The Shadow Realm

The Shadow Realm is the name given to an anomalous location people appeared to have been warped to when playing anomalous levels that are marked as non-canon, dubitations, joke pages, ztar articles, or flat-out deleted on the MIPS Hole Wiki while they are inside of the level. The original level would be removed from the copy entirely, including the method of entry, making it impossible to enter the original level and the Shadow Realm again unless another level met the requirements. The Shadow Realm was a large, black void with several strange assets and pieces of geometry floating around that allowed for the player to navigate this area, similarly to Bowser in the Broken Realm and Bowser in the Randomized Realm. Every time the Shadow Realm was entered, it appeared to grow in size, potentially due to the nature of the method of accessing it. Recently, the Shadow Realm began to become very distorted before disappearing entirely and eventually being replaced by the Spirit Realm and being reduced to a small level accessible through the Spirit Realm.

Description
The Shadow Realm currently has been described as a black, inverted version of the Spirit Realm with several clouds as a result of the Spirit Realm. The level is reportedly accessed through a portal in the Spirit Realm, potentially being the same portal that was reportedly when the Shadow Realm was still a large entity. Originally, the Shadow Realm was a large conglomerate of assets from levels that are now warped into the Shadow Realm before the Disappearance event.

Relevant Anomalous Events
Several events have occurred in multiple copies that have been attributed to the Shadow Realm. They range from changes to the Shadow Realm itself, to significant changes to several Super Mario 64 copies due to the nature of levels, or in some cases other types of assets, being warped into the Shadow Realm. This had caused the Shadow Realm to be viewed as a significant anomaly before the Shadow Ream's disappearance.

The Drought
The Drought was an incident where a page about water was created on the MIPS Hole Wiki, before being deleted by user SigmaShield and accidentally causing all water in Super Mario 64 to be warped into the Shadow Realm, pulling any who happened to be swimming at the time into the Shadow Realm as the area itself was flooded. No visible edges of the water appeared to be present, causing those who entered the Shadow Realm to swim around before drowning and being sent to the now dried-up Super Mario 64 world, with design changes similar to those that occur in the real world during a drought. Eventually, when all people in the Shadow Realm drowned, water appeared to reappear into copies, and those in the Castle Grounds at the time reported being warped to the Sunken Castle before it was properly documented. The Shadow Realm also turned back to it's previous state, losing all water remaining in the area. It is not known entirely what caused the event to revert, as the page on water had not been restored and a new one had not been created.

The Rearrangement
The Rearrangement was an incident when the Shadow Realm was in an entirely different form before suddenly and inexplicably turning into the form reported until the Shadow Realm disappeared. Originally, the Shadow Realm had all the maps of levels warped into the Shadow Realm entirely intact, allowing the player to collect stars inside of it and go to the other levels in a large grid. The Shadow Realm could instead be accessed randomly by entering any existing warp, with a rare chance of accessing the Shadow Realm. Notably, at this point, NPCs meeting the same requirements of the levels had also been reported to appear in the Shadow Realm, such as Stanley and Eric. However, the day before the Rearrangement, it was noted that Stanley disappeared. During the Rearrangement, players inside of the Shadow Realm all encountered miscellaneous error screens such as the PLEASE INSERT CARD screen, the standard Anti-Piracy Screen, etc. The Shadow Realm had then shifted into it's later state, and all NPCs had disappeared, though they potentially still existed and just hadn't been rediscovered.

The Maze
The Maze was an alternate name for the Shadow Realm during a certain event that was then given to the event in which this form of the Shadow Realm appeared. This event occurred around the time the MIPS Hole Wiki page on doors was marked as non-canon. All doors in the game disappeared, and those who happened to be walking through a door when the event occurred had been warped to the Shadow Realm, which was now made up almost entirely by doors. The players described opening endless amounts of doors, occasionally finding pieces of geometry indicating they were in the Shadow Realm, before they eventually left the level through the pause menu. After this, all doors were missing, making the game unplayable at some locations, before doors inexplicably were warped back into the main game, with all doors in the Shadow Realm disappearing unless they were connected to a piece of geometry.

The Decay
The Decay was an event in the Shadow Realm that started when the page on this area was uploaded with the joke page template. Due to being marked as a joke page and the nature of levels that are warped to the Shadow Realm, the Shadow Realm began being infinitely warped into itself, causing any players still inside of the Shadow Realm to experience extreme glitching and eventually be warped out of the Shadow Realm. Geometry inside of the Shadow Realm appeared to become more and more distorted before eventually disappearing entirely, making the Shadow Realm much smaller than previously reported. The entrance to the Shadow Realm remained the same. Those who had entered the Shadow Realm during this event have reported it slowly becoming more stabilized, though still corrupted and slowly losing geometry. This event recently ended during an event referred to as the Disappearance.

The Disappearance
The Disappearance was an event that resulted in the Shadow Realm disappearing entirely after the Decay had occurred. It started when someone removed the joke page template from the Shadow Realm page on the MIPS Hole Wiki, causing the Shadow Realm to suddenly and inexplicably turn into it's pre-Rearrangement state, with the original method of entry also reappearing. However, the level suddenly disappeared around 5 minutes after this transformation occurred, warping everyone out of the level. The Shadow Realm had not been rediscovered until the discovery of the Spirit Realm.

The Rediscovery
The Rediscovery is the name given to the event where the Spirit Realm was suddenly found, as well as the new version of the Shadow Realm in it's current state. Nothing notable has yet been documented in the level beyond the new geometry and ties to the Spirit Realm. Several questions have arisen about the Shadow Realm's new form, though none appear to be able to be answered.

Reports
These reports are in the order of which they occurred, meaning the instances of the Shadow Realm will be inconsistent due to the level's growing nature before the Disappearance occurred.

Report 1
This report was the first ever recorded instance of the Shadow Realm after the Rearrangement, though was simply brushed off as something else before more reports of the modern Shadow Realm began to appear.

"Okay. I found some pink pipe in the Castle Courtyard, and jumped in it because I had no clue what it was. Suddenly, I fell into some weird black void made of random platforms made of clouds, some weird volcanic dirt, a rainbow pathway, and some weird castle-looking thing? I jumped around for a bit and explored the relatively small area I could, before I eventually fell off the map and ended up in the Castle Courtyard again. Someone jokingly called it the Shadow Realm, and it's where "dumb levels go", but I don't know. The pipe was gone, by the way."

It is worth noting that if the "weird castle-looking thing" is indeed Big Boo's Castle and not some other level such as Unused Level 1, it was marked as non-canon some time after this report. It is unknown what caused this anomaly. It is also believed the clouds are derived from Cloudy, Cloudy Dream, and the volcanic dirt originates from Fire Bomb River, as both were pages on the MIPS Hole Wiki about these levels were deleted a long time ago.

Report 2
"Okay, I found some elevator in the castle, right? I entered it, and it led me up to some area called the sixth floor. I was kinda skeptical I was playing a real copy at this point, but looked around and found some weird painting of a city. I jumped in it and boom, I fell into some place that resembled some weird void full of random objects like a building, an image of a cat, some orange, green and white trees, and a ton of other weird miscellaneous objects. I went to the pause menu, and the name was just gibberish. So, I was roaming around for a bit, and then I found some weird building made of black bricks. I entered the door on it, and then I got warped back to the castle. No elevator, probably no sixth floor, nothing. Odd."

This report appears to indicate the Shadow Realm gained assets from the sixth floor and it's City in the Night Sky level, the Cat Room, the original version of Seasonal Sanctuary before a new one was discovered, 15 CRSE, and likely other levels that are not indicated by the report. It is not known if the Seasonal Sanctuary remnants still remained now that a new one has been established, due to the difficulties in locating the Shadow Realm.

Report 3
"''Get this. I ground pound the fountain in the Castle Courtyard, and I'm warped into some weird castle floor? It looked like the basement, but had several weird levels that appear to be entirely new. So, I'm exploring that, and I'm warped to the Shadow Realm, which had started to become more talked about recently. I look at the wiki, and my assumption was correct, the page on it that I hadn't previously seen has been marked as non-canon. I look around, and there's a ton of weird pieces of geometry. There's some weird trees, pieces of the levels I was just at, some stuff in the distance I couldn't quite make out, you get the idea, I think this area had taken up a decent chunk of the Shadow Realm. Anyways, I fell off like an idiot, but not before I kid you not I SAW AN AMONG US CREWMATE! Was it because the page got marked as "sus" as some dumb gag? I don't know, I got warped back to the Castle Courtyard, and I couldn't go back in. That was weird.''"

Report 4
"Okay, I was in the Shadow Realm looking around and I had been for ages since I got in through the Pipe to Another World. I'm looking around, and suddenly I fall into the platform I'm in, though I don't fall into the void, and I'm just stuck inside it. But I can look around and see parts of the Shadow Realm with some camera clipping, and the geometry seems to be teleporting around rapidly and slowly losing pieces of itself. I'd describe the objects, but I was just in a piece of brick, and things were moving too fast for me to really make out beyond a mass of colors. Eventually, the brick I was in lost a significant amount of existence and I fell through the ground into the void, and then I went back to the Castle Courtyard. No pipe. No Shadow Realm."

Report 5
"Straight to the point, I was in that weird Lunar Lunar Moon level before it was rewritten. It got marked as non-canon, and I get warped to that void place called the Shadow Realm. I roamed around for a while, and then the entire place started to collapse in on itself. I managed to find a Wing Cap box which I don't think is normal, and flew around, and grabbed onto a tree and just kinda held onto it while the chaos warped me around. Get this, I then get warped back into Lunar Lunar Moon. But it was different! It was an entirely different level. It apparently got rewritten by the author, and I guess that somehow warped me out of the Shadow Realm and back to the level? Yeah... I died in the level and the entrance was gone. How did I get there? I forgot, but I landed on the first floor and I looked everywhere. That was really weird."

Theorizing
The Shadow Realm's nature appeared to strengthen the theory that the MIPS Hole Wiki is anomalous and can alter personalized copies of Super Mario 64, creating and altering anomalies. The Shadow Realm also appeared to be the "trash bin" or "Hell" of Super Mario 64 and MIPS Hole, with discarded anomalies and pages being warped to the Shadow Realm after the appropriate conditions were met. When the page on the Shadow Realm was marked as a joke on the MIPS Hole Wiki, it appears to have attempted to repeatedly teleport itself into itself, causing the Decay.

The Drought and the Maze events both ended with the anomalies being reverted and the respective assets being warped from the Shadow Realm to the main game. The above theory appears to indicate why the Drought and the Maze occurred, though the reversal of the events have gone unexplained. Some have speculated that the Personalization A.I. realized that the game cannot be played without these anomalies, and restored them to their original state.

It is believed that the Rearrangement occurred when the Shadow Realm began to be overflowed, causing the area to begin being distorted and entirely destroying several things, such as the NPCs and a majority of the levels warped into the Shadow Realm. It has been estimated that a new Rearrangement could have potentially occurred around the time the page on the Shadow Realm was uploaded, though the Decay then began instead due to the page being uploaded. However, these theories have been unconfirmed.

The Disappearance appeared to have begun as a new Rearrangement after the joke page template on the page about the Shadow Realm was removed, undoing the Decay event and apparently sending the area to it's original state. However, the sudden disappearance of the Shadow Realm has gone unexplained, as well as it's reappearance in the Spirit Realm.

Trivia

 * Despite falling under the conditions to be "warped" to the Shadow Realm, the levels associated with Among Us Manifestations appeared to be resistant against the Shadow Realm as well as the Spirit Realm, implying some property unique to those levels that does not apply to any other levels that met the conditions to theoretically warp to the Shadow Realm after the conditions to do so are met.