadowlax]

In machine psychological manipulation. That's it. He probably heard about them coming before hand, or knew since he interacted with the black comment, and had that as a contingency plan. He probably went to the black comet because they pissed him off before hand. 

[Diogenes]

5 minutes ago, Darth InVaders said:

Because we know Gerald was in prison from start to finish during the creation of his revenge plan. We also know GUN was not letting Gerald continue his work on Shadow, but he still somehow altered Shadow's memory.

We don't know under what circumstances or through what methods Gerald was able to "finish" Shadow. The idea that he hacked into Shadow's brain is absolutely, 100% baseless, not the least bit more plausible than "actually turns out GUN let Gerald work on Shadow a bit anyway". And once he's got Shadow doing his bidding, there's no need for him to be hacking other things, and no reason to assume he's hacking other things when, again, there is no evidence that he is hacking things in the first place.

5 minutes ago, Darth InVaders said:

And Shadow does not seem like he has the ability to reprogram the Eclipse Cannon to do a doomsday dive at the planet plus do the master hacking needed to broadcast Gerald's final warning execution video across the planet.

He does when Gerald puts the instructions in his head.

5 minutes ago, Darth InVaders said:

Also Gerald had to do some master hacking to broadcast that video encouraging Shadow to defeat Black Doom.

ShtH is incredibly stupid and I refuse to acknowledge it.

[Shadowlax]

35 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

 

ShtH is incredibly stupid and I refuse to acknowledge it.

So are comic book heroes, but both of things are canon to their own universes so you have to in discussions like these

[Blue Wisp]

3 hours ago, Shadowlax said:

So are comic book heroes, but both of things are canon to their own universes so you have to in discussions like these

wat.

I fail to see the comparison but oh well.

Sonic Adventure 2's story is stupid imo so I'm not surprised arguments like this happen.

[SBR2]

Man it's almost like SA2's story is actually terrible or something.