Web Video / Visual Venture

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Visual Venture is a YouTube channel run by Gerard Christian, focusing on well-researched internet documentaries covering a wide range of topics, from Internet trends to influencers doing shady things. His first upload was in August 2021 and he's still making content to this day.

Be warned that many of the discussed topics are not for the faint of heart.

Tropes:

• Abusive Parents: Some of Gerard's videos on influencer parents also reveal that some of them are willing to abuse their children, either for fame, or wanting them out of the way.
  • Zaikiya Duncan, one of the cases from both "The Disturbing World of Influencer Parents" and "The Internet's Most HATED Family Influencers", cultivated a "perfect family" image throughout her TikTok content. However, she was abusive towards her eldest twin sons and locked them out of participating or doing anything, starving them. While they managed to successfully escape and begged for help, causing the police to go after Zaikiya, it all proved moot when she not only fled with her husband and her other five kids, but the twins were returned back to her.
  • "The Most Disturbing Banned YouTube Channels": The last case, Fantastic Adventures, is a channel created by Michelle Hobson, a mother of seven adopted kids. While it became one of the most successful family channels, it all betrayed the horrid stuff happening behind the scenes; Michelle not only pulled them out of school to keep making content, but subjected them to abuse whenever they messed up the lines they rehearsed. Eventually, Michelle is arrested in 2019 after her adult biological daughter reports her to the police.
  • "Notorious Videos Deleted from YouTube": One of the cases discussed is the DaddyOFive family channel, in which the parents, Michael and Heather Martin, decided to upload videos of themselves subjecting their own kids to abusive pranks. For illustration, it even shows clips of a video in which they spilled invisible ink on Cody's bed and pinned the blame on the kid by screaming abuse at him. 
• Adoption Angst: David Berkowitz, discussed in Chapter 6 of "Dumbest Mistakes That Got Serial Killers Caught", wanted to know why his birth parents gave him away for adoption since he was a baby. After reaching out to his biological mother and finding out he was born out of a double affair^note ie. his parents were married to different people, on whom they cheated with each other, he snapped and targeted women with dark hair in his murders.
• Age-Inappropriate Dress: One of the cases in "The Disturbing World of Influencer Parents" is teen influencer Jenny Popach, who filmed content of herself wearing bikinis and other revealing outfits despite being 15 years old, all to the tune of songs with raunchy lyrics. Moreover, it's implied Jenny's mother is behind the content of said videos.
• all lowercase letters: Gerard renders the captions and subtitles in his videos in all lowercase.
• Apocalypse Cult: The second and third cases of "Secret Cults Hiding in Plain Sight Today" are the Grace Road Church and Aum Shinrikyo, which both center on apocalypses but in different ways.
  • GRC not only predicted an imminent apocalypse that would wipe out humanity. When the cult got a member spike by 2012, founder Shin Ok-ju predicted that the only place that would be unclaimed by the apocalypse would be the island of Fiji (which conveniently was where her church's compound was based) and ordered 400 of her followers to quit their jobs and move in with her to the island. When they obliged, however, they got subjected to grueling work and abuse at the compound.
  • Aum not only believed in an imminent apocalypse, but they targeted critics for termination with beatings and sarin, but its leader and founder, Shoko Asahara, ordered his followers to kill the most police officers in a bid to scare the populace into deference to Aum, thus causing the 1995 sarin attack. While it backfired and got leader Shoko Asahara executed for his crimes, the cult still works today under the name of "Aleph", and has stuck to meditation and wellness only. 
• Banned Episode: invokedThe subject of "Cartoon Episodes Banned for Controversial Reasons", in which Gerard discusses banned episodes from known cartoons, and the reasons why they're banned.
• Banned in China: Several cases are discussed in-universe, from kids' cartoons being banned for controversial reasons (i.e. Peppa Pig episodes getting banned in Australia for teaching kids that spiders are harmless in a country where many of them can kill you) to disturbing movies banned in multiple countries for being too obscene for its tastes (i.e. the second Human Centipede film).
• Black Market:
  • One of the sites discussed in "The Most Unsettling Websites On The Internet" is Silk Road, a criminal online marketplace in which one could sell illegal goods and services.
  • Chapter 4 of "Exposing Telegram's MASSIVE Criminal Underworld" centers around the flourishing black-market group chats in Telegram.
• Bullying the Disabled: In "Dumbest Ways YouTubers Destroyed Their Careers", when Gerard discusses LeafyIsHere, he brings up the incident in which Leafy roasted TommyNC2010 for being autistic, which became the first nail in the coffin for his career as the former's fans began harassing the latter. This sparked a storm of criticism from other YouTubers for this and other previous instances in which Leafy targeted smaller channels for roasting.
• Cannot Tell Fiction from Reality: One of the cases from "The Most HORRIBLE People in Gaming History" is Grand Theft Auto player Devin Moore, who became obsessed with the game to the point of dissociation — when he got arrested for stealing a car and had the handcuffs taken off for fingerprints, Moore snapped and killed five officers on his way to steal a police car like in the game only to get caught and then sentenced to death via lethal injection.
• Can't Take Criticism: In "Dumbest Ways YouTubers Destroyed Their Careers", after Gerard discusses RiceGum's prolific career, he goes to the incident that ruined it — his feud with iDubbbzTV after the latter made a Content Cop video criticizing him, to which RiceGum responded with a diss track. However, all it ended up doing is proving iDubbbz's point.
• Childhood Brain Damage: In Chapter 3 of "Dumbest Mistakes That Got Serial Killers Caught", which is about Bobby Joe Long, Gerard explains that Long's childhood was marked by the repeated incidents in which he hit his head, which eventually damaged his brain and hampered his ability to distinguish right from wrong.
• Control Freak: In "The Most Unsettling Banned YouTube Channels", when Gerard discusses the behavior of Ian Rylett, the manager of SevenAwesomeKids, and by extension, its SevenSuperGirls spin-off channel, he explains that Rylett and the management not only put the SAK channels in a hierarchy and subjected the girls to stricter rules and conduct/dress codes as they worked their way up, but also controlled their friendships; they assigned every girl a "best friend" and forbade them from interacting with their actual friends under threats of being kicked out of SAK. To add insult to injury, Rylett himself was so controlling that he would call the girls' parents to scream abuse at them whenever they upset him, not to mention dishing out threats of demotion/demonetization at the girls themselves.
• The Corrupter: In Chapter 3 of "Exposing Telegram's MASSIVE Criminal Underworld" expands on how criminals and gangsters use the app to recruit unsuspecting users into committing fraud with the promise of making a quick buck, with some escalating into sharing private documents to Telegram groups.
• Come to Gawk: Autism-awareness family vlog FatheringAutism, discussed in both "The Internet's Most Toxic Family Influencers" and "The Internet's Most HATED Family Influencers", was a family vlog that became hated for being a thinly-veiled attempt by its creator, Asa Maass, of turning his nonverbal autistic daughter Abigail into a cash cow, even going as far as to record and upload her bathroom routines. Gerard even put a clip of SAVY WRITES BOOKS on the issue backing this up:
  Savy: It began to feel like Asa was making a spectacle out of Abby, documenting her like an animal and putting her real life on blast for viewers to gaze upon like patrons in a zoo.
• Compilation Movie: As of late, Gerard has been uploading compilations of his past videos following a theme each, such as toxic influencers, controversial shows, or criminals who used the Internet for their nefarious ends. Said compilations last around one hour and a half.
• The Cracker: In "Exposing Telegram's MASSIVE Criminal Underworld", Gerard explains how cybercriminals like Punchmade Dev used Telegram to order phishing kits that allow them to deploy ready-made fake webpages without the need of programming skills, showing a clip of Dev doing exactly that and teaching his viewers how to commit fraud with them by spoofing the identity of streamer Adin Ross.
• Creepy Doll: The Ingham Family, discussed in both "YouTube's Most Disturbing Family Channels" and "The Internet's Most Toxic Family Influencers", created controversy by not only uploading the birth of their baby son Jace and creating an Instagram account for him at 10 days old, but also sold a line of life-like baby Jace replica dolls. Understandably, the Inghams' viewers were creeped out by the concept and called them out for it, with one comment shown for emphasis.
  @KittieZombieSlayer: Imagine the horror when you're old enough and realize your parents replicated you in a doll form. Highly creepy and inappropriate to sell your own child.
• Cult: The subject of both "The Most Disturbing Cults on the Internet" and "Terrifying Cults Still Operating Today". The former focuses on modern cults operating on the Internet; the latter focuses on the creepiest in-person cults still in operation to this day, ranging from the eccentric like the Raëlians to the dangerous like the Zizians.
• Dead Guy on Display: The Love Has Won cult, discussed in both "The Most Disturbing Cults on the Internet" and "Secret Cults Hiding in Plain Sight Today", not only let their leader, Amy Carlson, die from poisoning with colloidal silver (which she promoted as a miracle cure) and refused to take her to a hospital out of believing modern medicine was evil (which she also taught), but when she died, they put her corpse in display inside a shrine riddled with Christmas lights.
• Dirty Old Man:
  • When Gerard discusses the SevenSuperGirls channel in "The Most Unsettling Banned YouTube Channels", he explains that the manager of its parent company SevenAwesomeKids, Ian Rylett, was not only a Control Freak towards the girls starring there, but was also a creep, from imposing a dress code that made them show skin and ordering them to act out Kiddie Kid personas on-camera even in their late teens, to making them send photos of themselves in bikinis to him under the pretense of sponsorships.
  • The first case of "The Worst Creeps of YouTube" is Donzel Owens Jr., known as PlasmaMasterDon. Don presented himself as a sweet old man who made covers of songs and outdoor videos. However, Don's sweet demeanor betrayed a creepy secret — he was a registered sex offender. When confronted at his channel over a Reddit post exposing him, he deleted the comments mentioning it, but liked one proclaiming they wouldn't mind the odd interaction if he was their grandpa, which confirmed the accusations.
• Entitled to Have You: When Gerard discusses the Twin Flames Universe in "The Most Disturbing Cults on the Internet", he explains that the cult not only taught its members to be willing to push boundaries in order to find their "twin flames", but some of the "Twin Flames" assigned to members were people outside of the cult. Gerard then shows a Reddit post in which the OP wrote about a Twin Flames member stalking a female friend of theirs to the point of uploading a video proclaiming "it was his God-given right to be with her".
• Every Episode Ending: Each episode ends with a lesson that Gerald recommends that viewers take away from the whole documentary experience, followed by a Title Drop.
• Fake Beauty Accusation: One of the cases in "Memes with Shockingly Disturbing Backstories" is the "Can't Hide it Forever" meme, which spawned from a plastic-surgery clinic's ad featuring Taiwanese supermodel Heidi Yeh. Gerard explains that this meme ruined Yeh's life as a Chinese tabloid attached the advert's image to a fake news story about a husband in Heilongjiang suing his wife for having plastic surgery as their kids looked nothing like her, which caused everyone to see Yeh as the lying wife in question.
• Fake Charity:
  • In "The Most Disturbing Banned YouTube Channels" when Gerard discusses the YouTube channel of Sonshine Media Network International, the broadcasting arm of Apollo Quiboloy's Kingdom of Jesus Christ cult, he reveals that one of Quiboloy's crimes was to send church members to USA with fake visas to manipulate people into giving them money under the pretense it was for a charity named "Children's Joy Foundation International", with the money going straight to Quiboloy's pockets rather than to the children they were supposed to help.
  • 'This "Respected" YouTuber Ran a $600K Charity Scam' is a video centered on The Completionist, a YouTube channel run by Jirard Khalil, and the controversies surrounding him and the Open Hand Foundation, a charity he and his father founded for the purpose of dementia research after his mother died of frontotemporal dementia, establishing his IndieLand streams to get donations for the charity. While he became a beloved creator and a cause célebre for his efforts, it all fell apart in 2023 when YouTubers Mutahar and Carl made a thorough investigation and found out the OHF didn't contribute a single cent to their partners, but pocketed the donation money for itself. As a result, Khalil's reputation tanked as his former fans turned on him while the OHF's partners cut ties with them.
• Faking Another Person's Illness: Some of the cases of Gerard's videos feature influencer parents faking illnesses for their children for the sake of fame.
  • "The Internet's Most HATED Family Influencers": Among the LaBrant family's stunts for the sake of fame, they released a video claiming their 2-year-old daughter was diagnosed with cancer. However, when genuinely concerned viewers clicked on the video, it turned out to be the family visiting a hospital for kids with cancer, with none of the LaBrant kids being ill.
  • "The Disturbing World of Influencer Parents": One of the cases, Jessica Gasser, not only faked a rare illness for her daughter for the sake of TikTok fame, but also went out of her way to make her seem sick (even going as far as gaslighting the girl herself and putting her through medical tests and regimes she didn't need). Eventually, Jessica's ruse ends up falling apart when her latest hospital reports her to the Family Protective Services, with the police investigating her and taking her daughter away.
• Faking the Dead: The subject of "YouTubers Who Faked Their Deaths for Dumb Reasons", in which Gerard discusses people who faked their deaths on YouTube for petty reasons.
• Flush the Evidence: On the first chapter of "Dumbest Mistakes That Got Serial Killers Caught", centered on British serial killer Dennis Nilsen, Gerard explains that once the murderer moved out on his landlord's orders and ran out of space for storing his victims' corpses at his new flat, Nilsen decided to flush them down the toilet. Gerard argues it was a bad idea; the corpses eventually clogged the drain and led to complaints among the other tenants, driving them to call a plumber, who found the mess of human flesh blocking the pipes that led to Nilsen's arrest.
• Forbidden Friendship: In "The Most Unsettling Banned YouTube Channels", when Gerard discusses the SevenSuperGirls channel, he explains that among manager Ian Rylett's behaviors towards the girls starring in it and the other six SevenAwesomeKids channels, he forbade them from interacting with their real-life friends and assigned each of them a "best friend" with whom they're mandated to interact instead.
• Formula-Breaking Episode: When Gerard discusses the Mickey Mouse cartoons in "Cartoon Episodes Banned for Controversial Reasons", he explains they followed a pattern of the title character getting in trouble, beating the antagonist, and ending in a happy note. However, he argues that The Walt Disney Company committed the mistake of breaking the pattern by creating The Mad Doctor in 1933, as it featured the titular villain kidnapping Pluto and Mickey for his experiments only for it all to turn out to be a dream by Mickey. The scariness of this cartoon caused Disney to ban and erase it from their repertoire.
• Future Me Scares Me: One of the trends discussed in "TikTok Trends Are Destroying Your Mental Health" is the Aged Filter, which used AI to predict how old will the user look. Gerard explains that the filter resulted in users (even children) becoming scared of growing old and taking up all sorts of measures to stop aging.
• Gasshole: A core belief of the Universal Medicine cult discussed in "Terrifying Cults Still Operating Today" was that certain foods would draw "evil energy" to the body if eaten, so the only way to expel it was by burping. Then Gerard shows a Vice clip of a man talking about how a UM member started burping all over the place.
• Genuine Human Hide: The first site discussed in "The Most Unsettling Websites On The Internet" is Urban Outraged, which is a retailer of leather clothes made out of human skin, complete with the names of the people they supposedly extracted the leather from. However, Gerard explains that when you click on the "Our Story" tab of the website, it'll reveal itself as a stunt by animal-rights group PETA to draw awareness of the suffering animals go through for their leather.
• A God Am I:
  • "The Most Disturbing Cults on the Internet" discusses how Amy Carlson, leader and co-founder of the Love Has Won cult, developed a god complex and called herself "Mother God" — she started off as a straight A+ student and school choir member, working as a manager at McDonald's. However, she started delving into New Age spirituality forums and met "Amerith WhiteEagle", who convinced her she was the creator of the universe.
  • "The Worst Creeps on YouTube": One of the cases, Josiah Mizukami, a model/entrepreneur-turned-cult leader, started proclaiming himself as "Earth's true Messiah" and even talked about an "infinite conglomerate" called Skyview Design. However, that's small potatoes compared to Mizukami's videos preaching disturbing ideas, such as animals being able to consent.
• Go Mad from the Isolation:
  • The last case of "TV's Most Disturbing Reality Shows", a Japanese game show Susunu! Denpa Shōnen, became a hit with its first challenge, which consisted on locking a contestant up in a room naked with no contact and only surviving only on edible prizes they won. To this effect, they picked Tomoaki Hamatsu, known as Nasubi. Gerard explains that as time went on, Nasubi slowly lost his mind as he talked to himself and behaved erratically.
  • The first case of "Dumbest Mistakes That Got Serial Killers Caught", Dennis Nilsen, led an isolated lifestyle during his teens, which caused him to spiral into insanity and eventually commit his first murder.
• Hanging Around: In "Streamers Willing to do ANYTHING for Views", when Gerard discusses Kai Cenat's 30-day Mafiathon 2 stream, he explains that one of the stunts to keep people interested was hiring magician Max Major to perform a magic trick involving three nooses, each one put on his neck while Kai had to pull one of three handles to launch each noose upward without hanging Max. After a successful first attempt, Kai flubbed his second attempt and hanged Max, shocking the audience. Thankfully, it was just a visual trick and Max uploaded a video clarifying the fact, on top of Kai completing his 30-day stream with 700+ subscribers. 
• Hassle-Free Hotwire: Two videos cover the Kia Challenge and the consequences that ensued from it.
  • "The Worst TikTok Trends" explains how the trend started when a TikToker tried to inform of how easy Kia and Hyundai cars were to hotwire, which backfired as other users decided to imitate it, starting the challenge and causing Kia/Hyundai owners to worry about being victims of carjacking. 
  • "The WORST TikTok Trends for Your Mental Health" expands on the trend by telling it from the victims' perspective as owners of said cars lived in constant fear and paranoia over being targeted by the "Kia Boys", with some developing PTSD and nightmares over it.
• Hostage Situation: One of the cases discussed in "YouTubers Who Turned Into Notorious Criminals" is the channel Nina Unrated, run by Denisse Muniz-Torres, who was notorious for having the cops and SWAT called on her for trying to chase her ex-husband, Morlon Greenwood, out of her Pembroke Pines home with a gun. When the relevant forces came over, she barricaded herself and her son inside the house, refusing to let him leave for six hours until she surrendered.
• House Fire: One of the cases discussed in "Cartoon Episodes Banned for Controversial Reasons" is the Beavis and Butt-Head episode "Comedians" and the controversy it caused when a kid from Ohio accidentally set fire to his house playing with a lighter, to which his mother claimed to news reporters that it was because of the episode. As a result, MTV had to move the series to a primetime slot and banned the episode.
• Humans Are Bastards: One of the cases discussed in "Documentaries Banned for Being Too Disturbing" is Mondo Cane, a "shockumentary" that, as Gerard puts it, meant "to show humanity at its most depraved", describing scenes of women being fattened up for a local dictator and animal cruelty.
• Immoral Reality Show:
  • "TV's Most Disturbing Reality Shows" explores upon the controversies caused by reality shows such as Milf Manor, Kid Nation, Fear Factor, etc.
  • "Most Controversial Reality Show Ever Created" is centered around Kid Nation and expands on the controversies it caused throughout its run, from the producers having the contestants' parents sign a contract forbidding them from filing lawsuits (even if their kids suffered injuries), to the town's unsanitary conditions and the kids themselves turning on each other as the show went on.
• Karmic Overkill: Discussed in-universe during one video, where Jessi (an 11-year old girl) acts like a brat online and is subjected to such immense hate (especially for a pre-teen) that it becomes almost impossible to not feel bad for her. Lampshaded by Gerard in the end.
  "Jessi's story is filled with pain and suffering. When she was a kid, she made stupid decisions. She talked like a brat and acted like one too. But do you think that an 11-year-old girl deserved all that unending hate? We're all human, we make mistakes."
• Kids Driving Cars: In "Memes with Shockingly Disturbing Backstories", Gerard explains this is the origin of the "Hoodrat Kid" meme; Latarian Milton, the kid in question, stole his grandmother's SUV in response to her saying "no" to him watching cartoons, and his "it's fun to do bad things" line was when the cops caught him.
• Kiss Me, I'm Virtual: One of the cases of "Creepy Apps You Should Never Install", the Replika app, had an ERP (Erotic Roleplay) function available for Premium users, allowing the AI to act flirty towards them. However, this led to people's Replikas harassing them and even scolding them for having real-life partners, which led parent company Luka to disable ERP in a later update.
• Last Disrespects: One of the cases of "The Worst TikTok Trends" was a trend of people dancing on graves for Internet fame, causing controversy for promoting disrespect towards the deceased.
• Might as Well Not Be in Prison at All: In Chapter 3 of "Exposing Telegram's MASSIVE Criminal Underworld", Gerard brings up the Luffy Gang, whose four members were caught, deported back to Japan, and jailed in 2023. However, this didn't deter them from operating their scams smoothly because they used Telegram to do so, sending out "dark part-time job" applications for people to take and do their bidding.
• Millennium Bug: The subject of "How One Computer Bug Almost Ended the World" and how much damage the Y2K panic caused.
• Mock Millionaire: Both "The Worst Eras in Internet History" and "The Disturbing World of Child Influencers..." discuss the case of Lil Tay, a notorious kidfluencer who flaunted her wealth while disparaging those who weren't wealthy until it was found out she was faking the wealth all along. The former video explains the consequences, such as her mother, a real-estate agent, being fired for using her bosses' properties as props to maintain the facade. The latter, expands on the girl's life after the debacle.
• Model Scam: Buddhafield, one of the cults discussed in "Terrifying Cults Still Operating Today" started off as this; leader Michel Rostan posed as an acting teacher to rope several hopefuls into his cult and use his licensed hypnotherapist skills to enslave them into working at his compound. 
• Mugging the Monster: The subject of "Dumb Posts That Made People Targets for Hitmen", in which Gerard talks about people who met their demises by posting things that drew the wrath of dangerous gangs upon them.
• My Little Panzer: "Kids Toys Banned for HARMING Children" features some of the most notorious Real Life instances of this trope. The episode opens with a news report saying that over 200,000 children were treated for toy-related injuries in 2021 (the year the channel started) alone.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: In "Terrifying Cults Still Operating Today", when Gerard brings up the last case, the Zizians, he explains an incident in which two members of the cult beat up their landlord bloody for demanding they pay rent, with the intent to kill him. While the landlord survived, this only pissed off the Zizians responsible into making two more attempts on his life, eventually succeeding in the third.
• Pedophilia Is a Special Kind of Evil:
  • "The Most Disturbing Banned YouTube Channels": One of the cases is Sonshine Media Network International's channel, run by Kingdom of Jesus Christ leader and founder Apollo Quiboloy. Gerard explains that apart from running a fake-charity scam in the US, Quiboloy also rounded up all female members of his church to select a personal assistant. As Gerard puts it:
    "These women were forced to work at his house during the night doing things that were far from normal assistant duties. The worst part? Some of them were on the younger side."
  • "The Most Unsettling Banned YouTube Channels": When Gerard explains the plight of the girls starring in SevenSuperGirls, he reveals that the manager of its parent company SevenAwesomeKids, Ian Rylett, wasn't only an abusive Control Freak, but a creep who enforced dress codes and even tricked the girls during a trip to Anaheim into sending him photos of themselves in bikinis under the pretense it was for sponsors. Eventually, Rylett was arrested in 2018 for mistreating one of the girls and molestation charges, which also caused all his SAK channels to be terminated.
• The Perils of Being the Best: In "The Most Unsettling Banned YouTube Channels", when Gerard discusses the SevenSuperGirls channel, he explains that the SevenAwesomeKids channels were tiered, with SSG at the top; the girls had to grow their fanbases and work their way up to said channel, but ended up subjected to increasingly stricter rules as they did so. Then he shows a clip of former star Emily Jade, who started in SevenTwinklingTweens, SAK's lowest-ranked channel, explaining that after she was met with stricter rules after rising to SevenCoolTweens, such as wearing summer outfits in all her videos even in the middle of winter and recording full-body shots under threat of consequences. Gerard even explains that by the time Emily got on SevenSuperGirls, she lost all excitement for it.
• Pimping the Offspring: One of the cases of "The Disturbing World of Influencer Parents" is a digital variant — the case of Wren Eleanor, a 4-year-old girl whose mother, Jaquelyn, filmed TikTok content involving the girl in seemingly innocent situations geared at a male adult fanbase. Eventually, concerned mothers and other TikTokers condemned Jaquelyn for her stunts, especially as later videos involving Wren featured more suspicious content.
• Passed-Over Inheritance: In "Terrifying Cults Still Operating Today", Gerard explains that one of the shady practices performed by the Universal Medicine cult was to manipulate terminally-ill members into leaving their inheritances to the leader and founder, Serge Benhayon, instead of their own children under threats of suffering kidney diseases in their next lives. This resulted in a female member's family suing UM after she died and left $1.4 million dollars in inheritance to Benhayon.
• Pillow Pregnancy: In "The Disturbing World of Child Influencers..." when Gerard discusses Boram's videos at the beginning, he brings up one in which she pretended to be pregnant by stuffing a pillow under her clothes, which disturbed her viewers to the point that humanitarian organization Save the Children had to intervene on her behalf.
• Posting What You Shouldn't: This is the subject of "Dumb Posts That Made People Targets for Hitmen", given it's about influencers and other famous people making social media posts that got them in trouble with dangerous gangs, with some losing their lives for it.
• Prank Gone Too Far: Often overlapping with Deadly Prank, Gerard does not shy away from discussing cases in which internet pranksters have ruined (or even ended) lives with their "pranks".
• Rage Breaking Point: One of the cases of "The WORST TikTok Trends for Your Mental Health" was the #CrashingOut videos, in which people filmed themselves having angry outbursts over anything, from personal problems to world ones. Gerard explains that this trend caused the people recording themselves to lose jobs, ruin their relationships, and become pariahs.
• Reptilian Conspiracy: Ramtha's School of Enlightenment, one of the cases in "Terrifying Cults Still Operating Today," had conspiracies about evil human-eating Reptilians as one of its core beliefs, which its leader Judy Zebra Knight uses to threaten members out of leaving.
• Revenge Before Reason: In "Dumbest Ways YouTubers Destroyed Their Careers", Gerard argues this of Tati Westbrook's "BYE Sister" exposé video, even captioning it as "The 43-Minute Mistake". For context, Tati uploaded said video out of revenge on fellow beauty YouTuber James Charles, for promoting Sugarbear Hair Vitamins^note which was a rival company of Tati's own, Halo Beauty. in Instagram, even when James issued a public apology for the stunt. After the ensuing subscriber spike for Tati's channel, James retaliated with an exposé of his own, which caused the tables to turn on her — Tati's channel lost subscribers by the droves, partners cut ties with her channel and sue both her and her husband, who divorces her, and she finally resigns from Halo Beauty.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: invokedThe subject of "Dumbest Ways YouTubers Destroyed Their Careers", in which Gerard talks about YouTubers who ran their own careers into the ground because of their poor decisions.
• Self-Made Orphan:
  • Two of the cases of "The Most HORRIBLE People in Gaming History" are people who killed their own parents.
    • Menhaz Zaman was a Perfect World player who killed his own parents and sister as an alternative to come clean about his lie about enrolling to York University and graduating, which he made up in response to their pressure to excel academically. Gerard explains that as a result of that, Menhaz got jailed with a life sentence with no parole for 40 years.
    • Daniel Petric, having started off as the star player of his high-school team until a skiing accident ruined his performance, became obsessed with playing violent videogames, specifically those of the Halo franchise. However, when his father caught him buying Halo 3 and locked his copy away, Daniel left the house for a friend's before going back to kill his parents as he retrieved the copy, but then his sister and her husband walked in and called the police. While his mother died from the gunshot, his father survived.
  • In "The Most Disturbing Cults on the Internet", when Gerard discusses the University of Cosmic Intelligence cult and brings up the crimes pinned on them, he starts with Damian Washam's murder of his mother with a ninja sword and tried to do the same to his brother and uncle.
• Serial Rapist: Bobby Joe Long, the third murderer discussed in "Dumbest Mistakes That Got Serial Killers Caught", started off seeking women in the classifieds to rape, which he did out of revenge for his girlfriend leaving him. After one of his victims reported him to the police however, he vowed to not let his next victims live and became a serial killer.
• Sinister Serial Adopter: One of the cases discussed in "Secret Cults Hiding in Plain Sight Today" is the Kashi Ashram cult, led and founded by Ma Jaya. Gerard explains that Ma not only arranged marriage between members of her compound at her leisure and demanded married members have children, but manipulated them into giving said children up for adoption to her. As in, making them sign adoption papers so she'll be the kids' legal guardian.
• Snake Oil Salesman: One of the cases discussed in "Terrifying Cults Still Operating Today" is the Universal Medicine cult, founded by Serge Benhayon. The cult not only maintained that burping is a way to heal illnesses, but also sold teas, herbal elixirs, and creams to heal said illnesses.
• Stalker with a Crush:
  • The first case of "Creepy Apps You Should Never Install" is an app/website called "Girls Around Me", which tracks down nearby women's locations around the user by their Facebook and Foursquare profiles. This understandably caused backlash as it could be used by stalkers to follow random women and do worse things.
  • One of the cases discussed in "The Most Disturbing Cults on the Internet" is the Twin Flames Universe, whose teachings encouraged followers to try and bond with their assigned soulmates (dubbed "twin flames") even if they're outsiders who don't know anything about them, with Gerard showing a Reddit post detailing an encounter with a TFU member stalking the OP's friend. Moreover, Gerard introduces the cult again in "Secret Cults Hiding in Plain Sight Today" by pointing out how they taught their followers to become stalkers.
• Start My Own: One of the cases of "Terrifying Cults Still Operating Today", Swami Nithyananda, decided to start his own contry called Kailasa after going on the run from the law after it was revealed he had a woman laying dead in his compound, along with several accusations from female former members of false imprisonment and sexual assault.
• Stupid Crooks:
  • The subject of "The Dumbest Criminals on the Internet", the thumbnail of which shows a criminal with a tattoo saying "I KILLED JOHN" written on his bare chest.
  • "Dumbest Mistakes That Got Serial Killers Caught" is, as its name implies, about murderers who ended up getting caught because the mistakes and blunders they committed trying to cover up their crimes.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: The first case of "The Worst TikTok Trends" was the Ice Cream Licking Challenge, started by the video of a woman at a supermarket taking a tub of Blue Bell ice cream out of a fridge, licking it off the lid, replacing it, and putting the tainted tub back into the fridge. This trend led to supermarkets locking the fridges and even hiring guards or cops to stave off future attempts. Eventually, it all ended when someone tried to do a spin-off challenge by opening a mouthwash bottle at another supermarket, taking a swig, and spitting it back into the bottle before putting it back into the shelf, leading cops to arrest future trenders.
• There Should Be a Law: The subject of "Laws That Exist Because of One Terrible Incident", in which certain laws came into existence after horrifying incidents occurred because there was no actual law preventing them from happening. Examples include product tampering being outlawed after people replaced Tylenol tablets with Cyanide Pills and a law being made against triggering people's symptoms over the internet after cruel trolls sent online videos and images in order to deliberately send people with epilepsy into a fit.
• This Page Will Self-Destruct: In "Exposing Telegram's MASSIVE Criminal Underworld" when Gerard explains the Yogesh Meena case, he brings up the app's self-destructing message function as one of its assets to help criminals stay off the hook.
• Threat Backfire: One of the videos discussed in "Notorious Videos Deleted from YouTube" is a video of Logan Paul responding to Coffeezilla's video about the former's NFT game project, CryptoZoo, being a scam. In said video, Paul accused Coffee of trying to use the former's name for views and money before threatening him with a lawsuit. Gerard explains that the threat backfired as Logan's attitude in the video came off as arrogant and defensive, which earned him mockery.
• Title Drop: Gerard always ends his videos by giving lessons related to the content before namedropping the title of his channel.
• The Tooth Hurts: Gerard discusses the Teeth Filing Challenge in "The Worst TikTok Trends" and explains the ensuing consequences as he explains one user ended up filing into her nerve and thus she needed painkillers from there on, on top of dentists warning about the enamel damage from this challenge. Moreover, Gerard also shows other derived trends from this, such as gluing fake vampire fangs with nail glue/superglue, washing their teeth with bleach, and using rubber bands to close their tooth gaps. 
• Trash of the Titans: One of the trends discussed in "TikTok Trends Are Destroying Your Mental Health" named "Bed Rotting" consists of people putting off plans to lay down on bed for days. Gerard explains that one of the consequences was the accumulation of filth and trash in bedrotters' bedrooms.
• Values Dissonance: invoked
  • The first case of "Cartoon Episodes Banned for Controversial Reasons" is the Peppa Pig episode "Mister Skinnylegs", in which Gerard explains that while the moral of not fearing spiders was passable and necessary in several countries, it was unacceptable in Australia because the country is home to the world's most dangerous spiders. 
  • One of the ads discussed in "The Most Unsettling Banned Commercials" is the one for Zazoo condoms in which a little boy throws a full-blown tantrum at a supermarket much to his father's dismay. Gerard comments that it was well-received in France for its dark humor, but became the object of backlash once it was aired in English-speaking countries because it came off as disrespectful towards parents.
• Virtual Ghost: One of the cases of "Creepy Apps You Should Never Install" is the With Me app by South Korean company Elrois, whose purpose is to allow the user to create AR avatars of their deceased loved ones and interact with them from their phone. Said avatars will derive their personality from any data about the deceased they're emulating and maintain conversation. Apart from the creepy implications of talking with AI replicas of deceased people, the creation of said avatars requires the person to pass through a special photo booth while alive to get the image data.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Discussed in-universe during "Kids Shows Too Inappropriate For Kids", with such scenes as a Quack Doctor causing a character to take unprescribed medication in Rocko's Modern Life and another stealing an alien's organs and replacing them with human ones so people won't find out he's an alien in Invader Zim.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: Discussed in-universe during '"Innocent" Cartoons Kids Should Not Watch', in which Gerard discusses adult animated shows like The Amazing Digital Circus, Smiling Friends, Don't Hug Me I'm Scared, Popee the Performer, Coraline, Skibidi Toilet Series, and Unicorn Wars, explaining how they're mistakenly assumed to be for kids because of the cute, friendly, and colorful aesthetic they evoke at first, only to terrify kids once they actually watch the shows.
• Wizarding School: In "Secret Cults Hiding in Plain Sight Today", Gerard explains that the first case, the Modern Mystery School, was founded with the alleged goal to teach ancient magic the founder, Gudni Gudnason, learned from aliens in a spaceship to stave off demonic influences in Earth. However, the "magic" and "exorcism" rituals amounted to meditation and martial-arts training.
• Your Days Are Numbered: One of the sites discussed in "The Most Unsettling Websites On The Internet" is the Death Date website, which can supposedly calculate the time a person has left before dying just by entering personal details and even the medication/stimulants one is on. Gerard then shows a Reddit post warning not to use this website.