Avoid The Dreaded G Rating / Animated Films

• All Dogs Go to Heaven, rated G, provides an inversion. Carface was going to shoot Charlie with a tommy gun, which would have given the film a PG rating. His weapon was changed to a Ray Gun. It still looks and shoots like a tommy gun but the realistic bullet sounds were replaced with laser sounds.
• Blue Sky Studios actually deserves credit for inverting this trope. They were specifically aiming for G's, not only on Rio and its sequel, but also on Horton Hears a Who! (2008) and The Peanuts Movie. Except for Rio at first, as well as Epic (2013), they've been successful at earning G ratings without their box office performances being threatened.
  • In the case of Rio, early promotional material said it was rated PG. Fox responded by pushing the film's release back a week (with only three months to release, no less) and edited it down to G by reanimating a pivotal scene. Despite this though iTunes (to this day no less) mistakenly rates the film PG.
  • Played straight with their Cash-Cow Franchise Ice Age. The first film was a comedy with lighthearted moments, but some dark and intense ones to balance it out. Many of the scary moments in the film would justify the PG rating it got. The second film was initially rated G, but was appealed and got a PG for mild language and innuendo, a rather unusual move for a kids' movie. By the time the next three films came out, PG became the default and all the other films were rated as such.
• The sole content descriptor for the movie of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is "brief mild language", more than likely referring to Mayor Shelbourne at one point describing Swallow Falls as a "hellhole" and possibly Flint's exclamation of "holy crap-balls!" upon seeing a fleet of living roast chickens as well. This was an attempt to nudge the movie towards an older audience.
• A good deal of modern Disney films are now getting a PG rating for something that would have gotten a G in the '90s, notably Tangled, Frozen (2013) and Big Hero 6.
  • Moana fits this as well, but to make it squarely in the PG range, a jarring Curse Cut Short, in this case, Moana herself shouting "You lying, slimy son of a-!" after Maui traps her in a cave is added in. You can even see her beginning to mouth the next word.
  • Home on the Range got a PG for this one line alone, right around the time the G rating was falling out of fashion:
    Maggie: Yeah, they're real. Quit staring!
  • It's theorized that part of the reason the hand-drawn Disney films such as The Princess and the Frog and Winnie the Pooh (2011) didn't make as much money as the CGI Disney films like Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph is because the hand-drawn films were rated G, while the CGI films were rated PG, and thus audiences believed that the CGI films would have more adult appeal in them than their hand-drawn counterparts.
• The association between Disney and the "G" rating led Jeffrey Katzenberg to deliberately invoke this for the Dreamworks Animation films, either by including a bunch of dirty jokes or having a lion getting a low blow and a zebra nearly uttering a Precision MF-Strike, or featuring a shark being Killed Off for Real.
• Averted with Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Aside from the main female protagonist doing a pole dance, the entire theme of the movie focuses on lust and sin, with the plot centering around an elderly, genocidal judge obsessed with a young woman. The ending has him trying to burn her alive for refusing to have sex with him. It got a G anyway.
  • In Australia, most G rated films simply state "For General Audiences" on posters or VHS/DVD covers, without any additional ratings advice. The Hunchback's home release on video was rated "G" but with an added tag of "Some scenes may be unsuitable for very young children". Later re-releases on DVD and Blu-ray have been bumped up to PG.
• The closest Illumination Entertainment had to get a G rating was The Lorax, and that's rated PG due to brief language (O'Hare sounding like he said the word "dammit") and a brief scene with a woman in a bikini.
  • The Grinch almost seems like a G rated film, but a suggestive shot that appears when the Grinch is working out, as well as a joke involving Cindy's invention accidentally removing her friend's costume, might have been added to bump it up to PG.
  • Then came The Secret Life of Pets 2, where words like "pissed" and "turd" are briefly exclaimed by characters.
• Averted for the most part with the films of Laika. While they are all rated PG, they contain many scary moments and adult themes across all five, more in line with "traditional" PG films. Many reviewers are quick to note the films are "not for young children". The only times this was sort of played straight were with The Boxtrolls and Missing Link. While The Boxtrolls was rated PG for the predictable "action, some peril and mild rude humor", it is mostly benign, at least in comparison to their other work. Missing Link, with a similar PG for "action/peril and some mild rude humor," is arguably even more benign than that, with a lighter tone and fewer scares.
• Inverted with The Land Before Time. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg wanted, and got, a G rating because of their concerns with certain scenes being too intense for young children. About 11 minutes of completed footage, mainly from the Tyrannosaurus Rex attack scene, were cut from the final release.
• Averted with The Last Unicorn. Anyone watching the film these days is shocked to find the film has a G rating.
• My Little Pony: The Movie (2017) is the first piece of the franchise to ever receive a PG rating in the U.S., for "mild action", keeping it in line with most children's animated films rather than risking a G rating. This is especially notable given that the source series has never been rated above "TV-Y", even at its most intense.
  • This continued with the G5 movie My Little Pony: A New Generation. The film received a PG rating for "mild thematic elements", with the tipping point most likely being the Fantastic Racism between the earth ponies, pegasi and unicorns.
• PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie is rated PG for "mild action and peril" Considering it's based on a show for preschoolers (and the first PAW Patrol movie was rated G) this might mean the G rating is near extinction.
• Pixar originally averted this trope, but began to play it straight by the late 2000s, beginning with Up for their original films and Finding Dory for sequels of G rated films. Forbes discussed the latter's case. Before this, the only PG rated Pixar film was The Incredibles, which featured heavy violence and adult themes to justify it. However, in 2011, Cars 2 got the G rating, despite having intense violence on par with The Incredibles. In 2017, Cars 3 was also rated G, despite having slightly more mature content than the first film. In 2019, Toy Story 4 also received a G rating, though it was a bit Lighter and Softer than the previous film, which was also rated G in early 2010, just before the MPAA changed its rules.
  • Inside Out was originally going to be given a G, but the producers decided to add several little things to bump it up, most notably a joke involving The Bear and a scene with a Sound-Effect Bleep.
  • Like its predecessor, Incredibles 2 earns its PG rating by portraying more mature content including the drinking of alcohol by primary characters, considerable action-related violence, and dialogue. Evelyn Deavor utters "hell", "crap" and "I'll be damned". Violet says "Boys are jerks and superheroes suck." There are also at least three utterances of "Oh my God!" A Curse Cut Short with Frozone's "What the?!" and Bob says "I eat thunder and crap lightning!".
  • Turning Red earns its PG rating by discussing mature themes like menstruation and portraying 13-year-old girls like the Hormone Addled Teenagers they are. Its foul language like "crap" doesn't feel forced but rather contributes to the characters' realism.
• While Poet Anderson: The Dream Walker wasn't rated, it's hard to imagine the solitary Precision F-Strike dropped by the main character being put in for any reason but the attitudes behind this trope. Besides one part with the main character's girlfriend in her skivvies, there's not a lot in the way of objectionable content.
• The Powerpuff Girls Movie was originally going to get a G rating, but Craig McCracken wanted it to be PG-13. He and the studio compromised on a PG.
• A weird aversion happened with two movies based on adult animation in Quebec. Beavis and Butt-Head Do America and The Simpsons Movie are rated PG-13 in America with the source material not meant for children, but both carry a G rating there.
• Inverted in Rock-A-Doodle. The part where Goldie poured wine down Chanticleer's throat would have given the film a PG rating, so that was changed to soda to ensure it got a G. Don Bluth also had to tone down some of the Grand Duke's misdeeds such as removing the scene where he cooks a baby skunk into a pie.
• Despite some nudity, drug use, mild profanity and frightening images, and the fact that it is decidedly not a kids' movie, Rock and Rule managed to only get a PG rating when it was first released. This can be attributed to the PG-13 rating not existing at the time (it was first introduced in the following year).
• While the first two Rugrats movies were rated G, Rugrats Go Wild! was rated PG for several scenes where characters are naked (however, the worst thing seen was their butts), as well as a scene in which a tiger cuts a man's finger.
• In an inversion of this trope, Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island had to have about five minutes trimmed off in its UK release to avoid a 12.
• Inverted with Sausage Party. The movie came close to receiving an NC-17 rating, mainly because of a piece of Lavash's pubic hair being visible at the end of the food orgy. But after his scrotum was digitally shaved, it was reassigned with an R, which is what the filmmakers were aiming for in the first place. This, of course, is saying a lot considering what did make it into the final film unaltered.
• Don Bluth wanted The Secret of NIMH to have a PG rating to appeal to a larger audience (and the fact that it has more frightening scenes than most of the Disney Animated Canon combined). Defying all logic (and one "damn"), the MPAA gave them a G. Then again though, there's another reason it was rated 'G'...
• Paramount originally wanted South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut to be rated PG-13, but Trey Parker and Matt Stone said they wouldn't make it unless it was rated R. In an inversion of this trope, Terrance and Phillip were originally going to sing "Mother Fucker", which got the film an NC-17 rating. To make it rated R, the song was changed to "Uncle Fucker". Trey and Matt said the change made the song funnier. Matt and Trey also said that the ping-pong ball scene was edited too in order to avoid the NC-17 rating. Originally, Winona Ryder actually was shooting ping-pong balls out of her vagina instead of just looking like it.
• The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie has one use of "damning" (not in a profane context, but the intent is obvious), one apparent use of "jackass", one use of "freaking", and jokes such as SpongeBob and Patrick getting drunk on ice cream in order to give the film a PG rating.
  • The Sponge Bob Movie Sponge Out Of Water: No profanity this time, but some "mild rude humor" such as a scene with a woman in a bikini laying on the beach, SpongeBob accidentally mooning Patrick, a censored curse word, and some trippy, drug-induced sequences (including a direct 2001 reference) seem to have been added for the PG rating.
  • The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run: "Crappy" is said twice and Squidward describes SpongeBob as being "freakin' annoying" to give the film a PG rating, with a content descriptor of "mild language" for the first time in the film franchise of the show, all with no dolphin chirps to censor it out (Although, in all fairness, in the US, "crap" and "freaking" are less profane than in the UK, some even going as far to treat them as playground insults, due to Values Dissonance).
• Inverted with Team America: World Police. The original cut received an NC-17 rating but a scene depicting graphic puppet sex was cut down to ensure an R.
• Allegedly Titan A.E. was originally given a G rating so the producers, not wanting to offend their target demographic, older kids and teens, added a brief shower scene to bump it up to PG. Not that it helped.
• The infamous line "Oh shit, what are we gonna do now?" from the 1986 The Transformers: The Movie was there to give it a PG rating (and "Open, damn it, open!" may have served that purpose too). This was reportedly in order to force parents to accompany their children to the theater, so they would know which toys to buy. Like Star Wars, this didn't work in the UK, where it got a U rating (though the line is missing from some DVD versions).
  • The Family Home Entertainment video release of 1986's The Transformers: The Movie included Ultra Magnus's "Open, dammit, open!", but lacked Spike's "Oh shit".
  • Oddly enough, despite the film including profanity to bump up the ratings, one of the songs in the soundtrack, NRG's "Instruments of Destruction," had some of the lines rerecorded to edit out comparatively mild words - "iron birds of foreplay" was changed to "iron birds of fortune," "violent seduction" to "violent eruption," and most bafflingly "iron tools of torture" to "iron tools of torment." Granted, the first two (particularly the first) could be argued to have been cut because they were of a sexual nature, but torture to torment is just... weird. The band later rerecorded the song again with all the lyrics replaced with a loop of Spike's infamous line, as a protest to the changes they were forced to make.
• Watership Down added Kehaar saying "PISS OFF!" and "Damn", just to absolutely make sure that an animated film based off a novel by a part-time animal activist featuring adorable animals engaging in gory violence wasn't shown to small children. It didn't work in the UK, where it got a U rating, while the US passed it off with a much less lenient PG rating.

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