A small YouTuber named Tony Vestdream, who runs a channel called Tony’s Film Club, recently found himself at the center of a plagiarism controversy after discovering that a much larger channel, Sneaky Sushi, had apparently lifted his video almost entirely, down to the structure, phrasing, and individual jokes.
The situation came to light when Tony noticed that Sneaky Sushi had posted a video about a horror film so real that people had reportedly called the police, the exact same topic Tony had covered a year prior. The video went on to rack up over five million views and became Sneaky Sushi’s most watched upload ever.
Content creator AugustTheDuck covered the story and broke down the similarities between the two videos, calling it “the most blatant form of plagiarism I have ever seen on this platform.” The evidence was hard to argue with.
Both videos opened with the same framing device of saying they could not show certain footage on YouTube, followed by the same style of dramatic reenactment. Both walked through the same sequence of topics, including the history of underground VHS tape trading, Japanese V cinema, and a closing reflection on why people are drawn to horror.
Several lines were nearly identical, with the same specific word choices like describing a setting as a “slaughterhouse,” a word that AugustTheDuck noted was telling precisely because Sneaky Sushi dropped the qualifier “makeshift” that Tony had used, making the description suddenly not fit what was actually on screen.
Tony addressed the situation in his own video and ended it on a surprisingly generous note, saying: “There’s actually no hard feelings. Please don’t send any ha te to anyone. The only purpose that I’m making this video is to sort of bring attention to my belief that hopefully we are in it together with my colleagues and the internet is already the wild wild west and especially now with AI slop making it very easy to steal other people’s work.”
AugustTheDuck appreciated the sentiment but pushed back on the generosity, arguing that if Sneaky Sushi was this comfortable putting out a video so clearly based on someone else’s work, it was unlikely to be the first time.
In a late update recorded while editing the video, AugustTheDuck noted that Sneaky Sushi had quietly changed the title of the video, updated the description to acknowledge Tony’s work as a source of “huge inspiration,” and pinned a comment that stopped just short of a direct admission.
The apology only appeared after the situation gained public attention. As AugustTheDuck put it: “It doesn’t really mean a whole lot when you only apologize once you’re caught for something like this.”
