I do mean stuff like removed scenes from international airings, replacing objects like cigarettes or vine with any other objects.
The Invincible TV series is quite gory. Blood gets censored to be white in China which makes for some interesting scenes of hands dripping with white stuff. Or this:
Die Hard 2.
Original line: “Yippee ki-yay, mother fucker.”
Censorship line: “Yippee ki-yay, Mr. Falcon.”
There is no one named Mr. Falcon in the movie.
I feel like even though there were probably instances of it before this, the “Yippee-ki-yay, Mr. Falcon” is kind of the OG, because it’s the first one I remember to become well-known on this new thing called “the internet”.
There is a famous US tv edit of Snakes On A Plane where Samuel L Jackson shouts at a pivitol moment, “I’ve had it with these monkey eating snakes on this Monday to Friday plane!”
Monkey fighting snakes, if my memory serves correctly.
The best version of that movie is the censored version lol
In France, advertising alcohool brands on TV is heavily restricted. It wasn’t a problem in the Simpsons since Duff was not a real brand of beer.
When Duff became a real brand, French TV had to blur every Duff logo and beep out every “Duff” pronounced on screen. Some episodes became unwatchable, Duffman became beepman, every beer became blurry…
Duffman became beepman, every beer became blurry…
Considering Duffman’s signature hip movements and the funky Ohhh yeaaah~ music that always plays whenever he arrives, someone who doesn’t know Duff is supposed to be a beer might get a very wrong idea about his job.
It’s like the censored Sesame Street clip of the Count
Wait, what?
Iirc they bleep out every time he says “count”
“I love to %@#$! 1…2…3”
Edit: lol https://youtu.be/6AXPnH0C9UA
The Welsh rugby team were at one point sponsored by a Cardiff brewery called “Brains” and when they played over in Paris the sponsors name was rendered as “Brawn”.
Also the cigarette brand “Benson and Hedges” were branded “Buzzing Hornets” when their F1 team were racing in countries that had already banned tobacco sponsorship.
When Sailor Moon was airing on American TV back in the late 90’s, they completely censored out every aspect of romantic relationship between Sailor Neptune and Sailor Uranus. Turned them into cousins.
It was a shock to me when I bought the subtitled version and they were suddenly lesbians.
Out of curiosity, (if you’d like to share), how old were you when you found out and how did you take it? Were you on board with it or did it feel weird?
::: I spoiler tagged this long ass post in order to hide it from folks who don’t care.
I’m not that person but I had the exact same thing happen to me! And let me tell you, when I was first watching it as a middle schooler, I knew they were in love! I didn’t know that women-who-like-women had a word (lesbian), so I thought, “Well, if you’re in love with someone, they’re probably your friend. Probably your best friend, so that makes sense. But you can’t just call them your girlfriend, because-”
I grew up in rural Oklahoma (and now live in Tennessee). A woman, who has a friend, and that friend is a woman, makes her a girlfriend. I still call women who are my friends, ‘girlfriends,’ even though it obviously could mean something romantic. So Uranus and Neptune probably couldn’t just say ‘girlfriend,’ because all the girls who were their friends were their girlfriends, so ‘best’ friend is probably a friend who is such a good friend, that you’re also in love with them. (This was the logic of a sixth grader.)
It’s one of the reasons that Sailor Moon fans have always been so inclusive, have always stood up for other presentations or orientations. Why on earth would we support people trying to hide this stuff from children, when a not-so-small number of us knew what we were looking at when we were children?
To add to that, I might have had a very unique interpretation of the situation, because I would later learn that I was a demi bisexual (we didn’t even have the word ‘demisexual’ when I was a girl) and what that means is… For me, I usually only want a relationship with the person who is such my best friend, that I also am in love with them!
:::
lol yeah. They didn’t edit out all the flirting though or all the embarassed or indignant reactions by the characters around them, which presents those “cousins” in a really interesting light ;)
The US version of Sailor Moon was also censored and edited in different other ways. IIRC:
- All Tokyo references were changed to New York. So they’ve changed where the whole thing took place.
- They changed all Japanese writings (Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji)
- Multiple characters had their gender or sex changed as to avoid homosexual relations.
- The music was completely changed for some reason
- They took out many scenes or even whole episodes if they thought, they might vaguely get into conflict with the FCC.
- They scrapped a whole season, because the Sailor Starlights (I think that was their name?) changed gender in their magical transformation.
I believe there was also a scene in Sailor Moon where a character was in the bath. In order to make the water opaque the censors decided that red would be the best colour to use, so it looks like she’s bathing in blood.
When I was a teenager, I bought a DVD that had a few Sailor Moon episodes that I had never seen before (being from the U.S.) In these episodes, Makoto (or “Lita” AKA Sailor Jupiter) develops a crush on Haruka (or “Amara” AKA Sailor Uranus) and has to cope with her being unattainable. The DVD included both an English dub and the original Japanese with English subtitles.
In the original Japanese version, the crush is treated as romantic in nature, with Makoto’s friends telling her that Haruka already has “a girlfriend” (Michiru AKA “Michelle” AKA Sailor Neptune.) In the English dub, Makoto wants Haruka to be her “best friend,” with the rest of the Sailor Scouts telling her that Haruka already has “a best friend.”
The visuals all stay the same, complete with roses and Makoto’s starry love-eyes. The romantic implications are so obvious it’s painful.
South Park Season 1 Episode 7 (the episode where Cartman wears a Adolf Hitler costume for Halloween) was partially censored in Germany. Cartmans “Sieg Heil” was changed to “Wie Geil” (means “how cool”). I think the censoring there was actually funnier than the original.
Similarly, the episode titled “An Elephant Makes Love to a Pig” was supposed to be “An Elephant Fucks A Pig”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Elephant_Makes_Love_to_a_Pig#Production
Parker and Stone intended to call this episode “An Elephant Fucks a Pig”, but changed the title under pressure from Comedy Central.
I always thought the “wie geil” was international for the joke to work. So that others think it’s harmless… but I haven’t seen it since years.
TV censored version of Kill Bill hands down.
His name is buck, and he’s here to party.
It’s a movie, but when Sigourney Weaver’s character says “Well, fuck that.” and it’s edited to say “Well, screw that.” without changing how her mouth moves at all is about the funniest one I can think of.
(Galaxy Quest is the movie)
That’s a gif I always want to send co-workers 😁
I never saw the movie and don’t know the context, but I wanted to see the gif so I looked it up. Is this the one?
Supposedly that was one of a couple leftovers from a more R rated first cut.
Some of those cut scenes are present on the DVD release. There’s one where Weaver’s character does a bit of a strip tease to disteact some aliens (the modification to her outfit is still in the movie, it just changes randomly between scenes) and another where Shalhoub’s character is explicitely confirmed to be high off his ass the entire movie.
I’m old, and I saw the Breakfast Club back in the 80’s on like, channel 11. For years I couldn’t figure out why Principal Vernon and Carl the Janitor went from hating each other to being friends.
Years later I saw it unedited and realized they cut out the whole scene with the two of them bonding and smoking weed. So much made sense at that point.
The version of From Dusk Till Dawn that aired on German TV with age 16+ rating was half an hour shorter and was cut so badly, it hardly even made sense anymore.
It’s basically just a couple of dude(tte)s going to a gas station, then walking into a bar and starting to shoot at nothing for no reason.I could look this up but what is with germany and blood censorship?
It’s just different values. I could ask the same about the US and nudity. In German media, blood and violence is fine, but it’s considered a topic that you need to be able to handle, so you need to have a certain age, depending on how gruesome that is.
Tbh, I’m European and therefore biased, but the way the united states have no problem with people harming other in media but being offended by something like “bodies” or “sex” does seem a little weird. Like, if my kids normalised harming others I’d be much more concerned than if they normalised making love.
Watching TV:
Here in the EU it is offensive/inappropriate to kill people.
There in the US it is offensive/inappropriate to make people.
So the difference is whether to make love or to make war. Personally I’d rather be a bononbo than a chimpanzee.
Bonobo Love Island:Chimpanzee Gladiators.
Little story to that point: In 2000 I flew NWA from Europe to the states. That time they still showed the movie on a big screen in the front of the cabin. The movie that day was Gladiator.
The airline did not censor gore and violence even though children were also flying.
But of course there was no nudity to speak of in that movie at all.
There is nudity in the original, when emperor rapes his sister(?) and I believe there’s other scenes as well. They usually showed the made for TV edit so that’s probably why you didn’t see.
Their solution for kids was to not give us headphones lol.
That’s not a movie that you can make TV appropriate.
The VH1 edit of showgirls. Movie was cut shorter… Meaning what actual plot there was was even more chopped up .
And when they couldn’t edit out the nudity, they “Ms painted” bikini tops on the actresses.
It’s absolutely hilarious to see https://www.reddit.com/r/Corridor/comments/1bs47qn/showgirls_movie_edited_for_tv_vh1_no_joke/
Here is a reddit link
Here’s an example
One of my all time favourite movie watching experiences was me and my brother watching Robocop (the original) which we taped off ITV, must have been 9 or 10.
All the gratuitous violence was still entirely in place, but all the swear words were dubbed into more palatable versions. Strangest was that we specifically recorded it when it aired at about midnight anyway so way past the time the swearing was usually considered OK.
Me and my brother still call each other “buddy funkster” all the time.
I remember when Young Guns aired on a cable channel in the 90s there’s a scene at the climax when Billy the Kid actually says “Murphy, you son of a bitch…” and shoots the baddie in the head.
So this cable channel edited it for him to say “Murphy, you sorry old buzzard…”. But the headshot was still intact because this is America.
John McClain kills every member of a heist crew then throws the boss off a skyscraper to his doom and the only concession made for tv is “Yippee ki yay Mr Falcon.” America.
Disney consored Gravity Falls a lot before the episodes even aired. Alex Hirsch (the creator) had constant trouble for even some minor things.
The funniest bit was, when they had a flyer that literally said “not S&P approved”, because S&P (standards and practices) wouldn’t approve the flyer saying “bottles will be spun”.
they had a flyer that literally said “not S&P approved”
Also a recurring problem in ReBoot. The original network wouldn’t let them do a ton of stuff for often vague reasons or ones that implied something was deeply wrong with the person monitoring the show. There’s an article about all the absurdity.
4kids animes replacing rice balls with donuts, sandwiches or cookies.
In Pokemon they didn’t even bother replacing the rice cakes, they just called them donuts and confused an entire generation of English speaking kids.
