I have item shadows turned off in graphics settings but thrown items still appear to have them. I don't know if this is intentional but perhaps it could improve performance if it isn't?

The item "shadows" are really just completely black versions of the item sprites so it's not like they're somehow tied to the shadow setting. Although if the API allows me to tell if that shadow setting is on or off, I could make it so that the shadow sprites don't appear. I'll have to see if that's possible. In theory it would reduce processing strain by half since each thrown item would just have the one sprite for the item itself instead of one for the item and one for the shadow