His most popular content is his scambaiting series, in which he recaps his adventures responding to advance-fee scams and other malicious emails that he receives. Aside from scambaiting, his channel also hosts a wide variety of content, including tech product reviews, cooking, foraging, craft projects and his long-running "Weird Stuff in a Can" series.
His YouTube channel can be found here
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Tropes you should never share with a stranger on the internet:
- 419 Scam: The bread and butter of the scambaiting series. Generally, the "Nigerian royalty" story isn't used anymore, but there are plenty of other scenarios that have taken its place:
- The "war riches" story: A soldier serving somewhere in the Middle East has stumbled upon a cache of money, and needs the help of a random stranger of the internet to smuggle it home.
- The "dying philanthropist" story: A lovely rich benefactor who loves to stress how Christian they are is dying of cancer with no surviving or trustworthy heirs, and needs the help of a random stranger on the internet to safeguard their fortune and continue their philanthropy.
- The "plane crash" story: A businessman was killed, sometimes alongside their entire family, in a plane crash. Their lawyer, unable to find any heirs, decides to hand their fortune over to a random stranger on the internet, possibly on the basis that they share a last name with the deceased.
- The "middleman supplier" story: A business (most commonly in the medical field) is looking for a valuable product as part of their supply chain, and decides that a random stranger on the internet should act as a middleman for that transaction, giving them a substantial cut of the profits for never fully explained reasons. Despite the convoluted premise, the endgame of this type of scam appears to be a standard advance cheque scam: They send the victim a cheque for a substantial amount that they are expected to pay forward to the supposed supplier. After doing this, the cheque bounces and the scammer runs.
- Ambiguous Ending: The Davis Bon trilogy ends with Mike getting a new email from 'Elaine Bon', whose scam is just a very sloppy find & replace job of the original Davis email, with whoever's behind the Elaine Bon email very quickly getting angry after complaining about not receiving a payment they didn't even ask for. Mike himself doesn't know what to think of this email and offers several explanations: That it is the work of a Troll who somehow found his scambaiting inbox, that it's a brand new scammer reusing the same template, or that it's the Davis Bon scammer again trying a new angle of attack.
- Artificial Stupidity: The FAQ section of "Davis Bon is Dead AGAIN!" covers the question of whether scammers are using chatbots to do their work. Mike believes that they currently aren't for precisely this reason: ChatGPT and its ilk try to be friendly to a fault, love producing lengthy answers even when that is inappropriate, and are easy to break if you try to give nonsense prompts; things that, on the contrary, scammers are far more flexible and human in response to.
- Artistic License – Religion: Points out in “The Scammers Who Dumped Me - Part 3” that a scammer includes traits from three separate denominations in their cover story: Anglican (“Church of England”), Catholic (“Father”) and Baptist (“Pastor”).
- Asshole Victim: Defied with a passion. Shrimp makes it a point to say that no one deserves to be scammed or "has it coming". While many of the scams he covers do pretty much exploit people's greed while supposedly pushing them to do obviously illegal things (smuggling, insurance/inheritance fraud, etc.) the people who often fall for them are usually either emotionally compromised or have a mental disability, while others prey on peoples' senses of charity or goodwill, some impersonate legitimate services like banks, shipping services, or tech support, and others claim to help people who have already been scammed. At the end of the day, it's not greed that gets people scammed, but lack of awareness and education.
- Back from the Dead: Manuel is very concerned that Davis Bon might suddenly stop being dead, but the scammer is adamant that didn't happen. This leads into a crossover Cutaway Gag with Slaughter Valley, where a team is advertised to take out zombies. Eventually Davis Bon does come back from the dead to respond to Spatula Grime's email, then promptly dies again once Manuel "finds out".
- Bad Habits: It is very common for scammers to claim to be reverends or pastors and to include wordy affirmations of faith in their emails, even when the scam has little to do with religion, presumably because it makes them appear more trustworthy. Sometimes they even claim to be preachers from multiple conflicting denominations at the same time. One such "priest" even ends up sending him a death threat (along with, later, one for his own Bishop!), accompanied by a graphic image of what he surmises is an animal sacrifice, which Shrimp censors for the sake of the audience and his channel.
- Bootstrapped Theme: "The Soul Called Mr. Barrister John Warosa" by Eric Castiglia was originally written to help Atomic Shrimp parse a particularly rambly email, but afterwards became the official theme for the series, which previously only used stock music.
- Broken Record: In one video called "Just Say OK to Scammers", those two letters are all he writes to them every single time to annoy them.
- Call-Back:
- One scammer repeatedly declared that he was a grown man and not a small boy, which in context seemed to be his way of stating that he was being serious about his offer and/or accusing Shrimp of not taking his offer seriously. Since then, Shrimp has taken to accusing other scammers of not taking things seriously by asking if they are small boys, particularly when they demand something like Steam gift cards as payment.
- One scammer claims that he had his money disguised as gold bars to prevent suspicion, and Atomic Shrimp found it so funny that it's not only a rare moment of laughing, but later becomes part of the story behind John Warosa's consignment box when Mange Tout tries to confirm if it's the same box with the new consignment box scammer, and even later when the same character insists on being paid that way.
- In "I'm Just Mad About SAFFRON", Mike discovers that the scammer has a front company that claims an address on 'Benson Hawking Drive' in Blackpool. There is a real 'Hawking Drive' in Blackpool on an industrial estate, which is a perfectly plausible location for a small medical supplier, but he has no clue where the 'Benson' came from. In "OK, Why is Everything Johnson & Benson?", covering a range of scammers where everyone seemed to have either of those names, he jokes that 'Benson' is a dirty word in his culture and begs the scammers not to use it.
- Catchphrase: In the scambaiting videos, he often states that the information the scammers request is "the sort of personal details you should never share with anyone on the internet."
- Crisis Crossover: "John Barosa Rides Again" features a hilariously implausible lineup of things the scammer is claiming to be working on behalf of.Our email claims to be from Jeff Bezos. No wait, from Jeffb Bezos, different guy. In an Avengers-like initiative, he's teamed up with the Organisation of African Unity, United Nations, European Union, the FBI, International Criminal Court and the International Monetary Fund. Some lineup!
- Cutaway Gag: A favourite, usually done to make fun of an unfortunate typo or unusual turn of phrase that a scammer employs:
- The scam in "Let's Tell The Scammer I Already Have The Money" has the premise of a lottery being done as a promotion "to encourage the active users of the Google search engine", the silliness of which leads to a gag in which the users of many other random search engines try to find out what Google is.
- "“The Scammers Who Dumped Me - Part 1” gives us a parody of The A-Team's opening after a scammer introduces themselves as working for "Heir Hunters Debt Recovery Unit Team of the Detectives".
- "John Barosa Rides Again" features a scammer listing various African countries, including the "Cote d'Ivorce". Cue a Parody Commercial for the "Cote d'Ivorce Couples Separation Resort".I wonder if that's like the opposite of Gretna Green?
- "Let’s Create One Big Unhappy Family" sees Atomic Shrimp put together a mock Medical Drama in response to a scammer claiming they are dying of "blood cancel".
- Endurance Scambaiting Part 2 uses this thrice in one video, having Shrimp create skits for "bridge of transaction agreement", "playing prang of the transaction", and "is it that you doesn't understand English". The latter two became an Ascended Meme, with Prang becoming a game and "is it that you doesn't understand English" becoming a shirt.
- In "OK, Why is Everything Johnson & Benson?", Mike responds to a scammer claiming to be 'Peter Johnson' by introducing himself as 'Richard Member', which leads off into a Real Trailer, Fake Movie for No Time to West,note a film dripping in Double Entendres and Gay Cowboy jokes.
- Death as Comedy: If a scammer tries to spin a "dying widow" story, Atomic Shrimp will generally act extremely laid back about the circumstances. It helps that, even if it takes weeks or months for the scambait to play out, these terminally ill benefactors never seem to actually die or have any trouble composing lengthy emails on their deathbed."Dennis W. Jefferson": …My failing health which has clearly deteriorated so badly indicated to my doctor i got approximately three weeks to live…Atomic Shrimp: Hi Dennis. I would like to help, but the three week timescale isn't going to work for me. Do you have any flexibility on this?
- Distaff Counterpart: Elaine Bon has a near-verbatim backstory to Davis Bon, but is female. Including being called a "celebrity man."
- Do You Want to Haggle?: In "Bringing Scammers Together for the Holidays", he manages to haggle an advance fee down from $100 to just $6.50.
- Elective Broken Language: Some of Shrimp's alternate identities, particularly Richard Dastardly, speak broken English. Shrimp himself knows perfect English, and is just trying to confuse the scammer.
- Freestate Amsterdam: In one video, a scammer claims to be working at ING Bank in Amsterdam and dealing with a deceased client, with the scammer accidentally changing the client’s pronouns mid-scam. Atomic Shrimp quips that, because it’s Amsterdam, getting gender-reassignment surgery is probably still easy even when you’re dead.
- Freudian Slip:
- Lampshaded in Part 2 of the Endurance Scambaiting series, where one of the scammers mentions that "other criminals" are involved in the transaction. The subtitle has the trope name with an arrow pointing to it.
- Similarly, in "OK... There Is No Advance Fee?", a scammer warning Atomic Shrimp not to talk to "OTHER FAKE OFFICES" sees an image of Sigmund Freud pop up to point at it.
- In "OK Let Me Steam You an Apple," Mike pretends to send a gift card to a scammer, Paul S., who says he has not received it. Mike replies, "Wow, I can't believe you would just take my money and deny it like that," and Paul S. replies "Oh my God, not yet!" as an image of Freud appears.
- Funny Background Event: Atomic Shrimp doesn't single out everything in the scammers emails, so there are some jokes and oddities hidden among them. In "Bringing Scammers Together for the Holidays", one email prorupting to be from European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde (working for the IMF for some reason, a job she left two years prior to the email's creation) includes this quote in the email signature: 'Résultat de recherche d'images pour "Christine Lagarde, IMF Managing Directors and Chairman"'. That's the scammer failing miserably to copy an image search result in to the email!
- Hilarious Outtakes: "The Scammers Who Dumped Me", with three instalments so far, is set up like this. The videos compile many scambaiting attempts that either had a funny setup but went nowhere, or went for a decent length of time before ending without a satisfying conclusion to build a full video around.
- Hollywood Hacking: The "Instagram Hacker" scams: Spam bots promote the social media pages of supposed hackers, who upon being messaged will claim that they can do absolutely anything for you as long as you pay upfront. The various videos stringing them along demonstrate that their illustrations of hacking are hilariously surface level; one scammer sent Atomic Shrimp a video of Matrix Raining Code as evidence that they were doing their job.
- Hypocritical Humor:
- At one point Abdul Karim mentions "I will not beg", which Atomic Shrimp draws attention to. Later on in the email that the song was based on, he says "I beg you" three times, with the lines juxtaposed with "I will not beg" on the screen as they are sung. Of course, that could also be taken as evidence of just how badly Shrimp had broken Abdul by this point.
- Whenever he tries to contact multiple scammers at once, they will always invariably say something to the effect of “don’t talk to that (other) guy, he’s a scammer”.
- I Have Many Names: He likes to make fun of scammers whose names are inconsistent, usually because their email addresses and the names used in the emails themselves rarely match up. He himself uses many different names: Merton Snerden, Morty, Manuel, Monica Flange, and John Warosa/Barosa being some of them.
- Informed Attribute: Davis Bon is allegedly a celebrity, but strangely, no one had ever heard of him before the scammer brought him up.
- Justified Criminal:
- Deconstructed on a few occasions. Atomic Shrimp has tried actually sending money to scammers on a few occasions by taking advantage of lopsided exchange rates. For example, in “Let’s Go Ambient Scambaiting”, after a scammer asks for £650, he sends 1,650 CFA Francs (£2.26 at the time of the video) instead. He actually wanted to send just 650 CFA Francs and then pretend to be ignorant of exchange rates (or perhaps different currencies in general), but Western Union wouldn't allow him to send an amount that low, so he had to tack a 1 onto the beginning of it. He then acted like he had accidentally mistyped and sent too much money, and asked the scammer to refund him the "extra" 1000. When the scammer got around to receiving the money and noticed how much (or rather, how little) was really there, he was so pissed-off he told Shrimp to just keep his money and never contact him again, as he didn't want it. Shrimp notes that if the scammer really was motivated by crippling poverty as many comments have suggested to him, he likely would’ve happily taken the money regardless, since it was at least enough to buy a meal.
- In another episode, he got a scammer to admit that the only reason he scams people is to get enough money to start up a legitimate business, after which he'll stop. Shrimp offers to pay him to film a short video about where he lives so that he can get the money through honest work instead, but never heard back. Whether he was simply unable to film the video, tried to film it but then decided it was too much work and gave up, or never intended to go legit in the first place and was just trying to get some pity money out of Shrimp after his scam failed is unclear.
- Lack of Empathy: "Mr. Paul Steven" is incredibly clingy, to the point that his constant messages are actually starting to creep into Mike's life outside of scambaiting. When Mange Tout says that he bent his knees backwards and had to go to the knee hospital thanks to Steven's constant messaging, Steven appears to completely ignore the situation and ask when tomorrow he can get the gift cards. When Mange reaffirms that he can't go to the store tomorrow with his knees the way they are, Steven is the one to get upset at him for delaying it without giving it a date. He later keeps pestering Mange in his hospital bed, asking him still to confirm when he can get the card. It's not until long after the group mailbox has begun its decline that he shows anything slightly resembling sympathy.
- London Gangster: The basis of his "Merton Snerden" scambaiting alias.
- Loony Fan: "I Am Your Biggest Fan!" has Mike play this role in response to a scammer that attracts victims by using bots impersonating YouTubers (in this case, Adam Ragusea) and claiming that the victim has won a prize. Even the scammer seems to get a bit uncomfortable with how obsessive Mike is acting.
- Non-Idle Rich: A few of the scammers base their emails on the premise that the likes of Jeff Bezos, Jill Biden, or the CEO's of major world banks are personally handling these customer service transactions themselves.
- Meaningful Name: An occasional feature of scammer screen names is that they are weirdly on-the-nose about their occupation. A lawyer for the royal family named 'Athelstan Britannica' is likely the peak of this.
- Mind Screw: He once attempted to do this to a scammer by claiming the fake scan of a cheque they sent him was actually accepted by his bank and gave him the amount of money the scammer promised, and even sent the scammer pictures of himself in front of all of the expensive things he bought with his newfound wealth as proof.note One can only imagine the scammer was suitably confused.
- Mood Whiplash: "The Very Angry Priest" goes very quickly from the usual feigning ignorance shenanigans to the scammer threatening to kill Atomic Shrimp unless he forks over some cash, complete with a graphic image of an animal sacrifice.
- Nun Too Holy: "Let's Go Ambient Scambaiting" features a scammer ("Reverend Mathieu Paul") who got really grumpy and impatient in record time, even by the standards of scambaiting sessions, yet still began every single email with "May the Peace of the Lord be with you" nearly without exception, leading to a lot of dissonance between the templated and handwritten portions of his messages.May the Peace of the Lord be with you.Please if you are not ready to claim your fund stop wasting my time.God Bless youRev. Mathieu Paul
- Perfectly Cromulent Word: In "A Little Nonsense Now And Then", he tries inserting made-up words into his questions to the scammer in an attempt to confuse or try to make them scramble and find the definitions of "glarded" or "sability".
- Repetitive Name: The scammer in the Davis Bon trilogy is called Mc McAllister after the first interaction.
- Running Gag:
- John Warosa/Barosa. Originating as a scammer who misspelled his own name and then claimed they were two different people who used the same office email, Shrimp then adopted the name(s) for another one of his scambating identities, who typically functions as a lawyer shared by his other identities (hence why the email that got him immortalized in song referred to him as "The Soul Called Mr. Barrister John Warosa").
- Whenever a scammer asks for personal information, he will inevitably tack on, "You know, the sort of stuff you should never share with a stranger on the internet."
- He, in his own words, has a rule: "Never respond to aggression with compliance, but with righteous indignation." And he will often bring this rule up whenever a scammer begins to show anger at his behavior.
- When a scammer asks for a phone number, Atomic Shrimp will generally provide a disposable one and give a ridiculous excuse for why it is usually switched off, which changes every time it pops up.
- Any time a scammer uses the specific phrase "be rest assured", it is accompanied by an Ethereal Choir.
- Near the start of "OK... There Is No Advance Fee?", Mike points out how a scammer's refusal to properly capitalise his job title of 'UN Diplomat' makes it read as 'un-diplomat'. Throughout the rest of the video, he always refers to the scammer both in narration and in the emails as "the un diplomat" or "the un diplomatic man".
- In "OK, Why is Everything Johnson & Benson?", one of the scammers constantly misspells "waste" as "west", each example of which is accompanied by a short Ennio Morricone-esque musical sting.
- Anytime a scammer presents an amount of money in a weird format, Shrimp will often translate it as a mathematical formula. For example, 'USUS$95, Million United State Dollars' becomes '95, Million US3 Dollars2'.
- “A small boy”: he denies being one when being accused of chicanery by scammers; also, it’s a common go-to phrase when he’s accusing the scammers of chicanery in turn.
- In "All Together Now - Scambaiting En Masse", all of the emails sent by 'Hon. Athelstan Britannica' (Queen Elizabeth 11's cabinet banker, whatever that is) is accompanied by a Union Jack and patriotic music, with the quality of both degrading with each new email as they gradually lose their temper.
- After a scammer claimed to have disguised money as gold bars to avoid attention, Atomic Shrimp frequently requests money to be disguised as "inconspicuous gold bars."
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: A few of the scammers have a habit of writing in an extremely ornate style that is well above their usual writing ability, which isn't helped by the fact that they tend to also be frugal in the use of punctuation.My dear brother there is nothing to be scared of because a man of caliber can never indulged himself into anything that may not have a solemnly conclusion or anything that may bring shame to my family considering my age and level in my community and I have first investigated properly into the transaction and I found out that there is no risk involved as you follow my instruction and keep everything as top secret my good brother you already know there's only one step forward and everyone will sit back and enjoy the fund to will be transferred into your account remember the total amount in the account which is going to be transferred to you is 10,5000 00 dollars all you need right now is to make the deposit to activate the account and we all will be happy at once and the fund we be in your account immediately I'm 100% sure about that.Richard Paolo Santiago
- Super Gullible: 'Sean Adams', the star of the "John Warosa Legacy" trilogy, likely wins the award for being the most impressionable scammer Mike has interacted with. His scam just kept going despite his constant accusations of Mike being a scambaiter and the many broken deadlines he set to try and bring things to a close. In the final video, he seemingly gives up after finally telling Mike that the legacy fund is no longer available for collection, only to be immediately drawn back in when Mike asks if he could pick up any other fund. And then in "A Little Nonesense Now And Then", he manages to be briefly put back on the hook again.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial:
- Extremely common in the received scam emails, and often lampshaded, most commonly claiming that it is 100% legal and risk free when not asked. Abdul Karim, the originator of the theme song lyrics, is one of the worst offenders of this, including mentioning repeatedly that he is not a cheater, not a deceiver, and not a small boy.
- The opening email of "I'm Just Mad About SAFFRON" features this gem in its first paragraph before it's even mentioned the premise of the scam:"This is a 100% legitimate business and has nothing to do with fraud money!!"
- "Davis Bon is Dead AGAIN!" features an email for a supposed Coca-Cola lottery that opens with the bizzare header of '[Message Came from Outside the Houston Police Department Mail System]'. Even Shrimp is confounded as to why exactly that is relevant.
- Terrible Artist: Atomic Shrimp loves to gleefully run down everything wrong with any fake document a scammer sends them, which almost always look extremely amaterurish and full of both typographical and visual errors, along with often being oddly casual in appearance for what are supposed to be formal legal documents. Undoubtedly the highlight is in the video "Making A Nuisance Of Myself With Scammers", which feature documents with borders made in clip-art, a signature on an employee ID that appears to have been drawn with a mouse, another signature on a death certificate that is clearly Benjamin Franklin's, and that same death certificate listing the time of death as "Plane Crash".
- Two First Names: It is very common for the supposed people sending email solicitations to have two first names. This quirk is likely a result of many languages around the world having a far less defined distinction between first names and surnames compared to English.
- Unfortunate Name:
- In "The Surprising Return Of John Barosa", Muhammad Hassan's law firm is named "Mohammad H&Ass Chambers", seemingly the result of an awkward attempt to abbreviate "Hassan & Associates".
- In "All Together Now - Scambaiting En Masse", he singles out a scammer for their alias being named "Mr. Dick Head".
- Verbal Tic: "Self-Destructing Scams" features "Mike Paul", a scammer with an absurdly repetitive vocabulary, to the point where a tracker was introduced to count all of his uses of particular words and phrases. Of note is that he appeared to use "ok" as a way of ending a sentence, and loved to insist that something had to be done "right now" ok
- Wham Line: Invoked on the scammers in the Endurance Scambaiting series, when after convincing them for weeks he was a gullible and frail old man, he abruptly informs them he knows they are both scammers and that the character was made up. Jerry's reveal was more powerful, with him starting by asking if he would be willing to be contacted at the bank, and then going into "do you really think so? Because I reckon you probably won't. Yeah, I just think given that you're a scammer, you probably won't."
- Won't Take "Yes" for an Answer: He once responded to a scammer with an immediate “sure, where can I send the payment?”, and repeated it during the scammer’s attempts to run through their script. It utterly threw the scammer off their game, and when they finally provided a payment link it seemed to be with extreme reluctance.
Tropes found in his other videos include:
- Analog Horror: Atomic Shrimp has a series of YouTube Shorts stylized as 50's-era government informational films, collectively called "Slaughter Valley Public Information". These shorts, about the fictional English area of Slaughter Valley, depict a fairly normal English village with some unique customs and happenings.
- Couch Gag: On every "Weird Stuff in a Can" video, a small adjustable sign briefly appears on his table bearing a pun or quip related to the can he is about to open.
- Disgusting Vegetarian Food: His 'Omnivore Reviews Vegan/Vegetarian Food' series avoids this, and Mike makes a point to always treat the food fairly. That said, even the thumbnail was disgusted by the Moroccan Spiced Veggie Burgers.
- Droste Image: In "Do AI-Generated Image/Art Algorithms Plagiarise?", Atomic Shrimp depicts the uncertainty over whether his AI-generated "Is this a pigeon?"/"how is babby formed" crossover meme constitutes plagiarism by putting it in place of the butterfly on the original meme with the caption changed to "Is this a [plagiarism]?" (since, as a very clear "redraw" of the original scene, it's definitely a derivative work), and then putting that meme onto the original meme with the caption changed to "Is this a [Fair Use]?" (since the changed caption and addition of the baby could be sufficiently transformative to qualify)
- Early Instalment Weirdness: His first Limited Budget Food Challenge is the only one that permits urban foraging; all future videos stick to just shopping and nature foraging.
- Foreign Queasine: Occasionally he will try something foreign on "Weird Stuff in a Can" that has ingredients that seem bizarre or even revolting to him. One example he is unable to finish is a vanilla-flavored drink made with white fungus and nests made from bird saliva.
- I'm a Humanitarian: In the Slaughter Valley short, "REDEMPTION", annoying acquaintances redeemed for money are implied to be made into soup, which is then sold back to the people who sent them in the first place. Or, they can just cut out the middle man, and trade the person for the soup directly.
- Know Your Vines: He starts "How To Get Started Foraging" with an exercise of letting viewers try to identify a selection of four leaves from the Apiaceae family, and also guess whether they are poisonous. The answers are Cow Parsley (edible), Hemlock Water-Dropwort (deadly), Poison Hemlock (deadly), and Ground Elder (edible).
- No Budget: The basis for his series of Limited Budget Food Challenges, where he attempts to stretch incredibly small amounts of money for as long as possible, such as £1 for 1 day and 3 meals, 2 days for £1.94note , 2 days for £2, and by far the longest one £5 for 5 days.
- Obvious Rule Patch:
- Within the Limited Budget Food Challenges, each day must involve the creation of three separate meals to get past the obvious solution of 'skip a meal to save money'. He also aims to make the meals reasonably diverse so he's not just making pots of noodles non-stop.
- In one budget challenge video, he encounters a roadkill deer while out foraging. He mentions that it could potentially be both safe and legal to take it home and use that as an ingredient, but won't since having a fresh chunk of venison would likely trivialise the challenge, and a not-insignificant number of viewers would likely find the idea to be
Squick.
- Public Service Announcement: His Slaughter Valley shorts are creepy fake ads modeled after old filmed public service announcements.
- Reading the Stage Directions Out Loud: "Fake NHS Vaccination Scam" features an email that looks scarily plausible at a glance... except that it randomly includes the sentence "It then goes on to say" in the middle of it. The most plausible explanation Atomic Shrimp came up with is that the scammer writing the email was listening to someone else transcribe a genuine example, leading to this random connective sentence not being deleted.
- Retraux: The Slaughter Valley shorts are in Deliberate Monochrome with film grain added and fuzzy audio quality to give the impression of being decades old.
- Running Gag:
- Referring to his home as "Atomic Shrimp HQ", which is always represented by an image a completely different house every time it is mentioned.
- Because it's spotted a lot while foraging, joking about the channel's affinity for Hemlock Water-Dropwort (a plant commonly found in wet grassland and woodland in the UK, which is easy to mistake for parsnip but is also potentially deathly poisonous) is common.
- Stock Footage: Used frequently, usually as a replacement for him eating something. Most apparent in the Slaughter Valley shorts, which are almost entirely composed of stock footage, with implications that the stock footage is actual footage of inhabitants of Slaughter Valley, such as with the "NORMALITY" short.
- Three-Point Landing: In "How To Get Started Foraging - Practical Guidance For Absolute Beginners", he begins the fieldwork portion of the video by flying into the middle of a field (aided by video editing), landing in this pose.
- Very False Advertising:
- In one subseries, he buys and tests inexpensive flash drives purporting to contain two terabytes of storage space. In reality, they were constructed with the intention of tricking the computer properties, and contain much, much less space, sometimes even less than 1 gigabyte, throwing the rest of the copied files out. One of them outright fried itself when he attempted a test transfer of 40 gigabytes.
- In another video, he orders a £29 laptop, and receives... a pair of sunglasses and a disposable face mask in a plastic bag, which he notes must have been handled and is therefore completely unusable.
- Zig-Zagged with the cheap dashcam he ordered, which he originally believed were given to him as cheap sunglasses masquerading as Ray-Bans, until he received an actual dashcam, just with far fewer features than advertised, after which he believed the sunglasses to have a different origin.
- Zig-Zagged again in "The Scam That Wasn't A Scam", where the scammer appears to be trying to scam Shrimp, although the offer was actually real... and is a scheme to scam Amazon.
