Where's That Damn Fourth Chaos Emerald? — Shadow the Hedgehog in a Sonic game cutscene with subtitle reading 'Where's that damn FOURTH Chaos Emerald!'

Where's That Damn Fourth Chaos Emerald?

2005catchphraseclassic

Published October 7, 2026

The line "Where's that damn fourth chaos emerald?" comes from Shadow the Hedgehog's 2005 solo video game, where the brooding hedgehog's cursing was played straight for drama. Sonic fans turned the earnest edginess into a running joke, spawning parody art, YouTube voice-clip edits, and Urban Dictionary entries across the next decade.

sonic memes catchphrase memes late 2000s memes deviantart memes dialogue edit memes

Overview

The joke works because Shadow swears about losing track of a magical gemstone, treating a basic fetch quest like a hard-boiled crime drama1. Sega's 2005 spin-off leaned on guns, grimdark voice acting, and mild cursing to age up the Sonic brand, and fans picked up on how silly the whole package sounded almost immediately4.

Parodies cluster around three bits. The first is image macros that stage Shadow with implausibly heavy weaponry, including the DeviantArt piece from Flying Mario that paired the line with an AK-474. The second is YouTube edits that splice the voice clip against other angry audio or paste the delivery into unrelated Sonic cutscenes3. The third is the quote itself, dropped straight whenever a Sonic fan loses track of anything.

Origin & Background

Platform
Shadow the Hedgehog (video game) / YouTube and DeviantArt (viral spread)
Date
2005

Shadow the Hedgehog launched in November 2005 as a darker spin-off starring Sonic's black-and-red counterpart, and it was one of the first games in the franchise to feature profanity1. The specific "damn fourth chaos emerald" line is delivered during the Circus Park stage, where Shadow is tasked with recovering a lost chaos emerald amid the game's branching good-and-evil missions7. The gameplay clip has circulated across YouTube in various reuploads, including a widely linked copy of the raw scene2.

How It Spread

One of the earliest viral edits landed on November 21, 2007, pairing Shadow's line with audio from the Tourette's Guy videos; the mashup crossed 89,000 views on YouTube3. On March 24, 2009, DeviantArt user Flying Mario posted an illustration of Shadow holding an AK-47 while delivering the line, which locked in the "edgelord Shadow with gun" visual template fans kept riffing on4.

The joke kept filtering through Sonic circles into the 2010s. An Urban Dictionary entry for the quote was logged on November 17, 2011, though the top-voted definitions on the page have since drifted off-topic and now describe unrelated slang like "square groupers" and "bunhead"6. On September 5, 2017, YouTuber Hypertech12 remade the scene inside Sonic Mania's 2D sprite style, and the animation crossed 300,000 views5.

Timeline

2005-11-15

Shadow the Hedgehog releases on PS2, GameCube, and Xbox, delivering the line during the Circus Park stage[1].

2007-11-21

A YouTube edit pairing Shadow's line with Tourette's Guy audio is uploaded and racks up 89,000+ views[3].

2009-03-24

DeviantArt user Flying Mario posts the AK-47 Shadow illustration quoting the line[4].

2011-11-17

An Urban Dictionary entry for the quote is added[6].

2017-09-05

YouTuber Hypertech12 posts a Sonic Mania-style animation of the scene, crossing 300,000 views[5].

Frequently Asked Questions