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Banned Episode / Live-Action TV

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Banned Episodes in Live-Action TV.

  • Adventures in Wonderland: "White Rabbits Can't Jump", which featured OJ Simpson as a guest star and aired at least once in 1993, was banned following his arrest in June of 1994. Oddly enough, the episode was adapted into a picture book, which gives a detailed account of what happened in it.
  • The two-part season eight All in the Family episode "Edith's 50th Birthday" was banned in Australia after audiences complained about the attempted rape scene in which a man attempts to assault Edith while posing as a police detective, leaving her traumatized.
  • The Amanda Show had an episode which contained a joke about a man exploding on stage in one sketch and a house being crushed by a meteor in another sketch. This episode was banned following the 9/11 terror attacks.
  • Are You Being Served?:
    • The Christmas Special from the eighth series, "Roots", has a final number based on The Black And White Minstrel Show where many members of the cast are in Blackface. This was considered as in extremely poor taste even at the time of broadcast (1981) and most if not all contemporary repeats either omit this episode or cut this section.
    • Possibly the second episode of season four, "Top Hat and Tails". This is most commonly described as a lost episode that was misplaced and rediscovered, but at least one PBS airing in the US described it as a banned episode, possibly because of a dance contest scene depicting two men dancing.
  • The Hub refused to run two of Batman (1966)'s storylines - Egghead's debut in Season 2 and Shame's return in Season 3 - due to their heavy reliance on Hollywood Natives (sometimes verging on straight-up The Savage Indian) jokes. Oddly, "Nora Clavicle and the Ladies' Crime Club" is completely untouched, even though it relies on equally dated Straw Feminist jokes.
  • The entire run of The Black And White Minstrel Show (the George Mitchell Minstrels in blackface doing a traditional minstrel show, and ironically the first-ever BBC1 show to be screened in colour) is never again likely to be screened, or released on video, for obvious reasons.
  • An episode of Blackish was pulled from airing due to Executive Meddling shortly before it would air. The episode was supposed to feature Dre discussing controversial themes, such as the national anthem kneeling controversy with Junior, as well as other racial issues. It ultimately was made available on Hulu in 2020.
  • The Brum episode, "Brum and the Pantomime Cow" was banned from reruns in 2008, due to Barney Dee (who played the busker) getting arrested for criminal offences. Because of this, any other episodes featuring his character got edited to remove the scenes that feature him, with the longer version of the S3-5 closing credits being replaced with the shorter one instead.
  • The Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes "Earshot", "Graduation Day Part 1", and "Graduation Day Part 2" were both postponed from their original broadcast in the USA, as their depiction of mass violence in a high school context was considered in poor taste after the Columbine High School massacre. It has subsequently been reported that just about all the Buffy creators and cast agreed with pulling "Earshot", as it dealt with a (foreseen) mundane school shooting, but the cancellation of "Graduation Day" was seen as much less justified, due to the fantastic nature of a high school's entire student body battling the town mayor, a black magician who had turned himself into a giant snake.
  • Chicago Hope got hit with this once, with the Season 2 episode "Quiet Riot", written by Peter Berg (who played Dr. Billy Kronk). The episode is extremely strange, and tries to undo the strangeness with an All Just a Dream moment. Apparently, then-president of CBS Les Moonves personally hated it and gave orders that it never air again.
  • The Cold Case second-season episode "Strange Fruit" (which revolves around the 1963 death of a black teenager) was pulled from StartTV's rotation since summer 2020 due to racial unrest in response to the cop-related killings of Ahmaud Arbury and George Floyd and was replaced with re-airings of season 5 episodes such as "Andy in C Minor" note  and "Justice"note .
  • The Cosby Show: As of 2021 most cable networks refuse to air it due to the allegations, and ultimately convictions, brought against Bill Cosby of drugging women and raping them while unconscious. At least on the Viacom CBS-owned TVLand (and its related networks), all references to The Cosby Show have been removed from the website altogethernote . BounceTV aired it until Cosby was convicted in 2018. However, TVOne still airs it, and it is available in its entirety on DVD.
  • Derrick, one of the most popular German detective series ever and a hit in most of Europe, was banned completely when in 2012 it turned out that actor Horst Tappert (who died in 2008) had been a member of the SS during his youth. This had never been reported before and as a result, all episodes were pulled from airing, but continue to be available on DVD.
  • Doctor Who: Apart from the below-mentioned "A Fix With Sontarans":
    • The BBC never intended to distribute the Season 2 story "The Crusade" to Islamic countries, for fear of causing offense.
    • "The Feast of Steven", the Formula-Breaking Episode / Christmas Episode of the Season 3 serial "The Daleks' Master Plan", was never broadcast anywhere or at any time except in Britain on Christmas Day. It would not have made sense to air except in the context of Christmas. As a result, of all the lost Doctor Who episodes, it is the one that is believed to be most likely irretrievably lost.
    • The Season 14 story "The Talons of Weng-Chiang", which features stereotypical depictions of Chinese villains and a white actor in yellowface as the one who gets most of the screen-time and dialogue, was banned from airing on Canada's TVOntario during The '80s. YTV later picked it up in The '90s.
  • Doomwatch's Series 3 episode "Sex and Violence" was never aired due to its unflattering caricatures of Moral Guardians such as Mary Whitehouse. Ironically, it became one of the few episodes the BBC didn't erase, although it was not legally made available until the 2016 DVD release of all surviving episodes.
  • The Dukes of Hazzard was pulled from TV Land and other networks due to the response to the Charleston SC church shooting in 2015 and the controversy surrounding the modern display of the Confederate flag (which is displayed on the hood of the 1969 Dodge Charger known as the "General Lee" in the show) after shooter Dylann Roof was seen displaying the flag in online profiles and used it as a symbol for his desire to start a race war. The flag had been a divisive symbol for years, and Roof's use of it was pretty much the final nail in its coffin.
  • Ellen: "The Puppy Episode", in which Ellen comes out as a lesbian, was preempted by Birmingham ABC affiliate WBMA when it first aired in 1997, due to concerns cited by its general manager at the time that the storyline would upset conservatives in the evangelical community (who typically look down on homosexuality) in Central Alabama. Gay rights and civil libertarian activists who criticized the preemptionnote  responded by beaming an ABC-provided feed of the episode organized by GLAAD and locally-based gay rights organization Birmingham Pride Alabama for viewing to a 1,000-person (predominantly gay, lesbian and LG ally) audience at a downtown Birmingham auditoriumnote . Later subverted as WBMA allowed a rerun to air later that same season.
  • Everybody Loves Raymond:
    • "Marie's Sculpture" is banned in the United Kingdom because the episode involves Ray's mother, Marie Barone, making a large sculpture of a vagina, much to the rest of the family's disgust (displays of female genitalia in any form are a no-no on British television).
    • "No Roll!", dealing with Ray and Debra's sex life, is also omitted from the eternal re-run loop on Channel Four UK. As ELR is run every morning on C4 before 9:00AM, presumably so people too busy to watch at the time can record it for later, you wonder if Watershed issues are at work here.
  • Family Feud: Three January 2020 episodes were pulled from syndicated and GSN reruns after Tim of the two-time champion Bliefnick family was charged in the shooting death of his wife.
  • The 2011 revival of Fear Factor had one stunt that forced the contestants to drink a blend of donkey semen and urine. Unsurprisingly, NBC outright refused to air the episode that included this stunt (the revival was recanceled at the end of its episode order anyway).
  • The first episode of Forged in Fire's eighth season was taken down from all services offering the show after a contestant was publically revealed to have Nazi tattoos on his neck that had been carefully covered by a bandanna during filming.
  • Frasier:
    • The episode "Dr. Nora", which centered around a thinly veiled - and rather vicious - parody of the real-life radio personality Dr. Laura, was pulled from syndication packages after the woman herself complained. Supposedly, she was more upset about the episode depicting her mother as an Abusive Parent than her own depiction. The episode can still be seen on cable and streaming, however.
    • The Hallmark Channel and Channel 4, which tend to censor most of the raunchiest jokes, skip over "High Holidays" entirely due to the plot revolving around Martin accidentally eating Niles' pot brownie.
  • The original version (not the 2010 remake) of Hawaii Five-O has two examples:
    • The season 2 episode "Bored, She Hung Herself" was banned by CBS in 1970 after a viewer reportedly died from imitating a deadly yoga technique that greatly resembled Autoerotic Asphyxiation, which appeared on the show. This episode was barred from ever being seen again, not even on network syndication or home video/DVD release.
    • The 1977 episode "A Capitol Crime" was pulled from syndication after 9/11. The episode is about an old man holding hostages in a courthouse with a bomb strapped to him, which obviously wouldn't play too well after the Twin Towers bombing. It was eventually reinstated in the syndication package.
  • iCarly:
    • "iRue the Day" was temporarily banned from Nickelodeon and TeenNick when Sony was hacked in 2014. The reason for the temporary ban was because a hacking heist was depicted. The episode started rerunning again the following year.
    • "iLost My Mind" was removed from Paramount+ and banned from future reruns on TeenNick in October 2021, due to its plot being too eerily similar to the "Free Britney" movement. However, the episode is still available to purchase via The Complete 4th Season DVD set and it can be bought on iTunes, Youtube and Google Play (albeit only if you buy the complete season 5 on the latter two and the entire series on the former. Strangely, though, "iFix a Pop Star", which featured a direct parody of Britney Spears, wasn't pulled from circulation.
  • I Love Lucy: For a period of time in the 1960s, networks stopped airing the final season episode "The Ricardos Visit Cuba", due to the then-strained relationship between the U.S. and Cuban governments.
  • Impractical Jokers: Five episodes were removed from reruns and streaming in January 2022, following Joe Gatto's departure from the group and divorce from his wife. All five featured Joe in suggestive situations. The five banned episodes are...
    • "The Dream Crusher", where the Jokers brought in Joe's then wife during a challenge involving kissing people at the mall.
    • "Stripped of Dignity", where Joe's punishment involved stripping for strangers in a park.
    • "Bull Shiatsu", where Joe hid in a massage chair and rubbed people for a punishment.
    • "Sun-Fan Lotion", where Joe's punishment involved having a parkgoer rub suntan lotion all over him.
    • "Rock Bottom", where Joe's punishment involved standing half-naked in front of a bunch of college students giving a presentation.
  • The IT Crowd: "The Speech", featuring a subplot in which Douglas unknowingly dates a trans woman and reacts with violence upon learning the truth which already hasn't aged well on its own, was taken off the air in 2020 in light of creator Graham Linehan's openly transphobic views.
  • In June 2011, TBN refused to air an episode of Jack Van Impe Presents in which the title evangelist criticized Rick Warren and Robert Schuller. One of the network's founders cited their policy against personalities attacking each other on-air, since Schuller also had a regular show on TBN. Jack Van Impe Ministries responded by pulling their show from the network altogether.
  • The Jessie episode "Quitting Cold Koala" was originally banned from TV by the Disney Channel due to a controversy over Stuart's gluten restrictions; it originally showed Bertram and the Ross kids making jokes about Stuart's allergy to gluten. To address this issue, Disney Channel posted on their Facebook page: "We are removing this particular episode from our regular programming schedule and will re-evaluate its references to gluten restrictions in the character's diet." The episode eventually aired on July 5, 2013, as part of a 2-episode spectacular. The episode was edited and revised, removing any mention of Stuart's gluten allergies.
  • The Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode "The Glory That Was" has been excluded from the Season 8 DVD set and syndication for "content" reasons. This has never been officially clarified, but the most common theory is that it was because the episode offended Brazilian politicians (it was banned in Brazil for this reason) by painting them as conducting a massive scandal to secure Rio as an Olympic location.
    • Another theory has surfaced that they didn't get proper clearance for the episode's Breakfast at Tiffany's references and it was a copyright issue that got the episode pulled.
  • Stemming from the murder of George Floyd and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter Movement in 2020, a number of American, Australian, and British shows had either entire episodes or the whole series taken off streaming services:
  • The season three Married... with Children episode "I'll See You in Court" was banned from FOX in the light of Moral Guardians complaining about the show's raunchy content (the missing episode was about the Bundys and the Rhoades having sex in a hotel room where they're being videotaped). It finally premiered on FX in June 2002 and has been airing on cable syndication ever since (TBS has aired it), though the episode did air overseas and was released on three DVDs: a compilation of Married With Children's most outrageous episodes, the Sony version of the complete third season set, and Mill Creek's complete series.
  • The Disney+ release of The Muppet Show does not include the episode guest-starring Chris Langham, as he was convicted in 2007 for possessing child pornography. (The Brooke Shields episode is also missing, but that's not this trope as that's due to music licensing.) Episodes of Andi Mack in which Stoney Westmoreland appears are also not included for similar reasons, and those episodes being missing would cause major plot holes for any first time viewers.
  • A 1979 episode of the game show Password Plus featuring Elaine Joyce and George Peppard as the celebrity guests was pulled by NBC. This was because Peppard started a rant about standards and practices enacted on game shows, comparing them to a "police state". Mark Goodson-Bill Todman productions also banned Peppard from appearing on their game shows ever again. To make up for the episode, NBC moved up the rest of the week by one day (the Tuesday episode, bumped to Monday, even opened with a disclaimer stating as such), and a later taping session had six shows. Despite this, the banned episode would later air on Game Show Network in the 21st century.
    • While Buzzr airs reruns of Password Plus, they skip over episodes with words/puzzles no longer considered politically correct. Among the skipped episodes are two KKK puzzles, an episode where the password was "midget", and another that featured "Sicilians" as part of the puzzle for "Mafia". Interestingly, the last one raised eyebrows even in 1979; the password and all guesses for it were blacked out and muted, and host Allen Ludden apologized for the puzzle in a later episode.
  • The NewsRadio episode "Injury", produced as part of Season 2, was withheld for almost two years - only airing during the gap between Season 3 and 4 - because of a subplot about the word "penis". (Ironically, it was being used in the concept of broadcasting censorship.) While generally considered part of Season 3, this led to the episode being included the "Complete First and Second Season" and "Complete Third Season" boxsets.
  • Police, Camera, Action! episodes "The Man Who Shot OJ", a two-part Multi-Part Episode about Zoey Tur produced in 1996, was never aired in reruns after 2008, apparently for reasons that are not clear to many people, and remain unknown today. In the 2013-2014 rotation run, it was not included. Even though it was very serious in tone, perhaps it was due to the references to O. J. Simpson and the Rodney King riots. Even in 2021, it is still never aired on ITV1.
    • The 2008 episode "Less Lethal Weapons" in its original form featuring Michael J.Todd, chief of Greater Manchester Police, being tasered by his own force, was never aired again due to his suicide in March 2008; a Recut / Edited for Syndication version was shown instead after its January 2008 airing.
    • Zig-zagged with "Ultimate Boy Racers". Perhaps due to fears viewers could imitate the violence depicted (soccer hooligans and street fighting), it was pulled from rotation mid-2012 and never aired again. The episode was a semi-Clip Show but had a lot of original footage too. However, the episode was skipped over in recent reruns from 2013-2014 onwards.
  • The Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue episode "Go Volcanic" was skipped in the UK by Fox Kids due to the appearance of a realistic firearm, but it would air on GMTV in the same country, though.
  • The Price Is Right:
    • A rare game show example; purportedly, on the demands of longtime host Bob Barker, episodes in which furs were awarded as prizes, which includes the premiere episode in 1972. Some said the ban also encompasses episodes that feature model Holly Hallstrom (roughly, those episodes airing from 1977-1995) due to various disputes in which she sided against Barker, but that was disproven when Fremantle launched an 80s channnel of formerly vaulted Price episodes on Pluto TV late in 2020. It remains to be seen whether the ban against episodes with furs has been lifted following Bob's death in August 2023 or not. Although the primetime tribute special The Price Is Right: A Tribute to Bob Barker featured clips from the first episode in 1972, these were the same clips that had been shown while Barker was alive, and the specific segment with the fur coat has always been cut off. It remains to be seen whether the "ban" has truly expired, or if the ban is still being enforced simply out of respect for Barker.
    • Pluto TV announced that it will skip episodes featuring the pricing game Bump. Said pricing game, active from 1985-1991, involved one model making a suggestive wind-up motion to push miniature double-decker buses. Barker's off-camera relationship with model Dian Parkinson and the subsequent sexual harassment lawsuit she filed against him are other factors. Among the affected episodes are Johnny Olson's last appearance and Rod Roddy's first trial appearance. One episode got by after Pluto’s announcement. It was removed from the rotation shortly afterward.
    • One of Drew Carey's early episodes has been banned from reruns, mainly due to the antics of one particular contestant, whose bids on One Bid items frequently incorporated "69" or "420" in them. One isolated incident was a bid of $2,000,000 on a kitchen island. Fortunately, he failed to ever get up on stage, especially after he had basically pissed off Drew and the producers.
  • The Professionals has a notorious Banned Episode (never shown on terrestrial TV in the UK, although broadcast overseas and later on UK satellite channels) called "Klansmen", which has apparent Ku Klux Klan members acting as muscle for a violent landlord against his black tenants. The episode was banned because one of the two protagonists, Bodie, repeatedly expressed extremely racist views himself (which were not endorsed by the plot), and also perhaps because, in a final shock twist, the evil landlord behind the Klansmen, and some of the hooded Klansmen themselves, turned out to be black.
  • The Family Channel's run of Punky Brewster left out the episodes "Metamorphosis" (where Punky gets her first training bra) and "The Perils of Punky" (likely due to the unexpectedly disturbing content in Punky’s scary story).
  • The Quantum Leap episode "Justice", which has Sam leaping into a Ku Klux Klan member, is consistently skipped over in syndication, no doubt because of the subject matter and frequent use of the "N-word".
  • Rising Damp had the episode "Stand Up and Be Counted", which featured a Labour election candidate named Pendry who was stated by a character to be dishonest. Yorkshire Television was sued by real-life Labour MP Tom Pendry for libel, so the master tape was wiped and the episode not broadcast in the UK for years. When Channel 4 started broadcasting the series in 1991, they restored the episode with a tape exported for overseas broadcasting, changing Michael Ward's credit from "Pendry" to "Labour Candidate" and covering up the poster that featured his name.
  • In a less extreme variant of the Cosby example, reruns of Roseanne were pulled from TV Land in 2018 in light of Roseanne Barr's controversial tweets (which also led to the cancellation of the revival). They were reinstated by October of that year.
  • ITV4 airings of the colour episodes of The Saint exclude the episode "The Gadic Collection" due to Peter Wyngarde playing a villainous brownface Turk, it's also not even on Britbox for the same reason.
  • Seinfeld: One of the last episodes of the series, "The Puerto Rican Day", was initially pulled after its original broadcast, mainly because NBC felt the episode was too offensive with its depictions of Puerto Ricans, as well as a scene involving Kramer (accidentally) burning a Puerto Rico flag, causing an angry mob of Puerto Ricans trashing the streets, and vandalizing Jerry's car (to which, Kramer remarks, "It's like this every day in Puerto Rico."). As of 2010, certain local markets across the country had placed the episode back into their packages; but as of 2012, the episode is now back permanently in the syndication package (Kramer's line, "It's like this every day in Puerto Rico" is absent, though it could be a case of being Edited for Syndication).
  • Sesame Street, of all shows, even has its share of these:
    • From the show's 33rd season, one episode dealt with Telly receiving a visit from his bully cousin, who essentially swipes all of his triangles away from him; Telly, naturally, wants his triangles back, but fears that it will cause a fight between him and his cousin Izzy – we are even treated to an Imagine Spot where Telly and Izzy do get into a physical scuffle, and we even see both of them lying in hospital beds, all bandaged up and in casts. Kids watching were apparently more entertained by the humorous fight between Telly and Izzy, rather than responding to the episode's actual anti-bullying message, to the point that Sesame Workshop removed the episode, and as such, it didn't appear again on PBS during that year's summer repeats, and the character of Izzy was retired. The episode did appear on the resource video "You Can Ask!", but with the fight scene omitted.
    • One episode was banned before it even made it to air: Sometime in the early 1990s, an episode was taped where the subject of divorce was tackled, in a plot where Snuffy and his baby sister Alice now live in a "broken home", since their parents had gotten divorced. Sesame Street often pre-screens episodes with focus groups of children, to make sure they grasp a message or educational concept before the episode is approved for airing. However, the kids in the test audiences were so emotionally distraught over the episode that it never saw the light of day on PBS, and to this day, remains unaired.
    • Another 1970s episode had Margaret Hamilton reprising her role as the Wicked Witch of the West, which only aired once and was banned for being too scary. A few scenes towards the end of the episode have popped up online before it was finally uploaded in its entirety in June 2022.
    • According to the comments of a blameitonjorge video on said short, Sesame Workshop decided to not air the short "Cracks" after 1980 because they worried that viewers might see the names of the characters in the short as being drug references.
  • The Disney Channel pulled the Shake it Up episode "Party It Up" from rotation after Demi Lovato complained on Twitter that one of the jokes on that episode (and an episode of So Random) made light of anorexia (Lovato themself had overcome the eating disorder). "Party It Up" later aired without the anorexia joke while the So Random episode that also had jokes about eating disorders seems to have been indefinitely shelved, though it did later turn up on streaming services, with those jokes edited out.
  • Shining Time Station
    • "The Mayor Runs For Re-Election" was pulled from rotation permanently because the episode featured a Richard Nixon impersonator, and many PBS affiliates aired the first re-run of the episode on the day his funeral took place.
    • Even the Thomas & Friends stories also fell to this trope. Rick Siggelkow, the co-creator and producer of Shining Time Station mentioned that during production of the show, it was his idea that the two Thomas episodes from the 2nd series ("Daisy" and "Percy's Predicament") were banned from being aired on Shining Time Station. The reason for this was due to his disapproval of Daisy's design being overly sexist and her lazy and stubborn personality. The episodes featuring her were never aired either during the Ringo Starr era nor the George Carlin era, but her episodes were only seen by US audiences after being released to home media in 1993. The only episode featuring Daisy that aired was Season 4's "Bull's Eyes" on Mr. Conductor's Thomas Tales, as this was after Rick was done working for the show. "Daisy" and "Percy's Predicament" were finally aired on TV in 1998 on Mister Moose's Fun Time after Shining Time Station ended.
  • Son of the Beach episode "Chip's a Goy!" only aired twice in the summer of 2001 before being banned after the 9/11 attacks, due to the fact that the episode involved an Osama bin Laden Captain Ersatz called Osama bin Layden. The episode can still be found on DVD (where it's stated to be "Never Before Seen").
  • When the BBC first aired Star Trek: The Original Series, it refused to air "Plato's Stepchildren", "The Empath", and "Whom Gods Destroy" for several yearsnote  (and also refused to repeat "Miri" after its initial UK broadcast) on the grounds of those episodes being "unsuitable for children". Never mind the fact that the series as a whole was never supposed to be "for children" (at least in America). On the BBC was shown in its original run in an early evening or late afternoon slot.
  • When 3rd Rock from the Sun aired on the over-the-air comedy channel Laff, the two-part Season 3 premiere "Fun with Dick & Janet" was never shown. Though no reason was officially, given, it's probably because both episodes feature Roseanne Barr in a guest role, and this was not too long after her Role-Ending Misdemeanor.note 
  • Top of the Pops: A sizeable chunk (mainly episodes that aired between 1964 and 1984) of the run of this weekly countdown series will likely never air again due to Jimmy Savile, one of the show's hosts (and arguably the face of its early days), posthumously being outed as a sexual predator whose victims were primarily (albeit not exclusively) teenagers – if it does air, it's only in short clips with the audience blurred out to protect the identities of possible victims. However, clips of Savile that were uploaded to various video-sharing sites before his death and the revelation of his criminal activities remain, and TV specials have aired performance footage from the Savile era that does not feature him on camera.
    • Also banned (at least from BBC Four repeats) are episodes featuring rocker and convicted pedophile Gary Glitter (who, in addition to making several appearances as an artist, mostly in the first half of the 1970s, was a guest host in the 1990s), as well as episodes hosted by Savile's co-worker Dave Lee Travis. Both were arrested and convicted for sexual offences in the wake of the Savile scandal, though, since Glitter's criminal activities first came to light around the turn of the Millennium, it's likely that the episodes he hosted would have been banned anyway. An episode from 1977 which features a performance by Glitter was repeated, but this was before news of the scandal broke. However, the ban only applies to episodes in which at least one of the three appears. Episodes where they are mentioned in passing (including those where Glitter is part of the chart countdown for that week) are unaffected, as are episodes featuring cover versions of Glitter's songs.
    • Jim'll Fix It, a show whose premise was having the wishes of kids granted via Savile, was banned outright following the revelations. Interviews with the man before his death suggest – in hindsight – that he only did the show so he could be close to his targets. This includes the skit/Doctor Who crossover "A Fix With Sontarans" once offered on DVDs containing "The Two Doctors". When the DVD was re-released in 2014, the skit was pulled. Later, a George Lucas Altered Version of the short was included on the Season 22 Blu-ray release, replacing the ending scenes featuring Jimmy Savile with a brand new ending divorcing the skit from Jim'll Fix It.
    • Tweenies once had an episode, "Favourite Songs", where Max impersonated Jimmy Savile as part of the "Tweenie Chart Countdown", which featured the titular characters singing, well, their favourite songs. The episode first aired in 2001 – well before the allegations gained nationwide attention. The BBC actually missed this episode when initially pulling Jimmy Savile related material from programming – it aired in January 2013 on their preschool subchannel CBeebies mere days after the Metropolitan Police put out a report effectively confirming the worst about Savile. The BBC, already doing damage control after allegations emerged that the BBC under-acted in regards to initial complaints against Savile, promptly apologised and locked the episode away.
    • It can be assumed that the Have I Got News for You episode starring Rolf Harris as host will no longer air due to him being found guilty of indecent assault via the Operation Yewtree investigations that the Savile revelations spurred.
    • Similarly, the comedy team sport show It's a Knock-Out! is unlikely to ever be repeated due to the sex offense convictions of its long-term presenter Stuart Hall.
  • When Me-TV reran the Western Trackdown in 2019, they refused to air the episode "The End of the World", about a snake-oil salesman named Trump who vows to build a wall, spurning comparisons to then-president Donald Trump.
  • Ultraseven had the infamous twelfth episode, "From Another Planet With Love" (also known as "Crystallized Corpuscles" in US) banned in Japan due to the Monster of the Week (vampiric aliens from the planet Spell) bearing a resemblance to survivors of bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, especially after a survivor's group complained about it. This episode was also omitted from the Shout! Factory DVD release.
    • The 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster also meant that episode 26, or "Super Weapon R-1" (also known as "The 8,000 Megaton Mistake"), is banned from the Japanese airwaves due to a scene where the Monster of the Week destroys a nuclear power plant through a tsunami caused by it landing in the ocean. This episode was included on ShoutFactory's DVD release, but the scene of controversy was cut out.
  • The 1988 Halloween episode (S1E3) of Unsolved Mysteries cannot be found in its original form on Amazon Prime or on the FilmRise Youtube channel. Three of the segments from the paranormal-only installment were split off and migrated into other episodes, but the infamous "Tallman's Ghost" segment —widely held to be the most frightening of the entire series run— has been excised completely. The only way to watch it now is to try tracking down a long out of print DVD collection of the show's supernatural stories or find an alternate upload on Youtube.
  • Wheel of Fortune
    • The April 9, 2004 episode which had Lori Ryan as a contestant. Ryan was later found guilty of murdering her two children.
    • Seven Southern-themed weeks from Season 19 through Season 34 fell victim to this. Wheel failed to notice an image on its video wall depicting African Americans in slave-era clothing from the closing of March 23, 2017. This was only discovered while the week was being re-ran, likely because many markets pre-empted the original airing for March Madness coverage. There was only enough time to pull the Friday episode.
    • February 25, 2022 was scheduled to be reran in June 2023 but was unceremoniously removed. This is likely because the closing chat between Pat and Vanna was about the latter's cat who passed away shortly after the episode was taped.
    • Happened to two episodes from Season 40, thanks to puzzles with questionable puzzle content:
  • The UP channel skips over the Kathy Griffin episodes of Whose Line Is It Anyway? thanks to her posing with a model of Donald Trump's bloody head.
  • The Without a Trace episode "Our Sons And Daughters" is skipped over in syndication (on the Escape channel at least, Pop still airs it) because of the graphic depiction of sex between teenagers.
  • An episode of Workaholics guest-starring Chris D'Elia as a pedophile was pulled from Amazon and Hulu in June 2020 after allegations of D'Elia grooming underage girls began to surface.
  • In a particularly horrific example, the entire 20th season of the Food Network series Worst Cooks in America (which ran in 2020) fell into this status in January 2021 after its winner was arrested for murdering her adopted daughter.
  • The X-Files: "Home" was the first TV episode to receive a Parental Advisory warning and the only one to be a TV-MA. Despite critics praise, Fox did not rerun this violent, Darker and Edgier episode for years. Ironically, it did end up on Disney+ when the series debuted on the platform in 2021, and in its uncensored version to boot (with the sound of the baby crying as it's being buried in the cold open, whereas in the aired version, the sound is removed).
  • The Canadian series Nurses was aired in the US on NBC in 2021 as a COVID replacement series while New Amsterdam re-wrote their season and shot it more slowly, and ended up with an episode ban when a b-plot of the episode "Achilles Heel" was heavily criticized by Jewish viewers for a Writing by the Seat of Your Pants Ass Pull plot that doesn't exist in real life, where a Hassidic Jew refused a skin graft because of fears he might get a graft from a Palestinian or Arabic donor (along with the worn-down I Have No Son! Orthodox father who will disown said patient because he plays casual street basketball in secret, where he got the gruesome leg injury that required said skin graft). In reality, Jewish rabbis don't care where the skin graft comes from, because they consider modern medicine a blessing from above, even if transplanted tissue comes from someone they might conflict with. NBC then pulled the episode, with the original Canadian network Global following soon after.
  • The Travel Channel pulled an episode of Xtreme Waterparks that featured the world's tallest water slide Verrückt, as well as any mentions of that episode or the slide from their website, after the fatal 2016 incident in which the 10-year-old son of then-Kansas state legislator (and later the 32nd Secretary of State of Kansas) Scott Schwab was decapitated when his raft went airborne and struck the metal support of the ride's netting (which was put in place to prevent riders from going off the slide).
  • The Wishbone episode "The Canine Cure," in which a boy's overprotective mother falsely believes that he's allergic to dogs, and Wishbone sets out to prove that that's not true. It was pulled from reruns in the late '90s due to concerns that it might cause children with genuine medical issues to believe their parents were being overprotective.

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