  In the AdS/CFT correspondence, the causal structure of the bulk AdS spacetime
is tied to entanglement in the dual CFT. This relationship is captured by the
connected wedge theorem, which states that a bulk scattering process implies
the existence of $O(1/G_N)$ entanglement between associated boundary
subregions. In this paper, we study the connected wedge theorem in two
asymptotically AdS$_{2+1}$ spacetimes: the conical defect and BTZ black hole
geometries. In these settings, we find that bulk scattering processes require
not just large entanglement, but also additional restrictions related to
candidate RT surfaces which are non-minimal. We argue these extra relationships
imply a certain CFT entanglement structure involving internal degrees of
freedom. Because bulk scattering relies on sub-AdS scale physics, this supports
the idea that sub-AdS scale locality emerges from internal degrees of freedom.
While the new restriction that we identify on non-minimal surfaces is stronger
than the initial statement of the connected wedge theorem, we find that it is
necessary but still not sufficient to imply bulk scattering in mixed states.
