Many characters have a past connecting them back to a previous sometimes-unwholesome work.
This often happens from being derived from early drafts of other works of the authors, especially creators who worked in the doujinshi industry: limited runs of small-release fan comics. Some kinds of doujinshi happen to feature original characters and also be outright pornographic in an attempt to gain some quick capital with fans, creating the potentially unsettling feeling the character started in the mind of the author with an unsavory tone. For some artists, this can be a little awkward, but the attempt to hide it (as voice actors do under an assumed name) is pretty futile in practice. Some professional artists go the other route, and may continue to draw doujinshi distinctly separate but still featuring their own characters.
Bleached Underpants is most common in Bishoujo Series, since most of them do assume the fan knows they were openly based onhentai games, but is obviously cleaned up for broadcast. While keeping the porn might stay true to form, it's much more lucrative to get the monies from TV while they can. In many cases, this removes the only thing worth watching. In others, the sex was an incidental or intrusive addition to make the early story more enticing, and reduces the amount of Selective Squick fans might have for the series. This is especially popular in "pure" moe fandoms that feed back into themselves, where later adaptations of the Bleached Underpants adaption also feature no scandalous scenes.
Because of the different attitude toward such things in Western society, this can be a shaky prospect, as many artists become well-remembered for their racier art, and often make attempts to distance themselves from it.
(If you still haven't gotten the title, it's a pun on "dirty laundry". "Dirty laundry" is something you're ashamed of in your past, so clearly cleaning up something you're ashamed of would be metaphorically "bleaching your underpants")
See also Old Shame, Rule 34. Hotter and Sexier is often the opposite of this trope. Playing to the Fetishes is a more different kind of opposite.
Examples
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Anime based on H-Games
Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru started as an H-game, which is ironic, given how shy Mizuho is in the only slighty ecchi anime.
SHUFFLE!, openly — somewhere around episode 10, an R-15 warning was added to the television broadcast, after which the ecchi content was upped... occasionally.
The anime adaptations of the TYPE-MOON adult Visual NovelsTsukihime (as Shingetsutan Tsukihime) and Fate/Stay Night with the erotic content mostly toned down. It's noteworthy that sex is actually a mechanic that's important for the Nasu Verse's magic system. It can be taken out of most routes without too many problems, but in the plots of Kohaku's route for Tsukihime and the Heaven's Feel route of Fate/stay night, it wouldn't be quite as easy and probably take away some of the drama.
In the PS2 port of Fate/stay night, this was done by having Sakura drink Shirou's blood (which also provides mana), removing all references to sex, and toning down Shinji's comments regarding Sakura.
Of course, Nanoha is based around a character from the game who didn't have any H-scenes.
On a related note: Nanoha was the first project of animation studio Seven Arcs which was not pornographic.
Leaf, developers of the classic Bishoujo GameTo Heart, initially released its game on the PC with explicit adult content, but re-released the game for the Playstation home console with adult content excised (then re-released that version on the PC with some more extras), expanding its following dramatically (in conjunction with the release of a clean TV adaptation). With the sequel, To Heart 2, Leaf reversed the bleaching and released a completely clean original on home consoles, then added adult content for the PC release, titled To Heart 2: X-Rated. The anime adaptation of To Heart 2 was clean. And *then* an eroge of To Heart 2 titled "To Heart 2: Another Days" was made just last year by Leaf with new characters,
LEAF / Aquaplus also produced Utawarerumono, initially an adult game. Its huge success lead to an anime and a Playstation 2 game, both 'clean' to the point of often lacking fanservice ( at least of more conventional sorts, though it does occasionally come up ). However, the anime, while leaving out the sexual aspects entirely, still left clear points in its plot where the story would have gone in an adult direction. The Playstation 2 version followed the original, adult game much more closely, to the point of cutting off on the brink of an H-scene then picking up afterwards. Only the original, adult game however, so openly blind-sides the player with the revelation that Dorii and Guraa are actually male. The others just kinda leave you unsettlingly uncertain.
Again from LEAF is Tears To Tiara which originated with an adult PC game. Later remade for the PS3 with (what is generally regarded as) superior character design. The anime then took the PS3's take on things.
As noted above, Key/Visual Arts' games Kanon and AIR were originally H-games, but the anime versions and later releases of the games were clean, and many people thought the hentai actually detracted from the story. (And was oddly placed. See Mai's arc in Kanon, where they go to the school to fight demons, but take a break to eat supper and do it on the desks. I suppose they were courteous demons.)
While in the subject of Key/Visual Arts, like Leaf, they also reversed the Bleaching with Little Busters! visual novel. Initially released as a clean visual novel with a gripping plot, followed by a manga adaptation, they now re-released it as Little Busters! Ecstasy as...well...an adult version of the original one (plus extras).
The same goes for Clannad, except that the unbleached game is a Gaiden Game sequel to one of the routes in the original (Tomoyo After: It's a Wonderful Life).
Although the Key 10th Anniversary Box edition is ero-free version of Ecstasy.
Yami To Boushi To Hon No Tabibito was based in a H game and while the anime still carries plenty of fanservice with School Girl Lesbians to boot it is far from being hentai.
There is also Touka Gettan, which is distantly related to Yami Bou, that features this trope on two fronts: it's based off of an erotic visual novel that, in turn, is a spin-off of the erotic visual novel/Hentai series Kao No Nai Tsuki.
Gakuen Heaven is a pretty good example of this applied to the Boys Love. The original PC game included sex but didn't show any penises. The sequel and the PS2 port both toned down the sex to just suggestion. The anime cleaned things up even further until the original game's rapist seme was reduced down to sexual harassment by elbow licking. The manga versions of things keep much closer to the original source material.
Demonbane is based on a series of eroge for the PC, but removing the adult content doesn't impact the mecha/Lovecraft story much.
Notable in this anime is that it spawned THE BIGGEST MECHA IN FICTION!
Another example is the popular Dating SimSukisho. The Shotacon, gore, and H scenes aren't present in adaptations from the game (At least not in the anime and OVA) and was basically toned down from a full blown Yaoi to Shounen Ai fluff.
The hentai game series Green Green was adapted into an anime that started off pretty clean, but eventually added back in the nudity, but never had the sex of the games.
Until episode 13. The one that was never licensed in the U.S.
The twelve episode series Soul Link is based on the game. Plot is almost the same, some characters were added, but the H is toned down. There is still lots of sexiness and one or two bed scenes.
Princess Lover, based on the same named eroge from RICOTTA. Most of the elements from the visual novel were kept for the animated adaptation; however, RICOTTA wasn't entirely satisfied with just a broadcast release, thus averted this trope by releasing an H-OVA for one of their heroines. They plan on doing this again for another heroine.
Yosuga no Sora plays this trope straight with its manga adaptation, but surprisingly averted this with its animated release...on broadcast television, by going the entire way of showing explicit sex scenes at the end of each heroine's arc.
Magical Canan, based on Terios Company's game and hentai OVA Magical Kanan, is developed by totally different developers (AIC) and has totally different art style.
Yoake Mae Yori Ruriiro Na originated as an H-game, but the anime adaptation and PS2 port have the sex scenes removed.
Anime whose artists were hentai doujinshi creators
Gravitation and its source manga are not hentai, but the original artist continued to release hardcore yaoi doujinshi — even of the series itself — while it was running.
Its sequel, Graviation EX, seems to be pushing the envelope even further. And the mangaka still seems to be releasing extremely explicit doujinshi of her own characters.
On a somewhat related note, an assistant of Akamatsu is behind the Cu-Little series of doujinshi. Certain people continue to argue the very similar art style is proof that Akamatsu himself is behind the books. This does not appear to be an issue in Japan, where they can read the credits and the assistant's website.
Kohta Hirano, creator of Hellsing, started out writing freelance hentai featuring characters that eventually became the cast of the aforementioned work. In fact, one of his works, Legend of Vampire Hunter, is identical in plot and character design to the first book of Hellsing — except, of course, that the busty police officer is only threatened with rape in the latter work. Hirano being Hirano, he lampshades this all the time in the author's notes in the first volumes. Other Characters used in previous Hentai titles that were roped into the Hellsing series; Alexander Anderson from the short comic "Angel Dust", Pip Bernadette and the Major from "Coyote", Doc and Shrödinger from "Doc's Story", Renaldo from "Magic School" and the Captain from "Desert Guardian".
Rikdo Koshi, the original creator of Excel Saga, introduced Excel, Il Pallazzo, and prototypes of the Daitenjin team in a hentai doujinshi. The anime version subverted this trope by dragging the doujinshi into Rikdo's — and the audience's — faces.
This was actually averted with Rikudo, who never stopped producing H manga or made any attempt to cover it up. And then it's subverted by Watanabe in the final episode "Going Too Far", who after chomping at the censorship bit for so long envied Rikudo's relaxed creative constraints. Watanabe looked forward to the chance to push every limit of broadcast standards, and is quite pleased with himself for doing so.
Oh! Great, creator of Tenjho Tenge and Air Gear. He still produces hentai manga and his mainstream work isn't too far from it. Some of the hentai work has seen release in the US under the title Sex Files.
Kiyohiko Azuma, the creator of Azumanga Daioh and Yotsuba&!, headed his own doujin circle, "A-Zone", and even professionally published one H-manga under a pseudonym, before creating Azumanga Daioh and hitting the big time in a big way.
Sadly unsurprisingly, the action manga Gunslinger Girl started out as a series of mostly loli doujin (by the same artist), and the final chapter of said series was an epilogue where the characters who were the prototypes for the eventual protagonist and her handler run away from the agency together and have gratuitous, statutory sex.
The artist who drew the sequel manga of Blood: The Last Vampire, Tamaoki Benkyo, also did several short stories for hentai anthologies.
Shirow Masamune, the creator of Ghost in the Shell started out as an H-artist, perhaps unsurprising considering the rife fanservice in both the manga and anime and the outright lesbian scenes in the manga. Most of his famous work was written while he was still an H-artist. He might not have ever stopped being one either. Most of these works can be found in the "Galgrease" artbooks, and are fairly old.
Hobby Japan, the anime-related merchandise company, who authored Queen's Blade, hired many artists and designers to create the girls for the line of battle books; some of these artists were (and others still are) renowed Hentai artists, the most notable being Oda Non, Koume Keito and Kuuchuu Yousai.
Masaki Kajishima, creator ofTenchi Muyo! started out with several H doujinshi, and has made several borderline titles set in the Tenchi Universe.
Kazuya Minekura, the creator of Saiyuki and Wild Adapter, started out drawing yaoi doujinshi. It's pretty apparent in her later works. In fact, Wild Adapter was officially published as yaoi in Japan (although not in the US).
The manga team Kaishaku, who even after being quite successful still do hentai doujinshi, even of their own work (one of them being a mix of Kannazuki no Miko and Magical Nyan Nyan Taruto, the latter is totally non-fanservice...)
The creator of the manga Bastard!!, Kazushi Hagiwara, works with his doujinshi circle "Studio Loud in School" to produce hentai doujinshi. Some of these are of the characters in Bastard!! and offer hentai scenes to the storyline that couldn't be put into the "regular" version, or pornographic retellings of scenes that are just borderline dirty originally. He sells these on his website. And they even advertise them in the back of volume 25 of the manga.
Ryuta Amazume got his start doing original H-manga, before eventually moving on to the almost-but-not-quite-H-manga he makes today, like Nana To Kaoru and Toshiue no Hito. Interestingly, he specializes in using ero-manga tropes and letting reality happen.
For those uninformed, Amazume Ryuta's pen name when making explicit stuff is "A Roman Gaman" (a Kanji Pun that can be read as "eromangaman"). He is particularly known amongst Lolicon fandom, despite his more serious works featuring grown women.
Konno Azure's probably best known work is Koe de Oshigoto!, which is incredibly ecchi due to the protagonist's job as an eroge voice actress. But look around and you'll find some straight up hentai works like Puberty Crazies.
One of the games they do voices for, "Miko Crazies", is actually Puberty Crazies but with less pornographic camera angles, or a character may be partially clothed. The dialogue, however, is exactly the same.
Inversions: some artists are more known for their ero-works than mainstream, but have also released mainstream works:
Naruko Hanaharu got his start drawing hentai for Comic Kairakuten, stopped only long enough to create Kamichu!!, then went right back to Kairakuten once it was done. The schism between the two bodies of work is not nearly so great as one might think.
BLADE, famous for some lolicon-ish mangas, also known as illustrator to Macademi Wasshoi.
Oyari Ashito aka NOCCHI, for illustrating Kita He~Diamond Dust Drops~. More known as illustrator of Porn With Plot game Girlish Grimoire: Littlewitch Romanesque.
Takeda Hiromitsu, he is more known for his hentai manga and doujinshi works, fame earned by his style of drawing women climaxing, the ahegao style, and some notable Netorare Genre works; he authored a mainstream work, Maken Ki, still it his first non-ero work and already got an animated adaptation, only time will tell if his resume will invert, to a mainstream mangaka who was once known as a hentai mangaka.
Toshihiro Ono is the well known creator of the manga The Electric Tale of Pikachu, the first official manga of the Pokémon series, as well as the first 2 volumes of Crest of the Stars. He's also Kamirenjaku Sanpei, artist of Anal Justice and other Futanari and Shotacon serieses using the same art style. (This surprises few people who have seen the original Japanese manga's Misty art — the girl runs around in a micro-tubetop and pants that would make Daisy Duke blush.)
It definitely surprised a few casual American readers, though. In one of Ono's other comics, an Author Avatar of him is at an American convention, and he gets asked by one person about his porn work. He just replies "Sorry, you're confusing me with someone else. And I don't know why it's called that either."
Tony Taka is the main illustrator for many of eroge developer Ciel's works such as GenmukanSora no Iro, Mizu no Iro and After. He is also the main character designer of Shining Tears and Shining Wind and Shining Hearts (oddly enough, he was not part of the Animated AdaptationShining Tears x Wind).
For some reason, Tony Taka rarely does the art for the anime/H-adaptations of the games he's worked with. His fame is so great that some adaptations falsely advertise him as the leading artist.
Another big name: Satoshi Urushihara, who does the cover artworks for H-manga anthology Tenma Comics, drew the characters in the Growlanser and Langrisser series. Not to be confused with Kawarajima Koh (collective pseudonym for Urushihara's assistants) of ero-doujinshi circle Henreikai, who is a different example of someone more famous for his doujinshi than mainstream illustrations.
Yonekura Kengo is more well-known for her ero-manga, but she did design the characters for a rather famous Eroge - Kana: Little Sister.
Satou Shouji of Highschool of the Dead fame is known for being the member of DIGITAL ACCEL WORKS as well as publishing ero-mangas under INAZUMA. Having a long, steady resumes of one-shots under anthologies, his mainstream works still show enough Author Appeal of Gun Porn and World of Buxom for anyone to make the connection.
Rei Hiroe, writer and artist of Black Lagoon, produces doujinshi under the name TEX-MEX, one of them being a beach-themed book featuring Black Lagoon characters.
While a lot of the works by legendary creator Go Nagai are rather... racy, he'd done his fair share of outright erotica. Even stuff based on his mainstream works such as Mazinger Z.
One interesting, if odd example, is the anime series Mezzo, a decent action anime series that would be of little note except for the fact that it is based on a hentai OVA called Mezzo Forte.
Curiously, each of the two Mezzo Forte episodes only has a single two minute sex scene — and it's easily edited out without any plot impact, as was done in some US versions. Japanese contractual obligations to add hentai material, meet overseas distributor underpants bleaching! The followup TV series was also non-hentai.
Too bad it's the pornographic original that had noteworthy animation, fight choreography, and tighter writing that the low-budgeted TV series fails to deliver. A very odd case where the clean, serious incarnation lacks the integrity of the hentai.
Mezzo Forte was not supposed to be porn at first, but the producer bankrolling it believed it was the only way it would make money and forced the team to add in the gratuitous nudity and sex. Basically, Mezzo was what they had really wanted to do all along (once they found a different publisher.)
Similar to Kanon and AIR, Project A-Ko was originally produced as part of the Cream Lemon hentai series, but the producers thought the comedy was too good to be broken up with sex scenes. They left plenty of suggestiveness in, though.
Fans of the Lupin III anime and movies are likely to be scandalized by the manga, which is full of nude girls, innuendo, and barely-censored sex scenes. The franchise has gradually become more and more family-friendly over time. For example, the first anime series was dark and serious, the second was Lighter and Softer, and the third was just silly - though the 2012 anime featuring Fujiko as the focal character returns to the dark and sexy with gusto.
Keito Koume, the illustrator for the manga version of Spice and Wolf, drew the H-manga Kafun Shojo Chuiho AKA The Pollinic Girls Attack.
Dream Hunter Rem started life as a one-shot hentai OVA. Due to popular demand this one-shot was re-edited and rereleased with a newly made episode as a mainstream title and eventually spawned four sequels.
Most of the artists who did the art for the Banquet of the Divas were known for hentai or ecchi works. Examples include Takuya Fujima, Torishimo, Chiba Satoru, Tsuji Santa and Uni. Given the nature of the artwork, it is obvious they had done porn at some point.
Comic Books
Wally Wood, known for his work for EC Comics (particularly for MAD), released three issues of a pornographic comic called Gang Bang. He was also responsible for the satirical piece The Disneyland Memorial Orgy, which was distributed as a poster by the underground newspaper The Realist, as well as being widely pirated.
Ben Dunn, author of the manga-esque Ninja High School, at the same time wrote a satirical adult series entitled NOT Ninja High School.
One of the unique things about NOT Ninja High School is that several artists from regular Ninja High School projects did stories. Artists who've done Not NHS stories include Bob DeJesus, Takeshi Suzuki and Fred Perry.
Fred Perry himself is an example; he got the idea for his comic Gold Digger while drawing pin-up art for his fellow soldiers during the First Gulf War.
Start? Check his Gold Digger commissioned works. He's STILL doing his own hentai doujinshis!
Either Perry has no sense of Old Shame or just likes to give Shout Outs to long-time readers, as one issue of Gold Digger had the characters dressed in the style of one of Perry's early doujins, Gillian's Isle.
(Not So) Surprisingly, Chuck Austen stirred more controversy with his nipple-free mainstream work (X-Men, Superman), than his early underground porn comics. (There's also some rather noticable thematic similarities between his X-Men dialog and the dialog in his X-rated comic, Strips.
Fables creator Bill Willingham wrote and drew the pornographic fantasy comic Ironwood earlier in his career, although he had also done gaming art and some comics before that.
Colleen Coover has become quite well known for doing the cute, funny back-up strips for X-Men: First Class. Her first published comic was a "girly [lesbian] porno comic", in her own words.
The artist of the Bazooka Joe comics was apparently an artist of Tijuana Bibles, short pornographic fan comics.
The assistant artist of Scott Pilgrim made some Rule 34 of the female members of Scott Pilgrim. O'Malley was fine with it since his comic already had its share of sex scenes.
Circles is a non-adult (though still moderately mature) gay Slice of Life comic series written by, drawn by and published by people who were better known before for their gay furry porn.
MANGA GRAPHIX, the company that publishes Witch Girls Tales, used to run a now dead Geocities site and e-zine called The Shrinking Sorceress, a fetish site dedicated to art and stories about people being transformed into things by sorceresses. (Note the copyright at the bottom of the page.) Malcolm Harris, the author of Witch Girls and the owner of Channel M (the company credited with creating the pen-and-paper RPG spinoff), lists himself as a writer for MANGA GRAPHIX in his resume. While Witch Girls is not dedicated to titillating its audience, several minor characters and the term "witch girls" were present in some of the stories on TSS, and both the newer comic and the RPG it's based on have an unusually large amount of art dedicated to people being transformed into things. It's a source of Old Shame for the creator now, as they are quick to jump into any internet discussion or wiki mentioning the connection and deny it.
Isaac Baranoff used to draw a pornographic horror comic called Tales Of The Unrefined. His publisher Mystic Studios Productions won't even acknowledge that it exists these days. Baranoff does, but he doesn't speak well of it.
Empowered grew out of Adam Warren being forced by financial difficulties to turn to the questionable but lucrative market of superhero-themed bondage pin-ups. Gradually, he found the single images developing into longer gag strips, and finally a full-blown comic series with fleshed-out characters. To the point that it eventually starts explicitly calling out the people who are reading for the bondage as creepy.
Barbara Canepa, the artist for W.I.T.C.H. did the rather risque series Sky Doll.
Film
The 1975 horror film Forced Entry was a loose remake of a 1973 porno of the same name.
When The Sopranos was being produced, they made sure to be prepared to bleach their own underpants for syndication. They would frequently record alternate versions of scenes where a nude character (often the strippers in the club) would be in bikinis or lingerie, and occasionally a scene would be recorded with softer dialogue to avoid Hong Kong Dub later.
During his run for the United States Senate, Al Franken had to publicly distance himself from a lot of his more ribald and controversial work on Saturday Night Live.
Dream On, much like The Sopranos, had nude scenes with alternate takes wearing underwear for broadcast syndication.
Manga
Ever read My Lovely Ghost Kana and Ai-Ren? Yep, they're huge Tear Jerkers alright. Well, their creator, mangaka Tanaka Yutaka mostly creates ero-mangas aside from his few ecchi mangas. His work ranges all across the spectrum of explicitness with Ai-Ren on the R-Rated end, and Virgin Night solidly in the "explicit" side of the spectrum. Worry not as even his more explicit works are worthy Hentai With Lots of Plot.
Even Virgin Night was pretty softcore; there was only a few panels showing the genitals and those were as softcore as you can get while showing genitals. This also applies to the other short stories within Virgin Night that are not the titular short story.
Omamori Himari, with its plot dangling between Porn With Plot, excessive (barely)SFW Fanservice with some Fetish Fuel, you know what you're into. And to no surprise, the author majorly draws H-mangas, and some pretty interesting ones at that.
Arguably Virgin na Kankei's author Takumi Kobayashi, but seeing the content of the mentioned manga, you definitely can't be surprised.
Little known to everyone, Black Cat and To Love-Ru's author YABUKI Kentaro has a history of drawing Hentai works, albeit with a different penname.
Tinkle, a CG Artist, has worked on a few H-games aside from 3 short manga serializations
Name any Light Novel series at Media Factory Bunko J (Hidan no Aria for example) and the artist who did the illustrations for the artwork and there is a very likely chance they did either the illustration for a H-Game or was a doujin creator if the artwork in the anime/manga is risque.
As if the Hellsing examples weren't enough, the creator of And Shine Heaven Now bleached three more characters from Kohta Hirano's hentai manga: Nina, admittedly wasn't bleached much (she went from a catgirl that had sex with Hitler to a succubus that switched bodies with Schrodinger and then fought Alucard), but the characters Natalie and Pip (the prototype for Hellsing's Pip Bernadette) from the hentai manga Coyote were lightened up, the only signs of the hentai background being a scene where Natalie is chained up. They turn out to be Pip's grandparents.
Many of Shimura Takako's manga are sexual, occasionally even straight out pornographic, but you wouldn't know that from her most popular work. It's quite PG for a Seinen manga and most of its sexuality was ditched early on. Well, until recently, and even then it's not very explicit. Aoi Hana has more sexual references, nudity, and sexual scenes but it's still not much compared to her earlier works.
In the Korean Artist community, almost every artist who did Sword Girls had nothing controversial to their name. However, the artist of Freezing pretty much makes up for it. He even did a Crossmake Series which just recently was pretty much a "too hot for the manga" doujin series with sex scenes galore.
Music
Jackie Wilson and LaVern Baker recorded an X-rated version of their duet "Think Twice" as a piss take during the recording sessions for that single, and later turned up on bootlegs and specialty compilations.
Shel Silverstein, best known for his Children's books, released an album of adult-oriented comedy songs called Freakin' at the Freakers Ball, with songs about pot smoking (most notably "I Got Stoned And I Missed It", later covered by Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show) and masochism. Not all of the material was Bleached Underpants, however - it also contained one of his more well-known novelty recordings, "Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take The Garbage Out", which has been frequently played on the Dr. Demento show. Some of Silverstein's other albums contain adult material, including "The Smoke Off" from Songs & Stories and "Quaaludes Again" from The Great Conch Train Robbery.
Johnny Otis recorded an album of sexually explicit comedy songs under the name Snatch and the Poontangs in 1969.
Country singer David Allan Coe released a pair of X-rated comedy albums in 1979 and 1982 called Nothing Sacred and Underground Album, containing songs about masturbation, oral sex, group sex, S&M, etc. These albums were initially sold through the back pages of a biker magazine and became notoriously infamous when Coe started selling them on CD through his website, just not for the usual reason.
The Muppet-popularized song "Mah NaMah Na" originated on the soundtrack ofSweden: Heaven and Hell, an Italian mondo documentary exploring lesbian nightclubs, porn films, swinging lifestyle of married couples and sex education of teenagers.
A couple of songs on Hardcore Devo Vol 2, a compilation of early Devo material, feature some pretty messed up lyrics by Devo standards: "I Been Refused" ("I was looking at that cunt") and "I Need a Chick" ("I need a chick to suck my dick").
And that's not even getting into the unsuccessful children's album they produced in partnership with Disney of all organizations...
Little Richard's original lyrics to "Tutti Frutti" contained unacceptable levels of swearing and sexual innuendo for contemporary radio broadcast, so songwriter Dorothy LaBostrie was brought in to hurriedly write new, clean, lyrics.
Caravan Palace got their start by making music for Silent Pornographic films.
Video Games
Eien no Aselia was originally an H game/RPG mix for the PC. Eventually, it was ported to the PlayStation 2, which doesn't allow adult content. Then it was ported back. So all the references to the sex are there and you can even pinpoint when it happened, you'll just never see it.
The majority of visual novels that get console ports experience this in their transition, especially if it's Porn With Plot; many of these examples can be seen in the anime section, including the likes of Fate/stay night, AIR, and Togainu No Chi.
Subverted with most of Compile Heart's artists, despite how most of the female cast is aimed at fanservice, most never had any history with hentai as the company pays more on average for starting artists. The only exception was Hirano Katsuyuki who does the erotic feelies for the other artists (From Dakimakura to pinups).
Enix, the company behind Dragon Quest, got its start making computer games. What kinds of computer games, you ask? Well, one of their earliest games involved saving a girl from knives being thrown at her, and the girl stripping as a reward. The game that followed? Stripping little girls...
Aeju Murasame, the creator of games like Bunny Must Die and the Gundemonium Series, started his career by making H-manga. Most of his works were original, but there is a particular one based on Gunparade March. These days, however, Aeju is more known for his games.
While MOST of the artists for the character designs in Sengoku Taisen or Sangokushi Taisen does mostly artistic nudity or has a clean record (well most of them, some of them you don't even notice they did porn due to the characters they draw are as not sexualized as possible). One of of their artists in particular does not have such a pristine reputation and has on several occasions drew porn of some of the cast. Be warned as the artist does porn of both genders...
Nintendo themselves (after hitting it big with hanafuda cards, and before hitting it big with Super Mario Bros. and the like) once experimented with other services, one of which was a chain of Love Hotels.
Many of the Final Fantasy characters that appear in Kingdom Hearts come from games that are much darker and directed towards older audiences.
Duel Savior Destiny originally had sexual content in Duel Savior Justice, but it later received a clean release that turned most of the sex scenes into something far more PG, faded to black on others and replaced the harem route with one focused around the princess character from the original game who did not originally have a route. In order to do so, she gets dragged along to a number of scenes that were clearly originally written without her presence, making her rather stand out.
Xeno Saga's character designer CHOCO, did a bit of adult game artwork and helped out in a variety of H-Game designs in both mecha and non mecha designs. He also published the Gothic Lolita series which was Porn With Plot set in Victoria England in a rather dark and sinister way.
Tooru Nakayama, the character designer for Megaman Zero series has about 6 adult doujins to his name. His perverted charm rubbed off on the director of Inti Creates who made Gal Gun.
Gloriously averted by Hideki Ishikawa, the character desginer for Mega Man Legends, who has not only made hentai, but has made hentai of the characters he designed for the series!
Studio Gainax, although an anime producer first, branched out into video games with some success. Gainax's best known game series, Princess Maker, is quite clean. However, the first game released by Gainax, Cybernetic Hi-School, was a strip quiz game with enough sexual content to be banned in one Japanese prefecture.
Scarlet Blade is already a risque piece of work, but it turns out freecree the cg artist was simple using cropped versions of his much more risque version of his artwork and has put it shamelessly on display.
Data East began its line of billiards games with a clean Arcade Game titled Side Pocket. However, all the (likewise clean) console releases of Side Pocket, not counting the Numbered Sequels, were based either on the nudity-enhanced update Pocket Gal or its sequel Pocket Gal Deluxe.
Webcomics
One of the longest running current furry webcomics, Sabrina Online, is drawn by Eric W. Schwartz, who has been known to draw furry pornography, and in fact currently runs a furry porn pay site. However, he wrote a F.A.Q. defining exactly how his characters could be used by fans, basically saying please don't draw Sabrina porn. However, a few atrocity tourism sites, especially Crush!Yiff!Destroy!, claimed that he himself was using other people's copyrighted characters in his pornography, under the pseudonym TDK, making him not only a furry pornster, but also a hypocrite. At this point, Schwartz has put out a "blanket denial," and nothing has ever really been proven either way.
It's been proven that TDK has an art style extremely similar to Schwartz's, at the very least, and that they have both posted to message boards and listservs from Amiga OS computers from the same IP within an hour of each other. They're roommates who happen to draw identically, at minimum.
Not to mention that several supporting characters started off as characters in various porn pics, by Schwartz and others (In particular, Tammy, Zig Zag, and Darke Katt {ZZ Studios' janitor})
Girl Genius writer and artist Phil Foglio was previously well known for his XXXenophile erotic comic series, although he makes no attempt to hide it - he's been seen at conventions wearing a pin or nametag reading "Gentleman Pornographer".
His wife, Kaja, was a collaborator in both XXXenophile and What's New? with Phil and Dixie, an RPG-based comic that used to run in gaming mags (and is rerun on the Foglios' website). Not to mention they both openly admit she models Victorian underwear of the type frequently featured in GG. And not always for the sake of the comic.
Wendy, one of Josh Lesnick's best remembered characters (or character templates) began as the focal character of The Wendy Project, a site showcasing tons of pinups of Wendy and her friends (which, according to the artist's retrospective, were rather badly drawn). The characters would eventually star in the increasingly more wholesome comic bearing Wendy's name, and Wendy's character design was later reused in the filler series Cute Wendy, which became a runaway success and spawned its own sequel/spinoff Girly. Despite the Old Shame involved, Josh has continued to produce short pornographic comics on his Slipshine subscription service to this day, some of which still feature Wendy prominently, although slightly better drawn now.
Before the webcomic got its start, Las Lindas artist Chalo had a number of pictures of Mora in some rather NSFW situations. Once the comic became popular, the pics were eventually deleted from his art pages, though they occasionally still pop up from time to time on imageboards. The move is somewhat ironic, given the Fanservice-heavy nature of the comic and that Mora has since been shown and implied to have had sex multiple times throughout.
The artist/author of Grrl Power is, like Eric Schwartz, well-known in the Furry Fandom, primarily for BDSM-related works.
The character Suzuran from the H-Game Suigetsu appeared on Image Boards so many times with the catchphrase "Waha!" that people took to calling her Waha instead.
This was not uncommon among some of the older masters. There is a Rembrandt etching of a couple having sex [1]◊, and a Da Vinci sketch of a man ejaculating into a woman... drawn in cross-section!◊
Phillip Jackson, one of the concept artists for Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, is also the author of the webcomic Sequential Art... and also a fairly well known (at least on Deviant ART, under the name "Jollyjack") drawer of very busty furries and furry transformation sequences. And he sells them over the internet to make an extra buck. The fact that some of them are outright porn doesn't help.
Of course, given that he's cheerfully open about this, and makes no active attempts to disassociate any one aspect of his output from the other- promos for a self-published comic and explicitly pornographic illustration sit side-by-side on his deviantART page- it's questionable whether this trope applies.
Noizi Ito is perhaps mostly known for her illustrations for the Suzumiya HaruhiLight Novels (which were used as the base for the anime), but she has also has done extensive work for various hentai games.
L0cke wrote and published hentai doujinshi before working on Gaia Online.
Takahiro Kimura, a character designer whose credits include GaoGaiGar, Godannar, and Code Geass, also did the designs for the Viper series of H-games. Though considering Godannar could get pretty Fanservice-y at times...
While no evidence of Harada Takehito doing outright porn has been found, he does do somewhat suggestive art (including one infamous Les Yay picture of the main character of Phantom Brave and her Ill Girl friend) and his mascot character has several erotic fan artbooks done of her, which he presumably worked on. His co-artist on the early Nippon Ichi games, Ryoji of Attic Work Space, is much more openly risqué in his art — which makes sense when you realize what type of character art he does for the Disgaea series.
Why does Barbie — an American children's doll — have Gag Boobs? Because she's based on "Bild Lilli", a doll marketed to adult men in Germany. Lilli herself originated as a bawdy character in a German comic strip in the 1950s.
Now, why some of Ryoka Yuzuki's roles are a Ecchi and Hentai in nature? It is because Ryoka-chan used to be a nude model prior to becoming a seiyu. But without the Rule34, though.
The Japanese woodcut master Hokusai created what is generally considered to be the Ur Example of tentacle porn. Google "Dream of the Fisherman's Wife."
Except that those stories are still more about macabre than eroticism. Even his most explicit stories that were collected in Switch Bitch — one story about a woman who tries sex again many years after her true love dies, another about two men who swap wives without the wives noticing — all end in macabre tragedy.
The creator of the semi-official Wikipedia mascot, Kasuga, draws hentai. This caused controversy in The Other Wiki when Wikipe-tan was shown in a suggestive manner that Kasuga had to put it down.
Jimbo Wales, founder of The Other Wiki previously headed Bomis, a web portal whose most popular search terms were adult-oriented. Despite not being specifically porn, Wales has tried to distance himself from his older project. It didn't work.
The characters Mordecai and Benson from Regular Show first appeared in an animated short the creator made during college, which involved two workers at a gas station convenience store going on a drug trip from doing acid. There were also a lot of Cluster F Bombs.
A fair number of professional wrestlers in WWE have gotten their undies bleached, sometimes as a result of a Heel Face Turn but more generally because WWE has in recent years attempted to become more family-friendly. The most notable of these is John Cena, who rose to fame as a heel that belittled his opponents through R-Rated rap promos. Within record time, Cena was PG-ized by the WWE when they saw his popularity and has gone full-tilt towards erasing any edginess about Cena in favor for a G-Rated version of Cena that they could shill to children. On the Divas side, Mickie James (who did several nude photoshoots before becoming a WWE wrestler) and Kelly Kelly, who started out with fairly perverted gimmicks (Psycho Lesbian and "extreme exhibitionist," respectively) before being converted to generic Divas.
Subverted with wrestler Steve Austin, who credits his brief tenure in ECW for severing as a test run for his revamp into Stone Cold Steve Austin. Meanwhile Edge, who for a time called himself "The Rated-R Superstar" reverted back to his wacky evil gimmick of the early 00s rather than simply being neutered.
Inverted (given it's for something after wrestling) with Chyna. WWE '13 retells the story of the Attitude Era without listing her. It's either due to a personal feud with Stephanie McMahon (who among other things married her ex), or Chyna starting a career as a porn actress.
The nursery rhyme Eeny, meeny, miny, moe has gone through some rather lurid incarnations over the past centuries, before being re-Bowdleriseed in the late twentieth century. The version that appeared in work by Rudyard Kipling, among others, doesn't use the word tiger (or "beggar", as it's bowdlerised in Britain).
The late Japanese TV personality Ai Ijima started her carreer as a Gravure idol/AV actress. She got her break on television as a bikini model. Once she hit the mainstream, her lawyers went through quite a bit of work to ensure that a boxed set of her previous "exploits" never saw the light of day.
Arthur De Pins, character designer for the show A Kind of Magic, also drew an erotic comic called Peches Mignon.
The early 20th-century gurus who revived hatha yoga, the most widely practiced school, carefully downplayed the prominent role that many of its original promoters had assigned to sex several centuries earlier, largely because it had ultimately become the source of several scandals. But you can always count on the return of the repressed
Before he decided to stick to writing for children, Dr. Seuss wrote and illustrated a book called The Seven Lady Godivas, containing a lot of gratuitous nudity.
Seuss seems to have regarded the fact that he drew "a book full of naked women" as an Old Shame, but he also implied that it wasn't the nudity per se that bothered him, but the fact that he "can't draw naked women, I put their knees in the wrong places." It's also extremely mild/inoffensive nudity (they don't seem to have any parts that a Barbie doll doesn't). He seemed more embarrassed by the fact it didn't sell well and wound up getting remaindered.
Dr. Seuss also did animation for the WWII-era cartoon shorts featuring the character Private Snafu, which, unlike the general audience Looney Tunes cartoons, contain a lot of things that would be considered objectionable both back in the days of the Hays Code and now (scantily-clad women, racist caricatures of the Japanese, references to Hitler and Nazism, uses of the words "damn" and "hell"note which, back then, were almost as bad as "fuck" and "shit", and crude humor that would appeal to its mostly male, young military audience).
Anna Wintour, the Vogue editor on whom Miranda Priestly of The Devil Wears Prada is allegedly based, doesn't often admit that she was once an editor at ''Viva'', an attempt at creating an adult women's magazine edited by Kathy Keeton (aka Mrs. Bob Guccione) in the late 1970s.
Camilla D'Errico, who did artwork for comics and a variety of art projects. However she is also well known for her artistic nudes which she at some point felt it was an Old Shame until the San Diego Comic Con.
Pre "Playhouse", Paul Reuben's Pee-Wee Herman was a stand-up character for adult comedy nightclubs, with appropriately themed humor. One of his routines involved Missy Vaughn and *ahem* 'shoe mirrors'. Missy Vaughn catches them trying to look up her dress and her undies. She tells them the joke is on them because she's not wearing any.
