Brian Shrimp is a character many believe first appeared in Island Xtreme Stunts. However, this is actually not the case. In this article, we dive into how he made an appearance in the first LEGO® Island before that and why it was so different from how he appeared in Island Xtreme Stunts.
Brian Shrimp's origins are able to be traced back to the November 5th, 1996 script for LEGO® Island, where he is a part of a beach portion of the ambulance mission as a surfer, along with Luke Tepid, Shorty Tails, and Gideon Worse. Its game design featured a nutshell-type game where the player had to find Gideon Worse's head beneath one of three barrels.
Ultimately, the beach portion ambulance mission got cut from the final game. Other than the script and likely some dialog recorded, it is unknown how far this section of the ambulance mission got into development before ultimately being scrapped.
While his role in the ambulance mission got cut, Brian Shrimp ultimately made it into the game. Using MattKC's WIP libweaver tool, it is possible to identify him using his animation for his Pizzeria animation. At the end of each name for an animation (before "_RunAnim"), there are two letters for a character's name. In this case, it's "BS" for Brian Shrimp, confirming his role as the redheaded surfer.
Additionally, on top of Brian Shrimp, two other previously unnamed characters can be confirmed to be Luke Tepid and Shorty Tails. During the tow truck mission, in a variation of when the player picks up the racecar, black-haired and pony-tailed surfers appear. While due to the multi-character nature of the scene, it's hard to use the animation's name to identify them. Fortunately, a look at the animation data lists "lt" and "st" using the same abbreviated character naming style. Editing the data by switching the abbreviated names allows for the surfers' proper identities to be revealed, with Luke Tepid being the black-haired surfer and Shorty Tails being the pony-tailed surfer.
How Brian Shrimp appeared in Island Xtreme Stunts boils down to how the developers at Silicon Dreams Studio found out about him. During the development of LEGO® Island 2: The Bricksters Revenge, they were given access to the first LEGO® Island's audio source. When they found his voice audio, they couldn't figure out his appearance, but they likely heard something relating to barrels from the scrapped ambulance mission section. Working off this, Silicon Dreams wrote his character bio much as he would later appear in Island Xtreme Stunts.
