Sonic 3 director Jeff Fowler pays tribute to 2005's Shadow the Hedgehog by putting sequences inspired by the bullet-heavy platformer into the threequel

Keanu Reeves as Shadow in Sonic 3.

If you head back to the credits of 2005's Shadow the Hedgehog, you may notice a familiar name crop up: Jeff Fowler – director of all three Sonic movies – was part of the cult platformer's CG Movie Production team. Now, he's paying tribute to his time on the game by putting moments and sequences from the game directly into Sonic 3.

"We built some of those moments [from Shadow the Hedgehog] into some of the sequences," Fowler tells GamesRadar+.