World of Funny Animals: Apart from hedgehogs and cats, who apparently inhabit entirely separate planets, there are sapient sheep, polar bears and birds appearing in Rise.

Vent Physics: A lot of the levels have fans that push the player around, sometimes into harm's way if you're not careful.

Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Rebecca can be recognized as female because she has visible eyelashes and long hair.

These cameras reappear several times in the second game.

Stealth-Based Mission: 'Watch out for the Watcher' in the first game has a minor example, where you have to avoid getting in the visual range of a surveillance camera if you want to avoid releasing a large horde of enemies.

Except for the black-robed wizards, which are beefier and notably tougher.

Squishy Wizard: The scrawny-looking wizard cats are among some of the weaker enemies in the game, health-wise.

Spikes of Doom: The game includes both spikes rising out of the floor, and spiked walls which kill you instantly should a ventilation fan push you into one.

In the second game, the sheep talk like this, with subtitled bleats. Similarly, in the first game, the Doom-referencing marine kitties from Episode 2's secret level talk in gibberish.

Speaking Simlish: While the enemies' banter is generally coherent speech, the Big Bad's taunts from the viewscreens are incomprehensible gibberish, though subtitled in proper English.

You can smash the screen while he's still talking, causing him to spout a string of bleep-heavy gibberish subtitled as '(Curses)' (first game) or 'Aargh!' (second game).

Shut Up, Hannibal!: Occasionally the Big Bad will taunt you from a video screen.

Self-Destruct Mechanism: Every single level has one for some unexplained reason, and the exit only opens once you trigger it, giving you ten second or so to get the hell out.

Rise likewise pays homage to Rise of the Triad, with orthogonal walls, all ceilings on the same level, and floating platforms.

Retraux: The design and the graphics of Shadow are a throwback to Wolfenstein 3D-styled games with flat levels and orthogonal walls.

Rewarding Vandalism: The aforementioned destructible decorations sometimes yield bonus items.

Punny Name: Some of the levels have pun-based names such as 'Fur of the Dark' or 'Purranoia'.

The ending of Shadow likewise shows the hero and his girlfriend cheerfully running away from a final giant explosion.

Outrun the Fireball: The end cutscene of every level shows the hedgehog running away as the facility blows up.

Rise of the wool ball