In the seventh episode of each course, the player is required to chase down and defeat Shadow Mario to obtain a Shine Sprite, which spawns from his dematerializing body as he teleports away. In actuality, the Shine Sprites are stored at fixed locations and are simply teleported to his location by the flag "appearShineFromKageMario". If the flag is replaced with "appearShineFromNPC", the Shine Sprites appear where they are stored, implying that these were their originally intended locations. The fixed points in "Shadow Mario Revisited", "Hold It, Shadow Mario!", and "Shadow Mario Runs Wild" also feature dedicated cameras for spawning cutscenes, corroborating the idea.

Of note is that the internal location for the Shine Sprite in "Shadow Mario Runs Wild" places it partially inside Pianta Village's golden mushroom, which further implies that this object had its height raised at some point during development.