Bowdlerise / Film

Although before it gained infamy on Disney+, the UK had this edit first.

Animated Films

• The opening song to Disney's Aladdin, Arabian Nights was changed from "Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face/It's barbaric, but, hey, it's home" in the original theatrical version to a more acceptable "Where it's flat and immense, and the heat is intense/It's barbaric, but, hey, it's home," for the home release when Disney received complaints that the ear-cutting part was offensive to those living in Arabic countries (even though punishments like that do exist in Arabic countries). The original version made it to the early pressings of the soundtrack on CD, but later versions used the less offensive version. MTI's junior musical of the movie uses the less offensive version, but "It's barbaric" was replaced by "It's a furnace!". The 2019 remake changes this line significantly as well: "Where you wander among every culture and tongue/It's chaotic, but hey, it's home".
• UK airings of Antz on ITV remove the scene with two characters eating something that "tastes like crap", but turns out to be actual crap, though the rest of the movie, including the violence and mild language, is intact.
• Astro Boy:
  • The Downer Beginning is less graphic in the movie than in the original manga. In the original, Tobio gets into a car accident riding on the highway (depending on the depiction he either hijacks his father's car or is riding his bicycle). In the film, Toby gets lodged inside a robot and explodes. He doesn't leave behind a body in the film, unlike in the manga which contains the iconic depiction of Tenma's holding his son's body.
  • The original Astro Boy manga features heavy themes of Fantastic Racism towards robots and What Measure Is a Non-Human?. Almost all of this is absent from the film adaptation.
• Thanks to the Columbine shooting in 1999 and heightened fears of school shootings and youth violence, Warner Bros., who feared backlash from releasing a violent movie at that time, decided to rewrite and reanimate any scene in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker that would be considered too violent (though some scenes that weren't violent were changed, like Batgirl asking two hookers on the street a question was changed to Batgirl asking a homeless punk and an older man who could be her father^note biological or otherwise) before releasing it, mostly to tone down the violence and to remove blood. One example is the Joker's death scene. In the original version, the Joker was shot through the chest with a "Bang!" Flag Gun. In the edited version, he's electrocuted by wires, which is still violent, but less so because a gun isn't involved. Fortunately, Warner Bros. still had the original uncut version of the movie, and eventually released it on DVD as it was intended to be had Columbine not happened.
• In the UK, Channel 4 showings of Bee Movie delete the scene when an old lady gets pinned down by the police, due to its possible Harsher in Hindsight implications of police brutality, with the transition to the next scene being edited so that it could happen at the point when the old lady's hand is grabbed.
  • Also, before the movie was released in the UK, the BBFC ordered the scene where Ken tries to kill Barry with fire to be cut out.
• The German release of the original Direct-to-DVD BIONICLE films cut many scary and/or violent shots. The most notable omissions from the first movie, Mask of Light, are the shots of the Rahkshi splitting their head plates open (though some made it through), and the complete scene of Makuta creating his first "batch" of Rahkshi. The third, Web of Shadows suffered more: every shot with even a hint of violence and scariness got removed or shortened, including the scene in which the villains explain just what the plot is about — namely, that Roodaka wants to obtain the corpses of the heroes to drain their powers. Thus, with a total of 55 different cuts, amounting to a solid 10 minutes of this 70-minute feature, the movie becomes an even more badly paced, Plot Hole-filled mess than it was, to begin with. The reason for the cuts is that in Germany, these films were aimed at slightly younger children.
• Cars:
  • When Cars aired on Disney Cinemagic in the UK, Mater's line "He did what in his cup?!" when Lightning McQueen mentions the Piston Cup was cut.
  • Most TV edits censor the phrase "hillbilly Hell" (notably said by Lightning McQueen, and later by Sally with the line "Even here, in hillbilly hell, we have standards").
• The English dub of Cat City deleted references to Lazy Dick (Billy Bugle in the dub) being the sole survivor after his flight had crashed. It also removed some of the more off-color jokes and replaced them with generic lines, such as Mr. Teufel's (or Mr. D's) Double Entendre about not making deals with blacks or Safranek (Tweed) admitting that his wife is actually living with Teufel... to Teufel.
• Chicken Run:
  • When aired on CBBC in the UK, the scene where the chickens learn they are being fattened up omits the end, where Babs shows Rocky that she has knitted a noose.
  • When Mrs. Tweedy tries to stop the chicken's plane from taking off, a shot of her knife landing next to her was edited by cutting to a shot of Ginger and Rocky looking at her where we hear the knife landing, but don't see it.
  • Also omitted is the start of the scene where the two rats are informing the chickens where the exits are in the crate and what to do in the event of a crash, presumably down to one of the rats informing the chickens to "kiss your bum goodbye". Instead, the scene starts at the bit where Ginger asks if everyone is ready to take-off.
    • Note that the above examples only applied to CBBC — airings on BBC 1 did not have the above edits.
  • When the film now airs on ITV, during the dance sequence where Fetcher gets emotional, the question Nick asks Fetcher, "What are you sobbing about, you nancy?" is edited to have "nancy" replaced with "fish", as well as the line "Don't push me, four-eyes!" being edited to cut "four-eyes".
• At the end of David and the Magic Pearl, Corrupt Corporate Executive Mr. Stealmore is trapped in the temple, with the guardian telling him that he will be released once he mends his ways. In the original Polish version, Dawid i Sandy, the guardian just laughs and Mr. Stealmore is trapped forever with no chance of redemption.
• Whenever Despicable Me airs on ABC...
  • The NBC logo is removed on the Times Square Jumbotron and the MSNBC logo is missing (for obvious reasons).
  • The part when Gru's mom shows the girls Gru's baby photo is cut. While they're not allowed to show it, due to adult content, they showed Gru's Sunday best photo instead.
  • The scene when three minions are playing with the copier is cut completely.
  • The end credits are shortened (meaning the channel removed the scenes when the minions attempt to reach the screen).
• Speaking of Despicable Me, the Hebrew Dub inverts this: the scene where Vector plays with the shrink ray includes an uncensored "Shit", and "I sit on the toilet" is translated as "אני עושה קקי" (I poop).
• Fantastic Mr. Fox lampshades this by using the word "cuss" in place of every cuss word, sometimes using it often enough to parody the overuse of "fuck" in Tarantino movies. In a streetscape background of one scene, there is graffiti that says "cuss" in big colorful letters. This, in turn, got the movie a PG rating for "slang humor".
• The extremely adult Heavy Metal wasn't immune to this either. The most obvious example of this attitude is in the "Den" story. Whereas in the original comics, Den arrives in Neverwhere buck naked in a fully visible fashion and never gives it any thought, the film version insists on covering up as soon as he arrives. Rather than even attempt to censor the copious female nudity left in, though, TV prints of the movie simply cut out the "Den" segment altogether. During the "Taarna" sequence, she is naked-from-a-distance during her "purification" swim, but anything that shows up close is covered by a traveling blur.
• The theatrical version of Hotel Transylvania 2 (which is also seen on FX as well as British TV airings of the movie) contained the following joke made by Kakie:
  Kakie: Slow down, Wuzzlelumplebum! The scariest monster of all is diabetes!
  • However, parents complained about the implications, so the joke was removed from all home media releases (it is retained on television airings, oddly enough). On the DVD, the line goes:
  Kakie: Slow down, Wuzzlelumplebum! *chuckles*
• The Disney Sing-Along Songs version of "Topsy Turvy" from The Hunchback of Notre Dame cuts out Esmerelda's sexy dance scene. It also featured some alternate lyrics. In the original film, Clopin sings, "It's the day the devil in us gets released / It's the day we mock the prig and shock the priest." Sing-Along Songs changes this to, "Good is bad and best is worst and west is east / On the day we think the most of those with least." Also, the line "Where the beer is never stopping" is changed to, "Where the cheer is never stopping." That lyric is still accompanied by a shot of people drinking beer, but at least they didn't actually say the word!
• A TV edit of The Incredibles censored all mentions of Mr. Incredible cheating on his wife. Granted, Mr. Incredible did not actually cheat on his wife; he was merely suspected of doing so because of all the clues Mrs. Incredible found (which were actually from his moonlighting as a superhero). Still, it might've made certain scenes less comprehensible.
• King Dick is an odd case since the film is rather explicit as it is, but notable scenes that have been reduced and/or cut in the English version include the two homoerotic gags involving Master Limpcock and his wife's manservant, the scene where a fish swims up Nymphomania's genitals and pulling it out only to show it has rot inside of her, an old monk chasing down two boys while sporting a Raging Stiffie, and so on. Otherwise, most of the edits seemingly aim to remove the Padding the original Italian version had, ending up with the movie only running at 62 minutes in contrast to the original's 76 minutes.
• The 25th Anniversary DVD of The Last Unicorn sloppily edited out the word "damn" in a couple of instances, including Molly's comparative Atomic F-Bomb directed at the unicorn. This isn't even consistent with the film's graphic content, which had instances of violence and a harpy with humanoid breasts with nipples. Thankfully, the later Blu-ray release was fully uncut.
• One version of the English dub for Leafie, a Hen into the Wild cuts out that part where Leafie dies while another version simply cuts right before it, but leaves in the implications.
• In the British edit of Lilo & Stitch, a scene in which Lilo is hiding from her sister Nani in a dryer was edited so that she instead hides in an odd cupboard with a pizza box door to avoid getting a 12 by the BBFC for imitable behavior. Disney+ uses this version of the scene in all regions including in countries that originally used the unaltered version. A 2022 re-release of the Lilo & Stitch 2-Movie Collection Blu-ray/DVD combo pack also edits this scene.
• Toon Disney airings of Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers cut out the scene during the climax where Donald pokes Pete in the eyes.
• The Dutch dub of Postman Pat: The Movie has suffered a few cuts, thus shortening the movie length. Some of the scenes that are cut include the scene where the PATBOT 3000 kicks the JESSBOT 3000, the scene where Edwin Carbunkle tells his plan to all of the PATBOT 3000s, the scene where Wilf hits the PATBOT 3000 with a package two times, and the whole climax of the film. It is unknown why those edits were made, possibly because the scenes were either too scary or "violent" to watch.
• The FXX cut of Sausage Party cuts down most of the explicit sexual acts during the food orgy scene, even blocking one scene with a graphic saying "CENSORED!!!"
• Shrek:
  • When Shrek is shown on Cartoon Network, the line "Well I have to save my ass." is changed to "Well I have to save my —.", with "ass" being replaced by a complete stop in the sound of the film. This edit was retained when the film aired on Disney Channel in 2019. Another 2019 airing had the line confusingly scrambled ("Well, I have to-sav-ss [pause].")
  • When Shrek and Donkey fight over the swamp, "Stubborn jackass/Smelly ogre" is replaced by the stop in sound. It happens again when Donkey and Shrek are about to take flight on Dragon and Donkey says that "no one likes a kiss-ass." However, since 2017, Cartoon Network has shown the film with all of these lines intact. Amusingly, the 2019 Disney Channel airing kept in "jackass".
  • Nickelodeon airings replaced both instances of "ass" with Shrek yelling "DONKEY!".
• Shrek 2:
  • When the gang is being broken out of jail, the Gingerbread Man doesn't yank at Pinocchio's thong (and doesn't protest he isn't wearing one). The CBBC edited version makes it look like Pinocchio's first denial that he is wearing ladies' underwear is enough to make his nose grow long enough.
  • The CBBC also edits the COPS parody because of drug parallels (the catnip Puss 'n Boots has is treated like marijuana, complete with the suspect denying to the police that it's his).
    • Note that the above edits only applied to CBBC and the film was shown without the edits when aired on BBC 1.
  • ITV airings from 2020-2022 keep the drugs parallels in the COPS parody, but remove the scene of Donkey yelling "Police Brutality!" as he's pinned down by knights due to its possible increased-Harsher in Hindsight implications following the George Floyd protests and riots, and the scene where Fiona headbutts Prince Charming was changed so that it happens off-screen (in the UK version, the headbutt was changed to a karate chop, but ITV were supplied with the US version, hence the edit).
• The TV version of The Simpsons Movie that aired on FOX, FX, and the Canadian channel Global has the following cuts:
  • Bart's penis showing through a bare space in a hedge during his naked skateboard ride through town was cut entirely on FOX and Global (on FX, the scene was shown, but when it came time for Bart to skate across the hedge with the gap in it, a black Censor Box that reads "European Version Only" was digitally added to cover the nudity); the "bountiful penis" scene (when Bart slams into the window of the restaurant that Ned and his sons just so happen to be praying at) was cut on all three networks.
  • Homer flipping off the angry mob as he's sinking into the sinkhole had Homer's middle/ring fingers erased, making it look like he's shaking his fists angrily. FX left this part intact.
  • Marge's line, "Somebody throw the goddamn bomb!" was shortened to "Somebody throw the damn bomb!" on FX and "Somebody throw the bomb!" on FOX and Global.
  • Homer's line "That could be anybody's pig crap silo" when he and Marge are watching his silo get extracted from the water was changed to "That could be anybody's pig silo" on Global.
  • Otto smoking a bong near the end of the film was cut on FOX and Global.
  • When the family discovers that Springfield is going to be blown up, Homer says he doesn't want to help the town because they chased them with pitchforks and torches at four in the afternoon. Marge corrects him and says it was 7:00 pm when that happened. Homer argues that it was around the time when Access Hollywood was on, and Marge adds that Access Hollywood comes on at 4:00 pm and 7:00 pm. On FOX, the references to Access Hollywood were cut. (Most likely because FOX knew that a number of their affiliates had Access as part of their schedules, and didn't want those stations getting into trouble with NBC Universal Television for something that would have been completely out of their control.)
  • Averted on the FXX airings of the film, which only censor Bart's nudity, at a TV-PG-DV rating no less.
• Arbelos Films' English subtitles for Son of the White Horse toned down some of the original dialogue's squickier lines. This is odd, as the film is full of nudity and sexual references anyway.
  • The words suckling and breastfeeding are replaced with nursing.
  • Instead of saying he was born from the White Mare's hole, Stonecrumbler says he came from the White Mare's lap.
  • The Gnome's second name that means "Hoe Handle-Sized Dick" is changed to "My beard is as long as a hoe". This is actually more accurate to the film's visuals though, as he does sway his beard around when introducing himself.
• The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run: Nickelodeon removes two instances of mild language.
  • When SpongeBob and Patrick are in jail, SpongeBob's line, "It sure does feel over... and crappy" is shortened to simply have him say "It sure does feel over."
  • When Squidward is defending SpongeBob and admitting that he's his friend, the line "Okay, he's mostly super freaking annoying" is edited to remove the word "freaking."
• Superman: Doomsday, a movie that was violent enough to earn a PG-13 rating, had to go through massive amounts of censorship in order to air on Cartoon Network's Toonami block with a TV-PG rating, removing much of the blood and violence. To be fair, censorship is something that a lot of shows airing on Toonami had to get through, but it's still especially jarring, considering that Princess Mononoke and the Hellboy movies were able to air without any editing (which was bypassed with a Content Warning screen telling viewers that these movies had inappropriate content in them). The difference might be the license; while Princess Mononoke and the Hellboy animated movies are both clearly targeted at teens and older, a Superman movie with blood and gore in it showing on Cartoon Network uncut might cause a bit of an issue.
• Tangled:
  • A developmental variant happened. Early in the film, Rapunzel confronts Flynn with a frying pan when he hides in her tower. Originally she was meant to confront Bastion (the character Flynn replaced) with a crossbow.
  • Plus, of course, this Disney version (like most adaptations) completely skips the part of the original tale that her lover gets her (teen) pregnant during his visits.
• The JeemTV Standard Arabic dubs of animated Disney/Pixar films (with the exceptions of The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and Winnie the Pooh) are infamous for this, mainly because of JeemTV censors them (such as removing references to romance).
• The 2019 4K UHD, Blu-ray, DVD and Digital HD releases of Toy Story 2 edit the Blooper Reel during the credits to remove an "outtake" of Stinky Pete flirting with two Barbies in his box, adding that he would try to give them roles in Toy Story 3 in exchange. This was likely due to it being seen in bad taste in light of the #MeToo movement, especially when you consider that the film's director, John Lasseter, got caught up in it.

Live-Action Films

• In the USA Network edited version of 2 Fast 2 Furious the main character flips off someone going reverse in the car. The edited version has him holding a fist towards the character which is apparently offensive. ^note (though, in most countries, a closed fist presented to someone in the same manner as the middle finger is considered threatening)
• The 3 Worlds of Gulliver: The satire aspects of the novel are largely absent, the thrills crafted with Gulliver's two most well known adventures (including the use of Ray Harryhausen's special effects) largely dominate the picture.
• A TV edit of 8 Mile in the US digitally removes Rabbit's middle finger in its most blatant use, leaving him with a lumpy nub of flesh with no fingers instead of a hand.
• The broadcast version of 10 Things I Hate About You had stellar examples of when Bowdlerization doesn't help in toning down content. When Patrick asks of Bianca, "What is it with this chick? She has beer-flavored nipples?" the TV version changes it to "beer-flavored boobs". Nipple and Dimed has taken to its logical - and silliest - extreme.
• One edit of 12 Monkeys has a handful of silly-sounding dubbed lines, but they seem to opt for just eliding swears with pauses whenever it'd still make sense. This actually may make the ending of the scene where James and Kathryn fight a pimp, then James is pulling out his own teeth in front of him a bit funnier:
  Wallace: Hey! Is that the cops? I'm an innocent victim here! I was attacked by a coked-up whore and a...a... crazy dentist!
• Many, many instances in the Netflix film adaption of 13, in order to make the ridiculous, and occasionally inappropriate storyline more kid-friendly:
  • Many of the lyrics from 'Bad, Bad News' were updated, replacing the footballers speculation on how to murder or otherwise terrorise Lucy away from Brett with more general speculation about whether they somehow offended Brett. The line 'He fell for a slut with a fabulous butt' was also changed to 'They're kissing, they're dating, it's so nauseating'.
  • Even more notable is the adaptation to 'Getting Ready'. Archie describes himself as a 'love God' as opposed to a 'sex God', Brett generally acts less obsessed with doing 'The Tongue' with Kendra, and Lucy's infamous spiel 'if he does it and you let him you're a slut' is changed to Kendra speculating on her teenage rebellion—a far tamer verse, with no use of the word 'slut' or 'skank', unsurprisingly.
  • A few songs were cut, including 'Any Moment' involving rather graphic descriptions of the R-rated movie the kids are watching, 'Terminal Illness', three minutes of Black Comedy about Archie's muscular dystrophy, and 'It Can't Be True', where the cheerleaders spread around a rumour that escalates from Evan and Kendra kissing, to them 'getting all the way to third base'
• For its Chinese cut, 21 & Over was heavily edited to the point of becoming almost a different movie, turning it from a raunchy college sex comedy into a Lifetime-esque cautionary tale about Western decadence. The Chinese-American main character is changed to a Chinese student in an American university, who is led astray by the American party lifestyle before rediscovering his roots and going home a better person.
• The United Kingdom release of the 1996 live-action remake of 101 Dalmatians has Horace's line "No bloody wonder you can't talk, mate!" re-dubbed to replace the word bloody with blinkin'. Since bloody is considered to be of profane variety in the United Kingdom, the BBFC refused to grant the film a U rating until the change was made.
• (500) Days of Summer has a Bowdlerized version played on Delta Airlines flights. In it, when Tom and Summer are playing the penis game the word "penis" is replaced with "panda". This leads to some odd reactions from people towards someone screaming "panda!"
• The UK version of The Abyss edits out all shots of Hippy's pet rat immersed in the breathable liquid due to the BBFC's rule against showing animal cruelty (mostly cockfighting, horses getting tripped by wires or diving into water, and animals being forced to fight each other by humans) and to get rid of the possibility that someone could imitate this at home with their pet rat (or any kind of pet rodent).
• Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls has the "rhino birth" scene altered in the TV version. Originally Ace is visible fully exiting the back of the mechanical rhino naked. The TV version replaces it with reaction shots of people staring, then cuts to Ace standing up and commenting on how he got lost in the rhino.
• Parodied in The Adventures of Captain Bucky and his Space Marshals, in Outer Space. Space Cadetette Jill swears at Captain Bucky, but it's dubbed over by a voice in an unconvincing falsetto calling Bucky a "heroic Hercules".
• American Pie:
  • In tv airings the infamous "One time at band camp..." scene either cuts off before Michelle says that she stuck the flute up her pussy or it replaces "up my pussy" with "in my mouth".
  • Stifler’s brother repeatedly calling him and his date “fuckers” has been censored with either “players” or a poorly dubbed “freaks”.
• A Disney XD airing of Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel muted out half-a-line near the end, maybe in light of later events:
  Brittany: Hey, Ian! [In the words of the Donald,] You're fired!
• In the Kare11 airing of Anchorman all of the violent scenes were cut such as a man catching on fire, Frank getting his arms chopped off, Brick stabbing a man with a trident, and when the biker kicks Baxter the dog off the bridge it's edited to make it look like he threw him.
• In the TV version of ...And Justice for All, Al Pacino's summation to the jury climaxes with the line "straight to filthy jail!" instead of "...fucking jail!"
• All known prints of the Marx Brothers film Animal Crackers have one line of the song "Hooray for Captain Spaulding" obviously edited out. (The line was Groucho singing, "I think I'll try and make her.") In one previous musical number, lyrics were changed to substitute "tramps" for "bums" to avoid offending British audiences.
• Animal House: There are several examples in the TV version. The scene where Bluto looks in the sorority house window is highly edited, of course, and the pot party scene is cut out completely, along with both scenes of Greg getting handjobs in his convertible and the Good Angel, Bad Angel debate over whether or not Pinto should have sex with the drunk girl lying before him. The most absurd bit of censorship, though, is changing the line, "Gregg doesn't believe in premarital intercourse," to "...premarital activity," which still means the same thing.
• Thanks to The Hays Code, several lyrics from the songs in Anything Goes were changed for the 1937 movie. "Now God knows" and "four-letter words" were changed to "Heaven knows" and "three-letter words" in the title song, and in "I Get a Kick Out of You" the lyric "Some get a kick from cocaine" was changed to "Some like the perfume in Spain."
• A politically motivated edit happened to the Hungarian release of Annie Hall, where the quote attributed to Groucho Marx ("I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member.") is credited to silent film actor Buster Keaton instead. Being a Soviet-controlled socialist country where the Marx Brothers were virtually unknown, the dubbing studio was terrified that audiences would confuse Groucho Marx with Karl Marx. The dubbing team argued that this is crazy, but due to studio pressure the line could only be kept if the name got changed. So they picked a random other famous comedian and ran with it.
• Network cuts of Apollo 13 tend to censor Bill Paxton’s Fred Haise calling the Lunar Module a “piece of shit” during an argument with his crew mates to “piece of junk.” It’s very clumsily done, too.
• The old Sci-Fi Channel cut of Army of Darkness contains a very strange edit where the hero Ash's name is cut out, presumably because some S&P dingbat misheard it as "ass". So you get Evil Ash saying "I'm Bad —, and you're Good —!" Note that his name is freely spoken elsewhere in the same cut.
• At the end of Arsenic and Old Lace, Mortimer Brewster discovers that he doesn't need to worry about craziness being inherited, since he's actually the illegitimate child of a maidservant. The play ends with him exuberantly proclaiming himself a bastard. When the play was adapted to a film in 1944, the Hays Office objected to the use of the word "bastard", and, instead changed Mortimer Brester's line to "I'm the son of a sea cook!"
• In the TV version of Arthur (1981) (the original version with Dudley Moore, not The Remake with Russell Brand), John Gielgud asks Dudley Moore, "Shall I wash your neck for you?" instead of "Shall I wash your dick for you?"
• The French children's production Arthur et les Invisibles contains some typical French risqué moments: for instance, Arthur, the main character, used the cord that laces the female lead's corset as a climbing rope, causing much complaining and one-handed climbing from her because she needed her other hand to hold the corset shut. This scene survived unscathed in the German version, but it got cut from at least one English variation. That is somewhat understandable, but another scene that got cut was a simple kiss between the two leads. Given the magical power of this kiss (the first kiss transferred some powers, meaning that the villain could no longer rob the female lead of her powers by kissing her), as well as its social implications (it's as good as a marriage), this makes the plot from this moment on rather confusing. Note that in both cases the uncensored film is perfectly legal: while the actor playing real-life Arthur is about 12, the scenes in question play in the world of the Invisibles (Minimoys in the adaptation) and are fully computer-generated. In the director's cut, Arthur's parents are racist, negligent monsters who don't care about their son and only care about the treasure.
• Austin Powers:
  • The first film's TV edit renames the character Alotta Fagina to Alotta Cleavage and changes "I never forget a pussy... cat" to "I never forget a kitty...cat."
  • In some versions, the Fagina part is omitted altogether, with her name just being Alotta.
  • "One Swedish made...enlarger!"
  • The TV version in the second film had Austin spitting out Fat Bastard's stool sample instead of saying, "it's a bit nutty"
  • In some versions, he says "It tastes like poo" instead of "It tastes like shit" and still remarks that "it's a bit nutty".
  • The third movie had a pretty bad case of this at times. Two notable scenes were Danny Devito's cameo as Mini-Me in the opening, where the line "Hey assholes!" ends up as "He—————!", as well as the Fun with Subtitles scene, where "shitake mushrooms" becomes "dungenese crab", but the following "Your assignment is an unhappy one." is unaltered. "Ass" has been downgraded from the top tier of curse words in recent years; "shit" is still up there, even in the past tense: "Shat on a turtle" becomes "Sat on a turtle".
• All television cuts of the Back to the Future films replace Marty's frequent use of the word "asshole" with a badly dubbed "idiot". In another example, when Nickelodeon or ABC Family aired the film, they edited Doc Brown's famous line of "When this baby hits 88 mph, you're gonna see some serious shit" to make him say it as "you're gonna see some serious...stuff," with a flat replacement voice. Not to mention Marty being dubbed over with "Holy GEEZ!" instead of the classic "Holy SHIT!"
• The Band Wagon bowdlerizes one line of "I Love Louisa": "I love a great big bosom" became "I never want to lose 'em."
• The TV cut of Basic Instinct is absolutely hilarious to watch. Sex scenes (and even the more risque clothed scenes — meaning that the infamous interrogation leg-crossing scene is no more) are either removed or reduced to nothing. Sexual uses of the word "fuck" are substituted with "sleep with" or "sleeping with", while "fuck" when used non-sexually is muted poorly. Huge parts of the plot are lost as a result, and it's just generally confusing. Basic Instinct does not belong on broadcast or basic cable TV because a toned-down version would be more offensive to watch than the full version, with all the swearing, nudity, violence, innuendo, and drug abuse intact. When aired on a cable channel a few years back, the opening sex/ice-pick murder scene was hastily edited, with obvious jump cuts on the soundtrack. It would have been easier to just cut the entire scene or edit out the nudity and violence without cutting it out of the plot completely.
• Peachtree TV ran Batman & Robin with all the ass and crotch shots removed from the suiting-up sequences.
• A This TV airing of Beat Street censored a line of the Santa Rap from "'Cause my G.I. Joe looked G.I. Gay" to "'Cause my G.I. Joe looked G.I.—————"
• Bedknobs and Broomsticks was released in Germany with the entire Nazi-subplot removed; it was possible that Disney did not want to offend the Germans when the film was released there.
• In the United States, they've broadcast The Big Lebowski on Comedy Central outside of their "Secret Stash" uncut and uncensored late-night block. By the time they were finished cutting it, the movie was practically incomprehensible — more so than usual. On the plus side, the edited line "This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps!" and its variations, like "This is what happens when you feed a stoner scrambled eggs!" have become Memetic Mutation and are seen as an intentional (The Coen Brothers and John Goodman did the ADR themselves) parody of the kind of nonsensical and lame lines that are used to censor out the stuff that may be violent, profanity-laced, sexual, or disturbing in nature, but probably makes more sense than what's being substituted. Ironically, when the Corvette's real owner smashes Walter's car with a crowbar, you can still hear "I'LL KILL YOUR CAR! I'LL KILL YOUR FUCKING CAR!" uncut if you have really good ears.
• Billy Madison:
  • After listening to a story in the first grade in the original version he says, "that dog is your responsibility you just don't go looking for an hour and call it quits, you get your ass out there and find that fucking dog!", while in the American TV version he says "you get your butt out there and find that stupid dog". The Australian airing edited the entire line on network TV, but not on cable or on the DVD.
  • The scene of the clown falling and bleeding from his head is replaced with a scene where the clown doesn't bleed and shows some signs of life.
  • The scene of the Alex Trebek reading the "burning dog poo and the human response" clue on Jeopardy has been removed (though the clue can still be seen on the board in distant shots).
  • Dan McGraff's list doesn't have "People to Kill" on it, which ruins the joke about his previous encounter with Billy Madison.
  • The scene of Eric being set on fire was cut from the British theatrical version (along with the "find that fucking dog" line and the clown falling down and splitting his skull).
  • The bus driver calling Veronica Vaughn a "hot piece of ass" was changed to "hot tamale".
• A TV version of Blade II completely removed Reinhardt's line "you're about one cunt hair away from hillbilly heaven", making it seem as if Whistler was suffering from dementia when he replied, "I love it when you talk dirty to me".
• Birds of Prey (2020): TNT plays a TV-14 edit that dubs over several swear words, edits Harley Flipping the Bird into her flashing peace signs, blurs out the "My Balls" on Renee's "I Shaved My Balls For This" T-shirt, and cuts away from Harley drunkenly vomiting. In 2021, this version was accidentally uploaded to HBO Max instead of the uncensored cut, prompting backlash.
• Blade: Trinity
  • One TV version had it so that Hannibal said things like "Shuck me sideways" and "Shuck you"… which resulted in some unintentionally hilarious moments.
  • One can't help but laugh at how they handled one of Hannibal's best lines. It's like they weren't even trying to get the lines to fit.
    Hannibal: "That tickle that you're feeling in the back of your throat right now? It's atomized colloidal silver. It's being pumped through the building's air-conditioning systems, you crock-juggling chunderbump!"^note The original line was "cock-juggling thundercunt.
  • Hannibal's "I farted". TNT's edit of the film replaces "farted" with "pooted".
  • One version (possibly TNT) replaced all instances of the word "dick" with "hoo-ha". It's an unfortunate substitution, as "hoo-ha" is traditionally used to euphemistically describe female genitals.
• Blazing Saddles:
  • At least one TV version of has all of the profanity and racial slurs blanked out. No, seriously: all of them, even though this makes up a big chunk of the movie and is a major part of its comedy. Additionally, the lengthy sequence in which a bunch of cowboys sitting around a campfire eating baked beans and farting is retained, but with all of the farts muted out. Mel Brooks himself stated that because of the heavy edits, Blazing Saddles absolutely sucks when shown on network TV.
  • The Comedy Central cut leaves in the racial slurs, but replaces the sound effect in the campfire scene with horse whinnies and cuts Madeline Kahn's character's last name in half (Lilly Von Shh). Strange choices given what's probably more offensive to the audience, but makes sense in terms of the point of the movie.
• In the TV version of The Blues Brothers, Jake tells the nun that she's up "the creek" instead of "shit creek", which makes it look strange that she finds the phrase so offensive. Also, they replace Elwood's repeated use of "bullshitting" with "bamboozling". The nun also seems to find "Ow, my arm!" to be offensive, then again, it is funny in an unintentional way.
• The sequel Blues Brothers 2000 is also edited for TV; at one point, Elwood says that "That's not right" and his friend replies with "No shit." The TV version changes the second line to "No it ain't."
• Any and every TV edit of Boogie Nights is horrible to watch. Language is regularly muted and sex scenes are edited out entirely (though the violence remains). The biggest and most glaring edit occurs at the end of the movie in which Dirk Diggler unzips his pants to remove his large penis. The TV edit ends on Dirk just staring into the mirror.
• Booty Call suffers from the "Mother Fucker" curse when running on channels like Comedy Central: the "mother lover" that replaces it is technically accurate and wouldn't be too bad if they only had gotten more than two versions. Every male says "motherlover" in the exact same way, and the few times it's uttered by a female it's the exact same clip for them. There's also about a 50/50 chance, mostly depending on the time slot, of whether Rushon's bare butt is shown when he exposes his newly-shaved pubic area due to nearly getting a vasectomy to Bunz (to convince his girlfriend that he doesn't base his life around the approval of his friends).
• In the TV version of Born on the Fourth of July, the anti-war chant at the end of the film was changed from "One, two, three, four/We don't want your fuckin' war" to "...stinking war."
• The iconic mooning scene of Braveheart is usually cut from TV edits, either by cutting to commercials beforehand or just editing it or replacing it with another scene. The preceding scene of the Scottish army lifting their kilts to flash the English army is also usually cut.
• As released in Germany, the climax of Breakdown - with Big Bad Red being killed when Amy releases the gears of his truck and it falls on him - is cut to remove Amy's action, transforming her vengeful And This Is for... decision into an accident.
• If you watch The Breakfast Club on TV sometime, you'll notice these edits:
  • Bender's line to the principal, "Eat my shorts" (which was used well before Bart Simpson used it) was changed to "Eat my socks!"
  • Some TV airings omit the scene in which Bender shares his marijuana with others during a therapy session, which causes everyone to dance to "We Are Not Alone". The TV version makes it seem like they are dancing for no apparent reason.
  • On Family Channel in Canada, some moments with the word "fuck" are cut out, and others are muted. For example, Bender quoting his abusive dad is shortened to remove the "fuck you" part, and then, when he calls the other main characters "fucking dildos", that phrase is muted out. Also, the line, "No wonder he's so fucked up," has too much muted out, so it becomes, "No wonder……p." Also, the word "fag" is blurred out on the locker.
• In Bridget Jones' Diary, the scene where Bridget Jones quits her job, she tells her boss that she'd rather have a job "wiping Saddam Hussein's arse" than working for him. The TV-friendly version? "Washing Saddam Hussein's car." In the UK version, Julian's line, "Careful, you ham-fisted cunt," had to be changed to "Careful, you ham-fisted cow!" in order to get a 15 rating.
• One Australian TV edit of Bridesmaids completely cuts the opening sex scene, jumping right into Annie in the bathroom in her lingerie.
• Bring It On:
  • On ABC Family, they take out all the swear words. One particularly bad example is when Torrance is yelling at Misty, saying something to the effect of "I'm gonna kick your ass." On TV, she yells the "I'm gonna kick your" part, and then she says "butt" in a normal voice. However, they don't do this for any of the other Bring It On movies. (Or maybe they do: on some TV screenings of Bring It On: All Or Nothing the shot of Britney mouthing "Asshole" after her ex-boyfriend leaves is cut.)
  • "Missy is an uber-dyke" is changed to "Missy is an uber-dork."
• The TV edit of Bulletproof has old, seasoned police officers calling each other "silly beast" in anger.
• FX's version of Burn After Reading is just sloppily dubbed over. It seems like the actors dubbed their own lines, but it's just that it's not seamless at all, including Brad Pitt constantly referencing Malkovich's "stuff" instead of shit. The dubbed-over lines for John Malkovich zigzag in quality as well.
• In the TV version of Caddyshack, Rodney Dangerfield's last line changes from "Hey everybody! We're all gonna get laid!" to "Hey everybody! We're all gonna take a shower!", which (a) is Out of Character for Rodney Dangerfield's character, and (b) sounds worse than the original line.
• Carrie :
  • In the TV edit, there's a scene where the teacher Ms. Collins is chewing out the girls who tormented Carrie by pelting her with pads and tampons after Carrie freaks out over having her period (and not knowing what it was, as she grew up very sheltered). Instead of saying what a "shitty" thing they did to Carrie, she tells them it was a "nasty" thing they did. However, since the "nasty" they spliced in was from the same chewing out scene, it actually worked.
  • The TV edit also throws in a ton of CGI steam to hide the gratuitous nudity in the girls' locker room ^note some edits exist where the nudity is covered up with digitally-rendered bras and panties, similar to how Showgirls is normally edited, removes the scene where Chris gives Billy a blowjob, and removes the scene with Carrie in the bathtub.
  • Airings seen up to the early 2000s on TBS were unintentionally hilarious, as they opted to simply mute curse words. So John Travolta keeps slapping his girlfriend for a pause in the dialogue, yet the censors for the longest time ignored a "Carrie White eats shit" epithet written on one of the walls.
• Every basic cable version of Casino especially USA Network will show the film with its various F-bombs cut out. Since this movie is a notorious example of the Cluster F-Bomb,^note It has been calculated that there are more instances of the word "fuck" in the dialog than there are minutes in the screentime viewers might be forgiven for wondering if their TV's speakers are cutting out or if Joe Pesci is developing a stutter. Here are just a few highlights of which lines were altered for TV:
  • During the scene where Nicky is interrogating one of the bar shooters, networks alter his dialogue so he's calling the man a "dumb moron". Keep in mind this is after showing him crushing the man's head in a vise.
  • Some networks change Nicky calling Ace a "Jew motherfucker" to him saying "Jew moneylover", which is, unfortunately, not much better.
  • One scene where Ginger is yelling at Sam has her let out an extremely unconvincing exclamation of "Freak you, Sam Rothstein. Freak YOU."
  • One of Nicky's henchmen gets in trouble for calling Sam a "maggot" and telling him to go "stuff" himself. Additionally, he calls him a "boot-lickin, stinky horse manure smellin' cockroach".
• An "Edited and Reconstructed for Television" version of Cheech and Chong's Next Movie features an abundance of changes from the theatrical version, including a longer animated intro (featuring a theme song with lyrics), a live-action intro with an alien spaceship, an endless loop of background music, and - most notably - diamonds in Red's luggage (instead of marijuana).
• The Children's Hour:
  • An entire adaptation was this. Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour is a play about two female teachers accused by an evil student of being in a lesbian relationship. When it was adapted to a movie in the 1930s, under the title of These Three, the lesbian relationship was changed to the two women dating (and fighting over) the same man. The 1961 adaptation called The Childrens Hour is truer to the original with the gay plot intact, though some editing needed to be done to appease the censors (as homosexuality still wasn't accepted in the 1960s).
  • In the play, Martha shoots herself. The 1961 film censored it to make it slightly less graphic. She hangs herself instead, with a silhouette of her dangling legs.
• In one instance in Cinderella (2015). The scene from the animated movie where Cinderella's homemade dress for the ball is torn to shreds by her stepsisters is toned down to Lady Tremaine ripping a few portions. Possibly because it would be more difficult to rip a dress apart by hand in live-action. Another possibility is that the writers wanted to make the scene less heart-breaking so that Ella could still fix the dress.
• On the USA channel's airing of Clueless, Dionne's line about the politically correct term for a virgin is someone who is "hymenally-challenged" is changed to "hermetically-sealed." There are two things wrong with this cut: 1) Apparently the censors of USA think "hymen" is a dirty word (it refers to something racy, sure, but how often is "hymen" used in casual sex talk?) and 2) (the most obvious of all): It's not an improvement over the original line, since the hymen is technically considered a type of seal. Though it arguably made the original line more accurate - "challenged" is often used as a politically correct substitute for "lacking" (e.g. "vertically challenged" as a euphemism for "short") and virgins are, by definition, not hymenally challenged. ^note Then again, "hermetically sealed" isn't really an accurate description either.
• An edit of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes shown in the UK changed Milo's line "Lousy human bastards" to "Lousy human backstabbers." It might not be a bad substitution in of itself, but it didn't make much sense in the context of the movie, as the humans are pretty open about their contempt for apekind. To make matters worse, the edited version only used a single sample of the word "backstabbers", which reduced the following scenes to hilarity as various characters discuss exactly who said "Lousy human bastards backstabbers," with absolutely none of the dubs sounding convincing.
• The film version of Damn Yankees rewrote a few lines of "A Little Brains—A Little Talent" to eliminate a joke about Lola sleeping with George Washington, and also altered a four-letter word in Joe's line, "What's so damn funny about Washington winning the pennant?" (Note that the musical's title, and the Title Drops, remained unchanged.) Also, "The Game" was cut along with the entire scene preceding it, probably to speed up the plot more than anything else.
• Deadpool (2016) was heavily censored just to receive an adults-only rating in India, as one can see from this document◊. Not only was the censorship a major killer of a lot of the film's humor, but it was also inconsistent (the repeated 'Sexy motherfucker...' in the Deadpool rap was left intact).
• On a related note, Deadpool 2 got a limited-run PG-13 cut entitled Once Upon A Deadpool for the Christmas season. Of course, in typical Deadpool fashion, the Framing Device is that Deadpool tied up Fred Savage in a bedroom so he could tell the story to him a la The Princess Bride, skipping over the naughty parts, and piling on tons of meta-commentary and fourth wall breakage care of the duo. To the point that there are even a few scenes making fun of censorship, such as Deadpool pointing out you can only use an F-bomb once in a PG-13-rated film (they never end up using it at all.), and another scene has Deadpool using a buzzer to repeatedly censor a specific word from a long-winded rant by Savage about his desire to fight Matt Damon.
  Deadpool: Now, I want you to take a deep breath. Listen to me very carefully: You're in a PG-13 version of Deadpool 2, which means we only get two sh*ts, one f***, and a glass of white wine.
• FX's edit of Martin Scorsese's The Departed has been turned into a comedy by way of poor choices in redubbing throughout the entire film (such as in the scene of Jack Nicholson telling Leonardo DiCaprio that someday he will wake the "freak" up or the scene of DiCaprio losing it with Mark Wahlberg with how about I "freaking" kill you. And, of course, there was Matt Damon's, "This gonna be "freaking fun" rant towards the end of the film).
• In Desperado quite a bit of the violence was censored in most TV airings and Cheech Marin's death scene is completely removed, making it look like he escaped the shootout (and was never seen or heard from again), and the language is also censored ("What the fuck?!" is changed to "What the frijoles?")
• The Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie airs on Disney Channel with a TV-PG rating, yet still has even the mildest of insults muted - for example, Patty's "Don't be such a wuss, Heffley." Not only that, but when Rowley lipsyncs to Ke$ha's "Tik Tok", the words "Jack" and "tipsy" are muted.
• Die Hard:
  • Die Hard on TNT: not only is the language muted, but all the violence is edited out.
  • AMC, on one of its first uses, has it be a Curse Cut Short by radio static. ("Yippie-ki-yay, mother—" [radio static])
  • The dub voice used throughout Die Hard 2: Die Harder's edit barely even matches Bruce Willis at all, instead of being described by various YouTube commenters as sounding somewhat like a bad Barney the Dinosaur impression. Perhaps the most hilariously egregious example of McClane's voice drastically changing mid-conversation is a scene where he starts arguing with Carmine Lorenzo. There are quite a few interesting word replacements. The most infamous of the edits is McClane's signature "Yippie-ki-yay-motherfucker!" being changed to "Yippie-ki-yay, Mr. Falcon", despite the fact that there's nobody in the movie named Mr. Falcon. Or rather, there previously hadn't been; one character's last name was changed to Falcon in the edit.
  • In the German dub, it's "Yippie-yie-yay, Schweinebacke" (pigface). German dubs have a tendency to — if they only have those two options — make something sound profane, yet cool and/or funny, rather than just profane to be shocking. Also due to German often lacking proper workable equivalents to the relevant English profanity.
  • In the TV version of Die Hard with a Vengeance, when McClane hands Zeus a gun, after Zeus says he doesn't know how to use one, Zeus says "Hey, all brothers don't know how to use guns, you racist melon farmer."
  • The "I hate niggers" sandwich board McClane wears was blank when the scene was originally filmed, as Bruce Willis might have been killed if he wore such a racially-charged sign in Harlem — a predominantly black neighborhood. In all cases, the writing was added in post-production, and edits on television and in some international markets use an alternate version of the scene where the sign reads "I hate everybody!" instead. It is a common misbelief that the sign originally read "I hate everybody!" during filming.
  • Much discussion was raised on Live Free or Die Hard, which reduces the bloodshed and curse words (McClane's catchphrase is cut by a gunshot) to lower the rating, making it accessible to more audiences. In a separate scene from the same film, "Yippie-ki-yay-motherfucker!" has become "Yippie-ki-yay, my friend!"
  • All the cursing and violence are restored in the unrated DVD version, making the gunshot-cut catchphrase into a totally badass LITERAL Precision F-Strike, the rest of the film has already used the non-killing-people f-word a bunch of times.
• In the broadcast version of Dirty Dancing, people would tell each other to "Flake off!"
• John Waters had fun with a basic cable edit of the controversially-rated-NC-17 A Dirty Shame, blurring any nudity, cutting any motions, dialogue, or even facial expressions deemed too sexual (of which this movie has lots) and dubbing over language with hilarious substitutes (on one occasion, "bear jobs" replaces "blowjobs"). This cut still got an R rating from the MPAA.
• When Dumb and Dumber aired on TV (mostly on TBS, and Cartoon Network when it was in the midst of its Network Decay of showing live-action shows more than animated shows), the following scenes are altered.
  • Lloyd's line, "That John Denver's full of shit" was changed to "That John Denver's really full of it."
  • The scene of Harry rushing to the bathroom after drinking the laxative-laced tea used pan-and-zoom to cover up Harry pulling his pants down just as he sits on the toilet and faded out just as Harry is defecating.
    • Some versions keep the scene but remove all the sound and condense it so that it's shorter.
  • The censors also ruined the punchline of combining a bulldog with a shih-tzu ("We call it a bull-sniki!"). They could have just removed the punchline altogether and made it a Stealth Pun. A different edit of the film does do this, in fact: Harry sets up the joke, Mary responds "Really? That's weird" and instead of the punchline, it just cuts to Harry laughing uproariously.
  • The scene of Harry, Lloyd, and Mary on the bed at gunpoint and Harry fighting with Lloyd, Harry asks Lloyd where he should sign. Lloyd's original line was, "Right on my ass, after you kiss it!" On Cartoon Network (and other televised versions), the line was changed to, "Right on my sandwich, after you kiss it!" Keep in mind that no sandwich is present in the scene.
• A Dog's Purpose censored a lot compared to the original book. Some examples include the Running Gag of the protagonist being neutered each reincarnation being changed to a running gag about him getting vaccinations, a child Serial Killer who kidnapped a child being changed into an abusive dad who kidnapped their kid, one of the characters no longer exhibiting Troubling Unchildlike Behavior (such as murdering animals), and all implications of sex being removed.
• In Escape from L.A., coarse language is one of the many things banned by the fascist American government (breaking any of their laws, of course, results in deportation to L.A. Island). When AMC airs this movie, any and all instances of coarse language are completely edited out, giving no justification for the punishment and drowning this in irony.
• In the twentieth-anniversary edition version of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the policemen's shotguns were digitally replaced with walkie-talkies, completely negating the suspense of the moment. It makes the staggering zoom to Elliot's horrified face before showing the shotguns, which is kept in the new version, look so out of place. However, this product of said editing was, nevertheless, awesome! As well as funny… Also edited in the newer version of the movie was the line, "You are not going as a terrorist for Halloween." Because it was released post-September 11th, "terrorist" was changed to "hippie." Mercilessly lampooned in the South Park parody episode "Free Hat." Incidentally, while said episode portrays Steven Spielberg as the diabolical mastermind behind editing Raiders of the Lost Ark, with George Lucas only reluctantly following, in Real Life Spielberg himself later stated that editing the movie was a mistake.
• A very British TV edit of The Exorcist changed one immortal line to:
  Your mother KNITS SOCKS in Hell!
  • In the U.S., it's "STILL ROTS in hell!"
  • Saturday Night Live actually used the line "Your mother sews socks that smell!" for their parody called The Exorcist II (no relation to the actual sequel) on the season one episode hosted by Richard Pryor.
• The HBO Max upload of The Evil Dead (1981) has an alternate poster that removed the hand from the drowning woman's neck, making the scene less violent.
• Fall was edited before its release to receive a PG-13 rating from the MPA; all but one of the uses of "fuck" were redubbed and the mouth movements were digitally altered. This censored version was released in theaters, even in countries like Canada and the UK where the movie's language doesn't make a difference for its rating. So far, the uncensored version has only been released on the UK Blu-Ray.
• A television edit of Fargo replaced all uses of "fuck" with "frozen".
• Fast Times at Ridgemont High has several instances...
  • During the scene at All-American Burger, where Brad gets fired, he says to the obnoxious customer, "Mister, if you don't shut up, I'm gonna kick 100 percent of your ASS!". The TV version changes 'ass' to 'face'. After Brad gets fired, he pounds on the bathroom door and yells, "I hope you had a hell of a piss, Arnold!", which gets changed to "I hope you had a hell of a break, Arnold!"
  • The scene where Jeff Spicoli and Mr. Hand first meet. The guy sitting behind Stacy tells her, "This guy's been stoned since the third grade", which gets changed to "This guy's been WEIRD since the third grade". WTH?
  • Also, in that scene, Spicoli says "You DICK!" to Mr. Hand when the teacher tears up his schedule. This is changed to "You NERD!" for the TV cut. Likewise, when Stacy is telling Linda about the incident later during lunch, she says, "Some surfer dude called Mr. Hand a dick", 'dick' is replaced once again by 'nerd'.
  • Jefferson's brother's reaction to him and Spicoli wrecking his precious Firebird. The original dialogue has the brother saying, "My brother's gonna shit! My brother's gonna kill us!", followed by Spicoli saying, "Make up your mind, Dude! Is he gonna shit or is he gonna kill us?" "First, he gonna shit, then he gonna kill us!" The TV cut replaces 'shit' with 'flip'.
• They edit the language in the TV cut of Ferris Bueller's Day Off to take out any swearing. The cuts are rather obvious to some viewers.
  • "Pardon my French, but you're a *splice* -IDIOT!
  • "What a little motorhead!"
  • (Yelling) "I'm not just gonna sit on my..." (Whiny voice) "Hind."
  • "If you stuck a lump of coal of his HAND, in two weeks you'd have a diamond."
  • At one point, a woman in a naughty nurse outfit shows up to give Ferris a singing telegram:
    "I heard that you were feeling ill,
    Headache, fever, had a chill.
    I came to help restore your pluck,
    'cuz I'm the nurse that likes to-

  ...which is cut short by Ferris's sister Jeannie slamming the door in her face. In the TV edit, she slams the door after the first two lines. Also, at one point a delivery man drops off a package, which is received by Mr. Rooney. Upon leaving, he honks out the tune, "Shave and a haircut", with Rooney flipping him off twice in "two bits" rapid succession. In the TV version, he simply looks annoyed and does nothing.

• A Few Good Men: Kaffee's "FUCK YOU HAROLD!!!" is changed to "FORGET YOU, HAROLD!!!" in at least one TV edit.
• When Fifty Shades of Grey was released in Vietnam, all the sex scenes were cut, a decision which rendered the entire film pointless.
• In the book Fight Club, Marla's line, "I want to have your abortion" was asked to be toned down. For the film, it was changed to "I haven't been fucked like that since grade school." The book line was originally in the script and it was recorded, but the studio insisted for it to be changed; so Fincher did, changing it for its even worse replacement, and absolutely refusing to shoot the scene again.
  • The Chinese release of the film on Tencent Video had the entire ending sequence cut and replaced with a card explaining that the state had foiled Tyler's plan and sent him to a lunatic asylum.
• In Final Destination 3, a photo shows a woman giving the middle finger (with both fingers) to the camera. Since the photo is integral to the plot, cutting out all scenes of it would render the movie incomprehensible. Instead, the middle fingers were digitally altered to peace/"V-for-Victory" signs (which actually is an obscene gesture in the UK, making the edit worse than intended).
  • In the UK, it's only an obscene gesture if the gesture is inverted i.e the back of the hand and the back of the middle fingers are shown. The V-for-Victory sign with the front of the fingers and hand showed is perfectly acceptable otherwise you wouldn't have the National Lottery using it as its logo and Mario would have been chewed out for using the victory sign in Super Mario 64 a long time ago.
• Forrest Gump:
  • The TV edit removes the gag involving the "Shit Happens" bumper stickers by replacing them with "Stuff Happens" or "It Happens" (including digitally editing the bumper sticker shown later), forcing the joke to lose all meaning: "Oh man, you just stepped through a big dog pile!" "It happens." "What? It?"
  • Also the scene of Forrest as a child sitting outside while the viewer hears his mother moaning orgasmically from having sex had the moaning either muted out completely or redubbed so it doesn't sound as sexual.
• The horror-drama film found. has over seven minutes of cuts to get an R18+ rating in Australia. This is ridiculously prudent compared to the UK which only required a four-second cut to remove sexual violence.
• As a joke, Tom Green edited a new version of Freddy Got Fingered so that it would receive a PG rating and included it as a special feature on the DVD. The PG-rated cut is 3 minutes long.
• When Friday airs on USA Network, every single instance of profanity is muted. Seeing that Friday has a lot of profanity, the movie becomes very incomprehensible.
• Friday the 13th:
  • In the AMC version of Friday the 13th (1980) all of the murders were heavily edited particularly Annie's, Jack's, Marcie's, and Steve's and in the climax Mrs. Voorhees' death scene is cut out just showing Alice swing the machete and the last few seconds of her headless corpse falling to the ground. However in their airing of Part III the scenes of Andy getting cut in half, Rick's eyeball being squeezed out, and Ali's arm getting chopped off were left intact.
  • During a marathon of the films on TNT's old "Monstervision" block, Joe Bob Briggs once said that you could tell how improved the effects were in each successive film by noting how much of the film had to be cut to make it to air.
• The Frighteners: In one TV-edit, the villain yelling "God damn you" is changed to "Gosh darn you".
• In the 1980s Get Smart movie The Nude Bomb, Max puts his gun in his pants. It goes off, he turns around, you hear the sound of him pulling his zipper down and up again, and he then turns around again with his Catchphrase "Missed it by that much". NBC dubbed in "Missed the bone by that much," which oddly sounds dirtier than the original!
• Ghostbusters:
  • Ghostbusters (1984) is fairly well-known for its rather lame TV version, in which the language is toned down, not by audio dubbing, but by using actual alternate takes that were deliberately filmed in case the censors wanted the movie to be more family-friendly.
    • The theatrical version's "We came, we saw, we kicked its ass!" after the lead trio's first capture of a ghost was replaced by "What a knockabout of pure fun that was."
    • Later, Dr. Venkmann telling Walter Peck "You go get a court order, and I'll sue your ass for wrongful prosecution!" was substituted with "You go get the court order, and I'll sue your funny face for wrongful prosecution."
    • Dana Barrett says "Oh no" instead of "Oh shit" when her kitchen ghosts return.
    • The most infamous one, this scene in the mayor's office. Film version:
      Ray Stantz: Your honor, our system was working just fine until the power grid was turned off by Dickless here.
      Walter Peck: They caused an explosion!
      Mayor: Is this true?
      Venkmann: Yes it's true, this man has no dick.
    • TV version:
      Ray Stantz: Your honor, our system was working just fine until the power grid was turned off by Wally Wick here.
      Walter Peck: They caused an explosion!
      Mayor: Is this true?
      Venkmann: It's true, your honor, the man is some kind of rodent, I don't know which.
    • As per a letter to the British film magazine Empire, the version that is shown on ITV had a different change to this scene (as well as none of the more gruesome... er... ghosts):
      Ray Stantz: Your honor, our system was working just fine until the power grid was turned off.
      Walter Peck: They caused an explosion!
      Mayor: Is this true?
      Venkmann: Yes it's true, this man has no twinkie.
    • The "some kind of rodent" version was used in the ITV premiere. However, due to audience complaints (and the fact that the picture quality on the edited version was markedly inferior), the US TV edit was never shown again in Britain.
    • Finally, Winston Zeddemore III later in the same scene as the above, "I have seen shit that will turn you white!" became "I have seen stuff that will turn you white!" with the emphasis moved to the final word.
  • Some UK airings of Ghostbusters II cut out the part where Ray gets possessed, so he's just staring at the painting for no reason before jumping out of the way.
• AMC's edit of G.I. Jane can be summed up in three words: "Suck my STICK!"
• Godzilla:
  • When the Sci-fi Channel aired the dubbed version of Godzilla vs. Megaguirus, a character briefly says "butt-hole". Apparently, Sci-fi found the word offensive, as they replaced it with "black-hole", in a line that makes no sense at all.
  • The English dub of Terror of Mechagodzilla cut out a scene where Katsura was naked, a scene where Interpol Agent Kasakuri is murdered by the aliens, and the scene where Katsura sacrifices herself to shut down Mechagodzilla.
• Good Will Hunting has a lot of the offensive language either dubbed over or cut entirely. One scene that deserves special mention: at the end when Matt Damon hugs Robin Williams and asks "Does this violate the doctor-patient agreement?" to which Williams responds jokingly "Only if you grab my ass." The Bravo channel's edit changes "ass" to "butt", which at least still gets the idea across. The ABC Family edit of this scene, however, changes the line to "Only if I turn around," the implications of which are more sexual than the original version and the Bravo edit (but, hey, that's our beloved trope namer for ya).
• The airplane edit of Goon (2011) removes so much of the profanity and violence that some scenes become downright mystifying.
• The Goonies has a lot of this too. Most of Mouth's dialogue to Rosita is cut out (i.e. warning her of "sexual torture devices.")
  • In some airings the "hanging" scene is cut down even though it's a faked suicide.
  • Whenever the film is aired on Channel 5 in the UK, the scene where Chunk breaks the statue of David censors out his expletive. He just says "Shhhhh" instead of "Shit". The reason for this is due to the film being aired in the early evening, as opposed to a time slot where it would be permissible for a film to use expletives.
  • ABC Family often edits out Andy's Panty Shots.
• An example of a movie's plot suffering from the effects of this: Gothika opens with Chloe's psych evaluation, where she describes murdering her stepfather because it was "the only way to help him." When Halle Barry's character asks, "To help him to do what?", the TV edit changes her response to, "To help him stop fighting me!". The original is, "To help him stop fucking me". Since most of Chloe's problems revolve around how no one believes she's a rape victim, it makes her sound like an ordinary psycho (or someone who was physically abused by a parent at a young age and finally snapped in adulthood) and undermines most of what she represents in the story.
• Grease:
  • This trailer for a re-release with sing-along subtitles for the musical numbers digitally removes a cigarette from John Travolta's mouth, and now, instead of "cream", "the chicks'll scream". The added sing-along subtitles say scream, but you can still hear 'cream'. "The chicks'll scream" is usually the preferred substitute for "chicks'll cream" whenever a high school play performs Grease in Real Life. Saturday Night Live parodied this on the season 33 episode hosted by Christopher Walken, in which 90% of the words had to be changed because the drama teacher (Walken) found them offensive.
  • When Lifetime aired the film, they just cut out the language altogether, so it becomes "You are supreme/Grease lightning!" Though other innuendos in the film remain intact.
  • The opening montage includes a scene of two people mooning out a car's back window. Some TV edits either cut the scene or blur the butts out, even though they're animated rather than live-action.
  • The mooning scene during the dance is usually edited on TV to remove the butts.
• Grease 2 was hacked to ribbons in an '80s ABC airing, with at least 2 songs (including "Reproduction") removed.
• Gremlins:
  • Most basic cable airings of Gremlins cut out the deaths of the first four gremlins which are ripped apart in a blender, stabbed repeatedly, blown up in a microwave, and decapitated with a sword — only the beginnings of these are shown in those airings.
  • HBO Family's cut removes three scenes involving Gremlins dying.
  • Some UK airings of the sequel cut out the part where the gremlins throw metal utensils in a microwave (despite that one character said that doing so was dangerous), so the microwave just explodes for no reason.
• Movies of the Halloween series can do this during kills. Particularly bad examples can be seen in the beginning of Halloween II where kills are simply replaced by a still shot of Michael Myers' mask with cuts to the soundtrack. Also, video quality decreases.
  • In Halloween II (1981), Budd sings a raunchy parody of "Amazing Grace" ("amazing grace, come sit on my face. Don't make me cry, I need your pie"). The TV cut naturally makes it far less dirty ("amazing grace, come show me your face. Don't make me cry, I tell no lie").
• The Disney+ release of Hamilton ditches all of the F-bombs but a plot-important one from Hamilton (which is permitted in a PG-13 film); overall, this trope is pretty downplayed in that none of the other profanity or suggestive content is censored.
• Happy Gilmore:
  • A couple of good bowdlerizations on the broadcast version: 1) In the clubhouse, when Happy and Shooter are arguing at the bar. Happy's original line is "I used to be on this tour for one reason: money. Now I'm on it for a new reason: Kicking your ass." The broadcast version dubs "ass" to "head", with hilarious results. 2) At the house auction. In the original scene, Shooter "eats pieces of shit for breakfast". In the edit, he eats "pieces of scum". The dub doesn't quite cover 'shit', however, and it comes out sounding like 'shcum'.
  • Some networks edit out Bob Barker's "I think you've had enough... bitch". However, there are those that still leave in Gilmore's "The Price is WRONG, bitch!" Maybe there's a bitch quotient. Others replace "bitch" with "Bobby".
  • When The Price Is Right was promoting the movie in its original release in 1996, they edited "The Price is WRONG, bitch!" to "The Price is WRONG, Bob!". However, in their 2007 primetime special, The Price is Right: A Celebration of Bob Barker's 50 Years in Television, they showed the uncensored clip.
• Harry Potter:
  • In Germany, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was edited to meet a "not under 6" rating. This included toning down the spider attack and the basilisk fight. Also, while the basilisk voice says, "let me kill you" in the original, the German version translates this as "let me get you." The uncut version was released in Germany years later, receiving a "not under 12" rating.
  • In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, Hermione's hands are covered in blood during the scene when Ron has been splinched. The trailer cleaned up her hands when it included a shot from this scene.
  • Cinemax Asia's airings of Deathly Hallows Part 2 cut Mrs. Weasley's usage of the word "bitch" to Bellatrix (after she attacks Ginny), shortening her line to "Not my daughter you".
  • ITV airings have several edits made for content such as language and violence. For example, in Deathly Hallows Part 1, Moody mentioning "goblin piss" has "piss" altered to "spit" (though Ron telling Harry to "piss off" in Goblet of Fire wasn't cut); and in Half-Blood Prince, the words "tosser" and "dragon balls" were removed, as well as cutting the scene where Draco breaks Harry's nose, leading to him suddenly getting a bloody nose with no explanation.
• The TNT version of The Help changes Minnie's famous line to "eat my spit". Not quite the same...
• The Family/Freeform Channel airing of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York cut most of the scene where Kevin threw bricks at Harry and Marv, they had Marv get hit on the head with one brick instead of four, Kevin's other violent traps used against them were left intact.
• The makers of Hot Fuzz were contractually obliged to make a version suitable for television viewing. The edited portions can be viewed on the two-disc version. The results are hilarious. "Jesus Christ" was changed to "peas and rice", for instance.
• A broadcast version of Hot Shots! cut almost the entirety of the 9 1/2 Weeks-inspired foreplay scene.
• In-Universe in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1, Plutarch edits "necklace of rope" to "necklace of hope" when using Katniss' rendition of "The Hanging Tree" over a propaganda piece.
• Idiocracy on Comedy Central has two obvious edit examples (among others):
  • Carl's Jr. machine: "Carl's Jr. Fuck you, I'm eating."
  • Joe: "I could really go for a Starbucks right now." Frito: "I don't think we have time for a handjob."
    • Amazingly, the first airing of the film on Comedy Central missed a huge one: The unaltered sign for the establishment "Buttfucker's" was still plainly visible when Joe first emerged from his pod.
• I Love You, Beth Cooper: This movie was originally intended to have an R-rating, but it was decided in post to try for PG-13, so there were some alterations. For example, one scene has Beth talk about how she sucked a gas station cashier's face as a bribe, implying a kiss; this is blatantly dubbed over, as can be seen by the fact that her mouth still says "dick" instead of "face".
• The Disney movie adaptation of Into the Woods was bowdlerized a bit in comparison to the original stage musical;
  • The scene where the Baker's Wife and Cinderella's Prince cheat on their spouses is left intact but is made slightly less suggestive than it was in the musical.
  • The Steward no longer bludgeons Jack's Mother with his staff. Rather, he pushes her down and unintentionally causes her head to bash against a log (he's also noticeably more remorseful and shocked at what he had done). We also never see the impact, and she dies off-screen rather than in Baker's arms.
  • The scene in which Cinderella's Stepmother cuts up her daughters' feet is altered so that we never see it done on screen.
  • Subverted by the Wolf: he was not portrayed as nude with a Gag Penis as in some productions, but they still gave him a slew of sexually-suggestive mannerisms during his song "Hello Little Girl", had him wear a black suit for a prostitute-like look, and had him played by Johnny Depp.
  • In the original musical, we actually see the Baker cut open the Wolf after he eats Little Red and Granny. In the film, the scene cuts right before the impact.
• The Iron Man DVD and Blu-ray versions alter a photo in a scene where Stark reads a newspaper with the headline "Who Is the Iron Man?", due to the photo being used without permission by the photographer Ronnie Adams.
• It's impossible for an adaptation of It to have the infamous orgy scene involving a bunch of preteens. Both the 1990 and 2017 adaptations thus cut it. In the latter, it was replaced with a group hug.
• The TV version of Jackie Brown has some rather clever edits of the many, many instances of "motherfucker" uttered by Samuel L. Jackson.
• A James Bond film re-aired on a German channel at an afternoon without showing the explosion of a cruiser ship in the climax, despite the scene being featured in every ad for the film and there being no visible corpses to justify a need for editing.
• Jaws: Some TV edits change Brody's immortal line "smile, you son of a bitch" to the far less biting "smile, you stupid fish".
• Free-TV The Jerk ruins the joke with the dog's name (can't call him "Shithead" now…) Also, Iron Balls McGinty became Iron Bill McGinty.
• John Wick: Chapter 2 cut down a suicide scene by 23 seconds in order to avoid an 18 certificate.
• An airplane edit of Juno changes Juno's father's line, "I'd like to kick that Bleeker kid right in the wiener" to, "I'd like to kick that Bleeker kid right in the knee".
• Kate & Leopold: During one of the opening scenes, Stuart is listening to the architect of the Brooklyn Bridge giving a speech in which he talks of the bridge as his "erection" (as in "my erection, the biggest on the planet, will stand forever"). The German dub replaced all "erections" with "buildings", leaving Stuart to stand there snickering for absolutely no reason. Although that might be less censoring and more being unable to translate the pun into German.
• The TV version of Kill Bill had a minor character saying, "My name is BUCK, and I'm here to PARTY."^note Would it have killed the censors to rename the guy "Marty" or "Arty" for the sake of that edit? Suffice to say that the original rhymed a whole lot better. They changed the name of his truck also, to PARTY Wagon. The original word also started with a P and ended with a Y, though the license plate (PSYWGN) wasn't digitally altered at all. Although without the original name of the vehicle given, you might guess from the license plate that the "P-S-Y" stood for "Psychology" or "Psycho". Also, Thurman calls her killers "sluts" instead of "dicks". Carradine who apparently did dub his dialogue changes it from "assholes" to "jerks".
• The profanity-spewing speech therapy scene in The King's Speech led to the film receiving an R rating in the United States, which would have prevented wider audiences from seeing it. As a result, shortly after its Oscar win, a re-edited version with a toned-down version of the said scene was released and got the much lighter PG-13 rating. The public attacked the distributors for resorting to censorship, and this re-edited version slowly drifted away from view.
• In Canada, as long as you slap a Content Warning on every commercial break, basic cable channels can get away with swearing and violence. However, an airing of A League of Their Own on W Movies censored "god" out of "goddamn". Some Canadian edits similarly seem to allow "shit" but not "fuck" (which is also what most American basic cable channels do. See: some of Cartoon Network's original programming, the TBS episodes of American Dad!, and anything on Comedy Central after 10:00pm).
• Liar Liar:
  • When Jim Carrey's character pummels himself in the bathroom (which is one of the movie's funniest scenes), someone walks in and asks, "What the hell are you doing!?" Carrey responds with, "I'm kicking my ass! Do you mind!?" In the edited version, he says, rather loudly, "I'M KICKING MY BUTT!" It's particularly obvious because if you read his lips, he's still saying "ass". In fact, lots of things were censored in this movie. Yet somehow, certain scenes (such as the "moaning" on a tape recorder, or Carrey's "encounter" before he is unable to lie) sneak by...
  • In the same movie, when Jim's character is describing to his client's boyfriend what they were doing on the recorder, all of the sexual wordplays Jim uses are edited out and replaced with stammering and incoherent gibberish even when his mouth is obviously forming words.
    Original scene: You dunked her donut, you gave her dog a Snausage, you stuffed her like a Thanksgiving turkey! (starts gobbling)
    TV edit: You dunked her donut, you gave her dog a Snausage, I didn't know she had— I didn't —(random lip-flapping noise, then starts gobbling)
  • Immediately after that, in the original version of the film after Carrey berates his witness into admitting he slept with the defendant, the witness finally shouts "Alright! It's true, okay?! I humped her brains out!!" (Which, already, is a pretty tame way to put it, considering) In the edited version, the guy instead shouts "I kissed her brains out!" Which is both...weird...and doesn't accomplish what the point of the scene was.
  • Another ridiculous example is when Carrey's character originally said, "Take it up the tailpipe!" which was changed to "Take it like a grown man!".
• The 1947 film version of Life with Father toned down the unbaptized father's frequent swearing. His bellows of "Oh, God!" were changed to "Oh, gad!" and most instances of "damn" were simply deleted.
• Both film adaptations of Lord of the Flies censor Piggy's death. In the book, he is hit with a boulder which sends him flying off the cliff. He hits his head again and his brains spill out. The film adaptations change it so that he simply died of brain injury from being hit with the rock.
• The AMC airing of Love Actually completely excises the John & Judy subplot, as there is no way to get around the fact that they are stark naked and simulating sex acts in nearly all of their scenes.
• Major League's TV version was highly edited. The most memorable instance: "Strike this guy out!" is in the place of "Strike this mother fucker out!" Not only can you still clearly lipread what the character is saying, but "guy" is said with a different actor's voice, rendering it even more awkward.
  • "All right, all right, knock that stuff off!!"
  • Pedro's cursing in Spanish at Roger Dorn is overdubbed with "Shut up, cowboy!"
  • Rick Vaughn's rant in the manager's office ends with "I'm gonna stick it to you, Mr. Brown" instead of "I'm gonna stick it up (to) your FUCKIN' ASS!"
  • Instead of urinating on Dorn's contract, Lou Brown blows his nose with it.
  • In the batting cage: "You may run like Hayes, but you hit like shit" became "You may run like Hayes, but you hit like his sister."
  • "Judas Priest, Cerrano!"
• The Mask is edited for TV to remove/alter the following:
  • Cameron Diaz calling the bad guys bastards before tying her to the pole is replaced with her screaming, "Let me go!"
  • The part where Kellaway and Doyle search The Mask in the park and Kellaway finds a framed photo of his wife in lingerie with the words, "Call me, lover!" written in cursive: In the original version, Kellaway yelled, "Margaret! You son of a bitch!" Most TV versions replace "bitch" with "witch" while others cut off after he yells, "Margaret!"
  • The part after The Mask gets his revenge on the car repairmen who screwed him (when he was Stanley Ipkiss) over: Originally, there was a long sequence where The Mask is confronted by gun-toting muggers, then transforms into a carnival barker and makes a Tommy gun out of balloons (after nearly using condoms as the balloons). The edited version either cuts to commercial or goes into the next scene, where it's morning and Stanley wakes up.
  • The TV version was later released on VHS, with the large print "This Film Edited For Family Viewing" on the front of the box.
• The TV version of The Matrix had some pretty creative editing, including the notable substitute of "melon farmers." Another line from a broadcast version becomes fairly funny when Cipher suggests that "If Morpheus had told us the truth, we would have told him to shove that red pill right up his ear!", with "ear" replacing "ass."
  • One particularly bad edit on a Canadian TV channel (possibly CTV) replaced Neo's "Holy shit" when he first experiences being jacked in with "Holy toast."
• In the version of Mean Girls shown on ABC Family and MTV, they make obvious edits to remove misogynistic slurs. For example, the scene where Regina says, "Boo, you whore." to Karen is cut so that she just says, "Boo!" and hangs up on her, and all instances of "bitch" have been replaced with "witch."
  • This even happened to the theatrical version of the film. Tina Fey's original script was more R-rated, filled with sexual innuendo, drug humor and "wall-to-wall titties" (Fey's words) in the vein of such teen sex comedies as Porky's and American Pie. Several scenes that were in the movie were raunchier in their original form: the "made out with a hot dog" line was originally supposed to say "masturbated",^note In fact, if you read the girl's lips when she says, "Made out with a hot dog? That was one time!", it's pretty obvious that the line was dubbed over. Regina and Karen's Halloween outfits (already skimpy in the final film) were more revealing in the original version, and the scene where Gretchen and Jason are caught making out in the bathroom originally had Gretchen about to give Jason a blowjob. There was also a subplot involving an ecstasy-popping raver kid named Barry that was dropped from the finished product.
    
    The script was toned down after Lindsay Lohan was cast in the lead role, due to the fact that she was then considered a family-friendly teen actress (which became Hilarious in Hindsight several years later after her fall from grace due to drugs and run-ins with the law). The 2018 Broadway adaptation had more wiggle room for suggestive content; the Burn Book pages displayed on the stage before the show even bring back the "masturbated with a hot dog" line.
• The television airings of Meet the Fockers use video editing to remove the nipple from the tool Jack Byrnes made to feed his grandson Little Jack with - an exact cast of Little Jack's mother's breast. Considering that Jack explicitly says that his purpose for making the false breast was to avoid Little Jack having any "nipple confusion" when being bottle-fed, removing the nipple entirely defeats the purpose of the apparatus existing.
• In Mexico, as a rule of thumb, any film depicting the American military killing Mexicans on any kind of context, while not always banned, were normally edited out in dubbed versions, for obvious historical reasons. Oddly enough, subbed versions averted this for some bizarre reason:
  • In the Mexican dub of RoboCop (1987), when in the news break talk about a war between Mexico and the U.S., the Mexican dub replaces the dialogue with about a war in the Middle East instead. (Oddly enough, the original dialogue was uncensored in the subbed version)
  • Also, the Mexican dub of Avenging Force, the motives of the paramilitary group were changed from declaring war against Mexico and kill Mexicans to declare war against the Soviet Union and to kill communists instead. And just like the previous example, it was also uncensored in the subbed version as well.
• The most scorned case of Francoist-era movie censorship in Spain is 1953 Mogambo, where the censors decided to eliminate the possible adultery subplot by changing the married couple to brother and sister. This backfired spectacularly because the Love Triangle was kept intact, and now had a good dose of Brother–Sister Incest thrown in.
• Happens In-Universe in Molly's Game. Molly has to buy bagels for her original employer "Dean", and he berates her for buying "poor people bagels." Molly's lawyer Charlie reads this incident in Molly's book and says that if Dean is who Charlie thinks he is, then he really said "nigger bagels", and asks Molly why she is protecting Dean.
• Television broadcasts of the Mr. Bean film Bean are edited to remove the part where a biker flips Mr. Bean the middle finger and Mr. Bean mimics him, thinking it's a friendly gesture (it's not, troper kids).
• The TV version of Mrs. Doubtfire has Robin Williams' uttering of "Oh, shit!" changed to "Oh, shoot!". Another one muted out "shit", while another edit had the line becoming "Oh, sugar!" and others remove the line entirely. Teletoon, however, accidentally showed this part uncensored on the weekend of September 8 and 9, 2012.
  • In the UK version, the scene of Mrs. Doubtfire naming off euphemisms for sexual intercourse ("Sink the sub? Hide the Weasel? Park the porpoise? Bit of the old Humpty dumpty? Hmm? Little Jack Horny? The horizontal Mambo?... The bone dance, eh? Rumpleforeskin? The baloney bop? Bit of the old cunning linguistics?") was cut in order to secure a PG version. An uncensored version of the film didn't come around until 2003 (when it was first released on DVD and VHS in the UK, it was the edited version).
  • One TV version completely cuts out the Porky Pig impression that includes the phrase "piss off", while the version shown on YTV replaces the phrase with more "pi-pi-pi-" stuttering.
• The Naked Gun TV edit changes the scene where Drebin compliments Jane Spencer's beaver while standing beneath her on a ladder (referring to her actual taxidermied beaver) to remove the word "beaver" and make the Double Entendre way more subtle.
  Nice ONE.
  Thanks, I just had it stuffed.
• New Jack City is another mess to watch on VH-1. Not only is the language and sexual content dubbed over and removed, but all of the gun violence is trimmed as well. The most noticeable edit: Allen Payne's shot to the head is cut short even though he doesn't bleed. The version shown on BET (Black Entertainment Television) has a better-edited version in which only the offensive language is muted and the sex scenes and/or nudity is blurred out or removed entirely while the violence remains. The only annoying edits on the BET version are all of the instances of Ice-T's character saying, "bitch."
• 1943's The North Star told the story of Ukrainian peasants banding together to fight off a Nazi invasion. The film was controversial at the time for its sympathetic portrayal of the Soviet characters and was considered pro-Marxist by some, even though the film was made at the behest of then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In the late-1950s, the film was re-edited to become a Red Scare film: it was renamed Armored Attack, included passionately anti-Communist commentary in the prologue and epilogue, and changed the nationality of the lead characters from Ukrainians to Hungarians to make parallels with the Soviet invasion of Hungary. The uncut version of The North Star was unavailable until 1976.
• TV edits of Office Space have "federal pound-you-into-ash prison". Ooh, so close, and yet so clever.
• The MGM film version of On the Town altered "New York, New York, a helluva town" to "New York, New York, a wonderful town." A few years later, the Bowdlerised refrain gave a title to Comden and Green's Broadway musical Wonderful Town.
• Oppenheimer: In India, an awkward CGI black dress has been added to Florence Pugh's nude scenes.
• The film version of The Pajama Game had a few of four-letter words and sexually suggestive lines written out of the lyrics, with the first compromising scenario described in "I'll Never Be Jealous Again" rewritten wholesale because of its Sex Dressed implication. The dialogue was far less censored, however, even retaining most of the Double Entendres in the "double-entry" scene.
• Watching Paper Moon on television, Tatum O'Neal's line "I gotta go to the shithouse" was censored. The last word was redubbed by a voice that was very obviously not O'Neal's. "I gotta go to the" was left intact, but suddenly a deep, male voice finished the line by saying "outhouse."
• The Parent Trap: Whenever they show it on Disney Channel, they cut out the part where Hallie pierces Annie's ears with a nail. They show Annie holding her ears, trying to make the decision. Then they cut to commercial, and when they get back, Annie's ears are pierced.
  • ABC Family keeps the ear-piercing scene intact, except for the close-up shot of the pin entering Lohan's ear.
  • They also have started completely cutting the scene where Hallie asks her mother for a sip of wine, which she then comments on with all the knowledge you would expect of a winemaker's daughter. In the uncut vs., this is a major reason that the grandfather suspects something is up and follows Hallie to the park. But the modern MPAA has declared that films with people drinking anything declared to be wine cannot go lower than PG-13 — that is, if you drink wine, then it's not a family film. The Disney Channel must have taken its cue from there.
    • The wine and ear-piercing parts were also cut when the movie was released in the UK. Both parts were cut because the censors in the UK don't like showing dangerous or illegal actions that can easily be imitated in real life ^note such as detailed scenes of drug abuse, lock-picking, suicide methods (hanging and wrist-slitting are commonly cut), any action that can cause injury, illness, or death if imitated by children and idiotic viewers (common scenarios cut include pranks involving electricity, using an aerosol can as a flamethrower, ingesting chemicals or bodily fluid, or anything seen on the MTV show Jackass), and, in the case of the ear-piercing, anything that can cause a blood infection or AIDS, especially in films rated U^note the British version of the G rating and PG (read: the kid- and family-friendly flicks) ^note Even the PG and 12-rated films have to be relatively family-friendly, but do allow for more intense content, so long as it's relevant to the story. These scenes can now be found uncut on DVD.
• Patriot Games features a scene where the protagonist identifies the bad guys' terrorist camp from a satellite photo thanks to the presence of a woman and her recognizable-from-space assets. Though the line is often cut entirely, at least some edits for some reason change his exclamation of "Tits!" with the somehow more acceptable "Jugs!" Additionally, a scene where a woman halts sex in order to get something from her purse has the man protesting, "you're not going to make me wear a rubber, are you?", is changed to "you're not going to make me wear one of them, are you?"
• Just about every really funny part of Paul Blart is turned into a really stupid-sounding kid-friendly gag. Although, props to the filmmakers for creating a toned-down alternate version to avoid the usual hack-job editing.
• The FX edit for Pineapple Express is hilarious, most notably changing asshole to casserole. Also: Mucka Lucka, Motherlover, Funny Cops, melon farmer. Surprisingly, a scene mentioning anal beads was left in.
• The edit of Pitch Perfect used on Freeform seemed to edit the "toner" bit a little. Since the line involved a reference towards an erection, an audio clip of Aubrey saying "toner" moments before is looped over the phrase "boner". Since the follow-up joke wouldn't really make much sense with the edit, the following scene is removed entirely.
  Aubrey: I can see your toner through those jeans!
  Beca: That's my dick!
• The ABC airing of Poltergeist trims down the scene where Marty hallucinates that his face is peeling off so it's less graphic, and it cuts before he rips down to the bone.
• The Postman Always Rings Twice was notorious even in the 1940s for toning down the source material. The sadomasochistic relationship between Nick and Cora was watered down completely, and the sex in the car sequence was also cut.
• The Arnold Schwarzenegger line of "BULLSHIT!" was censored to "BALONEY!" in the TV version of Predator.
• The Problem Child films suffered some legendary bowdlerization. The usual dub-overs of swearing and removal of gross-out humor are just the beginning; in the first film, two very important lines of dialogue are completely changed out of fear that someone would find the parents' callous take on adoption as offensive (which is the reason why You Can't Do That on Television had its episode about adoption banned after two airings on American TV). In the process, they actually destroy very important nuances of the film's plot and characterization:
  • "I don't wear second-hand clothes, and I won't have a second-hand kid!" is changed to: "I don't wear second-hand clothes, and I wanna have my own kid!"
  • "He's not even a real kid! He's adopted!" is changed to: "He's not even a fun kid! He's a devil!"
  • Other specific examples include editing out a nun saying "crap", pretty much all of Junior's profanity use, Big Ben saying "Japs", every incident involving Junior pissing on something, Junior's massive fart in Peabody's office, the tilt-a-whirl vomit scene, and the massive piles of dog shit Nippy unloads in the second movie.
• Pulp Fiction:
  • The version shown on Bravo must be at least a good thirty minutes short. The best part is watching Samuel L. Jackson's mouth move with nothing coming out of it.
  • One version that aired on The WB went further in cuts. The film lost an entire hour and some death scenes were cut completely. A few of the movie's stars; including Jackson, and John Travolta; re-recorded their censored lines.
  • Many TV versions completely omit the character of The Gimp, to the point where all shots with him in them have to be pan-and-scanned or cropped to get him out of frame.
  • There exists a TV edit that contains the hilarious line "English, mothersucker, do you speak it?". There are also enormous gaps in Honeybunny's dialogue in the opening.
    "Any of you... (uh...) pigs move, and I'll execute every last... (err...) one of you!"
  • Some TV edits are fun to watch just to hear how the "MF"-bombs are dealt with. One version has Jules saying "motherhubber" at one point, while Honeybunny addresses the diner occupants as "my friends".
  • At the beginning, "Pumpkin" rants about those "fucking Jews". In the German dub, the adjective he uses rather means "crazy" with a hint of "awesome", since using a more offensive word would've reignited all sorts of Unfortunate Implications about Germans hating Jews.
  • At least one version changed Vincent's line "go home, jerk off and that's all you're gonna do", replacing the offending phrase with "cool off".
• The scene where Raymond spazzes out in the airport was cut from most airline versions of Rain Man, even though it made nonsense out of the plot (why were they driving cross-country if they were going on an airplane?). After all, a recitation of plane crash statistics would be bad for business. The one airline that kept the scene in was Qantas—because "Qantas never crashed."
  • The goofiest edit by far though has to be an ABC edited-for-television cut, where, in the scene where both Raymond and Charlie are in a telephone booth, Raymond just blurts out "Uh oh, pass gas."
  • The scene in which Raymond walks in on Charlie and his girlfriend having sex is also heavily edited to remove most of the moans and cuts right to the revelation that he's in the room with them.
• The UK release of Rambling Rose trimmed the scene where Rose lets Buddy fondle one of her breasts and... stimulate her... because while Dawson Casting was in effect for 19-year-old Rose (played by Laura Dern, 23 at the time of filming), it was averted with 13-year-old Buddy (played by then-14-year-old Lukas Haas - under British law he was too young for that kind of thing).
• Repo Man was probably the first famous incident of an edited-for-TV movie that used "melon farmer". The full phrase was: "Flip you! Flip you, you flippin' melon farmer!"
• TV airings of Resident Evil: Apocalypse replace L.J.'s every utterance of "motherfucker" with "motivator".
• In Risky Business, Tom Cruise's friend advises him to "Just say 'fuck'. If you can't say it, you can't do it." (A reference to the character's virginity.) On network TV, that line was changed to "Just say 'hell'. If you can't say it, you can't do it." ^note Not only does this remove the virginity reference, and not match up to the lip-synching of what the actor was actually saying, but the whole second part ("If you can't say it, you can't do it.") is rendered into complete nonsense by the fact that "hell" is not a verb.
• When Road House (1989) first came out in Barbados, Patrick Swayze's nude scene was cut. However, all the female-provided fanservice remained intact.
• Robin Hood: Men in Tights:
  • An early shot where some prisoners collectively give their jailer the middle finger is cut.
  • The scene where Blinken mistakes a Venus de Milo copy for Robin is shortened to cut the bit where he comments on how Robin "grew some nice boobs"
  • In the original version, Latrine says her name used to be Shithouse. Some TV airings change it to "Outhouse".
• RoboCop:
  • The TV version of RoboCop (1987): "You freakin' airhead!" And the sequels, for that matter. Just ask Frank Miller.
  • The line: "Dick Jones is an impostor" is the TV replacement line for the original line, "Dick Jones is wanted for murder." This makes even less sense than the usual edit since Jones' act of having Bob Morton killed and his glib confession of it to RoboCop are still intact.
  • Another funny attempt at Bowdlerization in RoboCop had to be somebody calling RoboCop a "BLEEP fucker".
  • Another funny one: The line "Once I even called him" (dramatic pause) "...'asshole'" turned into "Once I even called him" (dramatic pause) ".... a lot worse" (or "airhead", on some channels).
  • Another is "You're gonna be one bad mother crusher”.
  • One fairly clever example that's arguably better than the original line is the crook's response to RoboCop's admonition that "there will be trouble."
  Original version: "Ah, fuck you."
  TV version: "Yeah, for you."
  • One of the craziest of the television edits is when one of Clarence Boddicker's henchmen gets covered in toxic waste and becomes a scary mutated mess. In the original version, Boddicker is driving away from RoboCop and sees the mutated minion in the road. Boddicker screams and hits the guy, gibbing him and causing him to explode into bloody, syrupy chunks that coat the car Boddicker is driving. The television version, however, uses an alternate take where Boddicker screams when he sees the guy and swerves out of the way, missing him entirely.
  • Early on, Sergeant Reed calling a lawyer a "scumbag" is changed to calling him a "crumbag". What's really bizarre is that virtually nobody would be offended by such an innocuous and non-profane insult, and anyone who would seems likely to take offense at any insult.
  • Lewis is told at one point to come over when she's finished "fooling around" with her suspect.
  • "I got the muscle to shove enough of this factory so far up your stupid fat nose that you'll sneeze snow for a year."
  • Boddicker saying "ladies, leave" and calling the title character a "bloodsucker" are also memorable censored lines.
• The Russian version of Rocketman (2019) has every gay kiss scene, gay sex scene (a first one in the history of mainstream Hollywood production) and every scene with someone doing drugs cut, a hell of an accomplishment for a biopic about openly gay musician Elton John which was supposed to be as realistic as possible. Most importantly, the final card where it was explained Elton had found his love and has been raising children with him since, was changed to a completely different one which emphasized his AIDS Foundation, hammering the point even more. This prompted an angry backlash from both Elton John and Paramount. Russia's Minister of Culture, while denying having any involvement and saying it was cut by the distributor before submitting it for a license, was quoted with this line of the century: In the government of law the law should rule, not some other person's personal esthetic and sexual preferences. Russia has a long-standing law prohibiting propaganda of "non-traditional relationships" to minors, but even with all the cuts the movie still got the 18+ rating, so minors couldn't watch it anyway.
  So Russia; you want a film about Elton John but you don't wanna see any gay stuff. Do you also want a The Fast and the Furious movie without the cars? —Trevor Noah
• Believe it or not, The Rocky Horror Picture Show^note another movie that's inappropriate for airing on normal television, due to content and its notoriety as a midnight cult film meant to be seen by fans dressed as the characters and shouting things/throwing things at the screen has aired on television with parts edited:
  • FUSE network's version cuts out nearly all instances of male-on-male innuendo (which, for a lot of people, is the best part). One person who posted on this thread about the movie's R rating being justifiable was disgusted by the editing:
  "Rocky Horror was on Fuse last night and they censored so many random things, like when Frank runs his finger down Rocky's stomach during I Can Make You a Man on (the word) "steam". They edit out when he chops up Eddie, which, fine, but also when Magenta pulls off his bloody gloves afterward. It was so annoying. At that point, I gave up and put in the DVD to finish out the movie, because I'm sure the whole mid-section of the movie was chopped to pieces."
  • The MTV and VH-1 versions cut the line "A mental mindfuck can be nice" and blur out Columbia's breasts and the genitals on the nude statues.
• A Marx Brothers film, Room Service, was based on a stage play that wasn't specifically written for the Marxes. It is about people trying to put on a stage play called Godspeed. In the film, this was changed to Hail and Farewell. The hotel troubleshooter's catchphrase "Jumping butterballs!" was originally just "God damn it", a rare case of a clean replacement being a lot more witty and innovative than just some boring obscenity. He also says the commonly used "By Godfrey" instead of "By God".
• In The Rose Tattoo, Serafina warns Jack that her daughter is a virgin, and he replies, to her astonishment, that he is a virgin himself. "Virgin" was still a taboo word in movies of the 1950s, so "innocent" had to be substituted when this scene was filmed.
• There was one time when some network TV prints of The Sandlot omitted the scene at a carnival where the kids chew tobacco, go on a Ferris wheel, and subsequently vomit. They also delete a piece of narration later on that referenced the scene. This is despite the fact that tobacco is portrayed in a negative light in the movie, especially in said scene. ABC Family censors wised up and put the scene back into the film.
• To keep the film at a TV-G level, the scene in The Santa Clause where a character's number is given as "1-800-SPANK-ME" (which unintentionally turned out to be an actual adult hotline) is changed to the non-existent "1-800-POUND". Most later releases of the film cut the scene entirely.
• Because of the success of the R-rated Saturday Night Fever, and wanting to expand their audience, an alternate PG version was released to theaters more than a year after the original R-rated version was released. The swearing was toned down, the scene with the stripper was deleted, and Annette's rape scene was toned down to PG standards.
• Scarface (1983):
  • One TV edit replaced the end of the line, "How'd you get that beauty scar, tough guy? Eating pussy?" with "Eating pineapple?"
  • Another funny, but clever edit is when Tony is describing Miami he says in the original "This town is like one big pussy just waiting to get fucked"; in the TV airing he says "This town is like one big chicken just waiting to get plucked." A special edition DVD version of Scarface even includes an edited version of the movie that sometimes plays on TV.
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World:
  • The Comedy Central version mutes Kim calling Scott a retard and shortens Roxy's "Your BF's about to get f'd in the B!" to "Your BF's about to get in the B!", as well as muting the words "shit" and "asshole" a few times; the thing that's really crazy about this is that South Park gets away with the same kind of language on a regular basis, even in its TV-14 edited version.
  • Edgar Wright seems to be a fan of inventive Bowdlerisation, editing it on a special feature on the Blu-Ray. It involved lots of uses of the words "Smurf" and "Owl".
• In See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Dave tells Wally to "tell me the first thing that pops into your head," and predictably, Wally replies "Pussy!", which was dubbed over on TV with... "pasta".
• Shaun of the Dead has a Bowdlerised version as a special feature on the DVD version called "Funky Pete". The original film has a scene where Pete, one of the roommates, uses different variations of the word "fuck" during a rant; hearing every instance changed to "funk" is highly amusing (hence the name of the special feature). In addition, "prick" is changed to the nonsense word "prink".
  • When shown on ITV, Ed's line "Can I get any of you cunts a drink?" was edited to replace "cunts" with "cocks" ("cock" being taken from a scene shown moments beforehand), however the nature of the edit makes it rather unclear what is actually being said. In more recent airings, it is simply changed to "Can I get any of you a drink?", cutting out "cunts" completely.
• When The Shawshank Redemption is aired on American TV, the line/mispronunciation "'The Count of Monty Crisco' by Alexander Dumbass" is sometimes censored to "Alexander Dumb...", killing the joke in the process.
• The 2018 Talking Animal flick Show Dogs had two scenes so controversial that it got bowdlerized while still in theaters. The scenes revolve around the (undercover) main dog getting his private parts fondled as part of a dog show inspection, with his friends telling him to cope with the discomfort by going to a "happy place". This sparked outrage due to concern that it was too similar to how pedophiles groom children, and that it could have awful consequences if children took the scenes to heart. The DVD edit cuts down these scenes but also dubs "I'm Sexy and I Know It" over the dog show inspection scene, which is still a dodgy choice given the context of the bowdlerization.
• Showgirls:
  • When aired on VH1 (or, in the case of that one Family Guy cutaway, TBS) the networks not only dub over bad language and edit out most of the scenes of sex and violence, but also take a page from Cartoon Network's version of Tenchi Muyo! and uses digitally-rendered bras and panties (most of which look as if it were rendered by graphic artist majors doing this as part of their college internship) to cover nudity. It was required to have a broadcastable version in which the plot (what little of it it has) makes any sense at all (there are plot-relevant scenes that take place while the main character, Nomi, is topless or in the nude), but really, like many of the movies shown here (particularly Blazing Saddles, Basic Instinct, and Kevin Smith's movies), Showgirls is better off not being aired on television at all.
  • The UK version cut the scene where Molly gets punched and raped by Andrew and his men, as UK censors will still edit an 18-rated movie if it has scenes of sexual violence (i.e. rape and child molestation), animal abuse, dangerous stunts that can easily be imitated, and any content that condones or glamorizes drug abuse.
  • The film is rated NC-17 in the United States, though an R-rated cut was made available for some video rental chains. It runs three minutes shorter and either removes the more explicit footage or use tamer alternate takes in some cases.
• The Silence of the Lambs:
  • The AMC airing replaced Miggs' line "I can smell your cunt" with "I can smell your scent," which made it odd when Lecter says that he himself cannot, then starts talking about what Clarice smells like. Another edit has 'fellatio' replaced with 'venal acts' in an obviously different voice.
  • The "Goodbye Horses" scene is usually cut right after Bill adjusts the video camera, both for time and because tucked nudity is still nudity. Weird Double Standard, because stuff like Hannibal Lecter eating a man's face off is not cut.
• A clever bit of bowdlerization occurred in the TV version of Slap Shot. The scene where Paul Newman's wife relates her lesbian experience to him was heavily edited, but could not be cut out completely because it's too relevant to the plot. Further complicating matters is that she's topless in the scene, so her breasts were airbrushed out.
• The usual TV-edit of the Smokey and the Bandit movies has Buford T. Justice's frequent use of 'sonnovabitch' replaced with the arguably worse 'scum-bum'. A later scene is completely ruined: Justice's car is stopped in traffic, and a police officer curses up a storm (but changed in the TV-edit to very mild words) to tell Justice to move it. After the police officer continues "cursing" at the car, Justice finally snaps and tells him to "Stop using that kind of language in front of my son!", which completely confuses anybody who hasn't seen the original movie. It's such a long tirade that it's completely obvious they got the voice actor for Fred Flintstone to dub Gleason's lines. Somewhat appropriate (given Fred was based upon Gleason's Ralph Kramden), but not even close voice-wise. The redubbing even extends to the gag reels that end each movie. In particular, during Part II's gag reel there are frequent uses of the curse "your mother's ass" which, for the edit, becomes "your father's face".
• When Snakes on a Plane made it on to cable TV, the movie's big line was…changed slightly:-
  I have had it with these monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday-to-Friday plane!.
  • And in Asia, Cinemax just cuts out the line entirely: "Enough is enough! Everyone strap in, I'm going to open some windows."
  • That's not the only baffling change made in TV cuts. For example, a line about the possibility of the plane going down "faster than a Thai hooker" is changed so it's talking about a Thai princess.
  • Many TV edits have some downright bizarre minced oaths, two of the most memorable being "son of a Basque" and "stings like shark".
• Sodom and Gomorrah: Given the censorship at the time, homosexuality couldn't be shown or even mentioned, so the most infamous inspiration from Sodom is omitted, only implied with Bera and her handmaid.
• Solo: In March 2018, Disney announced it would be altering the film's Brazilian poster to remove the blasters to present a more family-friendly image. This came after a string of shooting massacres in the United States.
• The Nickelodeon broadcast of Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) edits the film to cut out its references to drugs and alcohol and the offensive language between Tom and Dr. Robotnik in the final battle.
• In June 2017, Sony Pictures began offering the TV cuts of films in its library for sale online, packaged with the uncut version with no extra charge. The service, which Sony dubs "Clean Versions", has been argued to have been created to placate third-party websites such as VidAngel and ClearPlay, which sells unauthorized censored versions of films. Seth Rogen, who has an ongoing deal with the studio, has been a staunch detractor of this plan, along with audiences, filmmakers, and the Directors' Guild of America who see the move as censorship. Sony quietly pulled the clean versions from stores a week after the initiative was announced, and later announced that it would not sell the clean cuts to stores if the director of affected film objects.
• When AMC shows Spaceballs, the edits are quite noticeable. The worst-case was changing Barf's flipping the bird at the guards to a balled fist at them.
• The Cartoon Network airing of Space Jam edited Daffy's memorable line "We gotta get new agents! We're gettin' screwed!" by shortening the line to "We gotta get new agents!".
  • Initially, an alternate version of the first trailer for Space Jam: A New Legacy was uploaded to the WB Kids YouTube channel that edited out the use of the word "hell" and the scene involving Yosemite Sam using his pistols on Daffy. It eventually became all for nothing when the unaltered version was uploaded 3 days later and resulted in the former getting deleted not long after.
• The German airline edit (most likely the only edit in that country) of The Spirit trims, re-frames, and digitally masks large portions of the scene with The Octopus strutting around in Nazi regalia while "Deutschland Uber Alles" plays in the background for fairly obvious reasons.
• When Splash airs on Disney Cinemagic in the UK, the clothes store manager's line, "My daughter's lucky. She's anorexic" is cut down to just "My daughter's lucky", with the next line muted.
  • Disney+ also got a censored version that zooms in to hide Madison's buttocks and chest, plus digitally extends Madison's mane to hide her buttocks in one scene as well.
• In the German dubs of the (classic) Star Trek movies, they toned down occurrences of "son of a bitch" by translating to the literal equivalent "son of a dog" — which sound similar in the German language (stronger "Hurensohn" 'whore's son' vs. weaker "Hundesohn" 'dog's son'). Considering a bitch is a female dog, maybe this was more of a translation issue and not a censorship one. The literal English equivalent of the German word "Hurensohn" is the archaic word 'whoreson'. In English 'son of a bitch' is a context-dependent idiomatic expression.
• Showtime Canada's showing of Star Trek (2009) cuts the scene with Spock and Sarek set just after Spock tried to kill Kirk on the bridge. The scene is important because Sarek's talk allows Spock to deal with the emotions he's experienced due to his mother's death and regain his bearing. Without it, what we get is Bipolar Spock, leaving the bridge a psychological wreck and returning apparently seconds later (after the commercial break) calm and confident.
• In the TV version of the Dirty Harry franchise's Sudden Impact, the closing dialogue of the film is changed, possibly due to S&P feeling squeamish about Harry letting Jennifer get away with murder:
  • Theatrical version:
    Officer Bennett: Inspector, we found a .38 snub in his belt. (Shows Harry an open evidence bag; inside is the revolver Mick took from Jennifer.)
    (Beat, while Harry looks at Jennifer and she looks at him.)
    Harry (To Bennett): Run it through ballistics. I think you'll find his gun there was used in all the killings.
    Bennett: Then it's over?
    Harry: Yeah. It's over.
    (Harry escorts Jennifer away; the camera zooms out; end of the film.)
  • TV version:
    Harry (To Bennett): Run it through ballistics. I think you'll find this gun there was used in all the killings.
    Bennett: Then it's over to the jury?
    Harry: Yeah. It's over.
    (Harry escorts Jennifer away; the camera zooms out; end of the film.)
• FX airings of Summer of Sam edit out EVERY Cluster F-Bomb, which renders the entire movie meaningless.
• When Superbad is shown on FX, a lot of swearing is cut out or dubbed over, in most cases, rather well. The whole scene where Seth is talking about his childhood obsession with drawing penises is cut out, which makes the reason he hates Becca confusing.
• Swordfish features at least 3 edits for tv:
  • When Stan is auditioning by hacking the 128-bit encryption in 60 seconds, he's hampered by beautiful blonde Helga giving him a blowjob. The shots with Helga are completely cut for TV.
  • Stan comes across Ginger sunbathing topless next to the pool. In the TV version, they've put a digital bikini top on her.
  • During the climax of the movie when Stan is hacking the worm he put into the code to get the money back so Ginger doesn't die, Gabe tells him "She's dying, Stan." His response to TV is "Shut the freak up!"
• In the TV airing of Tales from the Crypt Presents Bordello of Blood a couple of things are altered. Caleb's line "Come back you motherfucker" is changed to "motherlover", most of the naked female vampires are fully clothed, and a scene where Lilith twists a minion's head off is removed.
• The 1984 Clip Show Terror in the Aisles, a retrospective of horror and thriller movies, had an alternate commercial television cut prepared which not only dropped/condensed some of the more violent clips but brought in less objectionable scenes from other movies (including Fahrenheit 451 and Firestarter, which weren't included in the theatrical cut at all). This was longer than the theatrical cut (95 minutes versus 84) and was released in full as a bonus feature on the 2020 Blu-Ray release.
• The TV version of There's Something About Mary. In the scene where Ben Stiller's character is taken away on the ambulance after the police officer gets him "unzipped", Mary's brother, instead of yelling "He was masturbating, he was masturbating," yells "Franks and Beans, Franks and Beans."
• Thomas and the Magic Railroad:
  • The Discovery Kids Latin America airing has a few scenes cut and/or shortened for unknown reasons (possibly due to time constraints).
  • One foreign Playhouse Disney Australia airing of the film cut out the part where Junior surfs on Diesel 10, possibly to avoid children imitating the stunt.
  • The final version of the film is actually a bowdlerized version of the original cut, which contained scenes featuring a removed villain.The reason why the film had to suffer cuts before release was because most of the test audience were bored and restless when seeing the live-action scenes, since they were only there for the Sodor scenes with the engines.
• The UK cut of The Three Stooges movie from 2012, with Chris Diamantopolous, Sean Hayes, and Will Sasso as Moe, Larry, and Curly, had some slapstick scenes cut due to fear of being imitated^note The movie is available uncut with a 12 rating for dangerous behavior, but in a slapstick context:
  • Moe rubbing a vegetable peeler on Curly's head after seeing Curly trying to smother a man with onions in his hospital bed (yet an early scene of Moe trying to slice Curly's head with a chainsaw, only for the blade to break wasn't cut).
  • A lot of the comedic violence against the Jersey Shore cast, including Moe rubbing a cheese grater on Ronnie's feet after Ronnie insults the Parmesan he got from the store for them, Moe clamping J-Woww's tongue with a hot curling iron, and Moe slamming a microwave on Ronnie's head and turning it on, causing Ronnie's eyes to bulge as it heats up.
  • A line about setting some brush on fire and pissing on it to extinguish the flames during the beginning scenes of the Three Stooges as children at the orphanage.
• Thunderheart is another to have some scenes filmed twice with toned-down language for television. Crow Horse's "God damn drilling for uranium" toward the end is "gosh darn". David Crosby as the bartender's line, "God damn prairie niggers!" when his establishment gets blown up by a Molotov cocktail was replaced with Crosby glaring as his bar gets burned.
• In the 1948 film version of The Time of Your Life, much of the dialogue concerning Kitty is rewritten to turn her from a streetwalker into a "B-girl"^note It should be noted that a "B-girl" is similar to a streetwalker in that she picks up drunken men at the bar, but "B-girl" has less obvious connotations to prostitution. The scene where Joe and Tom go up to Kitty's room to comfort her and angrily drive away a drunken young sailor is removed entirely.
• The early 90's Made-For-TV movie To Grandmother's House We Go, starring the Olsen Twins, originally aired on ABC. When The Family Channel re-ran it a few years later (back when it was still owned by Pat Robertson), the word "hell" was bleeped.
• The TV cut of Trading Places heavily edits the profanity — removing all usage of the word "fuck" ^note (either muting it, so "Get the fuck OUT!" becomes "Get... OUT!", or replacing it with ridiculous euphemisms like "motherfucking" becoming "mothergrabbing") as well as several other words, though not totally consistently ^note (it keeps Billy Ray yelling at a woman he was hitting on "Ya BITCH!" but later, when he's pretending to be a pimp, replaces "bitches" with "ladies"). It's all mostly seamless except for one instance where Clarence Beeks is supposed to say "Fuck off", but instead says "Get lost" in a completely different voice.
• Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen: Some international theatrical versions blanked out "Suck my" on the ice cream truck, leaving only the word "popsicle".
• Adhering to studio ethics, Disney toned down the violence for a 1975 reissue of their Treasure Island in order to get a G rating. The uncut version was submitted to the MPAA in 1992 with a PG rating.
• Tropic Thunder got some flack for using the term "retard" when it was in theaters, so for TV broadcasts, all instances of the word were replaced with "special". Ben Stiller and Robert Downey Jr. (or soundalikes) redubbed a scene where they're in the jungle alone talking about "special" movie characters. The problem was that every time a dubbed line was used, the editor forgot to blend in these lines with the jungle atmosphere, not to mention, they got the wrong voice actor to dub Jack Black's lines.
• In the TV edit of The Usual Suspects, the phrase they have to say in the line-up is changed to "Hand me the keys, you fairy godmother."
• In Vampire Academy, Lissa's cutting had been changed to the effects of using Spirit rather than her using it to cope with her depression as in the book. This might have been a late change after the censors complained, because several characters say things like "Wait, so she's cutting herself?"
• When the 1925 German silent film Variety was released in the U.S. in 1926, they took out the first reel, making it look like Bertha-Marie is Huller's wife rather than his mistress.
• The View Askewniverse:
  • Mallrats:
    • Brodie's reaction to Trish: "Holy shit, you slept with that asshole?" was changed for the FX version to "Holy snot, you spoke with that airhead?"
  • Every swear word from the Comedy Central version of Dogma is removed, making Rufus's line to Jay at the end of the movie ("And if you watch your mouth, I'll get you into heaven too!) fall flat.
• The TV airing of Waiting to Exhale cuts out the scene of Gloria's son being angry that his father is a closet homosexual.
• Fuse TV's edit of The Wall went with the brilliant decision to reverse most curse words ("You little TIHS, you're in it!""), as well as do obvious and awkward zooms to the side of the screen when Pink's wife shows up in "The Trial" (odd, since they just did plain old Pixellation for other instances of nudity) and the scene of the Schoolmaster beating Pink while being beaten by a fat, nude version of his wife only showed a close-up of the Schoolmaster and Pink. Some versions of this movie aired on TV don't even show Pink's wife at all.
• TNT's edit for Watchmen edits for offensive language, sexual content (particularly all scenes of Dr. Manhattan's genitals, which are pixellated for TV broadcast), and violence (the violence cuts usually just cut away to another scene or fade out to a commercial). Additional scenes from "The Ultimate Cut" DVD version are added to make up for the content that was cut (the TV version includes the "Tales of the Black Freighter" sequence).
• In the 1961 film version of West Side Story, the lyrics to the "Tonight Quintet" are changed. Instead of "He comes home hot and tired, so what / No matter if he's tired, as long as he's hot," Rita Moreno is forced to sing, "He comes home hot and tired, oh dear / No matter if he's tired, as long as he's here".
  • And in "Officer Krupke", the original lyric "My father is a bastard / My ma's an SOB / My grandpa's always plastered / My grandma pushes tea" becomes "My daddy beats my mommy / My mommy clobbers me / My grandpa is a commie / My grandma pushes tea". Yes, by The Hays Code, cussing is out, but Domestic Abuse and having elderly grandmothers be marijuana dealers are both acceptable. And being a Communist is just as bad as beating children or selling marijuana, though it's apparently more acceptable than being an alcoholic (although it's probably more about keeping the rhyming scheme than any actual problems with alcoholism).
  • Even better example in the same song, the movie makes "Dear kindly social worker / They say go earn a buck / Like be a soda jerker / Which means like be a schmuck." into "Dear kindly social worker / They say go make some dough / Like be a soda jerker / Which means like be a schmo." Cussing isn't even allowed in Yiddish!
    • By the time it made to the movie version, it had mutated into "Dear kindly social worker / They tell me get a job / Like be a soda jerker / Which means I'd be a slob."
  • The Bowdlerization of "Gee, Officer Krupke" started even earlier. Sondheim wanted the last line to be "Gee, Officer Krupke / Fuck you!" thus pulling a complete 180 on the boy's exaggerated politeness and showing that they were really troubled. The producers made him change it to "Krup you," which — while very funny in a Narmy way — lacks the emotional impact he wanted.
  • The "Jets Song" has some fairly ridiculous Bowdlerized words too- "the best barking gang on the whole bugging street" and "the whole, ever, mother-loving street!"
    • Word of God says that although the producers requested the changes, all of the above except "schmuck/schmo" he considered better than the originals. "Krup You!" was actually Leonard Bernstein's suggestion and he though that it fitted the kid-like nature of the Jets better. The same goes for "the best barking gang on the whole bugging street" and "the whole, ever, mother-loving street!"
  • A Have a Gay Old Time variation comes in I Feel Pretty. As originally staged: "I feel pretty / Oh so pretty / I feel pretty and witty and bright / And I pity / Any girl who isn't me tonight." To remove any hint that Maria was planning to spend the night with Tony, the words become "I feel pretty and witty and gay / And I pity / Any girl who isn't me today".
  • Shrank's nasty "How's the action on your mother's mattress, Action?" is changed to "How's the action on your mother's side of the street, Action?" Not much tamer, but just enough to go over the heads of the younger viewers.
  • "Sperm to worm!" became "Birth to earth!"
• The Spike TV version of The Waterboy edited the scene in the Bourbon Bowl where Derek visualizes the football as a KKK member's head in order to kick a field goal, which was the same way Bobby visualizes his foes, alongside the KKK member's scream when the field goal was kicked to simply a regular field goal.
• The TV version of Whiplash kills the film's intensity and a number of its best lines by redubbing them; Fletcher refers to Andrew as "floppy-lipped" rather than "faggot-lipped" in one scene, and in another tells a student to "get the flip out".
• The Cartoon Network airing of Who Framed Roger Rabbit muted out "lust" and "dinky" in Baby Herman's infamous line, "I got a 50-year-old lust in a three-year-old's dinky!" ^note (most TV versions of this movie that air during the hours when children and families are watching TV just redub the line as "I'm a 50-year-old lost in a 3-year-old body"), cut out Baby Herman's line "How many times do we have to do this damn scene!", also cut out Benny's "what the hell happened here?", and cut the "Booby Trap" part.^note Most TV versions — particularly the Disney Channel version in the 1990s and a FOX version that aired back when FOX aired edited-for-TV movies on weeknights and special weekends keep the "booby trap" part in, but replace Eddie's line of "Nice booby trap!" to "Nice one, Jess!"
  • Who Framed Roger Rabbit is also censored on video and DVD releases. In the original movie, when Jessica Rabbit is flung out of Bennie the Cab, her skirt flies up, and for a few frames, it's apparent that Jessica doesn't wear underpants (although this could just be an animation error). The laserdisc and VHS video version of this altered the scene by digitally putting a pair of white panties underneath her dress. The newer DVD version opted instead to reanimate the scene so that way Jessica's skirt is longer and the fall is a bit more graceful.
  • Also on the TV version, when Eddie Valiant approached the gorilla bouncer at the Ink and Paint Club, he quips, "Nice monkey suit," with the gorilla grumbling, "Wiseass!" The edited version replaces "Wiseass!" with "Wise guy!"; the Cartoon Network version, on the other hand, just had the gorilla looking pissed before the scene cut away.
  • The Hub/Discovery Family airing cuts out Dolores line after seeing Roger hiding in Eddie's coat, "Is that a rabbit in your coat or are you just happy to see me?".
  • Some UK airings remove the part where Judge Doom's eyes turn into daggers.
• Many TV editions of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (particularly the one shown on the former FOX Family Channel) have the disturbing boat tunnel Disney Acid Sequence removed. The Disney Channel airings of the '80s and '90s keep the sequence but remove the chicken decapitation.
• The UK version of the movie The Witches (1990) was edited to remove the Grand High Witch taking her wig off (which revealed a disgusting, possibly bloody rash) and shortened Bruno's transformation into a mouse, as the censors felt it was too much terror for a PG-rated movie.
• In A Wrinkle in Time (2018), references to Jesus and Christianity are removed.
• Zathura:
  • The Hub's version censors the line "Get me a juice box, bee-yoch!", although you can still see Walter mouth "bee-yoch", and mutes out "dick" when Walter intercepts Danny's baseball catch at the beginning.
  • The UK version is edited to remove two scenes considered too imitable for younger and/or impressionable viewers: 1) When Walter and Danny find Judy frozen in the bathroom, the scene of Walter using an Aerosol Flamethrower to thaw her out is replaced with a long reaction shot of Danny staring. 2) The scene of Walter and Danny finding the astronaut in their living room squeezing flammable liquid on the couch and burning it is replaced with a long shot of Walter and Danny at the top of the stairs and a longer shot of the astronaut standing next to the burning couch.
  • When Cartoon Network aired it on TV, words like "dick" and "beeotch" were muted. When Lisa asks "Who the hell are you?" to older Walter, it's changed to "Who are you?".

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