Break Them by Talking: A speciality of The Shadow, who isn't allowed to directly kill anyone in the radio serial.
His Big Good tendencies are more pronounced in the radio show where standards and practices forbade the Shadow actively killing.
While certainly not blanching at putting a permanent and lethal end to evil, and laughing like a maniac while he does it, The Shadow is firmly on the side of protecting the innocent.
Big Good: The Shadow is the rare Pragmatic Hero version.
Bait-and-Switch Gunshot: Standard practice in the radio drama, as you never know who's been shot until the survivor actually speaks up.
Happens again in The Phantom Voice, as he gets caught in a room narrow enough that two gangsters can stretch their arms out and walk forwards to corner him even without seeing him, and then being put in a chokehold - he ambushes the leader later with a brief explanation that he'd 'picked up one little hold in the Orient' that had let him get out of it. Only the timely arrival of the police saved him.
Badass in Distress: A lot of early episodes of the radio show, too, most dramatically in " The Society of the Living Dead", where he was trapped in a mausoleum quickly filling up with water, with only a dead man and a nearly-dead man for company.
Audio Adaptation: One of the first ever, being a radio version of the popular pulp fiction series.
Arbitrary Skepticism: Justified in the radio show, because he considers his powers entirely scientific and easily reproducible by anyone willing to put in the effort, so he looked at the supernatural with a jaded eye.
Once Welles left the role, however, later actors played him as a straight-up hero. He was much more moral overall and never directly killed anyone, but still often manipulated villains into killing each other or themselves.
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Anti-Hero: The Shadow of the radio series is a Lighter and Softer version of this, at least during Orson Welles' tenure.
He would do the same for Goodrich Silvertown Tyres, sternly lecturing the listeners on the dangers of wet and slippery roads in the dark. This rather shamelessly combined this with Product Placement, as the program's sponsor was a coal company.
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And Knowing Is Half the Battle: The show sometimes offered in-character advice on how to properly operate and maintain a coal-burning furnace after an episode was over.